Spotting Narcissistic Manipulation And Reclaiming Your Voice with Saige Whitney

Someone tells you they are dying, you stay because leaving would make you a monster, and slowly your whole life becomes about keeping them calm. That is the kind of emotional trap we get into when empathy meets manipulation, and it is exactly what Saige Whitney joins me to talk through with honesty and clarity.

Saige shares the real story behind starting her show, A Lights Out Narcissistic Podcast, after a relationship where her partner claimed cancer, kidney failure, and other severe illnesses that were not true. We unpack how narcissistic abuse can use big lies, victim narratives, and fear of abandonment to hook caring people, especially empaths and highly sensitive people who are wired to help. We explore the patterns that often show up early: intense trauma dumping, “I have nobody” loneliness scripts, gifts used to dodge accountability, and the subtle grind of being drained while you keep giving more.

From there we get practical about boundaries. We talk about good girl syndrome, why saying “no” can feel terrifying, and how to build boundary muscle in small, repeatable steps that actually work in real life. We also go into gaslighting, what it sounds like, why it makes you question your memory, and how to come back to your own reality. We touch on the body’s signals in toxic relationships, anger as a catalyst for leaving, and simple daily energy protection practices like grounding and setting an energetic force field so you stop absorbing what is not yours.

If you want clearer signs of narcissistic manipulation, better emotional boundaries, and tools to protect your energy without hardening your heart, listen now. Subscribe, share this with someone who needs it, and leave us a review, what boundary are you ready to practise this week?

Saige Whitney

Here is my website: https://alightsoutnarcissisticpodcast.riverside.com/

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My new novel The Red Magus has recently been published in conjunction with the Unbound Press.  An entralling mystical adventure set across time and space, where past and current lives converge.  Find it on Amazon and Barnes & Noble.

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Transcript

Welcome And A Big Life Update

SPEAKER_00 0:03

So, welcome everybody to another edition of Balm to the Soul podcast. And I'm your host, Natasha Joy Price, and I have some great news. I am no longer a lawyer, I am a retired lawyer. Yay! So after 29 years, I have hung up my lawyer hat. So now I can say I'm your host, and I'm an author and a podcaster and an energy therapist. So that was my exciting news today. But we also have some other exciting news in that we have a new guest on, and her name is Sage Whitney. So welcome, Sage. Thank you so much for supporting the podcast. Yes, thank you so much for having on a lovable world. Thank you for the case. Oh, it's a pleasure. It's a pleasure to have you on. I think you've frozen. Can you hear me? I hear you, yeah. Good. Okay, that's fine. So Sage teaches others to protect energy, set boundaries, and stop confusing self-sacrifice with love. And she has a podcast called A Lights Out Narcissistic Podcast. Um, so we're going to talk about that first, if that's all right with you. Tell me um why and the listeners, why you started the podcast? What's it all about? How it came into existence, really? Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:27

I started the podcast because of my narcissistic ex-girlfriend. She told me she had cancer, kidney failure, gastroparesis, which for the listeners that's a paralysis of the stomach. It's very hard for a patient to digest food, and um, that she was dying. All of those things were untrue. All she had was lupus, which is still very sad. Um, anyone that has an autoimmune illness, I send love your way, absolutely. Um, but but at the end of the day, all she really did have was lupus and an iron deficiency. Um, it wasn't until about a year later that I figured out she was an opioid addict and she was playing sick to and saying she had these illnesses to get opioids. Right.

SPEAKER_00 2:30

Gosh, that's very that's um it's such a massive story to come up with, isn't it? I mean, is that a trait for a narcissist? They come up with these massive stories that just are not true.

SPEAKER_02 2:48

Absolutely, yes. Um, I would say that unfortunately a good portion of things they say are not true. Depends, everyone's a little different with my ex, she made up so many stories about trauma and people hurting her that wasn't even true. It was just to further her role as a victim.

SPEAKER_00 3:20

And yeah. Why do they do that? What what's the what's the drive behind it?

SPEAKER_02 3:28

You know, for her, it was she needed to lie and say she was sick to get opioids. Um, I know she had a fear of abandonment, so that would play into because she didn't treat me good, of course. She was horrible to me. So, but she would play that I'm a sick girl, I'm

The Lies That Sparked A Podcast

SPEAKER_02 3:53

dying, you can't leave me, even if you try. And she used that card all the time, and so almost a strategy to keep people to stay, even if she was abusing them, mean to them, taking advantage of them. You can't leave me though, I'm dying. How are you gonna live yourself with yourself if you leave a dying person? And she wasn't even dying, so that's great in itself.

SPEAKER_00 4:24

So your experiences with this um partner um brought you to start the podcast.

SPEAKER_02 4:32

Yes, it was a healing method for me and a I realized that I could raise awareness for other empaths and highly sensitive people to realize that a lot of highly sensitive people, they are very pure souls, they trust everybody. Someone's sad, they want to go help them. I'm here to tell these highly sensitive people you're here on this earth to shine your light, to be a lighthouse. Lighthouses don't run along the shore saving people. No, no, no. They shine their light, they're a reference point, they're love, but they don't go save people. And a lot of empaths fall into the trap of I am only worthy, I am only valuable if I'm risking my life for people, and that's not true. So I'm here to raise awareness, and we have these narcissists come into our life because we don't have boundaries, and they are our greatest teacher and our most painful teacher. Absolutely, I didn't have boundaries. I do, and if it wasn't for her, I would still be saying yes all the time when my body's contracting and I want to say no. But because of this experience, now I have a voice. Now I show up cleanly with people. If they know I don't want to be there, then I say no to the event. And if I want to be there, I say yes.

SPEAKER_00 6:14

Yeah. So do you think that's quite a common sort of coupling, an empath and a narcissist? They tend to fit together for various reasons. The narcissist will look out for that person who doesn't have the boundaries and will accept and allow them to be in control.

SPEAKER_02 6:34

This is gonna sound very strange, but a narcissist generally, there are exceptions to every rule, will only go after an empath. Reason being, these people have rejected the light, the light of Christ, the higher light, whatever you believe in, um, that higher power love, they have rejected it. And um, you know, they were the way they were raised was sad. They were not given the love they were supposed to. I will always have, you know, sympathy for that. But what they do instead of working on themselves, taking accountability, is they blame everyone else around them, and then they go after an empath because they know empaths don't have boundaries. They have rejected the light, empaths hold the light, that healing, divine energy that they have rejected. They have to go steal that from other people. Okay, so they're on the lookout for empaths. That's their that's their main target. They get to full access 24-7 to divine energy. They get there's no boundaries, so they can get anything they want, take anything they want, say anything they want. And empaths are so trusting, they're easiest to manipulate because they see the good in this narcissist. Whereas other people, when I was in this relationship, were saying, You need to get out, this is bad. But I did see the good, and there still is good. And there was so much abuse, so much abuse, and that's not a reason to stay ever, ever, ever.

SPEAKER_00 8:15

So, what are the what for people listening? What are the red flags um of female narcissists? What what what should be a red flag?

SPEAKER_02 8:25

A red flag I've seen with female narcissists is when you meet them, they have trauma, right? And once again, so much sympathy for anyone who has trauma, but these people know they need help and they don't get it. So

Why Empaths Attract Narcissists

SPEAKER_02 8:43

that's I can't really feel bad for that if you're not getting the help you need, right? What I've experienced is I meet these female narcissists, and immediately they are telling me extremely traumatic things that have happened to them. Unfortunately, going back to the lying, some of that might not even be true. Reason they're doing that is they're immediately trying to hook you. I went through this traumatic experience immediately. That's emotionally manipulation. Okay. So that's the first thing I've seen. The second thing is I have no one. I'm so lonely. The reason they don't have anyone is they've abused all their friends and partners. So there's a reason for that. They've had people love them, care for them, they've abused them, they've exploited them. For my ex, I was her drug mule. She was straight exploiting a lesbian to get drugs. So that's another thing, too, that they'll use for emotional manipulation, the traumatic experience, and then the I have nobody. I have no one. And so immediately as an empath, empath, you feel bad for them, and they've gotcha. They've gotcha.

SPEAKER_00 10:08

So, how do the empaths set their boundaries? How do they learn to set their boundaries and not be sort of drawn into this?

SPEAKER_02 10:22

As a fellow empath, what I teach in my podcasts, especially in episode four, is you need to start small. You don't have boundaries. So, how do you set boundaries? It's terrifying. People that were born with

Red Flags Of Female Narcissists

SPEAKER_02 10:43

a voice will never understand this. I wasn't born with a voice. I was born with good girl syndrome. Do as you're told, respect, do what everyone tells you to do, agree with everyone tells you whatever people tell you, and be a good girl, sit with it, deal with it, right? That is so dangerous, so toxic, and it robs you of your identity. So, with empaths, I say you need to start small. Start with kids, right? If they touch you inappropriately, I need you to not touch me there. That's a boundary. Thank you for respecting this boundary. Start small. I looked in the mirror once for like a month straight and said, No, in the mirror, no, stop it. I'm not okay with this 50 times because I've never been able to say those words. So you just need to get used to start to saying those words out loud because we've never said them before for the most part, unless we've been pushed to our breaking point and then we explode. And that happens with a lot of empaths. And start small, start setting little boundaries, start saying no to little things, and watch how your life improves drastically. Watch the change, people will start respecting you more. You're not overgiving, you're not wasting your time on pointless drama. There is a change, and people feel it, and it is so worth it, and it is scary. And I tell all empaths, it is frightening. Take the first steps one day at a time. Respect the small wins, work your way to

Learning Boundaries With Good Girl Syndrome

SPEAKER_02 12:36

adults, and it is possible.

SPEAKER_00 12:40

I think um what you're talking about there, I think actually that's a lot of women that um find it hard to, and probably men as well, but my experience as women find you know, a huge number of find boundary setting to some extent difficult. And I don't know why that is with the human experience, but for some reason, a lot of us can't go no or or you know, that's not for me, or it in case we hurt somebody's feelings, or in case you know somebody doesn't like me for saying no, or yeah, that's I think that's quite a common problem, actually, to be honest.

SPEAKER_02 13:26

Um struggling with good girl syndrome, setting boundaries. This is not just for HSPs, but it's very, very common in HSPs. So that's where my focus generally is. Yeah, yeah, sure.

SPEAKER_00 13:49

Yeah. Um yeah. So on your podcast, you you go through um all of these sort of stages and help people to really look at their own relationships, perhaps. I mean, for a lot of people might not even realize that the p person they're with is a narcissist, they might not realize that that's what their relationship is all about, to be fair.

SPEAKER_02 14:21

Yeah, that's that's a great, you know, that's a great on look. And if you grew up with parents like this, that are unfortunately they they just see you as a means to an end, uh, an energy source. Um they see you as someone they can take advantage of, they waste your time, you pay for a bunch of things for them that is not your responsibility to pay for. Yeah, they throw themselves on you. Um they say, Well, I'm your mom, so you have to do anything for me. People that have parents like this, they're going to find a partner like this because that's what feels uncomfortable. Yeah, and then weird as that sounds.

SPEAKER_00 15:22

And you don't know, yeah, and you don't know it's not normal until it shifts, if that makes sense. They have to sort and then that's difficult because you sort of have to get used to feeling uncomfortable in order to shift out of that situation. It's not an easy, it's not an easy thing to do, is it?

SPEAKER_02 15:45

No. It's and being an empath growing up, I didn't have narcissistic parents. Um, that doesn't mean you won't end up with a narcissistic partner and or friends. And I looked back at most of my life, and a good 50% of my friendships were narcissists. Because it's yeah, it's comforting.

SPEAKER_00 16:12

Yeah. So how did you how what else did you do to help yours? Because you must have suddenly got real clarity on your relationship and thought, you know, this isn't right here. So what what other thing? I mean, can people go and do energy therapies? Does that help? What what what else can help people to I mean it's getting that clarity, isn't it? But what else can help people get that clarity?

SPEAKER_02 16:40

Yeah, and I I speak to a lot of women in domestic violence about this.

SPEAKER_00 16:46

Okay.

SPEAKER_02 16:47

It's time to get angry. You're stuck with okay. First thing, their presence. When a narcissist is getting a present, it's a cop-off, so they don't have to admit they did something really screwed up. So presence don't mean anything, and that's what happens in the battered wife cycle. He messes up, she's mad, he gives her a present, all is well. Presents just mean I'm gonna give you this, and I'm not gonna take accountability for anything I said, but because I'm giving you something, it seems like everything's okay. It's not so disregard their gifts, they mean nothing. Number two, it's time to get angry about how much time, energy they've sucked the life out of you. You're around these people, and your life force is drained. You are exhausted, you're sleeping all the time, you're sick, your body starts you get all the time. Why am I getting sick? Your body will tell you when something's wrong for you. Yeah, definitely. And yeah, and you need to realize that. Oh, wait, when I'm around this person, I'm sick all the time. I'm getting UTIs, my legs hurt, I'm meaning headaches around someone who's giving you life and loves you. That won't happen generally.

SPEAKER_00 18:15

No, you feel uplifted for with somebody in a good relationship, don't you? So when you come away from a uh, you know, maybe they're a friend or a relative, and you come away and you feel drained, there's an issue, there's something that is not quite right.

SPEAKER_02 18:33

Yeah, there's an energy transfer. They're taking, they're not giving back. So I tell women it's time to get angry

Anger As A Tool To Leave

SPEAKER_02 18:41

about all the divine energy that's been sucked out of you. It's time to get angry about all the times you cried and they got mad at you for crying. It's time to get angry. This stress kills your body, it throws off your thyroid, you start losing your hair, your organs start shutting down. It's start, it's time to get mad at all the crap they put in your body, all that negative energy, uh, all the gaslighting, the manipulation. And once you can get angry, that's when you can start the process of leaving. Another key point is you need to get angry and you need to talk to one person that won't make you feel stupid for staying with this person. One person that will say, What can I do to assist you? I'm here for you. Those two points get angry, talk to one person that can make you feel not crazy. That can be the process of starting to get out of this domestic abuse because anger pushes you forward to realize I need my life back, I need my body back, I need my power back. It was all taken from you, all of it was stolen. So I start with there, and then of course, once you're out of it, I energy healed. There is a a famous um psychologist, and he says, if you can write down your trauma extensively four times, the triggering from that trauma will significantly drop. You'll go from a 10 trigger to a two. If you can do that, it's hard to do. Once you write it down, burn the pages, rip them up, whatever, that trauma leaves you. So I tell that with my listeners too. That's what I've done with this podcast. I wrote it down. I spoke it out loud. I speak about this with all these people. I ripped up the pages, I burned the pages. All the that process was me releasing my trauma through this podcast.

SPEAKER_00 20:56

Excellent. I a couple of things, Sarah you're talking about. Um, isn't it interesting that the body tells you when you're in a toxic environment? It the body just the body warns you almost, doesn't it, that you know, this is not healthy for you. Even at that point when you maybe don't have clarity and you're thinking, okay, well, it's not perfect, but it's okay, sort of thing, your body will tell you something different. I always find that fascinating. And the other thing you mentioned was gaslighting. I was going to bring that up because that's a big thing, isn't it? This is all your issue. What's your problem? You know, you what's that about? It's such a destructive thing. And but as soon as you get clarity on that and you realise, hold on, this is not about my behavior, this is about your behavior. Um, you can you can see it, but sometimes it really it can really sort of suck you in, can't it? Gaslighting. Absolutely. Absolutely.

SPEAKER_02 22:00

They're gaslighting is a form of the other person not taking accountability, which narcissists are perfect. They do no wrong. So that's their greatest strength is you're being too sensitive. Um, she was you know, she would talk about sexually, but she told me she hates sex, she's sexual, she wants to have sex again. Once we were broken up, this whole new side of her came out. And I'd say, I don't want to listen to your sex life. You clearly were lying to me. You do like sex, you just don't like women. You're being too sensitive. You talk about your sex life all the time, Sage. What's the problem? I don't get it. What's going on with you, Sage? Why can't I be open about my sexuality? And then I'm like, I want you to be open about your sexuality, but you clearly lied to me. You're you're talking so in graphic sexual detail about these men when you told me you hate sex and you never want to have sex again. So it's just a form of she couldn't take accountability that she lied to me. So it goes back to you're a bad person because I can't talk about my sex life. Are you going crazy? You're too sensitive. What are you talking about? I never said that. Oh, she would say that all the time in this screechy voice. I never said that because I would call her out and then it was that gaslighting. I never said that. You feel insane by the end, you are going insane because they're just twisting your words left and right to not take accountability for really mess up things they've said.

SPEAKER_00 23:46

In fact, actually, it's interesting you talk about that because I've had that at work um rather than um uh you know personal relationship. I've had it at work. No, that's that's been going on for months. What what do you mean? That that's you know, that's something that we've done for months. And you do begin to question yourself, don't you? You think, gosh, have I missed something completely here? Have I, you know, have I been, you know, away with the fairies? And then you realize, no, no, absolutely not. So I get that. It's very it really does confuse you. So do you do you think that people, narcissists, do you think

Gaslighting And The Slow Loss Of Reality

SPEAKER_00 24:26

this all comes from their childhood? Do you think it's because of the trauma they've had in their childhood? And they, in a way, their values and their boundaries have got all mixed up, and you know, how they deal with the world is sort of all mixed up in in a way.

SPEAKER_02 24:45

Yeah, absolutely. I talked to another psychologist about this, uh, Misty Fulmer, because she stated it so well. She said, these people have either been given everything, so they they're put they've put themselves on a pedestal that everyone else caters to them, or these people have been given nothing. And so they're in survival mode to constantly be taking steal, you know, um money. I I deserve all the money in the world because I didn't I didn't have any money growing up, and um, you know, you you owe me money because I didn't, I was never given money, my mom was abusive, I was um sexually assaulted, you know, all those things, which is so sad. Um, to anyone that's experienced that, and I'm an advocate for people that have gone through sexual abuse, so none of that's okay. Um, yeah, she was she grew up with a very abusive mom. Um, you know, she ended up living with her grandparents, so or on the flip side, there's people that get everything that they cannot even, they're so spoiled that and so many people have adored them, they cannot even fathom that other people do matter. Yeah. So it there's two different types of narcissists um that we see.

SPEAKER_00 26:21

And and do you so for them it's like a learned way for them to survive as well, in a way. It's it's the way they have navigated their life experiences to that point. Yes.

SPEAKER_02 26:34

Yes. Um, another thing I've seen that's very interesting, I worked with a lot of autistic kids, is um all the narcissists I've dealt with have had traits of autism, not necessarily being autistic,

Childhood Roots And Empathy Gaps

SPEAKER_02 26:50

but heavy traits um that might play into it too. Sometimes when you're autistic, well, the autistic brain struggles with empathy and sympathy. So then we play that into a narcissist that doesn't have empathy or sympathy for you, it makes sense. Now it's very, very, very possible to teach an autistic child sympathy. And I saw that working with autistic kids. There's a child crying in the hallway, and the other child zooms past them, and we take that child by the hand, we walk them back to the crying child, and we say, What is happening here? Well, they're crying. What do we say when someone's crying? Are you okay? We're teaching that sympathy. Unfortunately, with a lot of these narcissists, they were not taught that, yeah. Or they learned that to manipulate you. So just to use it as a a way to, oh, I'm a good person, I'm asking you how you're doing, but there's no feeling there, there's no love there. It's just it's another way to um get a string attached to you to use that against you later.

SPEAKER_00 28:14

Yeah, yeah. That's really interesting, actually. Very interesting. I'd never thought about that. And and presumably, people who are narcissists, do you think that they can also have moments of clarity where they think, actually, the way I'm behaving is not right here? Yeah. Or do you think that's yeah, the brain that they can change and say, I okay, I'm not living my life like this? Because it must be like drama to drama to drama to drama. So may you know, do they ever get to a point where they think, nah, we I I want to change this?

SPEAKER_02 28:51

Yeah. The brain is I like to say the blame, the brain is play-doh. You can rewire your brain to become sympathetic. I've had even I have had narcissistic tendencies at a time um where I had gone through so much trauma that my it was a survival mode in my brain, and people would be talking, and it even my brain was like, what they're saying doesn't matter, your words matter the most. And I caught myself and I said, Whoa, everyone's words matter, Sage. You need to listen and value what people say, and that that was an empath with narcissistic just tendencies, and I was able to call myself out, so anything's possible. The brain can be rewired through trauma and then rewired again in a better way, shape, or form. It's just if you so choose, if you can lower your ego and say, man, I'm really hurting people, I want to change this, then you can. You can do anything you want. But is your ego going to let you? Or you're gonna say, No, I'm perfect, then you will not be able to change. You have to experience that humbling, or you have to humble yourself and realize, whoa, people's words matter, they matter too.

SPEAKER_00 30:23

Yeah, yeah, fascinating. So thank you, Sage. That was all I I found it very fascinating. I shall um put up all your details underneath the episode and where people can go and have a look at your podcast and catch that as well. Um, but before we finish, um just something I ask a lot of my guests. What's one thing that you do?

Can Narcissists Change Their Patterns

SPEAKER_00 30:48

Is it anything that you do spiritually every day, or just one thing that you do, even if you don't class it as being spiritual, um, that helps you stay centered and balanced and um help you move through your your day?

SPEAKER_02 31:05

What I do every day, I need to put my feet on the ground, on the grass, feel those vibrational frequencies run through my body. And as an empath, every empath needs to be setting an energetic force field around themselves every day because people are trying to hook onto you, train that life force. So every day without fail, you set that force field. I'm not taking on other people's energy today. If I heal, I'm choosing to heal, but it's not being stolen from me. And that grounding with that force field will center me immensely.

SPEAKER_00 31:52

Yeah. Oh, I love that. I I that's one thing. I do energy management sessions with people and teach them about their energy field, and that's one thing, two things that I always do with people protection and grounding. So important. Excellent. Thank you so much, Sage. It's been a real pleasure to meet you. And um, thank you for supporting the podcast. And um I will put all those details up there for people and if they want to contact you. Absolutely. Thank you. Um, thank you for all that you do.

SPEAKER_02 32:26

It is a beautiful work you're doing.

SPEAKER_00 32:28

Oh, thank you. That's very kind of you. So if you've enjoyed listening to Sage and I um chat, then please like and share the episodes. You can support the podcast. You can also subscribe to the podcast um for uh to have access to extra episodes. And um I will speak to you all again soon.