Melanie Tonia Evans is an absolute force of nature. As a global narcissistic abuse recovery expert and the creator of the quantum freedom healing method and NARP (the narcissistic abuse recovery program)- she has been able to help over 15 million people around the world. Her specified recovery programs have helped thousands, if not millions of people by now, make astounding recoveries. She is recommended by doctors, therapists, and psychologists from all over the world. In 2018, she released her first book which became the number one system for recovering from toxic relationships, “You Can Thrive After Narcissistic Abuse.” Since then, it has become an Amazon bestseller and has been translated into multiple languages. With a background in both kinesiology and energy healing, she has been able to take a holistic approach to recovering and healing from toxic and abusive relationships. Her experience, knowledge, and programs can surely help any individual recover from everything he or she may endure as a result of being in a relationship with a narcissist or toxic person. In this interview, Melanie will talk about her personal experience and how you can recover and become empowered by your experience just as she has.
To start off, please tell us about your incredible background, history, and how you got involved in all of this to begin with!
“I had no idea I was going to grow up to be a global narcissistic abuse recovery expert at all. I got into this because I was married to a narcissist. I had already been into personal development, coaching and I really thought I had worked on myself. I thought that I had hit the jackpot by marrying this beautiful man whom I thought was spiritual. He was everything I had ever, ever wanted. I felt like I was getting into something that I had never experienced before. I loved him with all of my heart but there were huge, red flags. There was jealousy. He would look me straight in the eye and he would lie and I would believe him.”
“Before we got married, I discovered he was already married and had not divorced his wife. That was a shock. This was after we had set a wedding date. He got the divorce. He then apparently had a melanoma cancer that was stage four. It was a hoax and it was all about control. He would rage, he would be jealous, and then he would say, ‘It’s because of my cancer.’ He didn’t have cancer. It ended up being an incredibly mentally, emotionally, physically, and sexually abusive relationship. I tolerated things that I never believed I would have experienced.”
“I remember watching Sleeping with the Enemy, that movie with Julia Roberts, and thinking to myself, ‘That happened to me and it happened to me on steroids.’ (After watching the movie), I ended up becoming very, very sick. I ended up having complicated post traumatic stress disorder. I was addicted to him like somebody to heroin. It shocked me that he was abusing me so badly yet I couldn’t stay away. I couldn’t live with or without him. I was on and off suicidal. At that point, I had realized he was a narcissist.”
How did you come to realize that he was a narcissist? What happened when you found this out?
“I was driving to an escape haven that I would go to and a voice in my head said, ‘Look up narcissist.’ I started googling narcissism and I started ticking off all of the points that he checked. I nearly fell off my chair. There was no missing it. I sought out a personality disorder specialist. Chillingly, the woman that was going into her appointments before mine every week was pregnant to a narcissist whose last three girlfriends had all committed suicide. The specialist said to me, ‘These are the only things that are going to come out of (the relationship).’ Because I was addicted to him, she told me that he was either going to kill me, that I was going to kill him, that I would end up with a terminal disease that would take me out or that I would have a complete psychotic breakdown.’”
“After a couple of years of getting away from him and then coming back to him, I eventually did have a complete psychotic breakdown. It was as if my brain had snapped. I got rushed off and taken into emergency. I’d had a complete adrenal psychotic crash. I had psychotic visions that would not stop whether my eyes were opened or closed. My adrenals were through the roof. I was told that I could have a stroke or a heart attack at any moment. Things were that bad. I was put on Valium and I went home on suicide watch. After my test results came back, my diagnosis resulted in the belief that I would need antipsychotics for the rest of my life and that I may need to be institutionalized. I was told point blank that I will never, again, function as normal. That was my diagnosis. This was 12 years ago.”
How did you get out of the relationship?
“I had always been a successful Type A personality who could make anything in my life work, similarly to a lot of narcissistic abuse victims, but I wanted to die. I ended up falling onto my bathroom floor, putting my arms up, and screaming ‘Help me. I can’t do this anymore.’ At that moment, I had this massive epiphany. I had a vision. In the vision, I got catapulted into the future and saw/felt myself as I am today, as I was 18 months after my breakdown. I felt whole, empowered, safe, fearless, confident, and authentic. I saw the truth like I’ve never seen it before. I saw what I had always avoided and what I hadn’t claimed yet. I saw how I handed my power away and how I hadn’t been sovereign, loving, or truthful to myself. It was as if all of the ‘victim’ in me got sucked out and a huge light came in. I saw that he was just the catalyst in me finally seeing this. My soul just went ‘this is it’ and then I got snapped back into the reality of being emaciated.”
“I was in this emaciated, shaking, racked, traumatized, finished body. But a voice within me said, ‘You have a choice. (What you saw in your vision) is your future if you choose it’ Although I had been doing therapy for decades, reading every book, and researching everything I could regarding narcissism, in my vision I saw that there is a way to heal your DNA cellularly from the inside out.”
“I decided to move forward on this journey. That didn’t mean that I was healed or that I was recovered. It meant that I had hope and that I had a path forward. It meant that I was guided. I ended up talking my way out of the medical professional diagnoses and drugs- which in itself was a miracle. I went forward in discovering ways to cellularly, within my visceral emotional somatic self, release trauma by bringing ‘source’ or a higher power to anchor into my true self so that I could operate in a true way. 18 months after my breakdown, I was better than I had ever been in my entire life.”
“I was married to a very vengeful, destructive man who wanted to take me out. He was a malignant narcissist. As far as he was concerned, if he couldn’t have me then I couldn’t be in life at all. I lost everything. It wasn’t like there was anything more he could take; but, he had my soul in a stranglehold. He was crushing it. I was able to stop all of his attacks, flying monkeys, abuses by proxy, everything. He got caught. It dissolved away. And I came out of that (experience), bit-by-bit, as this sovereign, empowered being that shone a light so powerfully it could dissolve all of his attempts to do anything at all. I found a me I’d never known.”
“A false self is no match for a true self. It’s the analogy of a vampire. They will suck your life force until you become a light and then they will scamper off into the shadows. They cannot stand it. They cannot be in the presence of a true self.”
What is NARP or Narcissistic Abuse Recovery Program? How does it help people prepare for negotiations, for court battles with narcissists? How does it help you recover from a narcissistic relationship?
“NARP is all based on the premise that a true self is always going to defeat a false self. What happens is that when people are going into court battles with a narcissist, they are so traumatized. They’re like how I was, so in fear. They are having the most awful threats thrown their way that hitting their primal terrors. They fear losing their children, losing their security, home, money, and even their lives. These are the things that narcissists prey on. Even if the narcissist somehow does walk away with nothing, loses horribly, people still won’t escape the horror show. The narcissist will still keep controlling and hurting them even if you never hear from them again. People will say that there’s nothing you can do. This is the powerlessness and the helplessness that is so consistent with narcissistic abuse. This is why so many people say you cannot beat a narcissist in litigation and that you cannot win- that they’re going to always take everything. This is not true.”
“NARP takes those primal fears that are triggered and that make you hand your power away and it helps you pick them up through your cellular being. It literally releases them and brings in source- which is wisdom, power, connection to the field, and even miracles. It brings on a massive shift from being on the defensive to being a bright light and in one’s power- in calm, logical solution, power, and inner knowing that you are protected. This is when people have had the most incredible results. It’s inevitable that people get to this point when using NARP.”
Can you share some of the experiences from your members who successfully won court settlements and custody cases against narcissists?
“Angela was a really good case because she was married for 22 years to a very malignant narcissist. He was very vengeful, very nasty. She was in a two-year high-conflict litigation with him and she was getting smashed. She lost her business, she had to declare bankruptcy on a corporate and a personal level. He was using the kids as pawns. For 22 years she’d been indoctrinated into him being the powerhouse that kicked her down. She was trying to please and hold it together and eventually she couldn’t.”
“When she got on NARP, she had so much anxiety and fear and feelings of injustice of what he’d done. She released all of that and it was only a few weeks after she completed the program that they’d separated. She was in her power and her calm and he capitulated and settled out of court. He actually came forward and said that he had enough of it. At this point, she had no more emotional trauma at all. She was at peace. He contacted her and said he was willing to give her what was fair. He settled out of court because she had cut the emotional cord of him sucking supply. It was done so he had to move on.”
“Now the gorgeous thing is living in a beautiful new home, engaged to a guy that she met three months after she started working with the NARP program. She says he is the love of her life and that the relationship is the most respectful, kind, honest, and real one that she’s ever dreamed of. Things have also healed up in regards to her kids because the narcissist used them as pawns- as they all do.”
What would be your recommendations for people who have to face their abusers in court?
“Definitely learn to detach. We know logically that when we try to get a narcissist to act decently and treat us lovingly and respectfully, the more abuse they’ll become. The more we try, the worse it gets. You have to learn to detach, start healing, start taking your life, your emotions, your soul back.”
“A good example of this is a woman named Prima. She was in a high-level abuse situation in which case she had to take her kids and run for her life because things were so bad. At first, she still had contact with (the narcissist). He was threatening custody and he was using all sorts of intimidation tactics. She was really hooked. She was trying to get him to calm down, to stop being abusive and violent but things just got worse and worse. He was sucking her in and abusing her because he was getting fed with narcissistic supply by doing so. She thought to herself, ‘If I don’t bring him back, if I don’t text him back, he’s going to come and get us.’ So she had to learn how to detach.”
“This is an extreme example that I’m giving you especially if you keep hooking back up with a narcissist because you’re trying to get safety and decency. Know that (when you do this), you’re just feeding them (supply) and you’re putting yourself in more hot water.”
“A lot of people find that the fight is somehow what is keeping them alive and that when they step out of the fight, it’s as if they are hit by a freight train because all the abuses of yesterday, last week, last month, and last year. They have a chance to catch up because you’re not in the fight on the battlefield. You can get hit with aftershock, which is horrific. This usually happens after you stop contact. Nobody had told me about the aftershock which nearly killed me. The aftershock would send me back. It sends people back all the time because they don’t understand it.”
“When you’re hit with aftershock, this is where NARP is so important. During this stage, Prima was so manically depressed that she could barely make a cup of tea or get out of bed, let alone look after her kids. This happens to people all the time. Some people can barely brush their hair let alone get to a work meeting. That’s how bad aftershock is. When Prima started working with NARP, she was able to get her soul back, she was able to eat again, and be a mother again. When she got enough power and healing within her, she went on the offensive and she filed for full legal and physical custody of her children. She also wanted any visitation to be supervised and asked for a full custody evaluation. Her tactic was to be as severe as she could be to protect her children. She went fully onto the offensive and she kept working on herself. When she had her hearing come up, the weirdest things happened. He got delayed, he didn’t get to the court case and she was awarded full custody at that hearing.The judge granted her everything that she had asked for.”
You have a free gift that I’m so excited to share with our listeners. Tell us all about it.
“I have a free 16-day course. The course starts you off with two really comprehensive eBooks that will teach you about the different levels of narcissism, what type you’re dealing with, the detachment process and what you need to do to heal. You will then get an email every day which will talk about the intricate parts of understanding narcissistic abuse recovery. I also have a free webinar that I will want you to come into. In the webinar, I will take you through a two-hour intensive journey of self-partnering, turning inward, so that you can get relief and clarity immediately. I’m going to take you through a Quanta Freedom Healing so that you can get trauma out and start bringing peace, power, and grace in. You’ll feel it in your body immediately.”
Where can people find out more about you and your programs?
“You can find me and more about my programs on my website. If you’ve had enough and if this type of deep inner healing resonates with you, check out NARP which is my program that has changed my own life and people’s lives around the world when nothing else did.”