Omg yes!
Thank you guys.

I just want to sum up how I made this happen so anybody viewing the thread in the future with the same issue has some direction.

It was both of your responses that ultimately helped me make this happen.
Stefan garnered a clue when he said that paragraphs in the navigation pane that I didn't want had somehow acquired 'outline level.'
Then Charles' idea to select the item in the naviation pane that I didn't want there and hit shift + f1 confirmed that it indeed had acquired an outline level.

So what I did was basically, click to the right of the period at the end of the paragraph before the paragraph showing up in my navigation pane and hit delete - to bring it up and make it styled the same as the previous paragraph, then I hit enter to send it back down to once again become its own paragraph, and voila!
The outline level was gone, and it was removed from the navigation pane.

Then I went through the rest of the document and did the same for all the other unwanted items in my navi.
Alternatively, you can click on the specific style that is doing this, click modify, then click 'format' on the bottom right, then 'paragraph', and you'll see outline level up top, most likely it'll be at outline level 1, 2 or 3 and you'll want to switch it to body text.

Thanks again for your help guys, and I hope this helps someone else.
-Mark
EndAllDisease.com