Dhru Purohit Show - Energy Vampires and Narcissistic People Are A Tax On Your Health - Here's What To Do About Them

Episode Date: November 18, 2024

This episode is brought to you by Bon Charge, Fatty15, and Lifeforce. A long and healthy life isn’t just about physical well-being—our emotional health and social relationships are crucial in determining whether we truly thrive. Spotting toxic relationships and navigating them can be challenging, but today’s guests offer valuable insights on assessing the relationships in our lives and reclaiming our health. Today on The Dhru Purohit Show, we have a special compilation episode featuring Dhru's conversations with guests about the profound impact of toxic relationships on our physical and mental health. Dr. Ramani delves into why staying in toxic relationships is a major public health issue that often goes unspoken. She shares insights into the diseases she’s observed in patients linked to toxic relationships, the rapid healing that can occur after leaving them, and the damaging cycle of self-blame individuals face when dealing with a narcissist. Vanessa Van Edwards explores how to assess our inner circle, recognize the effects of ambivalent relationships, and identify key red flags of ambivalence. She also highlights the traits of a master communicator and offers tips on how to use those skills as an invitation to clarify intentions. Dr. Ramani Durvasula is a licensed clinical psychologist, Professor Emerita of Psychology at California State University Los Angeles, and the Founder and CEO of LUNA Education, Training & Consulting. She discusses narcissism on her popular YouTube channel and social media, her popular online program on healing from narcissistic abuse, and as the host of the podcast Navigating Narcissism with Dr. Ramani. Vanessa Van Edwards is a multi-time bestselling author and renowned behavioral researcher on professional communication and leadership. Vanessa’s work has been featured in national and international media and to audiences in workshops worldwide. In this episode, Dhru and his guests dive into:  The public health issue of our time (2:10) Disease and healing when toxic relationships are removed (4:40) Lack of courage, training, and awareness among professionals (9:07) What is a narcissist, and how to spot one (16:46) Studies on the quality of our relationships and happiness (22:35) How to assess your inner circle (24:21) Ambivalent relationships (27:21) Red flags and body language indicating ambivalence (31:11) Master communicators and how to change the agenda (40:41) How to practice discernment (44:31) Characteristics of a narcissist and self-blame (48:51) When leaving isn’t possible and support systems (53:21) This episode is brought to you by Bon Charge, Fatty15, and Lifeforce.  Right now, BON CHARGE is offering my community 15% off; just go to boncharge.com/DHRU and use coupon code DHRU to save 15%. Fatty15 is offering an additional 15% off its 90-day subscription Starter Kit. Go to fatty15.com/dhru and use code DHRU to replenish your C15 levels for long-term health. Right now, you can save $250 on your first diagnostic and get personalized suggestions. Optimize your longevity and track your progress; go to mylifeforce.com/dhru!   Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hi everyone, Trupprode here. When we think about the most important factors for living a long and healthy life, we tend to focus on the indicators of physical health, like working out, movement, the physical health of our bodies from the food that we eat, the supplements that we take. However, the research reveals something else. Those things are important. And the quality of our life is hugely impacted by the relationships we have, meaning the high quality relationships we have lead to a happy and fulfilled life.

And so therefore the opposite is true. The low-quality toxic relationships that we have in our life, surrounding ourselves with narcissistic people, that will eat years away from our life. And that'll eat away at our longevity. So we have to know how to navigate these individuals because we are all surrounded by them. You know, I used to think that it was unfair to call somebody a narcissist or that it was lazy. I didn't even really like the word toxic when describing people. Because I felt, you know what, everybody's on their own spiritual journey.

they're doing the best they can and everybody can get better. But today's first guess that we have on kind of shifted my mind a little bit about it. She helped me understand that there's a reason that we have the word narcissist or toxic because a very small percentage of the population does fit this label. And if we don't know how to identify them and how to protect ourselves, we can end up finding ourselves stuck in these relationships for years, for decades, for our entire life. And that only harms us, harms our dreams.

and harms everything that we care about and love. So our first guest today is Dr. Romani. We feature a very powerful opening interview that I had with her earlier this year. And then we'll be talking with Vanessa Van Edwards, an expert and an author on behavioral research on professional communication and leadership. And she's going to give us some practical tips.

But let's first start off with Dr. Romani, a clinical psychologist and narcissism expert. And we talked to her specifically about this idea of the longest running study on health and happiness and what it's taught us about avoiding toxic people. So let's start off with our interview with Dr. Romani Narcissism expert. There was a pretty groundbreaking study that made all the headlines last year. And it was one of the longest studies on health and happiness. It actually ran 80 years, I believe. And it was published by the individuals and a research team at Harvard University.

And that study showed something pretty remarkable. It showed that the happiest and the happiest and longest living people that were in the study had reliable and supportive relationships that they built their life around. There was a deep sense of trust, admiration, and support that was there. Now, you're the world's foremost expert in narcissism, and you teach people how to manage and move on from the narcissistic people that are destroying their lives. So if you wouldn't mind, I'd love to start off with talking a little bit about the toll that it takes on your mind, body, health, your spirit. When you put up with and deal with and stay connected to narcissistic personalities and individuals long term.

Yeah, I think actually exposure to toxic and narcissistic relationships may be the public health issue of our time. I really, really do. We talk about sleep. We talk about exercise and movement. We talk about diet. We talk about preventative health care. But I am telling you now, and I would stake my reputation on this, for the people I've worked with them, there are thousands of this point, hundreds of thousands who are navigating really

toxic, difficult, invalidating, manipulative relationships. If you just lifted that thing out of their life, they're having. their health would improve almost instantaneously. I promise you that it would put years on their lives. Their health would improve. Their engagement in health behaviors would improve. Their sleep would improve. Their sense of meaning and purpose would improve.

Every single predictor of health and wellness would skyrocket almost immediately. I know that the Surgeon General, for example, made a lot of his focus on loneliness, the loneliness epidemic. And while I agree with that, I think that that's a lot of, a big issue. I still think it leaves this undiscussed area that I feel that the fields of medicine, psychiatry, and mental health won't take on, which is what is the toll of a toxic relationship? Nobody's talking about it, but I can tell you now that the change, and I can give you N of one research here. In that one case in particular, a woman was, she was having to wear some

kind of orthopedic device and was having a lot of trouble healing from an orthopedic surgery. And even the doctors were flummoxed. Why is this going so badly? Why is this going so badly? During the course of the recovery, it was taking years. A narcissistic relationship was removed from her life. Inside of a week, that brace came off of her. She said, and she said, I didn't put the two and two together.

She said, it's so weird, I'm feeling better. And she's like, in five days, I think I could try this. And she said, it was like years of no movement. And then there was movement. And think about it. When we think about what happens to a person under chronic stress, we see cortisol. we see other neurohormones being released.

We see inflammatory issues. We see greater propensity for issues like depression. We see problems in the gut microbiome and deleterious effects on health there. We see dermatologic issues. We see cardiovascular issues. When people are under stress, and what we know is that interpersonal stress may be one of the most challenging kinds of stress, right? Because it's often inescapable. When it comes to narcissistic relationships,

it really is it's narcissistic bosses when it's a narcissistic marriage narcissistic family members and so I can't put too fine a point on this when I say I think this is the public health issue of our time that's pretty mind-blowing to hear it that way and even before we hit record we were chit-chatting a little bit you said that it's literally taking years years of people's lives I am seeing people I've seen multiple patients who didn't really have the genetics for the cancers they got and the course of of the cancer was far more virulent than even their oncologists thought it would be. Over and over we see this. I was talking with a team of rheumatologists in Egypt who said, you know, we have two groups

of patients, one group of patients that really improves on medication. The other group, we just can't get. We can't get improvement. And you know what the difference was? They did sort of a straw poll survey. So they did sort of a straw poll survey. They found that the people who were not improving under best practices regimens were the ones in toxic relationships. All the stuff we know, medication, treatment, and call it what you will,

this is where Western medicine hits the wall because we don't ask about this. We don't address this. Or we think, ah, relationships are tough. No, actually relationships aren't tough. These relationships are tough. And when you throw in there, let's just put chronic health in there, chronic health issues that a person might be having a narcissistic person in that relationship is more likely to invalidate their experience, I notice much higher rates of autoimmune processes, autoimmune illnesses, call them what you will in people who are in narcissistic relationships over and over and over again. And not only are they invalidated by their partners and their families, often by the health care entire enterprise. So they're constantly being gaslighted by systems. They're often not helped.

They're often still having to do the vast majority of stuff in a household or around child-rearing. they're completely unsupported. There's no one sort of supporting their adherence to health care regimens. These are people who are chronically, chronically, not only swimming upstream, they're swimming upstream while people are throwing rocks at them. So it is a, so years, absolutely it's years because this amount of stress is, it is, the body never gets a chance to rest. On one hand, it's taking years off of people's lives.

especially most likely disproportionately affecting women. It does disproportionate affect women. But I do want to put, I do want to say that not all narcissistic people are men, and I have worked with many, many men who are in narcissistic relationships, came from narcissistic families of origin. They're experiencing the same negative health effects, but there are more narcissistic men than women, and women have less power in society.

So if they're in one of these relationships, they may be on the wrong end of the stick in terms of having to manage, you know, caregiving duties, maybe not having the same kind of financial power, stuff around family court can get really wonky. And then when you have intersectional factors, ethnic minority status plus gender plus lower social class or lower access to resources, then these relationships can get all the more harmful. So on one side, you have, it's taking years off of people's lives.

And on another side, you have an entire sort of medical, industrial complex and also a therapeutic industrial complex because you're also talking about how a lot of therapists don't have the courage or the lack of awareness. In fact, which one is it? Why is this going on? Is it lack of courage? Is it lack of training? Is it lack of awareness that people are not tackling this?

I think it's all of the above. I think that there's a real resistance to this. I'm struck by the real resistance to this. That this very simple education is, listen, I'm not telling you that I meet someone in 15 minutes and I'm like, oh, well, your wife's a narcissist. I listened to their story. I listen to the patterns. You know, we have some sort of, it's interesting.

I trained as a therapist in the 90s, right? So we didn't have the same kind of digital tools then as we do now. Many of my clients patients will show me text messages, sequences of text messages, emails, play voicemails and things like that. It's unmistakable. It's very clear what they're up against. And they're not making it up because I couldn't have made up an entire text sequence, right? So I'm seeing it right in front of me what these folks are up against.

and repeatedly, repeatedly, couples therapy is a great example. The couples therapist seems so invested in making the point like, what are both of you bringing in? Well, let's see. How about maybe one of them, one person is trying to play chess and one's trying to play checkers. One person's looking to fight, the other one's looking to affiliate. One person wants power, dominance, and control.

The other one wants closeness. This is not a fair fight. And so that kind of resistance, and in fact, I've had many, many patients come in, literally almost need to be deprogrammed from therapists who say, oh, don't talk about that narcissism stuff. You have no right to call them that maybe it's your problem. Maybe you're the one who's to blame. I mean, as recently, it's a both-sizing. So it's always a boat that takes two to tango. Not really, not really, not when one person is using actually what I would really call psychologically dirty tricks.

And when you have two people in a relationship and one person's really invested in wanting to maintain attachment, connection, closeness, that they're coming from. from a place of empathy and integrity and reciprocity. And the other person is coming from a place of power, domination, control, egocentricity, self-centeredness, and we'll do anything to make sure that whole relationship's about them. How is that person who's holding a stance that is more empathic,

that is more connected? They're not having the same relationship. And so short of people having paperwork that they put on a table when they enter a relationship and saying, hey, this is what I really want in a relationship, which narcissistic, people walk around thinking they're empathic, warm, nice people. So then you have that triple confusion that these are, it's not like the narcissistic person

says, hey, you just met me and I'm a handful and I am not a nice person. They think they're good people. And so do a lot of people in the world. So it gets very confusing, very quickly for people in this relationship. And I will say this for all my days, what this is doing to people's health, because I've seen what happens when we remove the narcissistic person. The person leaves the job, their health improves, and it's not because they're not working. It's because they're not, or they go to a new workplace.

That's a better example. They go to a different department in the workplace. They go to a different, literally a different employer. They're not working with someone like that, and they're thriving. Same person, the narcissistic people were removed. They'll say, after about a month living in my own apartment without the narcissist around, my health improved. When I stopped talking with my family, my health improved significantly.

And I think of all my clients. And I have to be frank with you, we muddle through week over week. We talk about what's happening with them. We put together, we put band-aids on all the injustices they experience. But in my heart of hearts, I know if those relationships were not in their lives, they wouldn't need me anymore. Wow. You know, you mentioned an important word. And it's the reason that we brought you here.

You mentioned the word confusion. There's a lot of confusion around this topic. And I really see you as a voice of bringing people clarity, also a sense of like letting people know you're not crazy. You know, literally the topic of the title of your book is, it's not you, right? Letting people know it's not you. So part of that confusion is that at the very basics and at the foundation,

many people actually don't even know what is a narcissist. Correct. Yes, no, they don't. And so let's start there. Let's start with basics. A narcissistic person is a person with a narcissistic personality disorder. They do not necessarily have a disorder. They do not necessarily have a personality disorder.

Everyone's got a personality. You've got one, I've got one. Everyone listening has got one. That doesn't mean we have disorders. It means we have personalities. All human beings have got them. And a narcissistic personality is characterized by variable, low, shallow, transactional empathy, entitlement, grandiosity, arrogant,

self-centeredness, sort of selfishness and egosentricity. Very poor frustration tolerance. If things don't go their way, they will react very, very angrily. There is a really thin-skinned sensitivity. They cannot bear up against any form of criticism, any form of feedback. They tend to envy other people or think other people envy them. Narcistic people often view themselves as a victim. If things don't go their way, it feels like the world is, you know,

unjustifiably coming after them, but if the same thing happened to someone else, they would not frame it that way. But I'd have to say if we had to pick one strand that defines narcissism, it's that entitlement. Now, all of the stuff I'm talking about, the entitlement, the grandiosity, the arrogance, all of it, these are defenses. They're grandiose defenses against a very core sense of insecurity and shame. That's what's percolating. It's bubbling. It's like it's the under what's under the earth's crust. We don't see that all the time, but it's there. So anything that activates that shame, like they don't get the promotion, they don't get the sports car they want, their girlfriend breaks up with them. Then we see that comes out as anger. Whereas other people,

when they experience shame, might experience sadness, they might experience guilt. The narcissistic person turns that into anger. So these are very antagonistic relationships. And the narcissistic person needs lots of supply. They have an excessive need for praise and admiration. So they're going out there all the time getting it any way they can. Now that means different things to different people. For some people, narcissistic supplies money. For some people, it's power. For some people, it's likes on social media. For some people, it's status. It depends on the person. And so they're going to go out and get that. And they'll often get that from other people. So that's what a narcissist is. Narcissism is on a continuum. At the low end, it's emotional immaturity, emotional stuntedness.

It's a, again, that constant selfish need for admiration and validation. Their relationships don't go deep. say at that low end of narcissism, it's annoying. You certainly wouldn't want to be raising kids with this person. You wouldn't have wanted to be raised by this person. But to anyone else, it might be sort of annoying, maybe at times harmless. Now when you get to the far end of that continuum, to the severe end of narcissism, you're talking about malignant, exploitative, severely manipulative, isolating, coercive narcissism. Now we're talking about something dangerous. Obviously, at that low and high end, the people in those relationships are having very different experiences. There are also multiple subtypes of narcissism. And all this heterogeneity means that different people in

different narcissistic relationships are sometimes having different experiences, but the core experience of a person in a narcissistic relationship is oftentimes confusion, self-blame, and rumination. So how do you know what impact your relationships are having on you? My next guest, Vanessa Van Edwards, shares actionable tips to evaluate and improve the quality of your relationships. Let's listen in. One of the things that you've highlighted is this one of the longest running studies that's happened. I believe it's out of Harvard. Yeah. And a lot of press about it that kind of came out early this year. And it's been going on for like 75 plus years. And it's looking at happiness and sort of social relationships and how the quality of our relationships being around

really incredible people that feed us, lift us up and are there and our are looking after us, which goes back to dopamine, oxytocin, that you shared earlier, is deeply correlated with longevity. And so I would have to think that the opposite that would be, or as part of that, is avoiding people that have a toxic influence in your life. And I'd love you to chime in on this,

because you've shared very openly that a big reason that you are interested and have gotten down the rabbit hole the work that you are into and sharing with other people, It's not only to improve your own charisma, but it was also to sort of break free of these toxic environments that you were in. Can you chat about that? Yeah. So I think that what we don't realize is that in our life, there are 10 to 20 relationships that are affecting us in many ways. They affect our productivity, right?

Do you have people in your life who are contributing to your motivation? They're encouraging you with your goals. They are supporting you. They are changing your health. Are they encouraging your health choices? Are they a good influence with the food choices or the workout choices? And then also you have the emotional supporters in your life. You have the people who are your partner, your parents, your kids, your best friends who are there on a bad day and they're there on a good day.

Well, exercise that you could do if you like to visualize as I like to visualize things is take out a piece of paper and draw a circle within a circle. So two circles. And then I want you to place people on level one, level two or level three. So all the people that you interact with, 10 to 30 people, you'll be. you see most or think about most, where would they fall? Are they on the outer ring outside the circles where you're on level one with them? So you just know the basics about them. You have the same kind of boring conversations over and over again. Are you in level two, sorry in that middle ring where you know their goals and their motivations, but you don't know

their self-narrative, they don't know yours, and then who's in that very inner circle, who really deeply knows your self-narrative? That snapshot is a really important snapshot because it's going to tell you, how supported are you? Are all of your relationships with people on the very, very outside? Do you have any depth? Do you have any emotional supporters? Are all of your relationships on that second ring? So you have a lot of connections, but they're not necessarily the deepest quality connections. And then do you have anyone in that inner, that tiny inner circle who knows your true self-narrative? Then the second extra exercise I want you to do. So do that with 10 to 30 people, I want you to draw arrows if you want them to move in or out.

Right. So if you look at that person and you see where they are, do you want them closer? Like coming in, draw an in arrow or you're like, no, no, I don't want them closer. I want them further away. Draw an out arrow. Okay. That's a really helpful exercise to see where you want to move people. Because the people who have an in arrow, those are people who I want you to ask the deeper

questions, right? You want to get to their self-narrative. You can ask them. What do you think your self-narrative is? Send them this podcast and be like, What is yours? Are you lucky? What are you learning?

What's your goal? What are you worrying about? Right? Like, ask them all these questions. Use it as a jumping point deep in connection. People without arrows, those are people who you want to actually stick to level one questions with. Right? You don't want to add depth that relationship.

You might want to maintain some distance is what you're saying. Yeah. Healthy distance. They could be in your life for various reasons, but you may not be leaning on them to a further degree than you need to. And conversational distance. For those people, you don't want to ask them. the deep questions because you don't want them to rely on you if they're a victim mindset, right? So you can create conversational distance where you see them in the office or maybe they're

a neighbor or a family friend or a family member, hopefully not. And you're like, you know, everything going good? Anything new? You can actually stick to some of those questions that are more autopilot because you don't want to go deeper with them. Even if that person for the people that are listening is their mom or their dad. I think if someone drains you, if someone drains you, you have every right to create boundaries in your life. And so I would try creating some conversational distance and if that takes the heat off the relationship. I think that is a worthwhile try.

Now, there's a last category in this exercise. There are going to be a couple people that you look at and you don't know which way to go. Those are the people that you have to watch out for. What research finds is that ambivalent relationships are more draining and more toxic than toxic relationships. What they found was is that when we are unsure if someone likes us or we are unsure if we like them, we're unsure, do they support me?

This is how you know if someone's ambivalent. Do I have fun with them? You see their name pop up on your phone and you're like, ugh. Right? Like not sure. You see their name on the calendar and you're like, do I kind of want to cancel? Or you wonder, was that a supportive comment? Was that passive aggressive?

Wait, was that kind of mean? Or you leave and you're like, why do I? feel bad, right? Like, those are actually ambivalent people. So a study looked at police officers, and they had them rank all the relationships in their precincts. And they found that officers who had toxic coworkers had let, they had officers who had toxic coworkers. And they had officers who had not a lot of toxic coworkers, but a lot of ambivalent coworkers. Co-workers were they weren't quite sure, where they stood with them, they weren't sure if they were toxic, they weren't sure. if they enjoyed spending time with them, they found the officers with the most ambivalent relationships

had lower happiness, had higher workplace stress, had worse immune function than the officers who had toxic coworkers. Here's why. If you go into your office and you know you don't like someone, it's quite easy. You don't ask them to lunch. You say, morning, hope you're good. You don't ask them about their weekend or maybe you say, what's new? Great.

Good job. You don't invest in that relationship. You keep it surface. You keep it cash. You try to work together and you don't spend time with them. Ambivalent relationships are much harder. That's when you're in the break room where you're like on a video call and you're like, should I ask about their kids?

Like are we due for a happy hour? Oh, but the happy hour last time was so not fun. That is so draining. So for those people on your list, like in that circle exercise, for the people who are like, I don't know, your mission in the next month. in the next 30 days is to decide are they coming in or are they going out? Hmm. Like put something on the calendar and then when you see it on the calendar, are you dreading it?

Then go out to lunch with them or out to happy hour or hop on a video call and then be like, am I enjoying this? Is my social battery being charged or am I drained? Do I not feel supported? It's so important. So important. You know, I bet if you were almost like a fly on the wall. Yeah. Then these individuals...

I could tell you. Not only could you tell, but you could point to, hey, you know that thing that sounded like a compliment? It actually was a backhanded nag. Neg. And that's why you don't know how to answer because you're not sure. Are they supporting you? Are they trying to take away from you? What are some of these examples, and maybe they fall in this category of red flags?

Yeah. What are some of these examples that people can be watching out for? And it's not that there's no baby. that's inherently toxic, right? People are largely a byproduct of their circumstances. And we should be so thankful that we didn't have the same parents or situation that they did. Because if we grew up in the same situation they did, we probably end up being very similar to them. And the other side of this is that it's okay to protect yourself. And you don't have to be the savior of everybody around you. High group people, listen up. This is important. High group, you don't have to be the savior. Don't have to be

the savior. You can be open. But one thing I've learned is that people change slowly. Yes. When they do, it's on their timeline. It's not on your timeline. So if you really care about somebody, you have to let them do the work. You can be there. You can see when there's openness and engage.

But anyways, I'm going on a tangent. I like the tangent. Red flags. If you were there, you could see these things. Can you highlight some of them? Yeah. So I like to think of this. there's, let's talk about actually some nonverbal red flags, just like very concrete ones.

So there are certain nonverbal cues that indicate withholding or closed-mindedness that you should be on the lookout for in a relationship where you want support. So one of them, for example, is a lip purse. So a lip purse universally when we're trying to withhold something or keep something in, we mash our lips together. And that usually means someone is holding back. I want, in my really good relationships, I don't want anyone holding back. I want them to be open with me and transparent with me and honest with me.

So one is if you're talking and they're like, well, they are withholding something and you might be feeling a low grade, what's going on? What's going on? Sometimes ambivalence can come from a not knowing why you're feeling bad, but you are catching anxiety or you are catching cortisol. So I opened my TED talk with this study. give me if people have heard it, but it's one of my favorites, which is researchers brought two groups of people into their lab. The first group, they had them wear sweatsuits to catch their

sweat and had them run on treadmills. The second group, they had them wear sweatsuits to catch their sweat, and they had them skydive for the first time. Both groups sweated a lot. But one group had just normal treadmill sweat, and one group had fear sweat, sweat where they were really afraid. They took these sweat samples and they got unsuspecting participants. I hope they paid them a lot. And they had them go in an fMRI machine and smell the sweat. Now, they had no idea what they were smelling. They literally went out for my, and could you imagine spelling these samples?

What they found was that when people smelled unknowingly, the fear sweat, their own amygdala lit up. Their own fear centers lit up, meaning even though they had no way. idea what they were smelling. They caught the fear. So I share this because if you're with someone and you're like, why do I feel so bad? Why do I feel uneasy? Why do I not feel safe sharing my biggest success? Why am I afraid to tell them my challenge? It's probably because you are picking up on cortisol. You are picking up on whatever is in that sweat that's making them a little bit nervous. A lip purse is a physical manifestation of, I'm holding back or I'm withholding something. You can also look for fear microexpression.

We don't see these as much, but you can sometimes see them if someone's feeling very nervous. So a fear microexpressure is when the whites of their eyes show, the whites above their pupils show. So when someone rolls their eyelids back, and sometimes they'll even raise their eyebrows up and, yeah, I guess so. And they have their eyes wide and their eyebrows up. So that's a fear micro expression literally means they're feeling afraid. So lip purse, fear, microexpression. I also always look for disgust. So disgust is, you can actually try it with me if you want.

So crinkle your nose up like this. Yeah, there you go. We do this when we smell something bad. You can even flash the ever whites of your teeth. It's a very weird expression. And so when you see it, you almost always know it means disgust. Disgust or like, I dislike this. I don't want this.

You will see it a lot in conversation when someone is lying. Oh, wow. So when someone's, if you ask someone a preference-based question, like, oh, what do you think of the new girl? You know, yeah, she's, she's good. Yeah, and your nose is crinkling for those that are listening. Yeah, your nose is crinkling up. So people who will sometimes show disgust when they're thinking and they're trying to think of a nice way to say, I don't like it. Or you're sharing your good news and they're like, oh, wow, that's great.

And their nose is like totally crinkled up. Oh my gosh, I'm so, I'm so happy for you. And you're like, why don't I feel like they're actually happy? It's because you are picking up on that cue that your brain knows. You know, we're sending thousands of cues every day. And our brain is a cue reading machine. It is very good at reading these cues, but we have taught ourselves to ignore them. We've taught ourselves say, oh, just listen to the words.

You know, my mother-in-law says that she's happy for me. She must be happy for me. She says she's happy, but why do I feel like she's not happy for me? It's because your brain spotted the disgust or heard a vocal inflection and didn't like or smelled a pheromone or a cortisol, we don't exactly know how it works that made us feel uneasy, that your brain is telling you, get away, get away.

This person is not supporting you. Or be on alert. Or be on alert. It's a red flag. A red flag is a very good way to look at it because, you know, we don't know why. Someone might be showing this guy, right? Someone might be jealous.

Someone might be actually happy for you, but they don't have that themselves. So they're actually unhappy with themselves. It could be they had a very bad day and they're thinking about how the tired they are as they're listening to you. Right. We don't know why we might see some of those red flags,

but it's definitely something to be like, note, mental note, that I saw fake happiness. The other one is fake happiness is when our smile doesn't reach up into our upper cheek muscles. So a real smile activates all these upper cheek muscles as well as the bottom half of our face. So our smile literally reaches up into our eyes.

When someone is fake smiling, they smile just on the bottom half of their face. So the top of their face is completely relaxed. They'll say, yeah, I'm so. happy for you. That's so great. Now, Botox has been messing everyone up, right? Like, my goodness, it's so hard in L.A. to read anyone's face because no one's face moves anymore. So that makes it a little bit harder. So if you know that someone has Botox or any kind of surgery or fillers, it can change the way they make expressions. Interestingly, if you have Botox, you should consider

that Botox does change the emotional feedback loop. This can be both positive and negative. So what they've found is that there's the facial feedback hypothesis is what it's called, that when you feel an emotion, you make a face. And that face kind of solidifies the emotion. Well, you can also make a face that will cause the emotion. So if I were to make a disgust expression, hold it, I would actually begin to feel a little bit disgusted after a while. Because my body is like, well, my face is like this, so I must be disgusted by something. So with Botox, they found that when you inhibit these furrow muscles, the anger muscles, so when we're angry, we pull our eyebrows down

and these two vertical lines appear. When we inhibit those, we actually feel less angry. Like, it can actually, they're thinking about using an anger management therapy. Because if you disengage the anger muscles, you literally feel less angry. Same thing with happiness.

So these muscles, if you're considering Botox and you're thinking about muscles, anger, maybe a little better. By my eye, my upper cheek muscle on the sides of my eyes, those are very critical for happiness. And so they've found that people who Botox those muscles also feel less happiness.

Like, you literally cannot smile as big, and it actually mutes your feeling of happiness. Wow, a little scary. No judgment or no better or worse, but you should know. Informed consent. Yes, and you should know this for the person that you're with if they have Botox or if you want Botox. You know, when I heard you talking about these red flags initially,

a big part of it that came up for me and the way that you were educating about it was, you know, there's people that I love that are fundamentally good people. and if I see one of these red flags, and there's plenty more that you talk about in your book, I think there's over like 90 cues that are inside of it. You have 97 cues. The biggest chapter is the bad guy chapter,

is the red flags chapter. And how many cues are inside of that that you highlight? Oh, my goodness. I think it's over 27 cues in that. And we have a link to your book in the show notes. Can you mention the title? Yes. Cues, Master the Secret Language of Charismatic.

It's fantastic. So everybody please pick it up. But what came up for me is that there are people that might have a bad day. There's people that you love that have a negative self-narrative. And sometimes their reaction to you is also a reaction to themselves.

Maybe they're listening to you, but kind of not listening. And they start to think that, wow, you're so lucky and your business is working out. And I've never been lucky. And I feel bad about that. And that shows, I mean, that's very sad, first of all. And so when I see these red flags, quote unquote, in people that I love especially,

that's usually a signaling for me to say, almost stop the conversation and just check in. Hey, I just want to check in. How are you feeling right now? Is anything on your mind? How's your day been? And I usually see that if it can be done in a way that is not too aggressive or violent, like, hey, what the hell is going on with you and you're putting them on defense? It doesn't work. Yeah. That doesn't work. Nobody wants to be treated that way. And often people will slow down for a second and say, you know, no, it's nothing. No, come on, cheer a little bit. Well, you know, today such and such happened. And then now you have an opportunity for vulnerability. And then there's the other side of it, which is, as we're all making

these different circles and we're putting the different people in our life into it, there are going to be people that, you know, you might have to just love from a distance because you see that they're going through so much hurt that they are at a place in their life where they want to take that hurt out on other people because it supports the narrative that they have, right? I'm not successful because everybody around me didn't do enough and I want to take it out on you, whatever it might be. And that's for individuals to figure out themselves, but I think that often when people hear red flags, they immediately think, okay, let's retreat. But you're actually using this as for some people an invitation to come in and do a little bit of repair between those individuals.

Invitation is the way to think about it. And this is you are a true master communicator, because what master communicators do is they pause their agenda. So when we're in conversation, each of us have our own agenda, right? Like we want to tell them our good news or we want to catch up on the day, or we have a meeting we have to get through, even in sales, right? Like, this is a really important thing in sales, is master communicators. They have their whole slide deck, their whole pitch. They're trying to raise money, whatever, trying to sell something. Master communicators, see a red flag and change the agenda.

They go, wait a minute. I just saw, let's take actually like even a more business one, which is less, less emotional. Let's say that you're in the middle of your sales pitch, trying to raise money or trying to convince a really important group of people to buy into what you're saying. And you notice on one of the slides, your cost slide, that you see three red flags in a row from one of the top investors. He does a negative nod. So oftentimes when someone says yes and nods no, there's a little bit of incongruins there. So, yeah, those numbers look great and they're nodding their head no.

You see distancing behavior. So a sudden distancing behavior is when we pull away from something. So I don't want to get away from the mic, but we lean back in our chair. We might turn our head away. We angle our body away. it's literally a way that we're like, we don't like it. We don't like something we try to get away from it. And maybe you see an eye roll.

You see all those three red flags together. A master communicator pauses their pitch and says, I'm going to stop and take questions. Is this all make sense? How are you feeling about this? These numbers look right to you? Those are very not aggressive questions, but you are pausing right then and there

and figuring out what is the sales hesitation here. What is the hang up? What is the hesitation here? So that person, one, you're saying, I see there's some, there's a problem here, to I respect you so much that I would like to invite you into whatever agenda I have so I can address whatever is hanging you up. And that's when they'll say, you know, those numbers don't make sense to me because I, and they say they say, oh, I would love to address that.

And then you're able to address it right there. When someone shows you a red flag, typically their brain is going into anger or fear or sadness or disgust. They cannot logically process what's coming next. If someone is in an emotional state in their brain, cognitive processing is going to slow down for whatever information you're giving them. So you are better off pausing in that moment

and saying to your partner or your friend who just showed your red flag, is everything okay? Hey, like, just pause for a second. I just wanna make sure, are we good? That is an invitation to say, I wanna wait a second so I can make sure I can disengage whatever negative emotions going on so that we can actually have a productive conversation

with what's coming next. it's such an important reminder because we all notice these things but it's really about strengthening the connection between our awareness and our gut intuition i hope you enjoyed those tips from van edwards now we're going to go back to dr romani the force that she is and in this next segment here i talk to her about the power of turning into your body to protect yourself from toxic relationships and she gives us some great tips and strategies for managing the narcissistic individuals that might be in our life, especially when getting away from them is not an option. There might be some people in your life that you can't get

away from and you have to know how to manage it. You have this framework for helping people live a more precautionary or as you say, a discerning. Having a discerning approach to who you let into your world. Correct. Can you talk about that and how your framework can help? help protect individuals from letting narcissistic people in in the first place. Number one, slow down, slow way down. Because, again, body and mind are so interesting. They need a minute, right? They really need a minute for you to be with someone.

Pay attention to that sense of psychological safety. In some ways, it's also equally important for us to know how we feel in our bodies when we don't feel safe, right? So if we're feeling that or we're not feeling that, Like when we're with somebody who is safe and comfortable and you're having a conversation characterized by reciprocity, your body relaxes. You find yourself like, oh, I'm not trying. I'm not being performative.

I'm being myself versus, it's interesting. Just I recently had an encounter with someone I did not feel comfortable. I did not. Even the way I was sitting, I was sitting almost like hunched over my physiologically. My body was almost putting itself in an uncomfortable position. My head hurt at the end of the circumstances. This is somebody I do not want to see again. I now know that.

And that's now on my list of people I don't want to see again. I very much learned to slow down. And after the event where I'd usually just rush into my car, I sat my event, I closed my eyes, I breathe, I paid attention on my body. I feel like, okay, my head is killing me, my neck is killing me, my gut was killing me. All of that was not comfortable. And I'm going to use this as a contrast. Like right now, I'm enjoying this time with you. I feel very much in my body.

I feel like this is a very mutual interaction. See what I'm saying? So when I think this felt like a very safe space to me. So we pay attention to that, number one. Number two, we have to have our good, safe people, right, our sounding boards, are people who when we go to them and say, I think I feel crazy, you'll say, you're not, you're not crazy, like talk to me and we'll how we'll listen to you. You don't need a lot. You don't even have 50 people like that. If you even have one, two, or three, you're doing great. One of them might even be a therapist, but have sound. board. So that's a huge piece to this sort of this idea of being discerning of, again, taking it slow, paying attention to your body, paying attention to what you're telling yourself.

There was a time, this uncomfortable interaction I had, there was a time I would have thought, oh, Gromeney, you're not, you can't get along with anyone or you, you know, you're so unsophisticated or something like that. I'm like, no, I just didn't feel right. So part of that is giving yourself, you can't gaslight yourself. And I think we can't. gaslight ourselves all the time. We tell ourselves, there's something wrong with us. We did it wrong. We're the ones who are damaged, whatever it may be instead of trusting ourselves. And interestingly, it doesn't have to be an indictment of the other person. I'm not saying this other person is a quote unquote bad person. For whatever reason, my body was not feeling comfortable in

this person's presence, whatever that means. And my body feels comfortable in a lot of people's presences. So there was something in that dance that wasn't working. I kind of knew what it was, but I paid attention to that. And so I'm a big fan of writing stuff down. I really think that we think we're going to remember stuff and we don't. And there's something, and I'm talking writing it down, ideally with a pencil in your hand, not just in your phone, that sort of physiological experience of pen or pencil and hand on paper, that can often help us sort of register memories in a way that we're also starting to trust ourselves more.

But all of those things together do make us more discerning. And I'm going to give you this example too and this has a lot of bearing on your podcast, which is when you think about the kinds of things you talk about, the things you've talked about with other guests of how careful people are, like you said, putting toxic substances in your mouth, don't eat this, don't eat something that's unprocessed or don't eat super processed or don't eat super processed food. Don't drink this. Don't smoke this.

Don't do that. Don't, don't don't, don't, don't. Right? So we spent a lot of time being super discerning about. about what we consume, what we put in our bodies. If we brought that level of discernment to people, we'd be so much more healthy. So if you can sit in the market and say, organic or grown here and spend all that time in your fancy groceries, you're figuring that out, then you owe yourself to spend the

equal amount of effort in being discerning about the human beings you let close to you. It's far more important. I have to say a lot of folks in intimate relationships will say it took them somewhere between one and two years to really spot the narcissism. They'll say, because again, the early part of a narcissistic relationship is often very idealized, very seductive, fun, and exciting. In fact, a lot of people will say this is the most interesting, compelling, exciting relationship. Because for that whole laundry list I gave you, low empathy, entitlement, grandiosity, arrogance, all that icky stuff, narcissistic people are also very charming, compelling, confident, clever,

and above all else, charismatic. So you have these really key. charismatic, engaging people, people aren't looking for the problems there. And when they do come up, people either blame themselves, they'll say, oh, it's just a bad day. Everyone has off days. And the excuses start to pile up. Most clients I've worked with, it was usually somewhere between eight months and two years where they're like, oh boy. And the problem between eight months and two years is you could be pretty deep in. You might have already moved in with each other. You might have gotten engaged. You might have gotten married. You might have a child on the way. Now you're sunk. because getting out of these relationships is no small tasks.

And the other tricky piece of narcissistic relationships is they aren't all bad days. So this is not like you're getting into a relationship where it's love bombing and then it's terrible. I always say it's sort of like a slow titration down. After the love bombing phase is done and the devaluation phase starts, it's still about 90% good and 10% bad. Then it's 80% good, 20% bad, 70, 30, 60, 40, at the 50-50 point, now we're in a process we call trauma bonding. that the confusion of the intermittent reinforcement, the good days and the bad days, the good days and the bad days. And in that structure, people don't want the relationship to go away.

They want it to improve. And they're like, well, there are these good. How can we make it so it's all good days, right? It's not all bad. So they start blaming themselves. The person in the relationship blames themselves. Maybe if I do this, maybe if I say it this way, maybe if I don't say it this way, maybe if I try this, maybe if I keep the house perfectly clean,

maybe if I make sure everyone's happy at the holiday, Maybe if I stay late every night at work, whatever it is, the person starts taking on more and more responsibility. Maybe if I'm quieter, maybe if I don't complain. By the time we get to 10% good, 90% bad, people are really stuck, but now they're really trauma bonded. They can't figure out what's going on. This is where the confusion becomes a real issue.

And other challenges, narcissistic people tend to treat those closest to them, spouses, children. Maybe people who are sort of don't have as much power of them in the workplace. as them in the workplace, what you'll see is that they'll treat them the worst. So the world is still seeing the charming, charismatic, compelling person. You're so lucky to be married to them. Oh, my gosh, your father's amazing. And the person's like, oh my gosh, it's got to be me. It's not you. It's got to be me because everyone thinks they're great. And then people will also say they almost feel physiologically stuck to the narcissistic person because it is so confusing. And lots of folks will say intellectually, I know this isn't good for me at this point, but physiologically, I'm

struggling. I feel a sense of panic at the idea of getting out. And it's really kind of a slot machine sequence because after a person's put $500 into a slot machine, maybe they've won $100 back, you still can't get them to walk away. Why? Why don't people walk away from slot machines? Because they're addicted. They're addicted to what? They're addicted to the unpredictability, and that something good might come from it. And what's the good? And the good is a return. term, payout, cash payout? Big cash payout. A big cash payout.

Like not a $20. They're holding out for the million dollars. They still think it's going to come, right? $500 in, they're starting to use their ATM card, take the money out. That's the psychological equivalent of giving up on yourself, right? So I'm going to keep getting more money out. I'm going to keep playing this. So people don't want to walk away because they might hit the jackpot.

But there's a second reason people don't walk away from the slot machine. What is that? After they've been paying it for four hours, put hundreds of dollars in it. Maybe they've won $100 back. They're 400 in the hole. Why don't they walk away? I've put in too much to walk away. Okay.

They don't want to cut their losses. They're afraid. Is that why? Kind of, but there's something more. A lot of people don't get this. Tell me, tell me, yes. They don't want someone else to get it. Someone's going to come to this machine and they're going to reap my investment.

I've heard you share this before. This is fascinating. The idea that even in a relationship that you've put up with this person so long, you've made them better, maybe even drag them to therapy or coaching or something. and maybe finally they'll improve, but then somebody else will get the better version of that. And I tell them, I tell my client, there's no jackpot. This machine is rigged. You're never going to get more than maybe 25 bucks out of it. Right. And so if those $25 payouts are working for you, and my point of view and my approach with clients, with anyone, is that this is, the whole idea of

healing is building up individuation and an autonomous self that makes their own choices. And to that end, I never tell anyone they have to leave. Not everyone can leave. Some people have minor children. There might be financial reasons. They say cultural or religious reasons. They say stay a sense of duty or obligation. Not everyone can leave every narcissistic relationship.

So part of the work then is finding the workarounds if you can't fully get out. But more than anything, it's radical acceptance of what this relationship is really about. And there will never be a jackpot. But all is not lost. You can still heal. And one of the key pieces is that if you are going to stay in the relationship, relationship, you really, really need to develop your bench, as it were. You need to have your supports. And a lot of people say, but it's my husband's supposed to take me to chemo. I'm like,

you don't live in that world. And we're going to, but your friend has been offering, I will take you and we'll go and we'll watch silly shows on my computer. Please go with that friend. Like, there's a sense of, but that's what someone else was supposed to do for me. That radical acceptance is they're not taking you to chemo. And if they do, they're going to complain the whole time. which is the worst thing that could happen for you when you're sitting in a chemo appointment. So it is helping people see that you have to cultivate supports. You have to cultivate meaning and purpose. You have to cultivate an authentic sense of you separate from the narcissistic person.

You know, the effort and awareness that we put into minimizing toxic relationships, firing them when we can and minimizing them when we can't leave. And of course, building up supportive ones, not only in, It impacts our day to day, but it also supports the future of our health, our happiness, our longevity, and most importantly, our goals and dreams in life. You know, when you are surrounded by toxic people, it sucks the life out of you. So you don't have the energy to put attention to your goals and dreams. Whatever that might be.

Maybe you want to write a book. Maybe you want to volunteer more at your local church or synagogue. Maybe you want to do something. You're just not sure what it is, but all your energy is being used up. with dealing with one, maybe two people in your life who are just sucking the air out of your existence. We have to have the right tips and tools and strategies to be able to handle these individuals and to identify them. I hope you found today's episode helpful in providing you with some of those practical tips that are there. If you want to dive in deeper,

we've linked to both of these full episodes below. I highly recommend them if you're looking for something to listen to you next. Until next time, true pro. Signing off. See you later on this week.