Know Thyself - E82 - Dr. Ramani Durvasula, #1 Narcissism Expert: The Harsh Reality Of Toxic People & Setting Boundaries

Episode Date: February 6, 2024

Today we are joined by clinical psychologist and narcissism expert Dr. Ramani Durvasala. Dr. Ramani unpacks narcissistic personality disorder, defining types of narcissism, how it’s diagnosed, and where this originates. She shares the implications of the extreme side of this disorder, discussing the dark reality of narcissistic abuse in relationships, love-bombing, triangulation, and gas-lighting. She provides advice for anyone stuck in a cycle of abuse or supporting a friend through this process. She reveals the sad truth of abuse: that most people never change. This is a great episode for anyone wanting to better understand this disorder and get out of a cycle of abuse. André's Book Recommendations: https://www.knowthyself.one/books ___________ Timecodes: 0:00 Intro 1:54 Defining & Identifying Narcissism  6:59 Why This Develops in People 10:20 Different Types of Narcissism  13:59 How Our Society Rewards Narcissism  15:36 How Certain Types Develop  19:16 At What Age Narcissism Begins  21:40 The Internal Reality of a Narcissist  25:45 Common Traits of Narcissistic Abuse  31:38 Why Love Bombing is Toxic  37:09 The True Meaning of Gaslighting  41:18 Triangulation & Cycles of Manipulation 42:40 When Self Esteem Becomes Too Much 47:14 Cultural Distinctions & Healing Family Trauma 52:18 Breaking Free of a Narcissistic Relationship  1:01:11 Will They Ever Change?  1:04:29 Is It You?  1:10:57 Supporting a Friend in an Abusive Relationship  1:14:45 Becoming Aware of Your Own Narcissism 1:19:28 The Sad Reality of Being a Narcissist  1:22:00 Spiritual Narcissism  1:28:07 Final Thoughts 1:35:34 Conclusion ___________ Dr. Ramani Durvasula is a licensed clinical psychologist in Los Angeles, CA, Professor Emerita of Psychology at California State University, Los Angeles, and the Founder and CEO of LUNA Education, Training & Consulting. She is an author of several books including Should I Stay or Should I Go: Surviving A Relationship with a Narcissist, and “Don’t You Know Who I Am?”: How to Stay Sane in an Era of Narcissism, Entitlement, and Incivility. The focus of Dr. Durvasula’s clinical, academic and consultative work is the etiology and impact of narcissism and high-conflict, entitled, antagonistic personality styles on human relationships, mental health, and societal expectations. Her work has been featured at SXSW, TEDx, Red Table Talk, the Today Show, and Investigation Discovery. You can also find her on YouTube where she has accumulated millions of views on her videos discussing narcissism on her successful channel, and on social media @DoctorRamani. Now she will be adding the role of host to her resume as she launches her new podcast, Navigating Narcissism with Dr. Ramani, a show that focuses on narcissism and its impact on relationships. Website: https://doctor-ramani.com Pre-Order “It’s Not You”: https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/710202/its-not-you-by-ramani-durvasula-phd/ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/doctorramani/ ___________ Looking to Start a Podcast? Podcasting Course: https://www.podcastpurpose.com/ Know Thyself Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/knowthyself/ Website: https://www.knowthyself.one Clips Channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCJ4wglCWTJeWQC0exBalgKg Listen to all episodes on Audio:  Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/4FSiemtvZrWesGtO2MqTZ4?si=d389c8dee8fa4026 Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/know-thyself/id1633725927 André Duqum Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/andreduqum/ Meraki Media https://merakimedia.com https://www.instagram.com/merakimedia/

We put 90% of our energy into our most toxic relationships and 10% into the relationships that actually give back to us all the time. Flip it. Let's start with what narcissism is. Entitlement, grandiosity, arrogance, selfishness. They are willing to do whatever they need to do to get ahead. They make more money. They're more successful at dating. They look great on paper. So the very thing we're socialized to think of is not good for us. That's tricky. What's happening during love bombing is it's a period that feels like perfect attunement. A person gets you. This can feel like it is healing a childhood wound. That's how powerful it is. When you ask for time and they say no, that's beyond a red flag. The challenge is we don't always know what's going to set a person off. And all hell breaks. Somebody invalidating you and

subjugating you, that's abuse. The very gift we have of empathy and compassion actually gets weaponized. There's anxiety, there's sadness, there's self-blame. You just sort of cut off from you because you're not allowed to have those things and have this relationship function. How possible is it really to stay in the dynamic and to have that narcissistic person to heal and to change? Oh, I'll tell you why. Hey everyone, welcome back to the know they self podcast. Today we are diving deep with somebody who's a clinical psychologist here in LA and is an individual who amongst many different ways of impacting the world is a podcast host, a bestselling author, creator of New Book, It's Not You. And we're going to be diving in deep today around narcissism as she is one of the world's leading expert around that topic. Dr. Romney,

thanks for being here. Thank you so much for having me. Yeah, it's, it's my honor. The discussion today, I think, hits close and hits close to many people's heart across, you know, all walks of life. Also, in society right now, I feel like culturally, we're living in a very narcissistic time. Yes, we are. And so I'd love for you just to share it open up so we're all using the same terminology and understanding of language, the distinction between NPD versus narcissism. I mean, we can go from there. Yeah, I think that's the biggest confusion of all because a lot of people hear the word narcissism and they assume this is a person who's a diagnosed personality disorder, and it doesn't.

So if I were to say a person is, they seem a little depressed. It wouldn't mean they have major depressive disorder, right? There's a series of steps to actually have a diagnostic kind of name for something. So let's start with what narcissism is because that's sort of what's foundational. Narcissism is a personality style, which means it's pervasive, it's stable, its traits, its patterns, its behaviors, and in the case of narcissism, it's comprised of lack of empathy or variable empathy, entitlement, grandiosity, arrogance, the need for admiration and validation and admiration and validation seeking, selfishness of superficiality, shallowness of emotion,

a need for control. Behaviorally, they show up as manipulative, there's a lot of gaslighting, they're often prone to betrayal, there's a lot of lying. devaluation, minimization, and people who are in these relationships, really do a number on them. So all that stuff I described, though, is the personality style and how it shows up. That's narcissism. When does it become narcissistic personality disorder? When someone with that personality style actually shows up in a licensed mental health professional's office and spends enough time in that office for that licensed mental health professional

to say, ooh, this is a pattern. It's cut across all areas of this life. It's causing them problems. They know it's causing them problems. And only then will you get the sort of diagnosis. So my point is there's a lot of folks out in the world who are narcissistic and may have narcissistic personality disorder or NPD, but we don't know because they've never been seen by a clinician.

Does that make sense? And a lot of folks who show up to clinician's office and who are offices and are narcissistic don't get the diagnosis because it's a tricky diagnosis. There's a lot of stigma. A lot of folks don't want to document it. So it's sort of this, in a way, there's some people out there who have narcissistic personality disorder. Frankly, their narcissism is not even as severe as people out there who have severe narcissism and have just simply never been in a therapist office.

So I think some people automatically assume that because someone has NPD per se, it's more severe, not at all. The only differences they were seen by a clinician. So if narcissism then, because we'll mainly focus on that, you know, most people, whether it's been a past, you know, relationship, romantically friendship, a parental figure have experienced and, you know, maybe internally as well, because I want to focus on how we can observe the parts within us that are, you know, narcissistic and how it's on a continuum and on a spectrum. How do you kind of delineate how widespread narcissism really is and kind of, you know,

we can dive into the characteristics and more how it shows up so people can readily perceive and spot it. Well, I'm glad you point, you brought up that issue of it being on a spectrum. So it's not black or white. It is on a continuum. At the mildest levels of narcissism, you're talking about a personality style that feels more probably annoying to be other people around it. It's sort of vapid, superficial, look at me, aren't I great, selfish, a lack of depth, and almost emotionally stunted.

Harmful? Maybe not harmful. I don't know that you'd want to be in a long-term committed relationship or raise kids with that person or have been raised by them. But I think that it's more of, again, it's more of an emotional immaturity and a selfishness and sort of a not being fully formed. At the far end of that spectrum, at the severe end of narcissism, we're seeing more of a malignant narcissism that can be coercive, manipulative, exploitative, isolating, and really harm people. And most people, the narcissistic folks

they encounter are in the middle. In fact, that's what the book is really about, because at those two extremes, it's such different experiences. So because it's on a spectrum, a person who's dealing with a person who's very severely narcissistic and another person who's dealing with someone who's mildly narcissistic are having very different experiences. So not everyone who encounters a narcissistic relationship, even on the other side, the person receiving the relationship is not having the same experience. So you ask an interesting question and one that is really not easy to answer. So this idea of how many people out there have a narcissistic personality at a level that we would notice it, right? I'm going to give you a spitball number, which really is sort of like if you talk to those of us

do this work, we'd probably spitball it as maybe 15%. I would say if you were in an, depending on the industry someone's in, so maybe if you were in an entertainment media kind of space, it might be closer to 20%, because I think certain industries pull for something, but I think 15% is probably reasonable. So about one in six plus or minus. But in that one and six, there might be that includes people who are severe, mild, moderate. So it's, you know, I think when we get to the severe end, it's obviously much lower, thank goodness. But I think that's probably a good guess. So if we're to go into the realm of somebody who is narcissistic, how much of it would you say is nature versus nurture? How much of is it born versus made? And I just want to go into the experience of why somebody develops narcissism as a personality trait, as a coping mechanism.

Personality for all of us, regardless of the personality, is sort of a social developmental phenomenon. It shapes on the basis of the child, the infant than the taller than the child's interactions with the world. We're all born with a child. temperament. Okay, we're all born with the temperament. It's almost like our personality we bring into the world. And obviously, there's a genetic element to that. And many people would understand temperament as people will say, oh my gosh, you do this thing that's just like an aunt or an uncle that you've never met. And so, or someone who's already passed. So you didn't learn it from them, but it's that temperamental piece. There are some temperaments in children that are more, I don't know, more vulnerable, more difficult, maybe. They're more difficult to soothe. They are, They don't come down easily.

They are more as they get older, the more attention seeking. They might even more externalizing. So they often put more of a demand on caregivers, on the adults in their environment. And so they, with that kind of difficult, if you will, I'm going to use the word difficult loosely here, but difficult temperament comes up against an invalid, if they come up against an invalidating environment. And an invalidating environment in childhood can be any form of adversity, neglect, trauma, emotional invalidation, emotional abuse, all other forms of abuse. That temperament comes up against

that invalidation. You can see that would be one pathway to developing narcissism. But keep in mind that the vast majority of people who have that combo do not become narcissistic, right? So we're still multi-determined. We're still talking about the path that most don't take, but it tracks. The other pathways, one we could call more of overindulgence. It's the parent who tells us, their child, you're more special than everyone else. You are more important than everyone else. Comparatively. So you shouldn't have to wait in the line. You should get all the things you want. Pretty much the other kids be damned kind of thing. All kids are special, but all kids are special. You know more special than them or them, right? So that's not what we're talking. We're talking about you

are more special than them. And in that, you can imagine in an environment like that, that's going to cultivate an entitlement. It's going to cultivate a, often these children, are not taught to regulate, that they can have what they want. They're often soothed using external items like material, things like that, but not taught to sue themselves emotionally. The adult caregivers in their environment may be very present as people who do stuff and people who almost like applaud for them performatively, but they're really not emotionally available. These are often emotionally impoverished kids, but to the world. They look very well-resourced and being told they're special. That's another pathway to narcissism.

but again, not everyone who has that pathway becomes narcissistic. So it's either more of an adversity pathway or it's more of sort of this overindulgence pathway. And the overindulgence pathway yields more of a grandiose, arrogant, entitled, look at me, I'm so great narcissist. That more traumatic adversity path can not more often lead to more of a vulnerable narcissism or a malignant, more severe narcissism. But again, none of this is a perfect model. But that's sort of what we see. So as we dive deeper into the why of what, you know, showing up within somebody's personality, can we keep laying down the different types of narcissism, right? Yeah. Because most people are familiar with the kind of grandiose overt, but I would love to just lay them all out there.

So the vulnerable narcissism is also sometimes called covert narcissism. Vulnerable narcissism is probably the more preferred sort of clinical term, but I think they're used interchangeably. Vulnerable narcissism or covert narcissism shows up as a person who's more sullen, petulmonary. angry at the world, victimized. They feel life has been uniquely unfair to them. We'll often see a lot of failure to launch. They'll have big plans, but they'll never take one step towards activating them and then being angry at the world that their big plan didn't happen. But yet they don't take responsibility for doing anything towards it. They can be very passive aggressive instead of more overtly or actively aggressive like we'll see in other forms of narcissism, though they can be that too. Malignant narcissism, as I said, is more severe, more of a focus on, again, the manipulation

and everything tends to be more severe. It's more coercive. It's more menacing. It's more fear-inducing. It looks more of like what we call the dark tetrad where psychopathy, narcissism, machiavellianism or exploitativeness, and sadism all kind of come together. So this is obviously more dangerous form of narcissism. Then there's communal narcissism.

Now, when we get to the more severe ends of communal narcissism, we're talking about cult leaders. These are people who get their validation from being perceived as doing good in the world. But they're doing good in the world to get validation, right? It's not coming from an inherent sense of service or goodness or even empathy. And the communal narcissism can result in sort of this two-faced kind of presentation where to the world, they come off as a savior. But behind closed doors, they're behaving badly. They might be either literally behaving abusively. They're being cruel to family members, close associates, people who work with them. And so, So I was literally just reading an interview in the newspaper about someone like this who would

portray as a family man and such a great guy and the people in his life were saying, no, this is actually a really bad guy. And so that kind of dichotomy is something you'll see in communal narcissism. When malignant and communal narcissism come together, that's where we see cult leaders. Self-righteous narcissism, these are people who are very morally rigid, judgmental. They view themselves as hyperethical and they sort of lured over other people. how much more better they live their lives. They are healthier. It's not as simple as they do these things and they're content doing them. They use them as a tool, almost like a hammer. I'm better than you

because, and because of that rigidity, they will often not help people in need, viewing them as, well, you made this mess. This is your problem. Even when they have some responsibility to that person and have the capacity to help them. These are people who are very rigidly oriented to schedules, their environments have to be held in a very specific way. They expect their children to follow these very rigid, developmentally unrealistic rules. They expect the children to be neat and tidy and just sort of only be seen and not heard. It's sort of that model. And again, very dismissive. There's a real cold curt quality to them. And ultimately we have sort of neglectful narcissists. And these are people who literally only view people as objects that a human being exists to

serve a need for them. So there's no intimacy, no closeness. A person will only be noticed by them when they can serve a need. And as you can imagine in the workplace, we can almost quote unquote understand that, though it's not okay. But for a family member or a partner, it's absolutely catastrophic because there's absolutely no love coming in, no recognition, no attunement. Those are your types. Do you have examples of where society might applaud what is, you know, really truthfully, a narcissistic personality, but culturally it's rewarded because you're successful and you're outwardly, you know, very impactful. And I mean, we see this across the board, but just a couple examples of how something is rewarded in the light, but like you said,

behind closed doors is a nightmare for so many people. Well, I mean, I think it happens every day. I think this is the problem, and this is where this is such a unique problem, right? So let's say somebody is in a relationship with someone who's living with addiction, okay? We know addiction's a disease, but we'd also have empathy for the people in that addict's life, knowing that addiction results in a series of behaviors, and it's difficult for others, and the addict might behave in ways that are X, Y, and Z, right? We understand that.

or even with a more severe mental illness, like bipolar disorder, schizophrenia. We might have empathy, they have a mental illness, but also the family member is having to endure the confusion of the psychosis and whatnot. And in those cases, addiction and major mental illness, these are people who are often not succeeding in the world. They have often sort of lost their jobs, living on the fringes, maybe in really dire straits. Narcissism is a situation where literally it is a fast track to success. These are our leaders. We vote them into office. They are CEOs. They are celebrities. They are willing to do whatever they need to do to get ahead. They will throw anyone under the bus. They make more money. They're more successful at dating. They look great on paper.

So the very thing we're socialized to think of, what a great person. So smart. So cool. So charming. So charismatic is not good for us. That's tricky. when you spoke to the neglectful self-righteous communal covert like these different types of narcissism are there different reasons why one will arise for somebody and you know another one will arise for somebody else for example something that happened in childhood like why would somebody develop the self-righteous narcissism versus communal so the self-righteous narcissism way back in the day in psychology probably sort of there was a word called an an incastic but it's more of sort of where this obsessive compulsive style, not OCD handwashing, but more of a very rigidly ordered,

almost workaholic, morally superior is a personality style. That can be a home where shame was often a tool of child-rearing, rigid rules were expected to be followed, or vice versa. The child grew up in chaos, and the orderliness almost became a response to the chaos in a way, and that they would originally adhere to that because that became a protective defense. And then grandiose, we know why, because again, usually it's the overindulgent parent. Malignant is often because there is abuse that's sometimes being mirrored in the child or the child is sort of trying to take back that sense of power as a correction in adulthood.

Vulnerable narcissism. There's different pathways to that, too, not just the adversity pathway, but one thing we're also seeing is that some of the vulnerable narcissism is coming up as this resentment of now, because this first generation of helicopter kids are really coming into adulthood, right? The bubble-wrapped kids where the parents were on it, took care of everything, were almost like trying to make up for the sins of the father's kind of thing, being the super-involved parent. These kids are showing some vulnerable narcissism in adulthood and this sense of a resentment that everything was done for them, and now they feel incompetent as adults. And that sense of incompetence is coming out as sort of they're both simultaneously

entitled and incapable and they're mad at the world and they lash out and they're not doing anything right so there's certain lack of hustle because they weren't sort of brought up with that hustly sense there was an adult that would step in who thought who was well intended but still it can create that too but communal narcissism I mean the communal narcissism is an interesting one because my guess it's a grandiose narcissist that sort of splintered off and found especially in our Instagram age where people can post about doing good like I'm on the bikini cleaning trash so I'm like okay? And so everyone's like, you're so hot picking up trash. And so they're getting all these kinds of likes for that. But that's why it's not really sort of not some sort of environmental

commitment. And so everything is being done. The do-gooding is being done for the validation. And if their do-goating is not validated, they get angry. So it's really not about the meaning and purpose of the active service. It's about are people noticing me do that? That's a grandiose thing, like I said. But it's a splinter off in terms of the tool of validation. I think that's gotten a lot worse with social media. And so you can see that certainly childhood stuff would play into some of this. Not all of it. I think some of it would have to do with the tools somebody has and how they might try to,

how they're going to try to get validation. And what's also important to remember is you can view these almost as building blocks. So two of them can go together. That's why I said like a communal malignant narcissist would be a cult leader. Because many cult leaders sort of say, I'm saving the world. I'm doing all these wonderful things. I'm spiritually evolved something like. So they're doing that kind of thing.

People follow them, listen to them. They'll exploit the followers. That's the malignancy coming in. That's a great example of a mix. Yeah. We've seen many examples where something that was like appears on the surface potentially to be so beautiful is like so dark and twisted. Correct.

And actually takes advantage of a lot of people. Do you see how like narcissism begets more narcissism in a family dynamic? Like if you're raised by someone who's a narcissist, I'm curious like are, are there certain developmental age brackets where people really start to develop this narcissistic personality style like early teens, toddler? Is there a really important period of time where that comes into play? So personality develops right through adulthood. So there's so much developmental change happening in the brain. And the last part of the brain to kind of finally kick in are our frontal lobes. That area of the brain probably kind of reaches it sort of,

It's always developing until the day we die, right? But the big, the sort of quantum leaves of development happen until 25 with, again, frontal lobe being last. And this is a lot of where I'd say personality is seated. It's sort of our highest order of functionings, our executive functioning, all of that, our inhibition, those things that sort of make us more human than anything else. It's all here. So as a result, I don't think it's probably that valid to communicate about personality

in any sort of substantial way until someone's over 25. So when somebody tells me, my 17-year-old is narcissistic, you know, they're hemming and hoeing about the dishwasher and they're like, they give me a hard time, but everything, they're mean to me. The first thing I would say to that parent, like, how are they treating other people and say, oh my gosh, they're so nice to their peers. I said, you may not have that much to worry about. I think teenagers are programmed to be abusive to their parents, but actually quite lovely with their peers.

If they're lovely with their peers, you may be okay. But I think that that we, I would never call a small child narcissistic, right? the child turns to the adults to meet their needs. That's the role of the adults in the child's life. So a child is a child by that definition, every child's narcissistic, right? Because they can't really meet the needs of adults. Though if you have a narcissistic parent, you're often pulled into that role. But I certainly we should not be diagnosing personality disorders with some exceptions that I'm not going to get into all those diagnostic vagaries. But by and large, we don't even talk about diagnosing personality disorders until people are into adulthood, so probably early to mid-20s. And I think

that definitely applies in narcissism because there's an inherent narcissism we see in adolescence. That's why we have to be able to see their behavior across arenas. We'll see an adolescent who's actually great with their peers, fine with their teachers, terrible to their parents. And the parents are worried, is this a narcissist? I'll say, no, they're just a teenager and it's really awful. So I think often rightly so, like a lot of people are angered when, you know, in coming to contact with certain narcissists. If we were to go into the experience of a narcissist, which I one that we just spoke into. Like their reality is actually quite sad, right?

That they're, whether it's on the mild end where it's a little bit more vapid selfies on Instagram versus more malignant narcissist, there's an immense amount of fragility and insecurity within their reality and it's actually quite sad to feel into that. And so can you speak into what is the reality and the deep core of somebody that's insecure that creates that coping mechanism? Right. So there is within all of us, there's these just like the planet Earth, there's tectonic

plates that move around and we're not even aware of it, which is why even you and I, exposed to the same stimulus would have very different reactions. Stimulus is the same. Our reactions are different, and what brought us to that reaction was a series of things that happened with us intra-psychically. Same thing happens with the inner world of the narcissistic person. The healthier the person, the more in touch they are with what's happening internally. Right. So that's plumbing the depth. That's the soul work of therapy where you're like, okay, I see, I see where this is coming from. We're never always going to be perfect, but we might give ourselves grace or make amends. Very quickly say, I was out of line.

I'm so sorry. I know where that came from, but that's not your problem. I was not okay kind of thing, right? That's what a healthy person does. For a narcissistic person, they're really not in touch with what's happening, sort of, again, intra-psychically at that deep, deep level. But what is happening is that the internal core for the narcissistic person is quite damaged. The ego is very fragile, and one would even argue, malformed.

there's a tremendous core of shame in the narcissistic person. So defenses like entitlement, grandiosity, perfectionism, the need to be seen as perfect and great and almost a fantasy object is what keeps, almost to view it as like trying to cap a volcano, right? All of that stuff keeps that lava down, but you can't keep the lava down. Every so often someone's going to even give a little bit of feedback, like, hey, you know, we wanted to give you some feedback on this, tiny, but that's enough to wear. that cap off that lava and it starts flowing. But instead of that being a self-reflective moment

for the narcissistic person who's not in touch with that damaged inner core, because it would be too devastating for them, they lash out at the person who dared move the cap off the capped-off volcano and the volcano comes out at the other person. The challenge is we don't always know what's going to set a person off, right? I've had people say to me, we're having the most wonderful time and all I said was, I don't think this is the parking structure for this theater. I think it's the next one over. Are you telling me? I can't drive. And you're like, oh my gosh, it's raining and I didn't want us to walk in the rain. The person was not commenting on their driving at all. They're just, they're reading the sign because they're the passenger, right? And all hell breaks loose.

It could be the kind of thing like, oh, I'm so happy you're wearing that sweater again. I love that blue with your eyes. Are you trying to tell me I don't have a lot of clothes? Like, I could buy and sell you a hundred times. Like, what are you trying to tell? And you're like, oh, my gosh. So, What happens when that happens? We don't know how to talk to them anymore. We get more and more tentative. We're walking on eggshells more and more. But for them, they're not in touch with this process, right? That there is this fragile ego. Because to be in touch with a fragile ego means that they're just ordinary like the rest of us. They're just a person. And that's intolerable. Can we do therapeutic work to get them there? I mean, it's very rarely. It's not likely to happen.

you need a level of motivation and commitment and willingness to be vulnerable that we're not going to see in 99% of narcissistic people. Are there unicorns? Sure, there's unicorns everywhere. But I'm not opening a private practice based on unicorns. I mean, I've done work with a lot of narcissistic clients. We've done some good work together. We've moved the needle a little bit. Has that needle moving undone the hurts of the people around them? No. So I know that you've personally experienced like this many times. I also have very much so intimately my own family tree. And I just want to speak into a little bit more of narcissistic abuse, especially when it's in a romantic partnership or like parents dynamic for 10, 20 years. The individual who's on the receiving end or the victim, whatever you want to call, completely often loses their sense of self and loses touch with their own desires,

wants, creative urges, and catering to this volcano that could erupt at. any point. And I just want to, from your experience, working with so many individuals for decades around this, you know, just dive into a little bit more of what is narcissistic abuse, how it kind of manifests, and then the process of what somebody does when they start to gain awareness of I'm in relationship with the narcissist or somebody, you know, somebody so close to me is narcissistic. So narcissistic abuse are the behaviors and the tactics that the narcissistic person engages in in any relationship. And these are a laundry list, including manipulation, minimization, invalidation, gaslighting, rage, reactivity, entitled rage. I'm more special than you.

It's domination patterns like shifting blame, not taking responsibility. This is not my fault. It's your fault. They don't ever take accountability. There is a lot of betrayal. There's a lot of lying. there is a lot of neglect. They will shame people for expressing their needs. Basically, they expect the other person to be in service to them. So that's what the narcissistic abuse looks like. The fallout of narcissistic abuse is what happens to the other person in the relationship, who by and large ends up ruminating about what's happening,

regretting what they said or even that they ever got into this relationship. There's anxiety, there's sadness, there's self-blame, self-doubt, There can be over time a lot of dissociation, not separate personalities, but a sort of cutting off oneself from one's needs, someone's wants. You just sort of cut off from you because you're not allowed to have those things and have this relationship function. There can be a lot of second-guessing oneself, a lot of sense of isolation, loneliness. Maybe I'm reading this wrong. Other people like this person. This person is so successful, it's got to be me. That's why the book's called It's Not You. And so you brought up the idea of what does it look like in parents and what

is it look like in intimate relationships? There's commonalities, but also differences, right? So the commonalities in both cases, the narcissistic person sort of usurps the identity of the other person, because it's like a one-way highway that only the narcissistic person gets to have their needs met. But if the other person expresses their needs, the narcissistic person will shame them, call them selfish, call them greedy, call them needy, right? And yet the narcissistic person's needs get to be met. Now, you can see how problematic, this would be for a child. Because the child learns very early on that there's almost a role reversal. They are to meet the needs of the parent, the emotional needs of the parent, the public needs of the parent, like make me look good, basically, and everything will be fine. Well,

the child has one need and one need only when they're a child, and that's attachment. Attachment is safety, attachment is security. So the child's not going to roll up and say, you narcissistic fool, I'm not meeting your needs. They're going to say, I better meet this person's needs. needs. And the kid might be recruited into any kind of role from housekeeper to shrink, to keep your mouth shut, to keep the house clean, to don't cause any trouble. Some kids rebel under those circumstances, but a lot of kids learn the family rule so they can stay attached, right? And then, if the child did express a need, the parent would say, how dare you? I do so much for you. How could you do this? And the child's like, oh my gosh, how could I've done that? So over time, it's an indoctrination.

and the child learns to squelch their needs, squelch their wants, and really believe that a relationship is a place where you only give of yourself and expect nothing back. And if you did ask for something, you're going to be shamed and shut down. So that's the dynamic. The parent guilts and shames the child all the time. The child internalizes that dynamic,

which obviously is a setup for adulthood. But even if you didn't grow up like that and you run into a narcissistic person in adulthood, that kind of dynamic can start in adulthood. Because a lot of people say, I'm in love with this person. There's a lot of stuff I like about them. I'm attracted to them. They're charming.

They're charismatic. They're cool. We're having a good time. Whatever it may be. And then after that initial idealization and seduction period, we call love bombing happens, a slow descent and devaluation starts to happen. And then your needs do get shamed. And it happens so subtly that at first you're thinking, maybe I did overstretch or maybe

it is me because healthy empathic people question themselves. That's the nature of empathy is like, maybe I do need to examine this. So the very gift we have of empathy and compassion actually gets weaponized, like a boomerang and it comes right back at our heads. And so that ends up happening. And so these relationships end up in this really unfortunate reversal. And the greater the stakes in the relationship, whatever they may be, maybe people are married, maybe they have kids, maybe there's a financial reason, cultural reason, religious reason, now the person in the relationship who's being narcissistically abuse is justifying, maybe it's not that bad, I'm being ridiculous, everyone else likes them, they're super successful, we did have fun last week, I do like how they look, we do have good sex at

times, so it gets messy. And that's the nature of the narcissistic relationship is that it's messy. So a lot of people start to believe, well, relationships are complicated, so maybe this is just complicated. No, no, no, no, no. Complicated is maybe when you both have two jobs. and you're trying to raise kids and all this other. That's complicated. Somebody invalidating you and subjugating you, that's abuse. There's a difference. Opened up so much there that I want to dive a little bit deeper into. One, you spoke into love bombing. Can you speak into how these narcissistic individuals, of course, have, there's a lot of beautiful things that can also coexist in the dynamic of a relationship,

for example, and often are very charming and charismatic at the first, you know, the first glance and first meeting, and there can be this love bombing. So, open up what love bombing is a little bit more and how yeah it can be very tantalizing and attractive and seductive in that early phase of somebody you don't see those signs right away until later down the line you connect the dots looking back right so prototypically love bombing is almost a fairy tale experience right and if not a fairy tale it's it's a period that feels like perfect attunement a person gets you they are into you they they they good morning my princess good night my king it's like everything's, it just sort of, it feels magical, it's a dangerous word, but it is also a period

of intensity. And it's as though they know exactly what you want. Well, they do because you're having these deep conversations. And a lot of people say, well, I thought it was intimacy because we were talking about vulnerabilities and we're sharing about our histories. Well, on your side, it was vulnerability. On their side, they were grabbing up a lot of data. Data that down the road will be used against you, but initially might be them recognizing that this is your favorite kind of food so it shows up on your desk at lunchtime, you really, and for a lot of people who didn't feel that their parents were attuned to them that way, this can feel like it is healing a childhood wound. That's how powerful it is, okay?

It's like a hole. It's a hole, and they fill it perfectly, so you think, well, this must be love, right? But love bombing often happens intensely. Love bombing often happens quickly. So people almost feel off balance, like, who, there's a lot happening here. when they ask to slow down, a common pushback from the narcissistic person is either anger or, okay, I thought you were wanting a committed relationship. So I must have misread the signals here. And the person's like, no, no, no, no, I don't want you to go away. Like, I want to just talk about this.

No, no, I mean, listen, I am just so in love with you. Like, I want to be with you all the time. And the other person's like, okay, maybe I'm being ridiculous. Oh, Dr. Romney red flags, Prishaw, I'm all in. And that time, they use that time, that, they almost shut down that ability to discern, you know, to take that minute and say, how does this feel in my body? Because for us to feel things in our body, we need to step away for a minute. And we need to just sort of stay with it and say, this doesn't feel fully right, to which I'd say, and then when you ask for time and they say, no, that's beyond a red flag. That's like a red banner blanketing the town. I mean, it is, it's really a real issue, right? But a lot of people

think, but am I saying no to my love story? Do you really want a love story? It feels pressured. You know, I mean, that's how fairy tales often are love stories that feel pressure. That's part of the problem. But love bombing isn't, and sometimes love bombing is fabulous dates and picnics and you go to the best concert and you get the impossible this and you go on a safari on your third date or some, all kinds of outlanders stuff, right? So, and people are looking at it like, whoa, they're very, being love bombed is very Instagramable

too. It's just all very exciting and everyone's excited for you. But love bombing always doesn't have. that sort of snazzy feel. Sometimes it is a deep vulnerability being shared by the other person. In other words, let's say somebody, the person who is not narcissistic, let's call it that way, is a natural rescuer, a fixer. The narcissistic person shows up with a hard luck story. Like, oh, my life is so tough. I can't even begin to tell you and my parents don't believe me and la la la, la, well, that rescuer, that's actually more seductive than somebody sweeping you away on vacation because I can fix this.

help you can I loan you my car like do you want to do this can I help and introduce you to this person and ironically some people will say to me they'll say you know it was never about flowers and fancy nights out it was this sort of I felt I felt for them and they were so open with me and I'd gone through some of those things and I thought I could make it right for them and initially they were appreciative in fact I'd even lend the money and they'd pay me back so and then it would go further and all of a sudden the money is not getting paid back and you're getting sucked into this system. We see that more it's vulnerable narcissism. And communal narcissism, people will often bring people into communities. You know, that's, we could talk. Occult indoctrination is a form of love bombing, right? Come in. You're a beautiful

spirit. That's totally misunderstood. Come in here. We see you. We see your wounds for a person who's hurt. That's the most seductive thing you could ever hear. So the different forms will do this differently. For a malignant narcissist, interestingly, the way they love. love bomb might be through control, which for a person who has never felt cared for, that jealousy might actually feel like somebody loves me so much that they don't want someone else to have me. They bought me a cell phone. Can you imagine? Great. They just put a tracking device on you. That's not how a person thinks of it. So most people aren't as cynical as me, but it's a, there's many tactics here. But what's happening during love bombing is it's indoctrination. You're

thrown off your game, you stop listening to your body, you feel like you're in something special, tailor made for you. It is where the roots of that trauma-bonded tree, those seeds are starting to take root. You're not even aware of it. And then we go into the next chapter. So there's a couple other things that you brought up to in which this manifests, right? One would be triangulation, another one, gaslighting. Let's start there because being gaslit or gaslighting is a term that's been more and more popularized and is often misunderstood as just denying someone's reality. but I'd love for you to contextualize it a little bit and too deeper. Yeah, so gaslighting, 2023 word of the year by Merriam-Webster Dictionary.

Like that's how much it is permeated. This was once a word only used by therapists and apparently a playwright and a filmmaker. That's really who used this word and then it came up. So as a result, it's gotten much like narcissism, it's gotten very misunderstood. Gaslighting at its core is a form of manipulation. And it's a form of manipulation that's predicated, number one, in a relationship that's characterized by trust. So the people who can gaslight us are our partners, our family members, our close friends, or even someone like a healthcare professional or a lawyer,

someone that we've hired to give us expert advice, right? Because we trust them, right? The next phase is they doubt, the gaslighter doubts the other person's memory, perceptions, experiences. I never said that. That never happened. I didn't put that there. You never said that, didn't I? And you're going through the phone. And initially, you might even fight back at that phase. So yes, I did. Yes, I did. I said, here, it's right there. And that's when the gas slider goes to the next phase. And most people get stuck at that phase. And it's like, that's gas lighting. It's the beginning of gas sliding. But the closer on gaslighting is where they'll say, okay, so you're showing me text messages. I'm in a relationship with the CIA. Is that what this is?

Are you just a paranoid person? I don't know. I don't know that I'm signing up for a paranoid relationship. We're no longer, they're not even addressing what's on the text. You've now been painted as insane or having memory problems. They'll say you need to get therapy. You're sure you shouldn't be on meds. Maybe you're having the beginning stages of dementia. I mean, all these things. You need rest. You've been working too hard. Are you having your period? Anything that would leave the person feeling somehow impaired and it's almost plausibly impaired that this this doubt has been created. And then people are scrambling like, no, no, no, that's not what I did. Sometimes the gaslighter will even intentionally move things away from the place they know the person usually puts, the person puts the keys on the hook or puts the remote next to the TV.

And they'll move the thing and they'll say, well, I didn't move it. So you must have moved it. Like, I didn't move it. And the person being gaslighted, this doesn't happen once. This happens over and over and over again with somebody they trust and care about. And sometimes when some plausibility is thrown in there, they actually, you sometimes did forget something or you don't remember something right. that's when it cements. And when it happens enough, and it's sort of, and I put successful in quotes, but successful

for the gaslighter, I guess, you kind of just start giving into them. You believe their version. You believe, they tell you the sky's pink. You're like, okay, the sky's pink. You're just fully now indoctrinated into their system. So you can see how dangerous this can be. Because above all else, what gaslighting leaves a person doing is entirely doubting themselves. And you'll see how it shifts in identity.

People are like, I don't know anything. I can't remember anything. I'm just a disorganized mess. And the people saying that they're not disorganized mess is they are remembering things and they're actually quite smart. But they've been so indoctrinated to believe that they're a mess, that they walk around and portray themselves as such and will often actually hold themselves back from opportunities, from doing things, from believing in their own capabilities. So it's a really, really pernicious dynamic. It's not just a difference of opinion. Some people say, some people might say, I like cheese.

I like pizza from Joe's. And the other person's like, I like pizza from Vinnie's. Stop gaslighting me. Vinnie's doesn't have good pizza. No, no, no. You just like different pizza. That's not gaslighting.

And I think we're throwing the term around. Like two people have like different candidates in a political race. They're not gaslighting. They just like someone different. You know, it's a, I think because of the nature of discussions and so many people are opposed in views on everything these days,

we're using the term wrong. Because the way I presented it in that whole cycle, you can see what an actually really treacherous dynamic. So there's a myriad of different ways in which these manipulative tendencies express. Another one is triangulation, right? And so could you also tie into that a little bit? So triangulation is what we see, usually in systems that involve narcissistic people. It would be rare to see with two people, but it can happen with two people.

And in essence, what happens is the narcissistic people draws on other people in the system to sort of consolidate their power by turning people against each other. In a family system, it would be like, you know, your sister said that you're, your sister said that you've been spending a lot of money. You've been, you've been taking advantage of her financially. You're like, she said what? So what do you call your sister? You're like, yo, you know what? And your sister's like, what are you talking about?

I don't know what you're talking about. And now your sister's maddie. You think I was capable of taking advantage. So now the narcissistic person has created this. What does that give them? Power over both of them. We see triangulation happen in families. we see it happen in workplaces all the time.

Workplace gossip, the leader sort of having factions. As long as there's factions, and they've got their devotees in that system, they're going to hold the power. And even when you're in intimate relationships, a classic example of triangulation is when the narcissistic person compares you to other people. You know, my ex didn't do that. Or my friend's wife is actually has no problem with him working late. That's also triangulation.

I'm curious for, like, is there a link with like too much self-esteem or what starts out is maybe healthy self-esteem and confidence that goes into narcissism? Like I think of maybe even like Kanye West who was raised by his mother to have a lot of self-esteem and confidence in his ability to manifest and create in the world. And then you see him go like further down the line. And like many of these, what someone might perceive as narcissistic tendencies, starts to view himself like Jesus or you. Jesus. And I even look in my own life, like, is there, are those two completely separate different things, or can self-esteem and confidence be like overflowing into narcissistic tendencies? So healthy self-esteem is always based in reality, right? And it's really what's more important than self-esteem is self-appraisal. It's the capacity to take a look at oneself and say,

this is what I'm good at. I'm not good at this. So we know what we're good at. We also know what we're not good at, right? Self-esteem is sort of the, I think we got over-focused on self-esteem, which is, I'm great, to which my comment is, are you? Like, show me, show me your greatness. You're good, you know, but you're not very good at that part of it. Oh, well, don't tell me that. My kid has self-esteem. So when we, when people have healthy self-esteem, they're not only aware of themselves, they're aware of their strengths, they're aware of their weaknesses, they're aware of any realistic limitations, but healthy self-esteem where it meets healthy self-appraisal, you're also aware of others, right? And you're not delusional. Nobody's great at everything.

Different people are great at different things, right? Nobody's a living deity. So that's delusional, right? And so I have to say you bring up an interesting point. Like when is it, when is it too much, right? Well, when it's not informed by reality. Now, here's where it gets really, really funky. And this is, I think, about this all the time because we're in such an interesting era of innovation and the innovation we've experienced I'm old enough to know that the fact that I have a computer in my pocket is it exceeds any childhood daydream I could have had it's science fiction if you told my eight-year-old self I would have had the entire encyclopedia in my pocket and could watch TV and I would have said that so silly because it was impot we did not even think it and it had to

happened in all of our lifetimes, right? So that I could video chat with some of them. My mom could video chat to family members in India. It's absolutely unreal. The people who had to bring that stuff to life had to believe in the unreal, right? So these innovators in some ways, their grandiosity kind of being off the chain has brought things into the world that have changed a role for better or for worse and probably a little bit of better and worse, right? But they have. And so then we have this question of, well, if we stymied narcissism, would we not be stymieing innovation? And the answer to that is, you're damn right we would. And so it's never going to go away. I'd say, heaven bless the innovators, just don't get married to them. You know, that's really

going to be. And I hope they're not your parent. But these things, so those people probably didn't have those kinds of walls on there sort of what is possible. But I do think that we made this mistake in the last 25 to 30 years of parenting. Let's build up everyone's self-esteem. We weren't doing anyone any favors because everyone sort of gobsmacked the first time they hit a barrier when they're not good at something. And I was a college professor for 22 years. And I worked with some students who had a lot of self-esteem and they couldn't construct a decent sentence. but my last professor told me I can write. I'm like, well, you can't.

I'm telling you that right now. It's absolutely you cannot write. So here's your C. And they'd go make a complaint because they're great. And I felt sad for them because they would stumble through. And at some point, they would hit the wall. They would not be able to pass the exam for their profession or whatever they need to do. But they were told they were great.

So I actually think that's a terrible thing to do to someone. And I do think it can go, I think you can go awry. So this idea, though, of healthy self-appraisal, healthy self-esteem, narcissism is actually about distorted self-esteem. It's about, I know, I'm great at everything, I know everything, I'm better than everyone. That is, people say that's lots of self-esteem. I'm like, no, that's distorted because it's not real. It's not realistic. It's almost delusional.

So I think it's just to view it through the distorted lens rather than having lots of it. Is there a distinction culturally? Like I know within Middle Eastern, Asian households, I feel like within there's the father and the family dynamic is like, I just know, especially in Middle Eastern in my culture, like overseas in Jordan, a lot of times, like, the father and the family is very narcissistic and it's like everyone caters to them. So I'm just curious for individuals that culturally have been raised in kind of, you know, an immigrant family or, you know, culturally different.

how you see that play out differently? It does play out differently. So as you imagine, I do a lot of work, not only in the Middle East, but also in South Asia. And when we see cultural organization that's very much around patriarchy, hierarchy, and authoritarianism within the family, you're all but for certain going to see narcissistic family systems, systems of high control, high rigidity, a sort of blameless, non-responsibility-taking person, usually father, or whatever patriarchal figure at the head of it, and everyone else having to endure that and not being not being attuned to not being seen and really is in essence

the entire system caters to that person right it's one way and one way only and it does harm to people in it i mean i think for the longest time it was always couched in duty and obligation sometimes even in sacred duty and obligation and that would become a tool of control but what it was doing was it was subjugating the kids in those environments so they were not able to express themselves you know even when we think for example of forget it would be career It could even be sort of sexual identity, gender-oriented, all those things, you know, that you could not be anything but what we tell you. You're going to marry who we tell you to marry. You're going to do for a living what we tell you to do. And so there was no room for individuation. Well, if you sap a person's individuation, you kill their soul. And so we get into this really interesting, complicated conversation about collectivism versus individualism, right? I was raised in a very traditional South Asian Indian home, very traditional. And some of that tradition obviously breaks away as we get more acculturated, but certainly the expectations were clear. And it was, I mean, a rebellion of the highest order for me to go and do what I did in my life.

And it didn't come without cost. But the cost mostly was I did a bad thing going and being my own self. It was not a good thing. It was a bad thing. So I had to sit with that moral injury for a long time that I did bad going and being myself. So my inherent self-identification became of selfish rather than strong. 25 years of therapy later, I've made some progress and say it's okay. But it's really terrible.

I can understand anthropologically, sociologically, I understand all the wise, but it is, it's very, very harmful because you've lost so much human potential. I think of all the creativity and all the things we've lost from people who are told, you're going to study STEM, you're going to become a doctor, you're going to become a lawyer, you're going to live near us, you're going to do the family business, and that there's no other pathway, and that the child was an ingrate for wanting to do otherwise, creates a tremendous well of shame and self-devaluation that people can carry as a wound for much of their lives. Yeah, it's sad.

I've seen it so often. my culture, my friends, my family, you know, it's like you're an engineer, you're a doctor, or a lawyer, or you're a failure. And those are your options. Which were path to you take? Sure, sign me up for failure. It seems like there's a lot more interesting things that will happen. But we do often hear like, collectivist culture is great.

And I'll say, because I, again, I worked in the multicultural research sphere for many years. There's no such thing as this is great, that's great. These harms of narcissism, the lack of empathy, the subjugation. of the other, that can happen in an individualist culture, and it can happen in a collectivist culture. Neither is protective. And in fact, one could argue in collectivist cultures, the narcissistic abuser is often surrounded by the sort of the family coming together, that sense of loyalty, family loyalty. We don't speak about ourselves outside of here. So those being harmed in those systems have far less recourse than you might actually find an individualistic system.

Yeah, I just have so much compassion for all the individuals that have been cut off from their own creative impulses and urge and artistic desires to express themselves and find their own individuation and had been cut off from their soul and feeling so much shame around that, so much compassion. I want to go into the romantic partnership side of things for people that have been on the other end of narcissistic abuse for years, decades, have lost that sense of self and are now awakening to how that's been in reality. and want to make a change can be very complicated, like you said, when there's financial ties, when there's kids in the picture, when there's so many different things, where does one begin

when they start to awaken to this to one day having a vision of finding themselves again, discovering their own voice and freeing themselves from so much abuse. It's a very complicated series of steps. I can imagine. Healing and that's the majority of what it's not you is about, the hard first step is recognizing what it is.

Right. So for years, people walked around. They're confused. They're bumping against the wall. It's got to be me. This is my fault. Let me try this. Let me be nicer.

Let me do what they want me to do for a living. Let me major in what they want me to major in college. Let me lose weight. Let me gain weight. Let me grow my hair out. Let me keep the house cleaner. Whatever it is, let me win this. Let me not ask them any questions.

Let me never criticize them. Let me be what they want. Right? And it still doesn't work. They still have their moments and more than their moments. And it is a person wondering why, despite me doing everything, they want, they're still not kind to me. And so it's the willingness to see, number one, it's a pattern, okay, that it's consistent. Those are two big things. With that awakening and all these other things,

there is a lack of empathy. You are being chronically dismissed. And then also the next step is that that stuff's not okay. That stuff's never okay in a relationship. I don't care how stressful their day was. I don't care how frustrating their job is. I don't care what their childhood was like. It's their responsibility to do what they need to do to set themselves straight. Another human being is never meant to be a pacifier or a punching bag. If they're able to go through the world and operate as a living, sentient human being in the world, then they need to take responsibility for themselves. This all is sort of creating a head of steam towards something called radical acceptance. And radical acceptance is understanding what these patterns are,

how they affect us but above all else and this is the tough part they're not going to change they're not and that's where people say they the eyes get wide in my office and they're the gas like whoa whoa wait this is how it's always going to be i said it always has been so tell me where you're going with the odds on this one changing and often there's that sunk cost fallacy it's it is so much of their sting and it has been predicated on the idea they will change they will change it's sunk cause fallacy but it goes deeper i think sun cause fallacies, the cognitive version of it, there's something deeply felt because it's attachment, it's love, it's old patterns playing out again. It's a plausible sense that this is my fault,

that I could have been better. But there's also that sense of panic that's created by something called the trauma bond. Getting to radical acceptance means understanding that this isn't just about how you think about this, but it is a feeling. And the trauma bond is a relationship, sort of a dysfunctional relationship structure created in a relationship where there's hot and cold, back and forth, up and down, good and bad. Just when you think it's terrible, just when you're like, okay, I'm done. Something good happens. Because as long as the narcissistic person has supplied, they had a good day.

Whatever that good day meant to them, they're going to come home in a good mood. Right? And if they come home three days in a good mood, all of a sudden, we interestingly sort of, sort of forgetting that bad stuff, right? a phenomenon that Jennifer Freid has, she calls it something called betrayal blindness, but we forget the bad things because that doesn't fit all these good things and these good things feel good and it means we don't have to disrupt the status quo. But trauma bonding can mean that a person makes so many justifications, not even just in their

mind but almost physiologically they believe them, that the idea of leaving the relationship fills a person with a sense of panic. They feel like leaving this feels like cutting off my own arms. not to mention the practical stuff, minor children, financial issues, housing, culture, religion, stigma. I mean, all that stuff matters too. So when you throw that into the recipe too, it's very, very difficult sometimes for people to even think about leaving and sometimes they simply cannot.

But with the radical acceptance and truly understanding, not only will it never change, they will never see your point of view. That's a hard one for people. You mean they're never going to get what they did to me? I'm like, probably not. No, sometimes people get a deathbed confession, but you're really going to sit around and put your life on ice for that? Probably not.

So there is that once you take that away, and I always say my work is building a scaffold around a person because then I'm going to take out the central pillar of the building. And then I need the structure to stand, which is the person. And so once that happens, once a person really gets to radical acceptance, the next thing that happens is a tidal wave of grief. The grief of everything, the grief of never really having a childhood where you felt safe. The grief of losing what you saw was your love story. The grief of not having the family you had made last. The grief of lost opportunity. The grief of a worldview, the grief of a loss of innocence. So many losses pile up. And a person

says, that means a loss of status quo. It's a loss of the ground underneath you. The grief goes, and like all grief, human beings are built. Like we grieve and then we heal. Every living thing on the planet heals. Trees grow back branches, starfish grow back arms, and human beings heal internally too. And so after the grief really then becomes a sense of you start doing the work of individuation. Who am I? What am I about?

That's often gotten lost. And for people had narcissistic parents, they never figured that out in the first place. that deep dive, that sort of self-exploration. I said it's almost like going on a tour, but it's of yourself. And you're like, oh, I never knew that person painted that. It's almost like, I never knew I liked this or I never knew this was my interest because to allow yourself to explore that while you were in a narcissistic relationship felt forbidden and even dangerous. So it becomes that process of who am I, what am I about? It becomes building up healthy voices. we put 90% of our energy into our most toxic relationships and 10% into the relationships that

actually give back to us in absolute gifts all the time. Why? Because the toxic people are always asking stuff of us. And that 10% those glorious people, they don't ask for anything. Flip it. Give the 90% of the good people. The returns are going to be so high. And the toxic people, give them some supply and call it a day. You know, I mean, that's all they want from you. Anyhow, there's going to be mad at you either way. So you might as well put less time in that and then put it in other places. So build up those social supports. Build up your inner world. Give yourself permission to do that. Recognize that the grief comes up time and time again. But also, I know that not everyone can leave. So can healing happen if you stay in one of these

relationships? It can. It's slower. It's different. But it happens. And people will say, listen, I couldn't leave my marriage, but I allowed myself to explore meaning and purpose more often, whether through their spiritual lives, whether through activities and volunteering, going back to school, reading a book, whatever it was, build joy and awe into your life. I mean, there's these things we can do. I think the problem is we were always trying to integrate the narcissistic person into that structure. Once you sort of take them out and give yourself permission to do that, again, the grief comes up. But then you start to realize like, okay, and some people say, well, is it really that bad? I said, go check it out again.

Let me know how that works out. I call it going into the tiger's cage. And they're like, oh, it was really bad when I went back in there. I said, I thought it would be. But you almost needed the reminder. And then they're like, okay, I'm not doing that anymore. And I said, and even if you do, it's okay. Not everyone's going to walk away from their parents forever, but you can find new ways of being with them,

no longer going to them for approval. Listen, there are 45-year-old people who are still running up to their parents. with their promotion and their new house and their look at look at my achievements like a five-year-old would bring a drawing to them there is that grief around there they're never going to see it but if you're surrounded by other people that do we all have different stories it doesn't always have to be that your parents saw at all it's just a different story and I think out of that recognizing that you have the ability to go and take care of you I think it's it really unleashes something within a person to actually do what a lot of people who are comfortable never get to do, which is really

get to know themselves holy. It sounds like it's really one of the toughest red pills to swallow that somebody that you are so intertwined with, that you've invested so much to that you have those attachments with are just really unlikely to change who they are, which is really what you're asking them to do, right? Change their personality, who they've ingrained themselves to be. How possible is it really to stay in the dynamic and to have that narcissistic? And to have that an narcissistic person to heal and to change, I know it sounds like you kind of have a depressing answer to the reality of like how often that actually happens. Oh, I'd say at least half of people stay at least one. In fact, I think almost all people stay in at least one narcissistic relationship.

I think in a significant one like an intimate relationship, half stay, half go. That's why my first book in this area was called, should I stay or should I go. Right? Yeah. So for the narcissistic person though to actually go through that process of healing. Oh. I'll tell you why. Because It is to ask someone to change their personality, their responses to everything. That's a heavy lift. That is therapy with a phenomenal therapist for years and years and years, a willingness not only to be vulnerable in there, but then to make substantial changes in how they go through the world.

So this person who is very used to thinking they're special and snapping at people and reacting to people, having to genuinely make amends and truly mean it to take responsibility. and sit with that discomfort of you're not perfect, of not getting their way, they're not going to do it because the other way felt so good. It feels good to be in power, right? It feels good to be at the top of the hierarchy. And they, that is, I just, it's who they are. I mean, it's who I am a very introverted person. I'm never going to be the life of the party. I've wanted to be the life of the party, but it's sort of an epic fail every time I do it. I'm like, okay, I'm just going to be comfortable where I am in the corner. Someone's going to come talk to me.

but I'm never going to not be an introvert. It's who I am. Inborn reasons, other reasons. And I don't want to change. I don't want to be an extrovert. I don't want to spend time with other people. But you have that flexibility. Then that health, mental health is flexibility.

Mental health means I do go to the party. And I do talk to people. And I come home and I sleep about 10 hours because I'm so tired afterwards. But mental health means we step up. But it is also the awareness of other, the capacity of engaging in empathy, intimacy, self-awareness. That's the core of health. And that's absent from a person who's narcissistic. An introverted person has all that, right?

So that personality style doesn't take that away, right? A person might say, oh, I'm going to skip your party, but can we have dinner together? Just you and me tomorrow night. You're not dissing the friend. You're saying this is just not going to be my favorite way to do this. I'd love to see you though. And is that okay? And friends like, no, it's my birthday. I want you to be this. I will be there. Then this is important to you. And I will be there for you. And you're not sullen. You go and you have a good time. Right. That's the flexibility, even if it's exhausting.

The narcissistic person to build that flexibility in what's been a rigid muscle for a lifetime when they've had that power. It's just, it's very, very, very, very rare because it's a lifetime of work. They'd literally have to commit to this every minute of every day. They'd have to hold. to be less disinhibited, disinhibited. They'd have to hold their temper, be less reactive, take the point of view of the other person, hear the other person empathically, not be contemptuous of them. This is an overhaul, the likes of which is, it's everything, it's too much. Your new book, it's not you. The title is, it's not you. And I want to speak into the part of us that potentially, you know, is playing the part in the dynamic where it is us, right? Because

of course if we've lost our voice and our sense of self and we've you know like we've we've spoken to into so much of the relationship dynamic with the narcissist I just would love for you to speak into the self responsibility and accountability we can come when we realize that we've been conditioned to believe that we're worthy of staying in the dynamic and so the part of us that is you know because I think that gives us more energy to actually do something about it when we realize that we are the ones keeping ourselves in the dynamic in the situation too. I'm going to push back on that. Please.

I'm going to push back on that because I think that while the trauma wounds and the trauma bonding is a part of ourselves per se, it is often very unprocessed, misunderstood because it's held again so somatically, so physically. And that the, and also that if a person doesn't understand what the narcissistic, dynamic is, they're not playing by the same rules. It's like one of you is playing chess and one of you is playing checkers and you think both of you are playing checkers. And so you're not playing the same game, as it were. And so I think that it is a part of the point about radical acceptance is if a person says, I can't leave this. I don't have enough money to get my own housing. I signed a

pre-nup so I will not be able to survive. We have minor children and I don't trust the kids to be with this person half the time. If I do this, my family will want nothing to do with me. Real reasons. That a person says, those are my reasons. So I'm sadly not going to be able to exit this the way I want. I'm not. I can't. The stakes are too high. However, I also understand the absolute limits of this person. And then my interactions with this person are always going to be harmful, negative, and unpleasant. Every so often they may show up pleasant. That's what's to be expected. They have a very realistic look at what they're dealing with. Okay.

But it's almost like having train tracks out your window that about every, unpredictably, this really loud train goes by for hours at a time. And you're like, oh, here comes the train. And that noise is sort of unsettling and plates fall off the walls. And, you know, it's not nice. But it doesn't happen all the time. And you can't afford to move. And you're like, okay, I'm just going to have to find something.

I'm going to soothe my nervous system. I'm going to breathe. I'm going to meditate. I'm going to ground myself. I'm going to read something that's meaningful. I'm going to do something that's meaningful. I am going to do things to care for myself while I'm with this stressful stimulus. I'm going to get help. I'm going to get support. I'm going to get therapy. I'm going to get to the other side. I'm above all else. I'm not going to personalize this, right? That's what some people are doing. So they are in the dynamic, but they can be open-eyed in the dynamic,

right? That this is what I'm dealing with. And in the healthiest version of this is the person who says, this person's horrible. Like, there's no version of this I like, but this is why I'm in it, and this is why I'm staying in it right now. And perhaps, I mean, some people file for divorce. Pretty much the stroke of midnight, they've pulled together the papers. When the day, the business day starts the next day, their kid's now 18. They file for divorce. No custody battle. And so there'll be other battles, but they'll say at least I don't have to ever worry about someone saying, my kid has to be away from me. This child will have a choice to go and spend time where they want and so or they're they're autonomous so people are making complicated choices really

complicated choices so I think and because a lot of people don't understand what this is about they don't understand what they're staying in they as long as somebody truly believes that if I try harder do more and remember the narcissistic person often future fakes they'll say okay okay I'm sorry sorry I'll change I'll change I did this because I was stressed out I'm going to go into therapy I'm going to do this I'm going to do that give me six months and in six months I'll get the promotion so you're another six months, right? And good faith, because you love the person. And then six months passes, nothing happens. You're angry at yourself because I'm the fool. I'm like, no, you're not the fool. That person betrayed you and tricked you. That's the piece that wasn't okay. And so it's that eye-opening

quality to it. So I really steer away from the idea that people are engaging this dynamic, unless they really are. Like if some people say, I don't believe you, I can get through to them, I'll say, listen, I'll be here. When you bring the pieces back, I'll help you glue them back together. They're going to destroy you. And I love you and I understand why you need. This is your process. So you go do your process.

But I need you to at least say, please ground first, please get yourself into a better sympathetic nervous system place because someone's going to come for you, right? It's almost like you're going into a place where there's wild animals everywhere. Like you've got to be ready. I need you at least ready. And when this all happens, let's figure out some kind of ritual you can engage. to soothe yourself.

And they'll often look at me like, is it really going to be that bad? And then they'll often text me like, it was really that bad. I'm like, okay, well. And you know what I say? Not that I'm so great and I'm so smart, but I will say when I,

this, how could I said this with certainty, unless I knew this was a pattern? I'm not a mind reader. I'm not a psychic. This is a pattern, right? Just like I can say, guess what the sun's going to rise this morning? Can you believe?

At the east, I'm so confident. How did you know that? It's the same thing. So it's a, that's where I'm very, very, very leery of telling people this is a you thing. And there's a lot of enablers around the narcissistic person. And there's a lot of enablers who don't want the status quo disrupted. So they'll often play on that self-blame, self-doubt of the survivor going through this saying, are you sure you know what you're doing?

Or, you know, I don't know, dating at 55. There's not a lot of options out there. So people, and they're not that bad. And I know he yells at you sometimes, but you have a really nice house. so those folks can make this hard too. So I don't think it's a pod to do. I don't think it's a dance of two. I think it's a, I think it's controlling and manipulative and malevolent. And once a person knows everything and they still put themselves in it, I'll even say to them, again, you're a process. I'm not going to say you're a fool. This is someone you love. You want it to be right. So I understand why you keep going back in, but you're going to get hurt every time. And that's the piece I'm trying to get people ready for. What is you, I love that perspective. And what do you think is the most effective way to support a friend or somebody that is so painful to see them continually feed into this pattern? How do you actually support them?

And what have you seen the most effective way to actually support somebody in this dynamic? Believe them. So when they say, it was something that many survivors go through. Let's say they think my partner might be narcissistic. They'll often be shamed. Like, how do you know that? Or everyone's talking about that on TikTok. And that's why you're saying that.

the better answer would be what's, you know, what's going on? That sounds hard. Like, what's making you think that? Most people are not going to say that for some people on TikTok. Oh, my boyfriend cheated on me. He's narcissistic. I don't know if he's narcissistic. He cheated on you. We know that, but I don't know the rest of it. So don't doubt them. Like be present with them. If you, if they don't, if they're not figuring it out themselves, but you see that they're caught in this self-blame cycle, which is what more often happens when you're a supporter of someone. check in with them and don't say, yo, I think your husband starts a cystic, but instead say, you're doing okay? And the person will say, of course, because they're in so much dissociated denial, say, I'm fine, I'm totally fine. Everything's fine. And say, okay, I just wanted to check in. Like, I noticed the interaction the two of you had, and actually, the way he talked to you,

didn't feel okay. I just wanted to make sure you're okay. So you are making a comment on that behavior. You are checking them with your friend. Odds are nine out of ten. Your friend's going to defend it. Oh, no, it wasn't that, it wasn't that big a deal. But you saying, like, I saw that and that didn't feel okay, you've planted a tiny seed. Someone saw this. And that person, at some level within them, that cognitive distance, that attention, they're like, okay, yeah, that this isn't okay. And that happens a few more times because what a lot of people never hear is that what's happening in that relationship is not okay. More often than that we hear, relationships are hard. And so when sometimes people simply get that, are you okay?

I'm checking in. I saw that. You know, I've noticed that you haven't been coming around as much. What's going on? Well, he doesn't want to come. I'm like, and then instead of saying, well, come without him. That person may not be able to do and say, well, let's figure out a time you and I could do something together.

Find the way because they're trying to tell you in a million small ways. But if a person tells you like, this is what's happening, be that listening ear. One thing that can be hard when you're supporting someone going through this, there's a lot of rumination. So the person wants to talk about it again and again and again and again. And that can burn a friend out. It helps when you can do it. But there might be the point where maybe you help them find someone who can, a therapist who's trained to listen to this again and again. But sometimes they just need to keep saying it again and again. And as a friend, it's not your job to fix it. I think we often want to solve problems for people. The greatest thing we can do is simply be present with them. Let them talk it out, hear it out, but don't try to fix it and say, or give them feedback. They might try something against you. Like, am I crazy in thinking that? Nine times out of ten, your friend's not crazy.

Say, no, that was wrong. They just need validation because they've been living in invalidation for such a long time that to ungaslight someone means you hear them without judgment. I love that approach that it feels like more of a gardener than a construction worker. Correct. Like instead of, because I'm sure it just wouldn't go well. like you say, hey, he's a narcissist or even to the narcissist, right? It's like, how is, that's not going to go well. It's not going to go well. And you never call the narcissist out.

Never. That's a never. If you only get one thing from this episode, never call, never say you're a narcissistic. That never works. It always backfires. They get angry. It creates gaslighting it creates antipathy. Don't do it. Just, you know, you, the greatest superpower you could have in a relationship is that you know this about someone and you can start constructing your approach around that. So for the individuals that maybe aren't, they don't have a dense, gross experience of this in their life with somebody else, but are interested to look in the mirror and see where is the inner narcissist, where am I on the spectrum, where am I self-righteous, where are there parts of me that still feel that need even just for validation on the mild or medium to level on that spectrum.

And they want to grow as an individual and they can see how that would be painful and also limiting their own experience for joy in life and many different things. Where does somebody begin once they start to have some awareness of there's part of me that is narcissistic and they want to heal that. So it's a couple of things. I think that number one, you know, one thing I actually don't believe in healthy narcissism. People say, well, maybe there's healthy. There's not. I mean, if somebody's not empathic, that's not, there's no healthy version of not having empathy, right, or being entitled or all of that. But if a person says, I'm listening to this and I'm like, I am a little judgey and I, you know, I do like sort of, I have my things that I do and I'm when people,

other people don't do them, I kind of judge them. I would say, do, you know, have that, do that accounting of how you treat others, right? That, you know, it's like I always say lead with empathy, lead with warmth. Today I was getting a cup of tea somewhere and the clerk was so surly, so surly. And I, and I was not in the mood because I was rain. and this and that, but I thought, leave with empathy that you don't know what day he had. You know, you do not know. And I'm like, hey, hey, could I get a cup of green tea? Surly, Surly, Surly, Surly, Surly, Surly, Surly, Surly, Surly, oh, can you tell me where I get it?

Do I get it down here? More surly. I'm like, oh, thank you. Thank you so much. And I get at the end. I'm like, thanks, everyone. Bye. Nobody was nice to me.

I still felt okay. You know what I'm saying? I don't, again, I always say, I don't know what their day was. I don't know what their life was. I don't ever want to spend time with them. Don't get me wrong. I'm not a sucker. I'm like, 86, this particular tea shop, because this was dark.

But I got my tea. And I felt better from it. So lead with empathy. Other people don't need to do things the way we want or the way we do them. But catch ourselves in judgment really ends the conversation, right? That so many people out there say, I'm open to so much. I'm like, but you're judging them. So you're not open.

So end the judgment. Be aware of how you treat other people. There is never just one right way. Catch yourself in contempt. Contempt is sort of human poison. Maybe people don't do the things the way you do them, but they do them their way. And it is the greatest thing we can bring to other people. Compassion, kindness. It really, really, it's good for your mental health. It's good for their mental health. It's good for the witnesses' mental health. A lot of people say, oh, but that feels like a sucker bat. people are going to take advantage of me. Be savvy. I'm not telling you to go play three card Monty with people. I'm telling you like, be nice to the three card. No, thanks. But also, don't interact when you don't feel safe. That for me was a big learning because I was always trying to be warm. And it actually got me into dangerous situations. And my body was telling me, like, this isn't safe. And I didn't honor that because I got caught in that loop. So we have to catch that balance of this body of ours gets things. The brain is a little bit late to the party, right? The body is wise. The brain is smart. I'd rather be wise than smart. Okay, so I often

turn your first. Listen to that. But we can bring our best selves forth. But if you do think you are, I am a little bit selfish, always bring it back to how am I treating others? Because the person might say, I am selfish. I work all the time. I live by myself. I have my schedule. And I'd say, is someone being hurt by this? And they'll say, well, no, it's why I chose not to get into a relationship because I know right now I have to work all the time. Are you mean to, no. I mean, I just feel like I'm selfish. But they've organized their life.

Why is that selfish? So I think some people go to the other side of pathologizing themselves because they're not making conventional choices. They say, I love my work. And that's why I don't want to have a relationship now because I know it would hurt someone because I wouldn't be available to them the way they'd want. Or I don't want to put a kid through this.

That doesn't feel selfish to me at all. That feels very circumspect. And so I think that it's to take some time and think about how you treat others because I think that gives us a real glimpse into whether we really are these things. And then if you aren't treating them well, clean it up really fast. And that might mean therapy, that might mean trauma-informed work, whatever that looks like for you, do it because it will, there's nothing more sad than a narcissist at the end of their lives. Let me tell you that right now. I've seen it happen and it is

not pretty. Can you just share a little bit more about that? Like, I could just imagine the perception of so much regret and like of a wasted life if they come to the awakening of it. Otherwise, it's like they, there's stay in the unconsciousness of it. They don't come to the awareness of it. They remain angry at the world, but they are lonely. People don't want to help them. People grudgingly show up. They are, you know, if you're lucky, they'll grudgingly show up. Some people have just abandoned it all together. You lost social connection to the world. I mean, we are not very sympathetic to older adults in our world. And if a narcissistic older adult who's now burned every bridge with the family, I mean, maybe they haven't. In some cases, I think very well-resourced

narcissistic folks are able to keep family on a financial leash. And so they might have people around, but nobody wants to be around. They're kind of counting down the clock on you, which is not a good feeling. But there's also, it's very hard for narcissistic people to grow old. You lose vitality. You lose attractiveness. You lose power. They lose all the things in the world that were keeping the cap on the volcano. All of that goes away. So there's an anger. I am no longer that person. I no longer walk down the street and everybody looks at me. I'm no longer the head of the company. It's tough for them. And what they're not able to do is pivot into meaningful activities like, oh, now I have the time to volunteer. And now I have the time to give back.

Now I have the time to slow down. They're not going out in the world. They may not be getting validation the same way. It's hard for them. And when things get hard for a narcissist, what do they do? They lash out at other people. So they lash out at anyone and everyone and they get lonelier and lonelier and lonelier. Yeah.

Like a scrooge. It's like a scrooge thing, but it's an angry, begrudging kind of scrooge. I mean, in some cases, I think that they realize nobody's listening anymore. Then they kind of just turn into themselves. But it's not what later life could be when you think of it could actually be a very beautiful, wise, collective, collaborative, loving time. But they feel almost betrayed by time. Narcissistic people. And that's why people are like, we can live to be 260 years old.

I'm like, no, I actually don't think we can. But I think it's almost narcissistic to think we can outwit life. Yeah. That's a whole other rabbit hole maybe for another time. Just quickly, I'm curious when you look at spiritual communities. I see this a lot in West L.A. kind of spiritual bubble communities where the identity of being spiritual, you essentially wear the spiritual clothes, you say the spiritual things. It's building on this identity structure and actually can really build into this neo-spiritual narcissistic way of expressing and is anything but spiritual, which is like actually being connected and having empathy and a lot of those things. So anything you want to say in terms of what you see there?

That's a lot of it. There's a lot of narcissism in those communities. And I say this is a South Asian woman. I take umbrage at how yoga has been sort of twisted about. It's very much part of Hindu spiritual practice in some ways. But I thought my mom was going to have a heart attack when she said, people are doing yoga to get a better butt. Because she's very devout. Yeah, mom.

The day really, I remember that day so well. And you think of another spiritual practice. And if anyone else was doing that with any other religion, people would think it was blasphemy. But I think that there is that issue of spiritual bypassing. Yeah. Right? That you don't have to do the work, that you positive your way out of it. Where we see more of the abuses in the spiritual community is when people come in with whatever

they're going through, the spiritual teacher says, do it this way. The person does it and says, you know, it's not happening for me. I'm not feeling better or I'm not whatever. It's almost like a critique of the system. And the spiritual teacher says it's because you're not doing it good enough. You're not trying it hard enough. That's a great example of some very common narcissistic invalidation we see in that space, that the spiritual teacher is so embedded in like, I have to be right, narcissistic,

that they would actually blame and shame and even gaslight someone who is continuing to struggle because it may be going through a very real mental health crisis. They may be going through a narcissistic relationship. any of that. So that's one thing that concerns me. I also think the other thing that concerns me is that everything can be answered here. So there's a grandiosity that we can solve all problems. And it'll be quick and we'll do this fast, but you just have to come and join us. And so I think that there's this and if you don't, that's because you don't want to get better. And I think again, that's more gaslighting, more shaming, more blaming. And there's cultic movements that can come up, which obviously do all that

indoctrination sort of piece. So I tell people, I said, if you ever feel shamed by any spiritual community, get the hell out of it right away because that's telling you that's either leading into the cultie or this person, this so-called teacher, guru, advisor, whatever the hell they are, they are harmful because that would be like a therapist saying, well, you're a terrible client go. And we sometimes let clients go because they're abusing the therapeutic frame. They're screaming, they're yelling, they're behaving dangerously, they don't show up, they don't pay. But, you know, if a person keeps using, we'll say, okay, the predication and being in this rehab center is that you don't use drugs. But this idea that a person's coming in and they're trying

to meditate away of major mental illness or something like that, it's not working on this thing because you're not doing it. Pay more, do more. That's a very risky kind of a space. And I think that the idea of there's also the potential for isolation and spiritual community, spend more time with us and spend more time doing it. Oh, you're, you're so conventional and dull the family and all that kind of middle America nonsense. That's you, you're never going to grow. You're stuck and sort of this kind of contemptuous dismissiveness of what a person's life may be. And that if you don't spend more time with us, which is very isolating dynamic, which is classically narcissistic as well. So those are some of the things I've seen come up in some of those

communities. And I also think that there's sometimes some talk about. relationships in a very ephemeral way soulmates and you know you if this is truly your soulmate or your faded love you it's going to be difficult and you're just going to have to keep pushing through because faded divine love and and people are sometimes even being coached to stay in traumatizing relationships and I have a problem with that you know and I've seen many people say I was told this was my soulmate so I had to keep fighting for it or that if you find this that relationships are difficult and so there was that piece too so I think It's when shaming comes into those spaces that I've seen the most harms.

Yeah, totally resonate with that. After everything we've talked about today, as we start to head towards closing here, is there anything that I haven't asked you that you feel like would add extra context to this whole discussion in terms of how someone can deal with the realization of being a dynamics with a narcissistic individual? Anything else that you feel like is important to add into this whole mix? I really want to reiterate that so much of what's written about narcissism is about narcissism. It tends not to be about the other person in the relationship.

And I really want to reiterate that healing is very possible. It's not easy. It is not easy. But it's very, very possible. And I think the other thing is that people will say, I was struck that upon healing from a narcissistic relationship, that it wasn't just that I distanced from the narcissistic relationship. But I lost some other people in my life too and that I was actually keeping people in my life who were also invalidating me as part of our relationship together. It became so normalized for me.

So then I started noticing that mistreatment was actually cutting across more than a few relationships. I was in a job where I was being undervalued or underpaid. I had a friend who was continually asking me to be her shrink. But when I'd call her, she wouldn't even take my calls or she had no interest in me. like those dynamics it's almost like a spotlight the radical acceptance spotlight comes in and you do the treacherous work of maybe dismantling distancing from disengaging from primary narcissistic relationships but then people really realize they had almost gotten embedded in this really invalidating structure that reinforced this idea that they're not enough and that there's something

wrong with them and that's again it's not you beautiful last question that comes to mind is have you felt into your own personal impact in doing this work i could just say imagine the ripple effect that comes from discussions and all the work that you're doing, even just a simple act of creating YouTube videos that reach people that maybe you'll have never met in your life, that go on to make this realization, get out of narcissistic relationship, then stop that trauma going on from their lineage and their kids and bloodline. Like, yeah, have you reflected personally about the ripple effects of your own work and acknowledge that?

I don't because, I mean, I need a little bit more narcissism myself, so I'd feel like, oh, look at how, I'm judging the world. But I think I know. I don't think I know. The meaning and purpose piece of my process through therapy and everything is probably the most important work I've ever done because I think it's something I never afforded myself. I don't want to say the luxury of because I don't think it's a luxury. I think we all should be living in that, no matter who we are.

I think that I wake up, it's probably too much work right now, but I do wake up feeling a sense of tremendous meaning and purpose. Because, and it really required me being able to question all of how the world of mental health was structured. So I had, in the same way, it's almost like how I had to rebel against family and cultural strictures. I had to rebel against how an entire field was organized. I didn't like how these clients were being, they were often saying, blame. It's like, well, there's two sides in a relationship.

And what are you bringing? I'm like, no, teach them what's being done to them first. And then when they have that roadmap, I'd say half of people almost. I'm out of here. Like, I'm not doing this anymore. The other half of people sometimes have much more complicated histories. So I guess I don't think of it that way. I also don't read the comments because I'm very, very, here's where I'd have to say I'm very tender-hearted. I don't do well with reading terrible things that are written about me. So as a result, I also don't read the good comments. And my team's like, I wish you could see all the good you're doing. I'm like, but then I have to read the bad ones and I'll throw up and I don't want to throw up. I'm not going to read the comments. And so they will summarize them for me. And they all summarize them for me. the questions and all of that. So I know it's making a difference. And in fact, what I really love about what I've had the opportunity to do is create a training course for therapists. It's a 36-hour course so people can get trained to do this work with clients. That's been such a privilege because then I know I've left behind something that people will be able to, that will have

therapists that can be responsive to these clients who have often traditionally been hurt in sometimes in therapy. So I'm really grateful for that. But I guess I haven't, I think I find the work meaningful. I often think of it dharmically. And dharmically, I mean that it's the process of the doing, regardless of the outcome, that if you can bring your sort of divine self to

whatever it is, even if it's washing a dish, then you've fulfilled your dharmic duty. So I think I view the work as Dharma. And so I think that helps organize it for me sort of spiritually. And then I get up and do my dharma and that's what I'm supposed to do and then I go to bed and it's okay. That's beautiful. I love the Taoist, Max.

some that says the master does nothing yet leaves nothing undone. And it's that way of living in your Dharma where it's just the natural effortless fragrance of your being of the work that you're doing and you feel so called and it builds that cycle of reciprocity. But I mean, yeah, I just wanted to reflect that. I personally have seen and I know how massive that ripple effect is in the world. And like I spoke to earlier, I've very intimately been in the dynamic and understanding of this. and I know how painful it can be for individuals and how much grief there is, but also the light at the end of the tunnel when you come to that healing. And that challenge can in many ways be like the crack in the heart where the light comes in.

And then you realize your gifts. And you're uniquely able to support people because of that challenging experience in your life. And yeah, any last words there about how these challenges really can activate many things in us that become a service to the world? Oh, I mean, again, it's roomy, right? the wound is where the light enters you, right? Exactly what you were saying is that I have to say that we're given such a cookie cutter instructions for how to live our lives. When we think about what humanistic thought has always been, is that there's really

no such thing as mental illness. There are conditions of worth. And we're told that only by doing what other people expect of us can we get sort of our interpersonal needs met, but that's what holds us back. And that if we could lift those conditions and allow people to actualize and be their whole selves, we would not be living in the messy world we're living in right now. I can tell you that right now. So I do have to say that when people go through this, and I truly believe I'm an existentialist and humanistic person at heart, that we can do meaning-making through suffering. And we all human

beings have that capacity. And it is that freedom to choose. How can I view this? Some people will say this 30 years in this narcissistic relationship was a hellscape, and I have children I love. And the children would only come from that relationship. And so I have to, you know, I have to view it that way. I view the narcissistic relationships I've been through and they've changed me and they've shaped me. But they've also, I couldn't have done this work otherwise. And it's helped other people. So we think about how I think many people are able to contextualize this.

But I think many of folks who've been through these relationships think of themselves as damaged because they didn't have a path forward that felt the parents who were happy to, married or parents who really were loved them or they were kept safe from trauma. And yet, I was just speaking with somebody who went through severe, severe, not only narcissistic abuse, but other forms of child abuse when this person was a child. I mean, things unspeakable. And the kindness and the joy and the gentleness of this woman now is, we were just commenting on it. You know, I thought like, how did you do this? And she said, I don't know. She said, she's like, I don't know because, and when you say I'm these good things, that's hard.

She says, that is hard for me to hold on to. But she is so gentle. She's so kind. And by all reports, she should be so angry at what was taken away from her. And she doesn't always feel perfectly safe with people. I understand that. But she meets it up with kind and terrible, terrible, difficult things that happened to her. So I've seen this happen time and time and time again in survivors where I think for many of them,

they just wanted to hear you're not damaged. A wound is not damaged. It's like it's the the wrinkle on our face might just simply belie all the laughter that went on that part of our face and that it makes us interesting. And so I think that that's the helping people recognize that that that was actually where their dimensionality was made was what the things that had been through and were willing to acknowledge. And as you said, more than anything, whether or not you have children, that doesn't matter, you do start ending intergenerational cycles. And when you think that some of these intergenerational cycles might have been going on for dozens and dozens and dozens of generations for hundreds and hundreds of years, to be the bearer of the person who ends that cycle,

that's a lot of power. And I think a lot of survivors forget that. So beautiful. Just the amount of beauty and grace that you unlock by being the person who decides to end that cycle and it's just such an incredible note to end on. So thank you so much. Thank you so much. Yeah. It's not you is available everywhere. We're going to link it down in the description below. Is there anything else you want to share in closing where people can find you or what you're going on? Please order the book as soon as possible. Yeah, we really just touched the tip of the iceberg and yeah, there's a lot in there. I just know how important this work is. Yeah, we did. And other books as well. Yeah. So we just touched the tip of the iceberg. So there's that.

We also for people who want to do a deeper dive into healing from narcissistic relationships, We have a monthly healing program. We can do it for a month and drop out. If it doesn't work for this, no obligation. You can check that out at my website, Dr. Romney.com. We're on all socials at Dr. Romney. And on our YouTube channel, we put out content every day. So I haven't said it yet.

I'm going to say it. And we have it organized by topic. So we have a library of over a thousand videos in there. So you're going to find it in there. And so there's lots of places to find it. I have other books. All of that stuff, though, is on my website. busy woman. Yes, right. Getting up with that meaning and purpose, though, sometimes I need a

meaningful nap. Yes. Thank you. Totally. Beautiful. Well, everybody, thank you so much for coming on this journey. They know they self-podcast. Please let us know in which ways this impacted you. And I'd be curious to hear to whatever degree you're willing to share your own journey and personal path with the things that we've been discussing today. And I'll get you on the next one. Until next time, it'll be well.