Mick Unplugged - Dr. Anthony Mazzella | Unpacking Narcissism: Self-Reflection and Communication

Episode Date: September 16, 2024

Welcome back to Mick Unplugged! In today's episode, we dive into an eye-opening discussion with Dr. Anthony Mazzella, a trailblazer in integrated medicine and holistic care. Together with your host Mick Hunt, Dr. Mazzella challenges conventional wisdom on boundaries in relationships, offering insights into the value of getting closer to someone's subjective experience for true understanding and conflict resolution. We delve deep into psychodynamic and psychoanalytic therapies, exploring how they address root causes rather than just symptoms. Dr. Mazzella sheds light on complex topics like narcissism and borderline personality disorder, emphasizing the importance of self-reflection and effective communication. We'll also touch on the fascinating intersections of depression, anxiety, and personality disorders, and how nuanced approaches can lead to better mental health outcomes. And for those battling sleepless nights, both Mick and Dr. Mazzella share their unique strategies for turning insomnia into productivity. So, get ready for a transformative and enlightening conversation that promises to shift your perspective on mental wellness and relationships. Let's get unplugged!   Takeaways ·      Self-reflection and understanding are crucial in relationships with narcissists. ·      Closer communication and validation can help manage conflicts with narcissistic individuals. ·      Narcissism and borderline personality disorder have overlapping characteristics but differ in terms of self-image and emotional regulation. ·      Depression and anxiety can be symptoms of underlying personality disorders and may require a different approach to treatment.   Sound Bites "You're one of the very few people that are qualified." "Get as close as possible to what just happened." "Appreciating somebody's subjective experience."   Here are 3 Key Takeaways: Beyond Boundaries: Dr. Mazzella challenges the conventional approach of "creating boundaries" in relationships by suggesting that we sometimes need to get closer to understand each other’s subjective experiences. This isn’t about tolerating abuse but fostering deeper connections and empathy. Understanding Over Labels: Labeling someone as a "narcissist" can escalate conflicts and hinder understanding. Dr. Mazzella emphasizes the need for psychoanalytic approaches that work on underlying issues rather than just addressing the symptoms. Handling Dysregulated Emotional States: When someone is in an emotionally charged state, the first step is to validate their feelings. Acknowledgment and validation help move them from a place of distress to one where they can reflect and manage their emotions better. 💡 Bonus Insight: Both Dr. Mazzella and Mick Hunt shared their unique approach to sleepless nights—using the time for productive reflection rather than struggling to sleep. Trusting your body to find its balance can be more beneficial than stressing over insomnia.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

There's this big word that everybody uses or this word that they use so frequently, which is create boundaries, right? It's all about creating boundaries and distance from this type of person. Unless you're in a really abusive or harmful relationship, I typically ask people to consider the opposite. In other words, get closer to somebody's experience. Absolutely true. When you separate yourself from the issue, you make the issue worse. There's no solving it if it immediately is leave or run or put up boundaries. What drew you to the fields of psychoanalysts and psychotherapy?

They're all different types of psychotherapy. That's talk therapy. And one particular type is known as psychodynamic therapy and psychoanalytic therapy. And the main difference is of the psychodynamic, of the different types of therapy, many of them focus on, you know, the manifest level, you know, like in other words, what's the symptom? And let's try to make that symptom go away. Welcome to McUnplugged, where we ignite potential and fuel purpose. Get ready for raw insights, bold moves, and game-changing conversations. Buckle up. Here's Mick. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to another exciting episode of Mick Unplugged, where we go deeper than your why and talk about your because, that thing that fuels you to excellence and success. And today on the podcast, we are diving deep into the world of transformative health and wellness.

We have a distinguished guest who's the leading figure in the field of psychoanalysts and psychotherapy. He's a pioneer in integrated medicine, renowned for his innovative approach to holistic care. He's dedicated his career to helping individuals achieve optimal wellness through personalized treatments and assessments. Please welcome me in joining the amazing New York's finest, Dr. Anthony Mazzella. Dr. Anthony, how are you doing today, sir? Great. Thank you so finest, Dr. Anthony Mazzella. Dr. Anthony, how are you doing today, sir? Great. Thank you so much, Mick.

That was a wonderful introduction. I appreciate that. I'm really excited to be here with you today. Thank you. I am excited to have you on because I feel like for the first time, we're going to unplug a lot of things that maybe people don't talk about, but need to be talking about in the world today. And you're one of the very few people that are qualified. We were talking offline and I was telling you,

or actually you asked me, my thoughts on narcissism. And I was like, wait, Dr. Anthony, what are you saying? What are you saying? That's not me, I promise. But no, one of the things that attracted me to you was the fact that you talk about it. And I think that that's, I don't want to say it's taboo in the world today. I just don't think it's getting talked about enough. And more importantly, people aren't self-reflecting enough. So the floor is yours. Narcissism, what do we need to know? What are some things we should be looking for in ourselves and others? Look, Mick, I think you said it already. One of the critical pieces to understanding this really complicated, it's a personality disorder, is you mentioned the word self-reflection.

And it's so unfortunate because the majority of the content that's out there is really being pushed by people who have been scorned, let's say, or hurt by a narcissist. And there's no doubt that narcissistic behaviors can be quite hurtful. But what happens is when the majority of the content is on sort of pointing the finger and look at how evil this person is and look what they've done to me, you know, it doesn't really allow for what you just mentioned in, you know, a moment ago for that sort of self-reflection to get a deeper understanding of what really did happen if someone, if you're in a relationship with a narcissist and it's not going well,

what's actually going wrong? And not everybody I'm discovering wants to just point the finger and blame the narcissist and then leave him or her, right? Because again, the majority of the content says, if you recognize that you're in a relationship with a narcissist, get away, you know, like head for the door or, you know, like get out of there as fast as you can. But it's more, it's much more complicated than that because some people are deeply involved. They have, you know, children, they feel that there are genuine moments with this other person. So just telling someone to head out is, you know, children. They feel that there are genuine moments with this other person. So just telling someone to head out is, you know, feels good because it keeps things really simple,

you know, and you don't have to look at the nuances of all of what's happening in the relationship that may be leading up to these problems. That's amazing. And I want to go deeper there because I know that we have listeners right now that are either in that type of situation or honestly, maybe they're not doing self-reflection enough and they are that person. What are some tips that people can use that you would advise today of don't just walk away? Like how can they better situations or what are some signs they should be looking for? Yeah, so this may be a little surprising because again, if your listeners are familiar

with the online content, there's this big word that everybody uses or this word that they use so frequently, which is create boundaries, right? It's all about creating boundaries and distance from this type of person. Unless you're in a really abusive or harmful relationship, I typically ask people to consider the opposite. In other words, get closer to somebody's experience.

You know, when I first started in this field, this was many, many years ago, I was doing a research study. I worked in a dialysis unit. That's for people who have kidney failure. And they have to go on this machine three times a week for three to four hours per treatment. So noncompliance, that's what they called it back then, was a big problem. People would skip or shorten their dialysis treatments. And the sort of medical community saw it as noncompliance, like you're not behaving. Like you need to do this. And when I set up this study, the medical director asked me, what do you want to do? And I'm like, I just want to talk to these patients and get closer to their experience of what it's like living a life, having to come

three times a week for four hours with a serious medical illness. And I want to hear how much they don't like being here, you know, and how they'd rather be somewhere. And I want to hear how much they don't like being here, you know, and how they'd rather be somewhere. And he's like, he didn't want to hear that, right? And most people don't, you see. Luckily, we were able to negotiate something. But the overall focus at the time was to get closer to somebody's subjective experience. So one of the tips, if we could call it a tip, what I would recommend, if you or somebody you know, or your listeners are in a relationship, and they don't want to just head for the door, the goal is to get as close as possible to what just happened. I'll

give you an example just to sort of root it into something. And then maybe you and I can play around with it a little bit if you like, okay? So patient comes in and says, my husband yelled at me, right? And slowly we begin to unpack, well, how did you respond when he yelled at you? Why do you think he may have yelled at you? What was going on before he yelled at you? Let's go back. Can we review this more closely? What sort of mood were you in? And then slowly we begin to

see that he yells, he gets upset about something. She takes it personally. She thinks it's about her. It may or may not be. She doesn't even know. And then she fires back. And she says this. And people who do have a little bit of awareness, like you mentioned earlier, and if they don't, through the therapeutic process, we help them with that, begin to see, how do I respond when my husband or my significant other or my mother speaks to me in this way? And oftentimes what you see is a counterpunch. So it feels like a punch and there's a counterpunch and then there's no dialogue. And then this just sort of deteriorates over time where you have two people who really can't talk to each other and get a sense of their subjective experience. You know, what was going on?

Were you upset with me when you yelled? Was there something that I did? Is there any way you think we could have spoke about this? I could keep going, but I think you get the sense. It's like appreciating somebody's subjective experience, sort of breaking through the defensive anger, right? Because that's what typically happens is it's much safer to be angry and yell at somebody, you know, than it is to relate to them. Does that resonate at all? Or am I? Totally. Yeah, totally. I mean, it's making a lot of sense. And I think, again, for the listeners, what's really important and what I think Dr. Anthony is saying, or not what I think he's saying, what he is saying is absolutely true. When you separate yourself from the issue,

you make the issue worse. There's no solving it if it immediately is leave or run or put up boundaries. The world works better together when we solve problems. And sometimes you have to communicate because the person on the other end, especially if it's a disorder, they just might not know. Yeah. Right. Like they may not know. And so what we see as, oh, well, that person's a narcissist. Well, maybe they don't know. Maybe they don't get it. Maybe to them, it's everyday human nature and they need that dialogue. They need to be able to say, oh, well, wow, maybe I am hurting someone or maybe I can change my actions or maybe I do need to go get help. But they're not going to do that if you don't get closer to them. So yeah. Yeah. Let me just play off of that a little bit because you said, okay, so maybe that person is a narcissist. And I hear this quite frequently.

I get these calls for a consultation and they say, my husband is a narcissist. He's gaslighting me. And then when I talk to them, they actually call their husband a narcissist. And they say, you know, you're pathological or you're so manipulative. And I begin to help them reflect on what sort of impact do you think it has when you label somebody as a narcissist? Because quite honestly, the term is not very flattering. You know, it's like, that's not a compliment, right? And typically you label somebody, whatever label you choose to use, I can almost guarantee it's just going to escalate things because you're never trying to understand somebody once you put a label on them. And once you're labeling somebody, you're already in a dysregulated state yourself now, you see, because you're no longer reflecting and trying to communicate and

connect. Now you're just accusing. And then one can even argue, they may be dysregulated, but now you're dysregulated too. Yeah. That's awesome. So I have to ask Dr. Anthony, what drew you the fields of psychoanalysts and psychotherapy? And I think for the listeners that are probably some like me that we think and communicate on an eighth grade level, I might not know what psychoanalyst means. So you might have to break that down. Oh, okay. Thanks. Yeah. So again, many years ago, when I was in graduate school, I pursued what was called psychotherapy training. There are all different types of psychotherapy. That's talk therapy. And one particular type is known as psychodynamic therapy and psychoanalytic therapy. And the main difference is known as psychodynamic therapy and psychoanalytic therapy. And the main difference is of the psychodynamic, of the different types of therapy, many of

them focus on, you know, the manifest level, you know, like in other words, what's the symptom? And let's try to make that symptom go away. Like the example I gave with the dialysis patients. If we look at the skipping treatment as the symptom, that's the problem, right? We need to get rid of the problem. From more of a psychodynamic or psychoanalytic perspective, what we would say is that is not the problem. That's the outcome of the problem. And if you really want that problem to go away long-term, we need to understand what's driving that behavior. And there's lots of research out there

that demonstrates that when you just work at the surface level, you know, like you probably heard of cognitive behavioral therapy or something like that. It works, by the way, you know, these different types of treatment work. But what you don't see, which is very different when you do more of the psychodynamic work to get to the underlying issues, you know, like what's just below the surface. And I'll explain that to what I mean just below the surface. But when treatment ends and they use all these scales to measure like how people are doing with people who get like the treatments that focus on symptoms, they tend to return to baseline.

Whereas people who get more of a psychodynamic treatment maybe meet more frequently with the therapist. You know, I meet personally, I meet with patients, hold on to your seat, okay? I meet with patients anywhere from one to four times a week, they come in to see me. Now you may say four times a week, like that's crazy. These must be pretty disturbed people. It's just the opposite. These are people typically who are really motivated to understand themselves and to change because personality disorder is cut across all different areas of life. It's not like you just have problems with your spouse or with your mother. You have problems in intimate relationships. You have problems with your family of origin, and you have problems at work. So when that kind of thing

happens, it takes a little bit more time to get to some of this stuff. So I'll just give you just another quick, I love examples, by the way, it really roots it. So that, when I say like, let's look just a little bit below the surface, the dynamic approach with the narcissist, some of the main characteristics, one of the main characteristics is they have this really dismissive attitude, right? Like nothing really bothers them because they have a sense of grandiosity. And I'm sure you've heard about this. Like that's sort of your stereotypical narcissist, like the grandiose, omnipotent, show-off, the woman who wants to glitter and shine, the center of attention, right?

But what people say is that these are not individuals who could really get involved. They can't get attached in a relationship. And what I demonstrate in many of my episodes on my podcast is very slowly I begin to show how these people really do get involved. But because of this dismissive, what we call in my field an affect block, like they can experience these more genuine emotions, so they block them. So what people typically see just on the surface is a more dismissive person who's not very in touch with their feelings as if they don't have feelings. But when you go right below the surface, you know,

what you begin to see is that these people do actually get very involved, but they're terrified of feeling dependent on anybody. Dependency is like the number one enemy to the narcissist. So the manifest level is, this is a person who doesn't care. They're just self-absorbed. They have no empathy. That's not the full picture. It's that they do get involved.

Of course, they have feelings. They have no empathy. That's not the full picture. It's that they do get involved. Of course, they have feelings. They're not robots. But you see the manifest presentation. So, through the psychodynamic therapy or the psychoanalytic work, what I begin to do is help them get in touch with parts of themselves that they're not even always aware of because they're so guarded against them because they don't want to feel vulnerable in that way. Right. That's amazing. You know, I love that we're talking about disorders because that's what they are, right? Disorders that aren't really talked about in the fashion that they should publicly. What's another disorder that is somewhat common that we're not talking about publicly like we should be? Well, something that's very close to narcissism. And when I get questions from my listeners,

this is often very confused. There's another one. I don't know if you've even heard of this. It's called borderline personality disorder. I don't know if that sounds familiar. Yeah. Yeah. So with borderline personality disorder, very similar to narcissism, there's what we call, again, I'm just using a little bit of jargon not to go too deep into it, but what we call a fragmented sense of self, which is just basically a split sense of self. Again, I love examples, so I'll just give you an example of this. Mick, imagine you're going out on a date, okay? And you're really looking forward to the date, you're excited, and then your date arrives late, or your

date arrives and you see her looking or him looking at another woman, he glances at somebody else, and then immediately you're in a rage. What are you looking at? Or like, why are you late? Or am I not interesting enough to you? Why don't you just go and be with them? Right? Et cetera, et cetera. That's what we call the fragmented or the split self, right? That you could go from feeling one way and it oscillates. It could oscillate very quickly. And that's something that we typically see with narcissists, by the way, when that idealized image that I mentioned earlier breaks down, when they feel deflated, you know, we could flip. But also we see this with what we call borderline personality disorder because they too have this fragmented sense of self. One of the main distinguishing characteristics is with the borderline personality disorder. And a lot of

people say, oh, my husband or my wife is narcissist. And when I get to know these people, sometimes they're more borderline than narcissist. So there is some confusion there. But one of the main distinguishing factors is with the person who's more borderline, you'll see these oscillations quite rapidly and frequently. So you could see someone literally laughing and having fun and then crying in the next moment. And then they go back to laughing and having fun. I don't know if you've ever been with somebody like this, but it's quite an experience. It's quite confusing as well. Right. Yeah. Right. That's wild. So, you know, I love the examples there. And so just like with the tips that we did for narcissism, what are some tips that you have for people that are experiencing that from a significant other or partner or even a friend?

And then also tips, because I know that there's someone listening that's like, oh, wait, maybe that's me too. Right? Like what are some tips that you have or some advice, not tips? What's some advice that you have out there? I'll tell you, like, just to stay with the example, just to keep this consistent. So let's say, well, you help me a little bit. Okay, Mick, which one are we going to go with? Like, because we set up the situation with the date night, right? Do we go with the person who- I was going to say the date and someone showed up late. Okay. So that's the patient then, the one who showed up late or the one who went and flipped and got very angry? The one who flipped and got angry. Okay, good, good,

good. Okay. So with that, the tip would be, well, I'll just demonstrate like how I might work with somebody like that because they come in and they're furious, they're blaming. So what I would say at that moment to myself, I don't use technical language with anybody really. I just use a little bit with here, you know, just to describe something, but they're in a dysregulated state of mind, right? So the first order of business, whenever somebody's dysregulated, blaming somebody, yelling, cursing, labeling, like we mentioned a little bit earlier, the first priority is always you have to help them get into a more regulated state of mind. And you can't do any work with somebody who's dysregulated because no matter what you say, they're not going to hear it. They first need to feel like you can hear them before they can hear you.

So slowly you help someone get more regulated by, I'm just trying to be consistent, appreciating their subjective experience. So I want to get close to how they experienced this. What was it like when they saw their partner? Or what did they imagine when their partner or their date was looking at somebody else? What was going through your mind? Tell me the details of that. And usually when you start doing that, Mick, they begin to feel like you're trying to understand them because you're not telling them what everybody else does, which is one, oh, you

know, you need to be a little tougher and just brush that off or you need to get over it. You know, you're not telling them. You're trying to really understand what was that like from your experience? I really want to hear about it. And then you can understand this is part of validating. So there's a tip as well. So first you get them into a more regulated state and then you could validate the experience because as you could imagine, that is quite disappointing, right? It's typically not enough to like lead to someone crumbling like the way that they do, but you could understand and appreciate that is quite disappointing.

You were really looking forward to date night. So expectations were high and then this happened. So there's a big discrepancy between what you expected and what really happened. And then you talk to them about that. And then finally we begin to think about how does one manage something like that when they're disappointed? Because this is a disappointing situation. But by then, what's typically happening is they begin to settle down because they feel understood and validated. And now we could get into a little bit more of the work in terms of that. Remember the word you used earlier, like into a more reflective state of mind. Yeah. That was perfect. I mean, we could literally do this all day. Like what are some other, and we don't have to go deep into them like we did the first two, but what are some other things that you're helping individuals, couples, and families

with in your practice? Other things besides like the relational piece, you mean? Or did you have something in particular in mind, Mick? Just in general about your practice and what are the things that you're helping with? Okay. So just to stay, again, I'm just trying to stay a little consistent since we have narcissism on our mind. One of the other big things is, and this is very common, is patients come to me feeling depressed or feeling very anxious. Like anxiety is a big problem in society today, as is the depression. So I'm also working a lot with depression and anxiety.

But here's a little sort of twist to it. And maybe this can help your listeners begin to think about this a little differently. Sometimes people come to me after having been in treatment for many years or have tried different types of medication and they're still feeling depressed, right? So what I begin to help them think about is, is this really depression? And it's the same thing with anxiety. Is this really anxiety? Because there's a lot of overlap, believe it or not. And I don't see everything just so you know, through the lens of narcissism, but when something is on remittance, and it's been around, and it affects many different areas

of life, you have to begin to think about a personality disorder. And even though this person took medication and got treatment, not every therapist is trained to work specifically with personality disorders, because they're really complicated. So oftentimes, people could treat the depression, they could treat it like it's a mood disorder when it's really a personality disorder. And we can slowly sort through and begin to understand how this may be what we call again in my field, narcissistic deflation, which is different than depression. So feeling deflated, like, you know, you've heard the word ego before, but like your ego takes a hit. These are like the slights of everyday life. So what we do is the same thing just by following examples. Like if

a patient comes in and says, I'm depressed again. And I say, what happened? When did you start feeling depressed? I remember last session when we were talking, you were relatively okay. Well, I just woke up feeling depressed. I don't typically buy that. You know, it's possible one just woke up feeling depressed. But what I like buy that. It's possible one just woke up feeling depressed, but what I like to do is hold open the possibility that something happened. And when we slowly get closer to their experience, more often than not, what we discover is the day before maybe, or a couple of days before, it's very similar to what I mentioned earlier. There was some kind of slight. Maybe, I don't know, some fellow I was talking to, his boyfriend went away and he thought that the boyfriend would be keeping in touch with him. And now he just disappeared and he felt a loss, but he couldn't name the loss and he couldn't name the disappointment. He thought he just woke up feeling depressed. So that's kind of like the stuff that we deal with. We start at the very

surface, appreciate that, and then slowly by getting closer and closer to someone's experience and following it backwards, we just try to understand what led to some particular mood or some symptom or whatever it might be that they're coming in with. the anxiety, for instance. That's amazing. You know, you have a role as a practitioner, you're an educator, you're a content creator with an amazing podcast, you're a keynote speaker, right? How do you personally balance all of this for your mental health? That's a good question. So I think, well, first of all, I don't sleep at night, you know, if that helps, because when I'm up, oh, this is actually interesting. So sometimes patients have a hard time sleeping and they wake up in the middle of the night. And I'm like, so what happens

if you wake up in the middle of the night? And they're like, it's really hard to get back to sleep. Now, what I do when I wake up in the middle of the night is I get to work, right? And I trust my body. And maybe that's partly answers the question is I trust homeostasis. Like we're going to get back to homeostasis if you trust the process. So if I'm up at three o'clock in the morning, because like you said, I'm teaching a class or I have an interview, I have a big interview that day, you know, on a mic unplugged, and I'm quite anxious about it, right? And I can't sleep at night. I'll get up and do some work. And then my body, you know, entrusting the process, I will catch up on my sleep. So I'm not going to stress it too much and let it overwhelm me. So that's the way I try to manage it. Yeah.

We have that in common. Like I sleep very lightly. and I don't sleep a lot of hours when I sleep. And so just like you, if I wake up with a thought or an idea and it woke me up, right, I don't try to go back to sleep. I get that out, like whatever that was that was on my brain or if it was an idea and I need to journal it, I will do that because then even if I try to go back to sleep, the quality of sleep won't be there. And I'll keep wrestling with, oh, well, I could go here. I could do this. So I just get up and just go do whatever that thing is. And then I feel much better. Yeah. So that's one of my tips. If you wake up and you're restless, there's a reason. Go do whatever that thing is that got you up. Yeah, I mean, what's the worst case scenario?

You're going to be a little tired the next day, but you'll get through it, right? Because some people will actually tell me that they get angry. Like they're trying to fall back to sleep and they're so angry that they're not falling back to sleep. To go back to the dysregulated state that you and I were talking about earlier. Now they're becoming aroused, dysregulated, and you and I were talking about earlier. Now they're becoming aroused, dysregulated, and then there's no way. So not only are they being punished now because they're angry and they're probably beating themselves up, it's like you and I, just do something and feel productive and get it out of you and trust the process, right? That's it. That is totally it.

So Dr. Anthony, where can people follow you, find you? We can definitely promote your podcast here because it's one of the best of the best. Oh, thanks. For having that. I'm all about self-improvement and you do a ton of that. So where do you want people to follow you first and foremost? I guess the safest place because everything goes through my website at this point. So the podcast, my video channel. So it's just drmazzella.com, like Dr. D-R and then my last name, M-A-Z-Z-E-L-L-A.com. Anything you ever want to know about me, you can find it there. Look, I promise you on his website, there's a lot of big words. He's world renowned. He's got so many titles, but more importantly, he's a great

human being. And that's what I appreciate the most about you, Dr. Anthony. You're very relevant, you're relatable, and your content is needed. And so definitely much appreciated for me and for my listeners and followers as well. Well, great. Well, thank you so much. And thank you. A big thank you to you for doing this, because just like what I'm trying to do, you're doing the same thing. Right. Trying to make an influence in some way on a larger scale. And I'm going to do whatever I can as well to help you grow your, you know, your podcast and your social media. And you're doing a good job without me. So I'm just following your footsteps. I'm just following your footsteps. I promise. So thank you

for being on. It means the world to me. And I think we should do this again because there's so much that we could go deeper on, especially with narcissism that I think we should. So if you're open to it, we'll have part two. Yeah. Listen, that'd be wonderful. I'll get into the punitive superego next time. That's like the critical voice in one's head, but we'll save that for part two. Let's do it. Dr. Anthony, I appreciate you. And to all the listeners, remember your because is your superpower.

Go unleash it. Thank you for tuning in to Make Unplugged. Keep pushing your limits, embracing your purpose, and chasing greatness until next time. Stay unstoppable.