Nobody Should Believe Me - Introducing A Little Bit Culty

Episode Date: November 12, 2024

LIFE AFTER NARCS: DR. RAMANI DURVASULA ON NAVIGATING NARCISSISM Are malignant narcissists born or made? How do you recover after narcissistic abuse? In this episode, licensed clinical psychologist Dr. Ramani Durvasula tackles our burning narc-y questions. She’s the author of two books on the subject: “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.” Her work has been featured at SXSW, TEDx, the Red Table Talk, the Today Show, and Investigation Discovery. You can also find her on her wildly popular YouTube channel where she dispenses wisdom on protecting yourself from hoovering, gaslighting and other narc trademarks. *** Join A Little Bit Culty on Patreon Get poppin’ fresh ALBC Swag Support the pod and smash this link Cult awareness and recovery resources Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

True Story Media. of the infamous NXIVM cult. This was featured in the HBO series, The Vow, among other places. So Sarah and Nippy were two of the whistleblowers that brought down this cult. And now each week on their show, they discuss cults and culty things. These two are so thoughtful and empathetic and they talk to a variety of survivors and experts to help us understand things like coercive control,

narcissism, and various forms of abuse. I really appreciate Sarah and Nippy and I think you'll love this show. So enjoy today's episode and hit the link in our show notes to subscribe to A Little Bit Culty to hear much, much more. Well, friends, it's 2025. It's here. This year is going to be, well, one thing it won't be is boring. And that's about the only prediction I'm going to make right now. But one piece of news that I am excited to share is that the wait for my new book, The Mother Next Door, is almost over. It is coming at you on February 4th from St. Martin's Press. So soon! I co-authored this book with friend and beloved contributor of this show, Detective Mike

Weber, about three of the most impactful cases of his career. Even if you are one of the OG-est of OG listeners to this show, I promise you are going to learn so many new and shocking details about the three cases we cover. We just go into so much more depth on these stories, and you're also going to learn a ton about Mike's story. Now, I know y'all love Detective Mike because he gets his very own fan mail here at Nobody Should Believe Me. And if you've ever wondered, how did Mike become the detective when it came to Munchausen by proxy cases, you are going to learn all about his origin story in this book.

And I know we've got many audiobook listeners out there, so I'm very excited to share with you the audiobook is read by me, Andrea Dunlop, your humble narrator of this very show. I really loved getting to read this book, and I'm so excited to share this with you. If you are able to pre-order the book, doing so will really help us out. It will signal to our publisher that there is excitement about the book, and it will also give us a shot at that all-important bestseller list. And of course, if that's simply not in the budget right now, we get it. Books are not cheap. Library sales are also extremely important for books, so putting in a request at your local library is another way that you can help. So you can pre-order the book right now in all formats at the link in our show notes,

and if you are in Seattle or Fort Worth, Mike and I are doing live events the week of launch, which you can also find more information about at the link in our show notes. These events will be free to attend, but please do RSVP so that we can plan accordingly. See you out there. Calling all sellers.

Salesforce is hiring account executives to join us on the cutting edge of technology. Here, innovation isn't a buzzword. It's a way of life. You'll be solving customer challenges faster with agents, winning with purpose, and showing the world what AI was meant to be. Let's create the agent-first future together. Head to salesforce.com slash careers to learn more. content provided by our guests, bloggers, sponsors, or authors of the opinion and are not intended to malign a religion, a group, a club, an organization, business individual, anyone or anything, unless

Sarah? You're a douchebag. Yeah, I mean, pretty much. Also, we're not doctors, psychologists, or wizards. We're just two non-experts trying to make you a friendly, informative podcast based on our experience that we've turned into wisdom. Okay. Good talk. Okay. Hey, everybody. Sarah Edmondson here. And I'm Anthony Ames, a.k.a. Nippy, Sarah's husband.

And you're listening to A Little Bit Culty, a.k.a aka albc a podcast about what happens when devotion goes to the dark side we've been there and back again a little about us true story we met and fell in love in a cult and then we woke up and got the hell out of dodge and the whole thing was captured in the hbo docuseries the vow now in its second season i also wrote about our experience in my memoir, Scarred, the true story of how I escaped NXIVM, the cult that bound my life. Look at us, a couple of married podcasters who just happened to have a weekly date night where we interview experts and advocates in things like cult awareness and mind control. Wait, wait, wait, wait.

This does not count toward date night, babe. We got to schedule that. That's separate. So there's two days we got to hang out? We do this podcast thing because we learned a lot on our exit ramp out of NXIVM. Still on that journey. And we want to pay the lessons forward with the help of other cult survivors and whistleblowers. We know all too well that culty things happen.

It happens to people every day across every walk of life. So join us each week to tackle these culty dynamics everywhere from online dating to megachurches and multi-level marketing. This stuff really is everywhere. The cultiverse just keeps on expanding and so are we. Welcome to season five of A Little Bit Culty, serving cult content and word salads weekly on your favorite podcast platforms. Learn more at alittlebit culty dot com. Welcome back, everybody. Sarah, this episode might be my favorite. Why is that, Nippy?

Glad you asked. We get questions and comments pretty much all the time about narcissism, right? And across the questions and comments, there are some common cores, wouldn't you say? Yeah. You want to know, are malignant narcissists born or made? When does healthy or typical self-interest cross over to hardcore narc territory? And once you've been burned or maybe repeatedly roasted by a narcissist, how do you go about healing? Good questions, which we get into. We wanted some expert help tackling these big ticket questions. So we reached out to our guest today, Dr. Ramani Dervasala. Dr. Ramani is a licensed clinical psychologist and the critically acclaimed 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. I think her next book's going to be How Dare You? The focus of her clinical, academic, and consultative work is the causes of narcissism and high-conflict, entitled, antagonistic personality styles, and the effect narcissism has on the human relationships, mental health, and societal expectations. Her work has been featured at South by Southwest, TEDx, The Red Table Talk, The Today Show, and Investigation Discovery. You can also find her on her wildly popular YouTube channel where she has accumulated millions of views on social media. Just go to at Dr. Romney on the socials. And now she's a

podcaster. Her pod, Navigating Narcissism, explores how narcissists are everywhere. And these days, it seems like everyone has at least one in their lives. Dr. Romney will help you spot the red flags and heal from the narcissist in your life. Every week, you will hear firsthand accounts from people who know this territory the best, the survivors. And breaking news, we're going to be on her show. Huevos. Keep an eye out for that because we do know that territory very well. Thank you, Vanguard. And we chatted with her about all these things and it was a lot.

And we hope you get some good nuggets out of it. And if you want to hear us do a deep dive unpacking about Dr. Romney, please be sure to head over to Patreon for our post-episode mini-sode. Enjoy! Dr. Ramani, welcome to A Little Bit Culty. Thank you so much for having me. I'm really looking forward to this conversation. Us also. In fact, since we spoke last time in our prelim call, I found out that you are actually working with my former business partner and very close friend, Mark Vicente. Yes, I am. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. We met, gosh, I think it's been almost a year ago we met and

he's working on, I think, you know, he's working on narcissism facing content as you could imagine. So yes. Yeah. It's wonderful to be able to work with both of them. Yeah. He's got a project coming out about it. Top secret. I did get permission to mention it on this podcast, but we can't go into more detail. We saw a top secret trailer too. Yes. What I think is funny is that we're always kind of, you know, our projects overlap in certain spaces, obviously. And I'm always saying, oh, I just interviewed someone who'd be perfect, you know, a survivor from XYZ. I was like, have you heard of this amazing doctor, Dr. Romney?

And he's like, oh, yeah, she's like the through line interview of our movie. I'm like, oh, well, because you're head of the game. That's really sweet. Yeah, no, I really enjoyed meeting him. And he happened to be in L.A. for some period of time. And so we were actually able to meet in person. Oh, great. So it was just nice. Amazing. That's so rare these days.

It is rare. You really, and he made a point of, he's like, I really want to meet you in person. So we waited until the stars lined up and we're able to do it. So we realized that you've done so many interviews and you have a huge body of incredibly helpful work out there, which we're going to be giving to our listeners as homework. They do like the homework. But since our podcast is a little bit culty, we're going to try to take your expertise and apply it more to this field that the podcast covers. Before we do that, we wondered if we could just start with like a baseline so that our listeners understand this word narcissism in context to the cult space and how maybe sort of breaking down like how that word is a bit overused, misunderstood, giving us a little bit of like foundation.

It's been thrown out a lot in the last five to six years for reasons I think we all can speculate. Right. It really is. It is a very overused, very misunderstood, but also a really important word. I think that in the anger that people have of it being overused and misunderstood, people are forgetting the potency of the word. And it is a word that gives us a lot of information if you're getting the right information. So narcissism is a personality style, right? It's not a disorder. It's a personality style. And it is characterized by certain consistent patterns in a person, such as having really inconsistent empathy. And I'm going to talk about this idea of it being inconsistent empathy. Usually we just say it's a lack of empathy. It's

a little bit more nuanced than that. So inconsistent empathy, entitlement, grandiosity, validation and admiration seeking, arrogance, a need for control, a real hypersensitivity to any kind of feedback or criticism, envy of others, or they assume that other people envy them, a real incapacity for deep relationships or true intimacy, and a very externalized model of going through the world. So in essence, they set their goals on the basis of what they think the world wants them to do. Their identity is very much shaped by how the world views them instead of having a strong internal sense of self. But at the bottom line, people with narcissistic personalities

are actually deeply insecure and have deep-seated feelings of inadequacy. So all of those things I'm talking about, the grandiosity, the arrogance, the entitlement, it's almost like a suit of armor that protects this really vulnerable internal piece of them that they are not even in touch with. But if anyone criticizes them, it's almost like that they are not even in touch with. But if anyone criticizes

them, it's almost like that wound comes up and they lash out. And the reason I say inconsistent empathy is that some people will say, you know, I met someone, but times they seem really empathic. Empathy for a narcissistic person is very transactional and it can be very performative. They use it to get what they need. So if you and the narcissist have really aligned needs, wants, or desires at the same time, you might actually feel like this is the most empathic person I've ever met. What will happen is that once that need has been served or they no longer are aligned with you, they will seem like the most cold, aloof, rejecting, or even contemptuous person. That confusion is often what keeps people in the game. So what happens is

they're saying, oh, I want to go back to empathic day. And so they bring it upon themselves. How can I please them? How can I win them over? How can I get them over back to that beautiful empathy they seem to have? What they don't understand is that narcissistic people know that empathy is a thing. They also know how to use it, but it's not genuine empathy. Again, it's very performative. So all those things, insecure, arrogance, all those things, and I'll speak for me, but I imagine a lot of people have felt like that in their lives, right? What would you say, it doesn't mean just because you're arrogant, you're entitled, it's a thing and you can outgrow those things. When does it become a narcissistic thing and not just a growing pain, so to speak? Right.

So that takes us almost to like, how does personality develop, right? Personality is part of how the central nervous system develops. And the central nervous system is sort of not really done. And I almost view it as a jello mold. I'm like, you know, if you open the jello mold too quick, it's just going to put a splat on the table. You really have to wait until a person's around somewhere between 25 and 30 to say, this brain is cooked and almost a little older for

men than women, but then you can pop the jello mold and you've got the shape. So that's how personality works. And that's why adolescence is so tricky. Some people will say every adolescent is narcissistic. And I'm like, yeah, kind of, because that's the nature of that stage of development. Adolescents are trying to separate. They're trying to become their own people. In many ways, they're almost trying to say, all you folks who are trying to control me, namely parents, get away from me. I'm going to do my own thing. And so I always liken to them to having clothes that are just too big for them and they're trying to fit into them. So there's lots of emotion, lots of raging, lots of figuring it out. That's adolescence. So I've told many parents, I'll say, listen,

narcissism is a story that can only be told backwards, but not forward. So if you have a 17 year old, 18, 19 year old kid who was acting like an entitled, arrogant, oppositional, unempathic jerk to you, I'm sorry. And I really am. And then call me in seven years and let's see where it's from. Because in many cases, that kid is going to grow up to the demands of the world. They're going to have to learn how to behave in a workplace. Empathy is going to kick in. And now that they feel more sort of in their own skin, the parents will start seeing that empathy come back, all of that. Now, the problem is for the parents who say, okay, my 30 year old is still the same entitled,

unempathic, arrogant jerk that they were in their teens. And that's when I say you might have a problem because now it seems that they didn't. So in other words, you can tell the story backwards. They were like that then. They're like that now. But so many people at 17 will grow out of it. So there's definitely that piece of it. Then some people say, what about the showboater?

The person who's got the big ideas and they come in and they hold the stage, but then offstage, I'll ask them, what's their behavior like? This is a person who might really be able to hold the room, but then when you talk to them on their own and they're very sweet, they're very kind, they're very solicitous and self-aware and self-reflective, they're not narcissistic. They're able to put a grandiose show on a stage, but they're also very aware of other people, not a narcissist. But that person who's up there on that stage prancing about as an arrogant, grandiose performer and is a jerk off stage, narcissist. It's the consistency, it's the stability, it's the pervasiveness that it

cuts across multiple relationships. We're looking for like a pattern, not for somebody who behaves badly on one afternoon that they got fired. This is not a one-off. This is a life-off. It's happening all the time. Got it. Well, just looking at the patterns of narcissism within the cult world and what we're seeing right now with series like the Tinder swindler or Inventing Anna, where does it cross over from narcissism to narcissistic sociopath? And what are the tendencies to look out for? How do you distinguish those things? So when we start using terms like, so for example, you're bringing up two examples, Tinder Swindler, inventing Anna, of people who were, you know, in essence, grifters. They were probably more in the sociopathic, maybe even marginally psychopathic, but more

sociopathic realm. When we start bringing in other terminology like sociopathy and psychopathy, we have to view narcissism as being on a continuum, on a spectrum, right? So at the low end of narcissism, where it's light, narcissism light, as it were, you're talking about people who are sort of superficial, adolescent, emotionally stunted. At the age of 50, they still seem to concern themselves with the things like, oh, we're going to a cake party. I'm like, oh my God, you're 55. What is happening? But they're annoying. They're ridiculous. There's no depth to the relationship, but they're not psychologically harmful. At the far end of the spectrum though, now you're leaning into malignant narcissism. And malignant narcissism is really where we see

not only all the top notes of narcissism, but some of the stuff we see in psychopathy, the hostility, the callousness, the exploitativeness, the willingness to take advantage of people. And we also see some sadism mixed into there. We see some paranoia and we see Machiavellianism. So now it starts getting scary. Then the train goes into the more scary stations like sociopathy and psychopathy. Psychopathy is the most terrifying of all because now we're no longer talking about insecurity. These are people whose nervous systems are very, very different. They do not get that sympathetic nervous system activation that we all get when we

do something wrong. We feel uncomfortable. If we do a bad thing, we're like, oh, this does not feel good. We'll feel sick. We can't sleep. Psychopath can, you know, can do, I don't know, can rob a bank at breakfast and be having lunch with their mom and not even think about that sequence. Like they're not bothered by doing bad things. Narcissists are bothered by doing bad things. They don't want to get caught. They don't want to get publicly found out. They actually do value how the world sees them. The psychopath, it's a little less important to them. Sociopaths are a different animal. Sociopathic people are people who are, they're much more dysregulated than the psychopath. So they're like the narcissist. They get angry very easily. They're your bar brawlers. They get really upset. They

can be very manipulative. They'll take advantage of people, but they're not the cool operators like the psychopathic folks. Sociopathy is actually not a term we use in the mental health world. It's more of almost sociological, criminological kind of a term. And so it's not as well-defined in our world, but that malignant narcissism. And if you look at Fromm's work, Fromm has actually written about cult leaders. And he specifically said cult leaders are malignant narcissists. And I agree with that. I think 100% of cult leaders are malignant narcissists without exception. I've never seen one story of one.

By definition, a cult is a controlling space that is exploitative. That's the malignant narcissist space. So you have these terms for these people and with empathy, and I'm curious where the empathy and conscience comes in because a lot of them are very high performers in certain domains. And I think in some of your talks, you mentioned how they get a hall pass because of that. I'll use examples like Steve Jobs. I know he could be very temperamental to a Michael Jordan who is win at all costs. And they seem to have a capacity to, and I certainly wouldn't necessarily throw them in those categories, but they seem to have a capacity. Even when I was playing sports do, some don't. I'm curious as to when, you know, how do you make those distinctions and what kind of freedom do they have without their empathy that seems to serve humanity sometimes? Like, you know, if these people

are contributing to humanity, like how do you reconcile those differences? Does that make sense when I'm asking? It absolutely makes sense. Empathy makes us very inefficient. That's a bottom line. It is like the drag coefficient on our souls. It's a paralysis sometimes because you have to work it out. I wouldn't even say it's a paralysis as much as if I'm going about my day and I see someone, a colleague of mine is sad or upset and I'm like, hey, let's go get a cup of coffee. Let's talk it out. And they're starting to tell me about, oh, they're having marital problems and I'm there for them and I'm helping them. I might've just lost an hour of my workday. Now I got to stay an hour later. I'm inefficient. Or if I say, oh, maybe I should let that person get the promotion. They've been here longer. They're

just as good at me as the position. Now I haven't thrown them under the bus because I had the inside track and could have gotten it, but I recognize they're older, they're more experienced. In fact, their family could use the money. I just lost efficiency. The more empathy you have, the less efficient you are in the most beautiful way, by the way. You know what I'm saying? But in a winner-take-all, capitalistic, whoever has the most toys wins society, that the people who don't have empathy and are willing to climb over whoever they need to climb to are going to be your billionaires, your innovators. They're not stopping the change of baby's diaper, right? They are all in on their success. And you're absolutely right.

Then we look at them. They're the visionaries. They've changed the world. I get all of that. And I'll even tip my hat and say what you did, did change the world. What I say to the world is don't marry these people. Don't get close to these people. They're not father of the year. They're not person of the year. So our problem is we're conflating too much, like separated out just because a person is a great basketball player doesn't mean they're a great person. Just because somebody who has made a technological advance has changed the world doesn't mean they're a good person. I can't tell you how many people I have worked with who have said they endured terrible narcissistic

relationships. And when I ask them, what drew you to this person and what keeps you in the game? Well, they're so smart. And I'm like, when did smart become a virtue? Smart is smart. I mean, that's great. You're smart. Wonderful. That doesn't mean you're capable of deep emotion or empathy or intimacy. And that's our problem. We're putting very successful people up on pedestals and we're viewing them as holistically good people. No, they're good at one thing. We can acknowledge that, but we've got to stop viewing success as being necessarily good because what that means

is people then want to get close to successful people saying, well, this is going to be a great relationship. And more often than not, I say, no, it's not. That's such a great piece of advice. I really also appreciated the advice I heard you share with somebody about parenting and how teaching empathy is sort of the anecdote to this and raising our kids with that trait. Can you give us, our audience, a couple tangible nuggets on what that actually looks like with young children? Because I've got mirroring as

one of the things. Is there, or maybe you can elaborate on that? So the younger the child, we do it in different ways. There is no higher task than teaching a child empathy. There's really not. And alongside empathy is self-soothing. The child learning to regulate themselves, like recognizing you got to wait and learn, wait in line, you got to wait your turn. Sometimes you lose, you know, and you're going to have to manage the emotion around that.

So, and I think those two things are very related. But in a very, in an infant, empathy is achieved by staring at their face. And that's, if you look at the angle at which a child is fed or put on the breast, it's a perfect angle for them to make eye contact with the mother. So the mom may not want to be checking her phone while she's feeding her child, like face to face. That's how it's been done since time immemorial, even physical touch, skin to skin. All of that slowly starts building up empathy, doing mirrored

games. You play with their expressions. They make an expression. You copy their expression. That's baby. But as they come up, as soon as they start having language, you start working with them on feeling. How do you feel? You teach them that feelings have names. You never shame their feelings. It can be built into play. You can read any children's book and someone, a bear or a cat or a bird has a feeling. How do you think the bear felt? How do you think the bear felt when Goldilocks was sleeping in his bed? You know, he might be like, I wasn't okay with that.

Like that kind of felt like breaking and entering, but they might say, I was happy Goldilocks was sleeping in my bed. You can take any children's story. And at the end of the book, that's actually where the magic happens. How do you think she felt? How do you think he felt? How do you think they felt? And you're now teaching your child to name emotions, not just in themselves, but in others. You can do this in TV shows. Like I think that media can really be used as a jumping off place. You want to have your child spend time with other children so they can learn about taking turns. Like, oh, we've baked a cupcake. How should we split this up? So they learn like, oh, let's cut it in half.

Oh sure. Let's get a knife and cut it in half. So you're doing that now as your child comes into, and I have to say all of what I'm suggesting is easy to do through primary school. Like gotta love the little ones, but once they hit middle school, their brains are developing in a different direction. They're more focused on their peers than their parents. They think adults are full of crap. And so empathy starts taking on a different tenor. What's interesting is puberty age, adolescent kids have a lot of empathy for their peers.

They have none for their parents. And so the parents get confused and say, my kid has no empathy. And I'll say, can you tell me what your kids like with their peers? They're great with their peers. I'm like, good. The empathy is sound. They're trying to get rid of you. They're trying to make you so awful that when they have to leave, they're not panic stricken. It's actually a phenomenon called shitting the nest. And so they make a mess and then they're like, oh, this place sucks. I'm out of here. And that's how they let go. And I think for a lot of parents, we struggle. I have adolescent kids. We struggle with hurt feelings. And I have to remember that

what they're doing is they're making it easier to leave. And my job as a parent is to make it easier for them to live. So they're not looking backwards and saying, mom, and I'm saying, I'm always here. You know, it's just differences. Now you're carrying me inside your heart and I'm always here. You know, it's just the difference is now you're carrying me inside your heart and I'm just not going to be at your side. I'm going to cry. That's coming soon. But that's the hard thing for parents to do because when I, my child's moving out, I've got a child graduating high school soon. My child's moving out and I'm telling you, I see like a six month old infant and I'm

thinking, well, no, she's not. And that's the piece I carry. And so, but all of that is part of the empathy that we have for our children. And we teach it over and over again. What we cannot do is tell our children, hey, you're more special than all the other kids. To hell with them. Go ahead and take three pieces of pizza. And sadly, some parents do that.

And so I know it seems so logical, but actually a lot of parents don't practice it. And narcissistic parents, least of all, because they have absolutely no blueprint or template for what empathy should look like in themselves or even in the children. This is the golden age of cult recovery. The more we speak up and share our stories, the more we realize we are not alone. Your voice and your story can empower others.

This is Sarah, and I'm proud to be a founding collaborator of the hashtag I got out movement. Learn more at I got out.org. Can we contact you in like seven years when Troy's 15 for a consult? I feel like we're going to need it. And adolescent boys often just really kind of go off into their peer spaces. Adolescent girls are a whole different kind of creature. I know I was a piece of work with my, I apologize to my mother, mom, I'm really sorry. And this is another apology publicly. Okay. That's the empathy, right? The empathy is like, oh, shouldn't have done that. But it's hard. I mean, your heart's always getting torn. Like I did

everything for you, but I recognize what they're doing. They've made such a mess of things that that goodbye just became easier for me and it became easier for them. In some ways, their mess was the most compassionate thing they could have done. Maybe you'll want to help them pack. Maybe, maybe you'll, you definitely want to help them pack. You're like, all right, got to go. Got to go. Like my, my daughter's dorm opens up on a certain day in September, like we could go out four days early. Well, talking about these childhood, you know, the template in a healthy way is super, it's just wonderful because we really like to give our audience like these nuggets of what they, how they can heal and make their lives better and change the patterns that they've grown up with. And one of the things I found really interesting in our cult recovery self-education

is that a lot of the leaders that we were analyzing, Keith included, or people like David Koresh, there was a consistency in what little we know of their childhood, about their childhood. There was a consistency in the way that they were raised, specifically in the lack of healthy attachment with their parents and then how they ended up kind of becoming special through some gift and then, you know, winning the ladies. And that was like the end for them. Have you noticed that? Or have you seen any studies that would verify what seems to be a pattern? So the lack of secure attachment early in life would seem to track for, because it's a huge player in the development of the narcissistic personality, right? Secure attachment

is everything. A child having a secure base, a place that they know is always there for them. It helps them at points of separation. It helps them learn to self-soothe. All of that stuff we're talking about, empathy, it needs that attachment, that secure base of attachment as the root of it. People who are narcissistic didn't have that. Even the most overindulged, spoiled child, you'd say, well, how did they not have it? Because the parents were really good at buying things or taking them on extravagant experiences or showing up to every soccer game so they could get attention for their kid being a great soccer player. But at those early years when it was really about the consistency and the availability, they weren't available. And so that's how attachment happens. Attachment doesn't

happen because you show up to your kid's soccer game. Attachment happens because in those earliest years, the caregiver is consistently available. So that part doesn't surprise me at all because that's often a forerunner of narcissism. Now, it's not the case for everyone. Some people don't have a secure attachment. They just end up not becoming narcissistic, but very anxious adults. So it's not a slam dunk. And that's the challenge. The story can be told backwards, not forwards. So we'll always have that insecure attachment in their backstory. But that next piece you brought up, Sarah, is so interesting, that having a gift, right? Because what the child then learns, like let's say they're really good at school or they're really good at a sport or whatever it is they are, they now learn that

something external to them, something they do rather than who they are, is going to actually at least get them some validation. It's not the same as attachment, but at least it's something. So now they cultivate that. And that's what I'm talking about, how the narcissism really runs a very externalized game. Everything's what's happening outside of them. How are people viewing me? Am I doing what the world wants? Because they, again, the kid who wins the spelling bee or is the best soccer player, whatever it is, that child is learning. That's where my gift lies, right? So then they take that into adulthood. And that's why narcissistic people are so charming and charismatic because it's a very external game. Like they just put on their bright face. It's almost like they're

putting on a mask. Hi, Sarah. It's so nice to meet you. I love your sweater. Tell me a little bit about you. And we think that's good. We think that kind of really slick presentation versus the person who's like, oh, hey, Sarah, it's kind of nice. And they're kind of awkward. We view that as unskilled. Whereas that kind of slick, smooth thing is often a mask that kind of gets put on and they learn to put that mask on early because it's getting them the thing they need, which is attention. And then as you said, and then oftentimes it turns into sort of sexual admiration or being able to have sexual partners or conquests or people they attract to themselves in that way

that creates that overvaluation of power control and dominance in a very specific way, that creates that overvaluation of power, control, and dominance in a very specific way, which is all a narcissist is motivated by. They want power, control, dominance. That's it. If they have those things, they're done. They're good. And then that goes into adulthood. So a question follow-up there. I'm wondering if predominantly maybe in the Western culture, you see a lot of this stuff in men because of the pressure to perform. And, you know, I can remember thinking even in my teenage years, my self-worth is predicated on how good I am at my sport, at least for me personally. I felt like if I wasn't good at this, I didn't have value more to myself and then, you know, maybe to the world, but it wasn't so much the validation as much as I wanted to be good at this because it felt good. And I'm wondering how

that relates to maybe, do you see it more in men or differently in men than women? Would you say that the scale is more men and women do it differently? What's the distinctions there? So grandiose narcissism and malignant narcissism are more prevalent in men. They are. And I think for some of the reasons you say, I think how we raise boys is very different than how we raise girls. We don't hold space for men to safely express emotion or boys to safely express emotion. We often shame emotion in boys and men. Yeah. And so it's, that's not healthy for the child. Now there can be outlets like sport and the challenges that the child may build a sense of confidence in sport. But then the sort of the flip side to that is then the child may recognize like, I'm not making goals or scores or the MVP, I'm not going to be loved. So then that's going to create this sort of performative, the only way I'm going to get through the world isized lens, like they're going to need to be providers and all that. We still, even though obviously women are very much in the workplace.

Well, it's reinforced by our culture. Reinforced. And it's valued. It's also valued. It's beyond reinforced. It's incentivized. And in girls, there's more space held for emotion. There's more focus placed on affiliation and that human relationships for girls and women

serve a more sort of emotionally supportive space. That's not the case for men. It's not how they're socialized. It doesn't mean they're not capable of it. Obviously, they're capable of it. But if it's consistently shamed and it's devalued, they're not going to do it. Now, here's where it gets interesting with gender. You might see more narcissistic, more men are in the grandiose narcissism world, malignant

narcissism world, but not so the grandiose narcissism world, malignant narcissism world, but not so in the vulnerable narcissism world. Talk about vulnerable narcissism, the gender distributions equal. Now, vulnerable narcissism is all the same bells and whistles, the lack of empathy, the entitlement grandiosity, that list stays the same. But the difference is in the vulnerable narcissist, it's expressed more through a victimized, passive aggressive, resentful, petulant, sullen, like the world hasn't been safe to me. I wasn't born with a trust fund. How does anyone expect me to get ahead?

Everything's unfair. And why should I go to college? The professors are morons. I'm smarter than them. It's a lot of that grudging kinds of stuff. And people who are higher in vulnerable narcissism, you see higher levels of sort of sad mood, even sometimes full-blown depression, social anxiety. So they're not socially skilled. They're not the charming, charismatic narcissist, but they still,

they don't have empathy. It's all about their victimhood. And if they're going through something, they don't care what someone else is going through. Their entitlement is things like, why should I go to college? I'm smarter than all of the teachers. And so in the vulnerable narcissist, you might even see more of sort of a failure to launch. And there's more of a rejection sensitivity in the vulnerable narcissist. So when you really see their anger come out is where they feel like they're being rejected or even abandoned. But in that presentation of narcissism, we see that to be similar across genders.

So the story is a bit more nuanced than is it more men than women. It really comes down to the subtypes and all of that. Okay. So it's more of types than it is quantity. It is. And then that socialization is, so let's say you have a girl who, again, has that insecure attachment or the anxious attachment in childhood and doesn't feel valued and isn't seen and doesn't feel like and isn't seen and doesn't feel like

she's enough. It's more likely that for her, her narcissism is going to be almost more of a life's not fair. Why should I try? Nobody likes me. So it looks different. And that's why many times narcissism in women is missed. It looks more victimized. That's interesting. Would you say that it's predominant in Western culture? And the catalyst for that question for me comes from, I read this book a while ago, The Subtle Art of Not Giving a Fuck. And there's a part of it where he talks about how he went on a date with someone in Russia and how he was doing kind of a persona of getting to know the person and the person

just wasn't buying it. And they were like, do you want a date? Do you want to go out? And they were like really direct. And he's like talking about the Russian women. And he went to a professor to discuss it. And the professor was like, that's because people there need to know who they need to trust right away. And the niceties of culture don't fly in a Russian culture in the way that they're nurtured in the Western culture. And I'm wondering if that may have a little bit more of a breeding ground or less calling it out in the Western culture than say Eastern cultures. So I think it gets tricky here. So being abrupt doesn't mean someone's narcissistic. Oh, that's exactly what I mean.

It's a protection, but it may very well be that once you get on the other side of the abrupt wall, there might be somebody who has intact empathy and is well-regulated and all that. It's just getting to the other side of the wall. I think this is a global phenomenon, right? Because to the degree this goes back to attachment issues, right? That attachment issues present in all cultures. And I think that when we throw the cultural piece on top of this and the argument I and other theoreticians would make is the more authoritarian, the more capitalistic, the more stratified and the more patriarchal a society, the more narcissists it's going to beget. Because what it's doing is it's basically, you've now sort of codified the idea that

some people are better than others. And that sort of societal dismissal of entire groups of people creates a societal narcissism, which then in the more privileged people in those societies, they're going to be very dismissive. And that will happen in a family system as well. So I think, and at this point, I'm going to be honest with you, that seems to describe most cultures in the world. And when you have, it may not even be authoritarian, but it may have a culture where they're like, no, we're all so warm and fuzzy, but it just so happens that a very small handful of people hold all the money, that's going to beget narcissism too. And this has obviously become a real passion for you and the big part of your life, it appears. If you could wave a magic wand

and manifest your ultimate goal in terms of education and recovery from narcissistic abuse, what would that be or what would that look like? It's a complicated answer because at one level, what I'd like to see is more accessible, informed services for people who've gone through narcissistic abuse. Because I think the mental health field has not caught up. We are not recognizing, because usually when a person comes in with an issue, we're like, ah, they're anxious. Ah, they're depressed. We talk only about the person in the room, which is ridiculous because we exist in all these interpersonal spaces. But the unwillingness of many therapists to acknowledge like, ooh, their spouse is narcissistic.

Let me teach them that they're with somebody whose personality is not going to change and they need to make their decisions accordingly. The field is uncomfortable saying that the narcissists aren't going to change. That's a bet. They're not going to change. Every so often a unicorn gallops through the valley who is a change narcissist. Why would they? They would because at some point though, their lives get blown up. Their lives get blown up

enough. Some of them will say, okay, I can't live like this. But then they find the change is almost too difficult to make. But that said, to your magic wand, I'd like to see a world where there were informed services, accessible services available to people healing from it. Number one, number two, I'd like to see us starting to talk about this with younger and younger kids. When I've tried to pitch talking about narcissism to high schools are like, that kind of feels negative. Like we don't, and I'm like, oh my gosh, negative. Let me tell you what's negative is a high school kid getting into a really emotionally abusive relationship. That's negative. And if we could teach them this, so there's a real resistance to teaching because by the time this has happened to you, it kind of

does a number on you. But if we could teach younger people that this is a thing, that would also be really great. I would also like to see that people who are able to securely attach with their kids are the ones having kids and the parents who can't are getting supported to do so. I mean, I think that this is an early childhood issue too, and that we support parents and we teach parents, but you need a whole, in essence, we would have to address insecurity on a global level. And finally, if I really wanted the magic wand, I'd want all people to have agreeable personalities. That's the world I want to live in. I mean, it does mean like we're sort of all going to be like sort of living communally

and there would be no wars and everyone's going to get along. I want to live in that world. Me too. Kumbaya. So that's it. But you know what? It's beyond kumbaya though, because I think agreeable people are very collaborative. Yes.

They'll say, okay, we can work this problem. However, what I'm not going to do is like, I run Amazon. I don't need to make $100 billion trillion. How about I pay the warehouse workers $60 an hour? Yeah. That's what would happen in an agreeable world. That sounds great. But we don't live in that world.

And it's only getting worse. And in fact, the narcissistic people prey on the agreeable people. So the agreeable people and So, you know, the agreeable people are, and agreeable men makes lower salaries. So there's not a lot of incentivization to be agreeable, except it's kind of who we are. Some of us are just sort of, we're, we come into the world more agreeable and our agreeableness gets cultivated. Everyone out there should marry an agreeable person. You may have some trouble paying the bills, but everyone should marry an agreeable person. I don't know how much you know or followed the story with NXIVM or how much you read about Keith, our former leader. You did, okay. A lot. I thought I'd share a little

tidbit with you that I think you'd get a kick out of. And it relates to this. He had us all fill out these what they call personality questionnaires before and after. And it was, I want to say, what do you think? It'd be like 20 pages. It was too long. I just went C, C, C, C, C, C. Yeah. It was way, way, way too long. And listen, we were there for like over a decade and we still, even as leaders, anytime we took a training, like a higher level training, we still had to do a before and after of the same questionnaire. A new person going through it would take at least an hour, especially if they, if English was not their first language, an hour and a half. Very specific questions, true and false statements, A-B questions, a number of different formats. And first of all,

after the first one, I just hated filling it out because it was very redundant, but it was very tedious. And what we were told is that these tests were being sent to an outside source to analyze so that they could actually be looked at from a scientific point of view. Great. Peer review. Amazing. Now, not only did we find out that they never left the building when we left, but it always bothered me that we were the success program and the papers were clearly photocopied from different things and cut and paste and then put together again. Like it wasn't even one format. Do you know what I mean? Like it was one page looked like it was Xerox from something. And anyway, it was just messy. We found out later, like if you type in personality questionnaire narcissism, the questions that I found on the internet were word for word,

what was in this, at least one section of this questionnaire. Cut and paste. Wow. Cut and paste. Wow. And we think that he, our theory was that he was trying to figure out who were the narcissists so that he could have them be, you know, in his inner circle and be his flying monkeys, like give them, you know, the golden key to the, whatever it was that they were like, he basically was looking to see who he could, who he could control and use for what, depending on their level of narcissism. Do you have any theories on that? It's interesting. It's interesting because I would say, it depends on the narcissism questions. One of the biggest problems in the field of narcissism

is measurement, right? Traditionally, a lot of the questionnaires that are used and probably some of the items that were being used in what the two of you filled out, they lean more to grandiose narcissism. And how grandiose narcissism is measured is sometimes even a little bit more like people who want to be leaders and assertiveness. It's not this stuff I'm talking about, this sort of soul crushing, unempathic, entitled, like it's not as dark as some of the clinical stuff. That stuff is often done in an interview format. But you know, it's interesting because someone like him who is so manipulative and if he knew anything at all about narcissism, which you may not have, I wonder how much he also might've been afraid of the people

who are higher in narcissism and actually tried to ice them out, you know, isolate them, keep them away from others, not let them be as influential. Because in theory, the more narcissistic people might actually try to take some of his influence and try to be the leader and try to overtake. So they might be the people instead of bringing him into the, unless he wants to keep his friends close and enemies closer kind of thing, unless he was trying to keep them close to sort of neutralize them, there might be some wisdom in a position he was in to take the narcissistic people and sort of actually put them out on an ice flow and keep them away from others so they couldn't usurp his front lines, so to speak. Yeah. Yeah. Well, just keep them, make it so that they can't, that they're not a threat because at some level, a person is a much, much higher narcissism score

on these kinds of questionnaires is somebody who wants to be a leader, somebody who is more assertive, the person who might be less involved with the emotional worlds of others, but that leadership and assertiveness piece could have been a threat. That makes sense. We kind of had our, you know, we're obviously not therapists, but just our analysis of the people who got close to him. And before we understood attachment, we called it like daddy issues. To your point, they were more agreeable. They had a lot of the family systems that we've learned about through, you know, getting ready for this interview with you, like, oh, that was consistent. They, you know, their dads weren't around or, you know, whatever it was that were like that.

I don't know. I think, I think we both had very healthy relationships with our parents generally. And, you know, I think ultimately that's, you know, obviously we were very indoctrinated and we were bought in, but we weren't bought in as much as other people were bought in. So we were able to kind of snap out of it when it was clear what the abuse was and what was happening. And whereas other people just kept doubling down. Correct. So if they really wanted to be sinister, they would have done better giving out questionnaires that assessed attachment style and trauma. Yeah. So if they understood that about the post-traumatic stress sort of symptomatology and address something called adverse childhood experiences, if they had sort of gotten those

numbers, then they know exactly who the most malleable people could have potentially been in that kind of a group. And I bet you that those questions were there. We just recognized that one page as cut and paste from the internet about narcissism. I'm sure there were other things that we haven't even analyzed because we don't have access to those tests anymore. But also, you know, he would elicit information from them on his long walks and everything. I'm wondering, what was your assessment if you, I don't know what the extent of what it was, but what did you think of what you've seen? When you heard about this debacle? You know, immediately the reason I was drawn to it is like, wow, here we have a malignant narcissist, possibly a psychopath, predator. I want to,

you know, I want to listen to the story. That's what drew me in. It was wanting to, because anytime there's a story like that, I just want to see how it played out. And the whole thing tracked in some ways, his story is interesting for how uninteresting it is. You know what? I totally agree. You know what? If you put a bunch of ingredients in a cocktail shaker, that's what you get, you know, like his history, his intelligence, you know, again, that, that, that sort of smarmy salesman thing he's got going on that that's sold. And then he took it into the sort of the personal growth market. And then, you know, and there's,

there's this piece that this, and you see this in yoga cults and a whole bunch of different cults where that sexualized piece is the piece where he started recognizing, like, cause I mean, he's kind of a short, dumpy looking guy. He's not kind of, he is. Yeah. Okay. So I'm just trying to be kind. Short, dumpy looking guy. I mean, like nobody would look at this guy twice. Right. And so, and yet here he's getting the attention. And I was looking at this, this movie and I'm like, my God, these people are absolutely gorgeous. So these absolutely gorgeous,

intelligent women are gravitating to him. He hit the mother load. And at that point, one thing we do know about narcissistic people is they're what we call very reward sensitive, meaning that dopamine for them, like kind of gets them worked up. That's why you see a lot of problem gambling in narcissistic people. It's why they like stimulant drugs like cocaine. They like rewards. They like prizes. They like putting plaques on their wall and they like sex and sexual attention. So for him, when he realized that this new racket was getting him the Holy Grail, which was the sexual attention of women, that was it. He was off to the races. And so, and that's where a narcissistic person then obviously gets completely

drunk on their own power because it's going to, what did I say? Power, dominance, control, and one would also argue pleasure are the main motivators for a narcissistic person. Everything that motivated him was there. So that's, it was so clear. And then the way he would get intel on people, those long walks, I found that really interesting. I was like, ah, this is how he's doing the download. Narcissistic people are notorious for being able to, they seem so curious about people. And so many people out there have never had somebody deeply interested in them from childhood. Their parents, most people's parents were relatively disinterested in them. And so now there's a person who's in a position of authority, who's leaning in and saying, tell me everything about you. A special person is

valuing you. That's what every child has ever wanted, that the parent actually wanted to hear about their day at school instead of hurry up, wash your hands, do this. I don't have time for that. I'm too busy, which is what most kids hear. He was the parental figure as it were, who was leaning in and listening. There's nothing more seductive than that for somebody who has felt not heard and not seen for most of their life. That was the play, and he played it well. Hey there, listener. Hope you're enjoying this episode and that you're taking deep breaths when we cover the

enraging stuff that cult jerks are up to. Let it out. As in the yoga practice, Inhale positivity, exhale negativity. That's for you, Sarah. We got this. No hulking it out, all you little hulksters. And if you need some helpful resources on the topic of cult recovery, check out our website at a littlebitculty.com.

And now here's a brief message from our sponsors. That explains so much. He definitely did that and even just to attend next year you had to fill out an intake form which was the questions were you know what are your goals like why are you coming whatever but it was also like what's the worst moment of your life what's your worst decision of your life who's your best ally and who's your worst opponent and that intake sheet if someone filled it out honestly was also could be used as blackmail because someone's worst decision is like you know hookers and blow or something that they don't want people to know about that's that can be used against also he did it in plain sight yeah so

you wouldn't suspect it because he knows that people wouldn't suspect it and most people don't know what they're looking at i mean people forget he was able to convince the dalai lama he was able to convince some pretty influential people. And that just goes to show you. Okay. Let's go back to the Dalai Lama. That piece, I actually stopped and went back and watched. Here goes back, though, to the point you were making earlier.

This idea of how we revere powerful people. Okay. And I have to say, maybe this is on, I mean, I really respect his holiness, but I do think that even the Dalai Lama probably could use a session with me on narcissism because I see him getting played all the time. I really do. And I'm sorry, there's no Buddhist, I was raised Hindu and I was raised Hindu. Like mom was in it, you know, and I, I'm sorry, there's no Bhagavad Gita. There's no Buddhist scripture out there that is going to say, you got to have your game on. I would say that there's some wisdom here

in sort of knowing your enemy. And I do struggle a little bit with what happens is, is that it does feel like I'm using the Dalai Lama as an example, because it was in the documentary, but anyone who has that kind of sort of spiritual authority, or it seems like a paragon of goodness or something. And that the idea that these are often sort of purchased almost like papal indulgences and transactional relationships, that if you know the right person who has enough money, which is how he got there with those heiress ladies, you have enough money, you can get an audience. And I have a problem with that. If you're a holy person, you should be sitting with the most vulnerable

and indigent in a society, not the person who could fly in a damn private jet to India. I struggle with that so that what happens is then there is this messaging to the world of like, oh, if somebody is spiritually evolved as the Dalai Lama is seeing this person, the danger to that, and I have to tell you,

the Dalai Lama has sat with some really evil people and I'd like to think he'd see it. I'm not kidding you. It's all I can do to say, I'd love to get to Dharamsala and say, can we sit down and talk about this? Because you could be doing far greater work if you weren't giving so much platform to people who are going out there and doing so much harm. Agreed. And it seems like his organization, separate from him or part of him or whatever can be bought essentially. All organizations can be bought.

That's the problem. And you know what? Everyone getting bought, I don't have, like, listen, that's the world and it is what it is. But the problem is, is that the virtue that is given to some organizations and that then leads people to no longer trust their instincts, Sarah. So people say like, he can't be a bad guy if this guy is signing off on him, but he feels like a bad guy in his gut.

So what do survivors do? They say, it's got to be me. I've got to be the one that's wrong. And how do I tell people? No, actually they paid for that audience. And nobody is acting as the narcissism patrol at the sort of at the gateways of all of these seemingly evolved that was certainly us i mean that was us and was it 20 2009 or 10 when he came where i mean we had many problems there all my doubts and it's like all my doubts at the time

were like okay this guy well dilemma same and same with you know allegedly there was a training on necker island with rich Branson. Same thing. These people are validating us. Or even when there was a study that apparently we cured Tourette's, which I don't think we did. But all of those things, when I was still in it, was like, okay, phew, like validating. We're in the right direction. We're going in the right direction. We're part of something good.

Because we couldn't be part of something bad because then, of course, we're stupid. You know, and then the shame. There was so much shame around everything that Keith did to make us feel less than not enough. Same as I would imagine in a one-on-one relationship with a narcissist. So, okay. So this, this is where I go to like my hopeful question or something like that, because I look to leaders in the past and I think some of them got it right. Some of them are, you know, they got parts of it, right. You're never going to have the perfect leader or whatever.

But for me, when I look at the template in history, and I was a history major, and I'm interested just in leaders and why they're leaders and how they do it. I look at like the 60s that gave us like the Kennedy brothers, Robert and John and Martin Luther King. And it seems that, you know, I played a speech for Sarah last week and it had us both crying because it seemed to come from an empathetic place. And I look at John Kennedy in particular as a person who, while he probably bought the presidency through clandestine means, seemed to empathize a good balance of understanding the power that he had and spoke from a place of empathy and

principles. Now, I don't know how narcissistic John Kennedy was because it seemed like he had a sexual appetite that he couldn't control. But that was also maybe because a lot of the drugs that he was on because of his Addison's disease. And so it's complicated. And then, but you hear Martin Luther King and you hear things about that. So what's the balance? And like, how do you, you know, I don't think people should put all their trust into a leader,

but there seems to be people that do embody these things, or at least try to embody these things, the balance of empathy and power. And are you hopeful that that person can emerge, or is it one person, or is it a movement? It seemed that the 60s were that movement, and look what happens when that movement gets such an inertia, it feels like it has to be stopped. If that's indeed, you know, what happened, we'll never know the nuances of it but it seems that that that there was a movement that the principles of the american idea were starting to gain some inertia and they literally got shot it's the challenge there though becomes like here's what's interesting

there's actually some really interesting literature saying that not only is empathic leadership possible it works it's profitable it's better outcomes for the populace, everything. It's possible. Now, the problem is that the United States and politics in the United States is a shell game, right? It's bought and paid for. And so this idea that leaders are being elected for the good of the populace, them days are over. I mean, even as I filled out my ballot, I live in California, and I'm just sort of like,

oh my gosh, this is like a continuum of psychopathology and I'm trying to choose the least pathologic person. I have very little regard or belief in the majority of politicians. Part of that is how, you know, again, it's a game system. It's a transactional system. There are lots of levers being pulled in back rooms by people. I mean, I don't want to sound as like, you know, sort of conspiratorial, like cabals of people, but they're kind of cabally, I got to tell you. Like they're, you know, these are organizations of people have a lot of money

and want to maintain a certain status quo. That said, I think in the political realm, especially in the United States politics, I don't see how we're going to create that shift that easily because it is such a power game. I do think though, in some small local politics, we do sometimes see people trying to step up Don't see how we're going to create that shift that easily because it is such a power game. I do think, though, in some small local politics, we do sometimes see people trying to step up and do the right thing. You might see this at the level of school boards, small town politics.

There are people out there who really go into this well-intentioned. I think you can even see this in business leadership of people who are really trying to say, OK, we're trying to live by these ideals. We're trying to, through leadership, ensure that all boats rise with the rising tide kind of thing. That's empathy. That's empathic leadership. It's not always easy. And what's interesting is where you have a disconnect. Let's face it, the way John Kennedy ran his private life, I have to believe his wife was hurt by how he conducted himself. Maybe rich people have affairs and that's just how they live their lives. But by all reports, she was hurt. And so there was some empathy chip missing there. One would say it was the time, it was privilege, it was entitlement. I don't know. You see a young woman who was thrust into

a really public role at 31 and handled it with grace and there's hurt on her face and he chose not to recognize it. There was some empathy missing there. There's no two ways about it. She suffered. She suffered. The favorite thing I heard you say, and I have to say it before we get it in, Sarah, you can take over after that, but pushing back on narcissism is a human rights issue. That was a goosebump line for me when you said that. It absolutely. Look at the world we're in right now. You show me a single problem in the world right now, and I'm talking big problems, wars and lack of healthcare and the state of girls and women in parts of the world. You show me one of those problems and you can't track it back to narcissistic leadership. Every single case of that. It is an absolute lack

of empathy for the most vulnerable people in a society and a person using a position of power and inborn privilege to maintain their sense of power, dominance and control and viewing human beings as disposable. That is the root of all of it. And we're not pushing back on it. In fact, a lot of people are saying like, well, you know, all different kinds of personalities and we shouldn't judge. I'm judging. I am judging that the way we treat an individual is how we treat the world. That's where our podcasts overlap. I, you know, I think that like, that's our shared mission, you know, it's slightly different content, but I know that you, if you feel comfortable sharing, we can cut it out if you don't, but you have a podcast also, a burgeoning podcast. Tell us. Yeah, burgeoning podcast. I wish I had a release date for you.

Yes. It's a new podcast coming out called Navigating Narcissism. It's an opportunity to hear from people in all kinds of different stories of people who've been through narcissistic relationships, what the stories look like, where the red flags are and how they navigated it and where they ended up. And more importantly, what can we learn from it? That's what the podcast does. And I think that narcissism is lurking in so many public stories. NXIVM is a great example. You know, I remember sitting with my team and I said, okay, this is, this is the narcissism story of the week. And I covered, I, I, I watched it very carefully because as soon as I heard some of the elements of it, I'm like, okay, wait for it. And here it was. And so I don't think

most people watch the story of NXIVM as a narcissism story. And it was that front to back, you know, and so, and then using that as the frame and teaching people this story that seems so big and involving all these people actually relates to the person who's verbally abusing you in your kitchen right now. They're one in the same. And so the podcast is meant to help people connect those dots and teach people enduring this isn't okay. I am, I've said this before. I said this on Red Table Talk recently. The four most dangerous words in the English language when strung together are benefit of the doubt.

That's gotta stop. Like, why am I, I'm not giving you the benefit of my doubt. Like your behavior is a problem. It doesn't mean I'm gonna cut and run, but you better believe my boundary just got really thick and high. And I'm distancing myself a little bit. We don't give

ourselves permission. And people judge us. The enablers step in and say, what are you doing? Or give them a chance. Or who do you think you are that you get to stand and be so uppity? I'm like, how come we just don't allow people to say, this doesn't feel comfortable. I don't like this. And let them step away. In fact, we often encourage people to walk towards their perpetrators. I have a problem with that. No, I do too. And that's great advice for our listeners and for anybody's setting those boundaries.

Is there anything else you'd share, especially because so many of our listeners are survivors of different, not only just cults, but narcissistic abuse, abusive relationships, anything else to recover from being gaslit or being in a toxic relationship of any kind? Absolutely. Well, please come over to my YouTube channel.

It's a wealth of knowledge, everybody. It's so good. There's a big library of content there and just, you know, join that because honestly, it's a really robust community and people in the comment section share a lot of their stories. You see that you're not the only one going through this. I also have a subscription healing program for people who want to do more of an intensive deep dive into sort of like, there's a lot, it requires a lot of journaling and there's a Q and a, and there's a workshop every month and all of that. And if you just go to my website, which is drromany.com, you can sign up and it's, you know, for some people it's an adjunct to therapy for some people to say, listen, it's, it's

for this amount per month, it's, it's an affordable price point for me to just be able to like stay on top of this. There's a community platform that's closed. Only the people in the program can get in it. So it's just, it's a safe space, which we cure, you know, we monitor multiple times a day. So I have that. I have, and then if you go to my website, you'll find my books and you'll find my various

kinds of other recommendations I have for content out there. You can find me lots of places talking about narcissism all the time. Huge library. It's so good. We're going to put your website. I have a resource page because people were reaching out asking for help. So I'll put it on our resource page. And I know your books are on Audible. And is there anything else that you want our audience to know? I have one. Oh, yeah. Okay. Sorry. When you go on social media, I think you see a lot of this stuff, Twitter or whatever. And it seems to me a lot of people don't know what they're looking at. And it seems like a lot of these so-called movements that are going on right now, what I call the maligned fringe movements, are really people who are traumatized. And a lot of the solutions seem to be these kind of linear solutions to spiritual trauma problems.

And they don't know what they're looking at. And then people feel like they're not heard. And then they start canceling you for not hearing them and all that stuff. And it seems just like a whole shit show of if people just understood they were looking at trauma and had the empathy that you're talking about to looking at it and not necessarily trying to get them louder voices or whatever, these things could be solved in a week. No, it wouldn't even be a week as much as they could be solved in the sense that the cycles I'm trying to see people end are the cycles of self-blame. But it's hard to end the cycles of self-blame when social media and the media at large are always raising up the narcissistic people as sort of examples of how to live.

Or even in a world, listen, we live in a world where inflation is terrible. People are still struggling economically. Lots of people can't afford housing. And so when you see the most narcissistic person lives in the biggest, nicest house, you're like, wait a minute, what am I doing wrong here? Maybe this whole nice person thing isn't working out for me. And sadly, in some ways that agreeableness research does show agreeable people do tend to make lower salaries because they tend to go into human service jobs, therapists, teachers, helpers, helpers don't make money. You know, people who hurt people make more money. And so when your economy is organized that way, that's the struggle. And so I think, unfortunately, there's a lot of people out there who are sort of exploiting the vulnerability of people who've been through these

relationships. I completely agree with you. A lot of this is very much holding a trauma-informed space, a space of not only safety, but also a space where the ultimate goal, like we said before for the parent, why do we raise children? We raise children so they get strong enough to walk away, fly away, and live their life. That's parenting, not to make them live next to you for the rest of their life. Some people do that. Great. Good for you. That's how it worked out, but they should feel that they have the permission to also go in and fulfill their destiny. It's, you know, it's very similar for in, in therapy that for the goal for me in working with a client is for them to now feel that they have, they can, they feel, they feel committed in their choices. They feel

confident. Like I'm trying to build up an independent and autonomous person. My job is great when people leave because they feel ready to go out into the world. I'm not trying to keep them on the chain. We want people to be independent and autonomous and be able to feel safe in the world. That's the problem right now. A lot of people don't feel safe. The more we have personality styles like narcissism holding important and leadership positions, the less safe the world is. And that's the world we live in right now. It feels, I don't mean literally unsafe. I mean, it's a psychologically unsafe world right now. Right. Right. And what you described is like the opposite of a cult, which of course breeds

dependency. They want to keep people loyal, keep people in, keep people broken enough and not enough enough so that they stay and keep buying more and more classes or whatever it is that they're peddling. And isolate them from the world and say, we're better. Because ultimately the ultimate goal is to feed the cult leader's ego. And not only is that happening through validation, the belief that the cult leader's ego. And not only is that happening through validation, the belief that the cult leader holds all the truth, that everybody outside of the cult doesn't have the truth, and it gets monetized, then that's just merely a source of power, money's power. So it gives them more power. It allows them to sort of secret themselves from the world and do what it is they need to do. I was really, I mean, I will tell you when I saw the outcome of NXIVM

and the trial and how it went, my immediate reaction was absolute relief. And it wasn't just relief that this guy is going to jail. It was the relief that all survivors feel when we see those rare moments of justice. I was convinced that Keith Raniere would not receive a penalty that was commensurate with what he did. I really was convinced. I was convinced that Keith Raniere would not receive a penalty that was commensurate with what he did. I really was convinced that I was even glad to see his enablers took some hits too, because he needed those enablers to be able to be propped up. They were complicit. That trial was the kind of outcome that actually gives survivors that wholeness that only justice can deliver. And most of us

don't get to have justice in our lives. And to your point, I think the catalyst for his downfall was empathy. Oh, that's interesting. Not from him. Not from him, from a prosecutor who saw it in Moira Penza. And really what I think, you know, the love that happened started with Mark's wife, Bonnie. Oh, Bonnie. Yes. Oh, yeah. Absolutely. You know, that kind of Mark, she put it to, she put it to Mark. It was like, you know, this is that. And then Mark went to Sarah. And then, you know, then I came in and did my part. And that was the ripple effect of love and empathy, I think. That was a ripple effect. But also Bonnie to me was such an important person in the story because in many cases, I wish everyone had like a Bonnie friend in their lives if they have a narcissistic relationship, that one friend that comes up to you and says, this isn't right. What

I'm seeing here, not okay. And many people don't have that one person who takes the risk to step up. And then she told her partner and he, instead of rejecting her, like you said, the empathy, he was willing to hear her. Most people, when they speak truth about It's an empathy chain. But for most people, that chain gets clipped right at the very beginning. And you don't even have someone like Bonnie who is really willing to roll up and say, the emperor is not wearing any clothes. Right. And this is beyond the emperor is not wearing any clothes. Quite literally. Yeah. Emperor is literally not wearing clothes and it's harming other people.

This isn't right. And I have to tell you, even in my world, when I have an organization and groups I've worked with, certainly not at this absolutely perilous level you were at with NXIVM, but in smaller scale issues, when you are the messenger, you are really viewed as a problem. Oh gosh, there's Romany. Why do you have to be so difficult? Why can't you give people a chance? Oh, your narcissism thing, la, la, la, la, la, la, la. And it's what I do. And I'm at an age where I just really no longer care what people think of me that way. But earlier in my career, it mattered to me more than I keep my mouth shut. And there's a point at which, and this is hard when I often do leadership training for

folks and people coming up in their careers, I say, everyone's like, well, how can we make it work? How can we make it work? I'm like, sometimes you can't make it work. Sometimes you gotta walk away. When it's that toxic, you've got to do that. And I think so much of the rhetoric out there is like, how can we meet them halfway? I can't meet someone halfway who's holding all the toys.

Like they took everything. So I think it's a real shift. And this is a, like I said, if you haven't been through it, you don't get it. And it's a real shift. And, and, and this is a, like I said, if you haven't been through it, you don't get it. And that's a real challenge too. It's very difficult to anoint those who don't want to be anointed. And I, I struggle with that. And then when it finally happens to someone years later, they'll call me back and say, I wish I listened to you. And I'm like, okay, fine. Sure. Okay. I wish I listened to you. Yeah. I wish I listened to you.

And a lot, I've been labeled a cynic. I've been labeled a bitch. I mean, I've been called every name in the book because basically I'm saying there's no Santa Claus. You know, nobody wants to be that person. I was going to ask you about your colleagues and what it's like in the position that you're in. And if you get pushed back, thank you for answering.

All the time. And I have to say, you need only spend one hour in a room with a survivor who's been broken by someone narcissistic to say, I'm not, you sit with that human pain long enough. You're not going to care what if there's pushback saying, you know, just because you make the rules doesn't mean you're right. That this is not like, this is not okay. And we've got to, we've got to find a way to work with survivors and bolster them again, whether it's in a cult. And every narcissistic relationship is a cult. It's a cult of two, but it's a cult, you know? And so you can see it and that's the level of manipulation being used and understand all those techniques when it's happening to someone in real time. I really want people to say, aha, I got it. And maybe one day long after I'm gone, there'll be a

narcissism detector. The language will come in and a little device will beep and they'll be like, sequence of language. And I see AI that's not beyond the pale. I think at some point, AI will be able to detect the language patterns that people with these personalities use. And then they'll beep away. We've had this in the last couple of episodes. I don't know if you can see this bullshit button, but Nippy and I, when we, for example, read the response that Teal Swan had, she posted on her blog her response to the media about her right now. Now we do this. Warning, warning, bullshit alert. So that's how we have to find our ways to laugh and stuff.

I don't think it'll become an ongoing sound effect in our podcast, but I think that would be great if that existed in the world more, 100%. I really do. I mean, I think that if we... And listen, people would just be even more savvy consumers. Capitalism is actually incumbent on people being played by narcissistic people because if we didn't feel insecure and we didn't fall for the gaslighting, then we wouldn't buy stuff, you know, like, no, that pair of shoes is not going to make you happier. Or, you know,

it's that idea that a thing or something you pay for is going to be the sort of soul healing experience. People get to that point. Don't, gaslighted by a sales pitch or something like that, but the economy is actually going to take a hit. So I always say, if we dismantle narcissism, we may be dismantling capitalism. I don't know that anybody's ready for that. Wow. That sounds like another episode, maybe on your podcast. Yeah, that's a big one. But then you start getting all the, then you get canceled by the capitalism crowd and then it's all very good. So let me get started. Before I start, yeah, before baby steps,

before I start taking down institutional structures. Well, the world needs more people like you. And we were so honored that, it was actually one of our listeners connected us. Oh, that's awesome. I'm so glad to hear that. Oh, I think it was Amy. I have to go back and look at the email chain, but we're very grateful for that.

We're grateful for your time. Thank you so much. Yeah. It's just like such a treat. I can't wait to meet in person when we're in LA. Please come to LA. Please find me. And also, thank you for what you do.

Your experience and you had such a raw experience in the vow. And I remember thinking like, wow, that is really courageous to put your story and your vulnerability out there. And that's where healing happens, that I'm going to put my vulnerability out there, no matter how the world judges me, this is how I'm going to heal. And you did that. And I think a lot of people, you know, some people learn, some people don't. And like I said, you can't anoint those who don't want to be anointed, but many people learned. And I thought it was, it was really quite, I mean, I was, I watched it twice. The gift is wisdom. And if we can articulate it and stay in our lane, I think we're doing our jobs and then it's been worth it. Yeah, it's great.

You said something in an interview that really stuck with me. I thought I knew all the Khalil Gibran quotes, but you said, out of suffering have emerged the strongest souls and the most massive characters are seared with scars. And just want to let you know that I've had my brand removed. Oh, that's wonderful, Sarah. That is wonderful. And yet, you know what it is, is that I'm so glad you had that. And yet the other scars we all carry. I always tell people, I'm an introvert, so I don't go to parties.

But when I do, I always scan the room for the most scarred person. And I'm like, yeah, that's who I'm talking to tonight. Because they're always the most interesting and eloquent. It definitely has been an interesting talking point at dinner parties. And I, and I needed to keep it for a number of years, partly for evidence, you know, but to have it gone, I do have to, like, I literally had it cut out with plastic surgery. I just have like a, you know, a two inch line scar and I'm, I'm okay with that. It reminds me of what I've overcome. So, but I think that scar also reminds you that you took your power back. And that's a different kind of scar. Absolutely. Yeah. Awesome. So thank you again. I'm so glad I got to deal with narcissists, Sarah.

My head is full. Oh, my God. How many of those do you know? Too many. Too many. Or, you know, the interesting thing about it is that it's a personality style disorder, which I thought was interesting. Evaluating it backwards.

And it also gave me hope for the future. More on that. There's hope for you, Nip. There's hope. There's hope. No, for our children. I just feel like we're, by teaching empathy and I feel like we're on the right track. But let us know what you think about this episode. Tell us the craziest thing a narcissist has ever done or said to you. And hit us up over Instagram or leave us a voicemail on our website at a littlebitculti.com. I'm anticipating some voicemails after this episode.

And just remember, anything you do or say on our voicemail might get played on this podcast. That sounded like your Miranda rights right there. And just remember, anything you say can be used against you. And we'll be back here soon with a new episode. And in the meantime, you can join us on Patreon for some exclusive mini-sodes and other stylish, informative bribes. Including the ability to listen to our episodes ad-free. Less ads, more of us. That's not narcissistic at all. No, no.

Thanks, everybody. Have a great day. Hope you liked this episode. Let's keep the conversation going and come hang out with us on Patreon, where we keep the tape rolling each week with special episodes just for Patreon subscribers and where we get deep into the weeds of unpacking every episode of The Vow. And if you're looking for our show notes or some sweet, sweet swag or official ALBC podcast merch or a list of our most recommended cult recovery resources, visit our website at a littlebitculty.com. And for more background on what brought us here, check out Sarah's page-turning memoir. It's called Scarred, a true story of how I escaped NXIVM, the cult that bound my life.

It's available on Amazon, Audible, narrated by my wife, and at most bookstores. A Little Bit Culty is a TalkHouse podcast and a Trace 120 production. We're executive produced by Sarah Edmondson and Anthony Nippy Ames with writing, research, and additional production support by senior producer Jess Tardy. We're edited, mixed, and mastered by our rocking producer Will Rutherford of Citizens of Sound, and our amazing theme song, Cultivated, is by John Bryant and co-written by Nigel Asselin. Thank you for listening.