The Ben Mulroney Show - Is being a Karen a Psychological disorder?

Episode Date: April 8, 2025

Guests and Topics: -Is being a Karen a Psychological disorder? with Guest: Dr. Oren Amitay, Psychologist If you enjoyed the podcast, tell a friend! For more of the Ben Mulroney Show, subscribe to the podcast! https://globalnews.ca/national/program/the-ben-mulroney-show Follow Ben on Twitter/X at https://x.com/BenMulroney Enjoy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The all-new all-electric Can-Am Origin motorcycle takes you everywhere. Sleek power for the streets, and deep adventure routes for the trails. Discover your origin today. Learn more at CanAmMotorcycles.com. Every day, if you're on social media, you see at least one video of a Karen going crazy. And everybody knows what a Karen is. Uh, and we want to have a productive conversation about this, but before we do, let's listen to a, uh, some audio of a Karen harassing a woman because her son placed chips on the bench by her sister's by her sister's memorial bench

which is in a public park. This bench I donated because of my late sister passed away. Okay so my son just set it there and he walked to the bathroom and he'll be back soon and we'll pick it up. I'm asking if it can be me. I'm asking if it can be me. Okay, but now you're attacking me because it's just sitting there and my son will bring it. I'm asking you to be respectful. Okay, well you're not being respectful to Ashley.

Absolutely not, no. No, she was. Look at the plaque. She asked if it was okay and you said no. Yeah, because my son just set it down and he's going to come right back and pick it up. It because my son just set it down and he's gonna come right back and pick it up. It's really not that big of a deal. I don't want trash next to my sister's bench. You don't want people sitting on the bench. You don't want it. You don't want the public

interacting with it. Don't put it in public, Karen. I'm joined now by Dr. Orin Amate, psychologist. Orin, welcome to the show. Thank you, Ben. We see this so much that the question bubbled up to us is what's the deal with Karen's? I mean, can we diagnose them with something? Well, I mean, I can't diagnose from afar, but I can give you general descriptions. And people toss these terms around as an insult.

And as always, when I bring them up, I am bringing them from an actual professional psychological perspective. I'm not just trying to insult anybody. Right? So the reality is, if you look at them, it really blows down to several different traits. And the most common ones are all related to narcissism, whether it's an actual narcissistic personality disorder or just narcissistic traits. But they definitely demonstrate those. Maybe we can talk about each

one if you'd like. Yeah, let's do that. Break it down for us. Okay. So we have grandiosity or a sense of superiority. My vision of the world trumps all. Okay. I should be able to tell you how to live your life, what to do, et cetera. That's one. We haveumps all. I should be able to tell you how to live your life, what to do, et cetera. That's one. We have entitlement. I should have the right to come up to you, you know, breach your boundaries,

encroach on your space and tell you this is what you're doing wrong, this is why you're a terrible person, et cetera, et cetera. No empathy. And empathy is not just feeling someone's feelings of something, empathy is taking someone else's perspective. So being able to say, okay, you know what, hey, maybe this is a child or maybe there's just some people enjoying themselves or maybe they don't see the world the way that I do.

So these are all traits of narcissism. There's still more, but I just want to throw those out. And the other thing is there's a strong component of like an authoritarian personality, right? And it's ironic because for them authority rules. So they will call the manager, they will call the cops. They will do all these things, right? Yeah. But as soon as those people in charge say,

hey, you know what, knock it off, you're the problem here. Suddenly authority doesn't count because they're grandiosity. That's right. That trumps their respective authority. Yeah, we see it all the time with Karens coming up and asking somebody why they're parked somewhere and why they're filming something

or why they're in a neighborhood where the Karen feels they don't belong. And you're right, they act as if they are the authority and their feelings in that moment are the only thing in the world that matter. Exactly, and there's also a few other things which is, um, and people throw, again, another insult they throw out round cluster B personality, which is narcissism, uh, borderline,

anti-social and histrionic personality disorders. And whether it's narcissism or a borderline personality, this emotional dysregulation, when you watch them, they escalate very quickly, right, they'll have an adult temper tantrum much of the time, and both narcissists and borderline people borderline personality disorder have a really hard time regulating their emotions. So that's another part of it. And, you know, there's a whole bunch more. But how can a how can a Karen be cured of her Karen

this? Oh, she can't. It's not possible. I mean, the way that they can be maybe stopped is if they have such humiliation and that the people around them don't come to their defense and don't say, yes, you were the victim here. The people who say, you know what, maybe, you know what,

you were in the wrong or maybe you shouldn't do this. Maybe you were in the right, but it's not productive. That's what's not gonna be. So naming and shaming is the only way to go. All right, we're going to move on to this other story. So look, every school board is different. Issues in the United States are not necessarily issues that we have in Canada, but there are trends, right?

There are trends in education, there are trends in society, and they can, what happens there can happen here. This is some audio of a school board that doesn't get their own hypocrisy as they try to condemn the language of a father at a school board meeting, even though what he's doing is quoting books that are in the school library taught to children.

Let's listen. Hello, Navarro, suck any good lately. What's wrong, Navarro? I think you like a big in your mouth. Ha ha ha. Page 23. The other board. What's the educational benefit of talking about? What's the educational benefit of talking about that? Is that going to help someone on the SAT score? Yeah, I'm not suggesting that what occurred at that school board meeting is indicative of, you know, the trends in Canadian education. But I mean, that's a problem. These are educators. These are people who are making decisions and they're allowing that book to be in a children's

school library and they find the language offensive at a school board meeting populated entirely by adults. If you can't get them to see the hypocrisy or how insane that is, and you realize these are the people making decisions on the education of kids, I mean, that speaks to a problem. I mean, in your experience, do you see kids being, a lot of parents like to go all the way to indoctrination, but do you believe kids are being indoctrinated?

And if so, how bad is it? Okay, so I'm not speaking hyperbolically when I say yes, there is a huge amount of indoctrination on my ex-feed, Doc Amate. I repost many people who are giving clear examples of this happening in the school. It is bad, it is widespread. And whether it's in Ontario or different provinces,

I'm speaking mostly about Ontario, but we are not seeing, let's say the people in charge, standing up to this. They are encouraging it, whether they believe in it, or they're afraid because they don't want to lose their own positions. So they're bending the knee. Look, it's clear ideology has taken over the schools and again this is not hyperbole. It's getting worse. Now not every student is being brainwashed but

the attempt is there whether we're talking about politics or about sexual identities and so on. They have a place, and especially at age appropriate levels, but a lot of these people, and I don't think they're bad malicious people, most of them, some aren't very narcissistic themselves, but the fact is, the reality is that, evolutionarily speaking, maybe one out of 100 people is designed

to be able to be a leader, and a teacher is a leader. We have many people in these positions of leadership and authority who do not have the wherewithal, the capacity, the ability to be leaders. And so they are allowing this to happen. Good intentions executed poorly lead to terrible outcomes. And that's what we're seeing. Well, on that note,

with the good intentions leading to terrible outcomes, you've got a story in the United States, again, of a trans track athlete who had, when they were competing as a boy, was placed last on the junior varsity boys team, I believe falling an entire foot short on the high jump to then transition and once competing with the girls, beat every girl by a country mile.

And look, I'm not sitting here bashing anyone. That's not my intent, that's not my heart. But how is it not common sense, like we can go down that path, how is it not common sense that this shouldn't be allowed? But what I'd rather say is, what impact would something like this have on a young girl who wants to compete

and then sees somebody coming in and just smoking the competition because they were born a different gender? Like, if I had a daughter who loved track and field and then found herself just not able to compete anymore, I don't know what that would do to her mental health. Well, it's affecting on several different levels. Of course, it's demotivating. Okay. It's discouraging. It's disempowering. And in reality, the saddest thing is that these girls, whether it's about competing, whether it's about being placed in lockers with,

you know, with biological males, the fact is they are internalizing this message. Doctor, we're gonna leave it there, my friend. Thank you very much. Flavor Network is giving one lucky viewer $15,000 to put towards the grocery bill. Oh, I love that. Tune into Flavor Network every night at 9 Eastern or stream live on StackTV. Look for the daily code word and enter on our website for a chance to win $15,000. Oh my god, that's so good. We're gonna blow some minds. Let's do it.

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