THE ED MYLETT SHOW - Powerful Strategies To Deal with Narcissism and Addiction

Episode Date: March 22, 2025

👇 SUBSCRIBE TO MY YOUTUBE CHANNEL - so this show can reach more people 👇 https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCIprGZAdzn3ZqgLmDuibYcw?sub_confirmation=1 Click Link Below to Subscribe to my email list to MAXOUT your life (all value, no fluff) https://konect.to/edmylett Are You in a Toxic Relationship? How to Navigate Narcissism and Addiction What if the person you love—or even yourself—has been unknowingly caught in patterns of narcissism or addiction? How do you recognize it, and more importantly, how do you take back control? In this episode, I sit down with Dr. Drew Pinsky, Rebecca Zung, Najwa Zebian, and Jo Frost to break down some of the most misunderstood dynamics in relationships, parenting, and personal growth. We uncover the real definition of narcissism—why it’s not just about ego but deep emotional wounds—and how it often connects with addiction. Dr. Drew reveals how childhood trauma fuels these behaviors and why so many people fall into destructive patterns without even realizing it. Rebecca Zung shares strategies to negotiate with narcissists, ethically turning their manipulation against them. Najwa Zebian dives into the toxic attraction between narcissists and empaths, and Jo Frost brings it home with parenting wisdom on raising emotionally resilient children in a world full of distractions. The truth is, whether it’s a personal relationship, a business partner, or even yourself, these behaviors are more common than you think. But you’re not powerless. You CAN break free, reclaim your confidence, and set boundaries that protect your peace. Key Takeaways: ✅ What narcissism really is—and why it's more about insecurity than arrogance ✅ The dangerous cycle between narcissists and empaths (and how to break it) ✅ How childhood trauma creates patterns of addiction and self-sabotage ✅ The difference between addiction and dependency—and why it matters ✅ How to negotiate with a narcissist and stop feeding their control ✅ The parenting mistakes that lead to entitlement and emotional weakness ✅ Practical ways to rebuild confidence and create a stronger mindset At the end of the day, it all comes down to self-awareness, boundaries, and action. The people in your life should add to your energy, not drain it. If you're ready to stop playing small and start living on YOUR terms, this episode is for you. Thank you for watching this video—Please Share it and get the word out! 👉 PLEASE SUBSCRIBE TO MY YOUTUBE CHANNEL - so this show can reach more people  👈   → → SUBSCRIBE TO MY EMAIL LIST TO MAXOUT YOUR LIFE (ALL VALUE, NO FLUFF) ← ←   ➡️WEBSITE   Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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I am so grateful to this man sitting across from me who is here today for a lot of reasons. Number one, he's changed so many lives in my lifetime, and I grew up listening to him on Loveline. And so I'm really grateful to have Dr. Drew sitting in this seat, finally, across from me today. Finally, indeed. It's such a privilege. We have mutual friends,

we kind of live near each other in weird ways. It's all odd, but I'm so glad I'm here. It is odd. I wanna start out, because your version of narcissism is a little bit different than I've heard it from other people before. So what is the definition of a narcissist?

So people think about narcissism in the sort of common lexicon as being somebody that's self preoccupied or thinks a lot of themselves, which is really not typical narcissism. I mean, that it can be, that can be a way it manifests. And malignant narcissists certainly present that way, but narcissism really at its core is a feeling of being small and empty. It's an injury in childhood that leaves somebody disconnected from their core

self, It's an injury in childhood that leaves somebody disconnected from their core self such that the only way they can feel okay is to get from the environment what they need to fill that emptiness and that smallness. And oftentimes one of those strategies is to make myself feel big, you know, get my, get everyone around me to think I'm great or have lots of power or money or something. So I, I'm feeling buttressed against this inner core that is very fragile and empty. Emptiness is a very common feeling in narcissism. And so really at its core, it's a, it's a, it's a smallness and an injury and a,

and a wound. It's not a bigness and a preoccupation and a vanity because that's just what's on top to protect the core. Okay. So when you said this, the time that I heard it, it makes me emotional to say, I thought, I think I'm a narcissist. Well, pretty much everybody is today. That's the why I was working in a psychiatric,

I started working in a psychiatric hospital in 1985. And they have, we had these admitting sheets, you know, where the various diagnoses would be put down and always the personality assessment would be there too. And when I got there, there's different personality, A, B and C clusters, and they were all over the place. There are all kinds of different personalities, obsessive-compulsive personalities and dependent personalities.

Around 1988, I noticed it all started shifting to sort of cluster B and by the mid 90s, it was only cluster B, which is the narcissistic cluster. And there's a lot of literature out there and Christopher Lash predicted this, that shows that we've had this narcissistic turn where narcissism is a very, very common sort of feature of how we manage our lives these days. It's a personality style and it might be, I think, I suspect it is, the result of a whole wave of childhood trauma we went through

in the 50s, 60s and 70s. And do you think there's something like social media contributes to this form of narcissism? Like in what sense? You've written about this, but I just want them to hear your version of this because I just feel like the two things you just opened up with, one is the service of others

and how that helped my dad stay sober and others stay sober. It brings a level of just bliss to your life and value. The other side of that coin to some extent is so self-focused, so try to fill that hole that you've described. That's a never-ending treadmill that goes nowhere. That just keeps going, going, going.

And it can feel good, it can get you high, but it's a never ending treadmill that goes nowhere. That just keeps going, going, going. And it can feel good. It can get you high, but it's an addiction at that point. And you're just in it. And it never fills anything. It never really regulates. So I think there's a lot of ways to think about these conditions of the human being. But one of the things that I focus on

or like thinking about is how humans regulate. How they can connect with spontaneous affect, experience it, regulate it, share it with others. That's actually a taller, I had to have 11 years of therapy before I really got that. And me, prolonged therapy. I was, well, it's a couple things. My wife sent me in, she was like,

it's one of those, I had one of those phone conversations with her where she's like, you need to see a therapist. I'm like, oh yeah, it's one of those, I had one of those phone conversations with her where she's like, you need to see a therapist. I'm like, Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. I know I need to, yeah, I'm going to, I made me a better, you know, better to work with patients. I've shows and she just goes, look, listen to me. You need to see the hair. And I was like, Oh, got it. I put the phone down, called somebody, got a referral and started going right then. And, um, greatest experience I ever had.

And, uh, healed a lot of my own narcissistic injuries because I had narcissistic parents and that's how you get narcissistic injuries. It tends to feed on itself. I wanted to ask you about that. So I'm prepping for this. You've always seemed to me, obviously your intellect levels through the roof, but over the years, I'm like, this dude just has it together. Oh, I don't know about that.

No, but you, but you know that that's the impression, right? You know that. Let me be the first to tell you, I have generalized anxiety disorder. I had panic. Uh, I'm prone to depression. I'm, I'm it's rearing its head again lately a little bit.

Me too. Yeah. And, uh, yeah, we all are human beings and we have brains and those brains have these proclivities and, uh, I getting it, having it all together is almost anathema to me. I almost don't understand what that is. I am grateful for a ton and I've had a it all together is almost anathema to me. I almost don't understand what that is. I

am grateful for a ton and I've had a really productive, really good life. I've had the, and one of the greatest things I've had is the opportunity to see the human experience through a lens that very few people do. My days for 20 years or certainly 15 years was getting up at 5 30 in the morning, doing intensive care rounds, then hospital rounds, then outpatient medical patients. And then it would go to the psychiatric hospital and do a full day there and ended up running their addiction services. And I saw everything. You have seen it.

And it was just such a, I'm so grateful to have had that. Now I just want to give it back. I just want to give it. Cause I had this crazy experience. Well, I think you've done that. I mean, I, but I want to stay on something there. Cause you went to therapy and the reason I think it's so important that both you and I say, Hey, look, we don't have it together. Cause I think the impression probably for both of us is that we do and people come to us for advice and counsel. Right?

So being available for service and counsel is, is you don't have to have it together really to do that. But it's, it's just think about the brain, like, um, our heart, uh, although the two are deeply connected and I have a lot to say about that. Um, but I mean, we're in shape and our heart is, you know, we have a map, don't hopefully cardiac output and cardiac workloads and things. And don't think about the brain any differently, even though I may have certain proclivities in my heart, do I have heart disease in my family and who knows what's going to happen to my heart? Cause I have a heart, hearts get sick, things happen.

Same thing happens with brains, same things. Not because my heart has it all together, my brain has it all together. And you think that I want to talk about brain and heart coherence in a minute. However, stay on the brain thing for a second. So you talked about there being this injury when we're young of some type that can create this. Are most people aware of what they are? And like in your case,

so I think your dad was a GP, right? Your dad was a general practitioner. He was a family practitioner. A family practitioner. And then your uncle was actually a psychiatrist. Correct. So you had this really diverse medical background in your family.

Yet you, I've heard you talk about your dad a little bit lately and mom, and you just said it a minute ago that they both had narcissistic tendencies. I want to know how you think that impacted you. Oh, well. And by the way, when someone's listening to this, how do they know whether or not they had an impact like that as a child? Are there emotions they'd be experiencing now that are indicative of you've probably

got an injury? Yeah. There's many, many ways. Uh, I think the, the first and foremost way is I should have a piece of paper in a pen because I have so many things I want to say. Sasha, let's get a piece of paper and a pen. So, uh, how you function in relationships is numero uno. So if you are, you know, having problems, empathizing or having problem

compromising all the things that make for good relationships or being intimate, that's a sign. And that's, that's really where I was used to like say this when we, when we did love line, our craziness enters the room through a relationship. That's where you see it. That's where you see stuff. But in my case, I get, just so people have a little model for how, how I experienced it, I had sort of a, uh, as a relation to my dad, it was a very kind of, this is going to sound pejorative, but I don't mean it that way. He was like a closeted narcissist.

If you're very, everyone loved him. He was a nice guy. He was an excellent doctor, a great judgment. And thank God I inherited some of that. But, uh, I was there to serve his needs. That is narcissism. Uh, when you, when you're as a parent, you were there to be present for the child and that's it.

To be present, keep them safe and to be present and while they go out and struggle with the world, your home base that they come back to. If when that child comes back to home base, I as a parent have a bunch of needs that that child has to attend to, that's a narcissistic injury right away. That's parenting the parent.

So I lost that. And it made me highly attuned and highly effective with other narcissists because you are responsible for his feelings all the time and his feelings were protected. He would get wounded, you know, all this kind of stuff. And so I've had many narcissistic bosses that I was extremely, but I subjugated my own needs to the boss. And when you realize after a while, you're like, Hey, wait a minute, this isn't working for me. And yet the boss is always like, yes, you're the best.

You're the only one. You're the perfect. Thank you for being that guy for me. And it's so seductive when you're, when you've been in that relationship with a parent like that. It's very challenging to get out. I wanna interject one thing.

I just hope everybody listening to this is hearing this through the filter prisms of other relationships that you're currently in. Yes, for sure. Because that addictive, I'm gonna help you and serve your needs thing. hearing this through the filter of prisms of other relationships that you're currently in. Yes, for sure. Because that addictive, I'm going to help you and serve your needs thing. Or fix you or whatever it is. Our job is to be present and close.

That's it. That's what a good relationship is. Fully present, the totality of our being and body, right? The brain is embedded in the body and the body is a major part of what the brain is doing and being fully present and with the other person, uh, unavailable. And then my mom was flat out emotionally abusive. It was just like really emotionally abusive, like severely. And so that was critical and, and harsh.

Yelling and harsh. I mean, yelling, I'd only heard yelling like hers once in the whole time. I spent those 30 years in the psychiatric hospital only one time did I go, Oh, that's familiar. Really? Yeah. It's like really crazy yelling. And how did that manifest itself in your life in a good way in a bad way?

My dad's part had some good stuff to it because, you know, again, strategically, it also, well, I'll tell you, here's the good way. When you have somebody like my mom in your life, you as a child learned that your survival depends on that person, not freaking out or getting angry. You, so you would get, you get highly attuned to another person and their emotions and regulating them. Yes. That's where codependency comes from.

Okay. I'm, I'm an, was I'm, I'm over the top codependent. That's my proclivity. All right. And therapy, thank God has reestablished boundaries and I can, I can over the top codependent. That's my proclivity. All right. And therapy, thank God has reestablished boundaries and I can, I can tell the difference between another person's feelings in my own. I had trouble early on in my career. People's other people's pain I would experience so profoundly.

There's really my pain being activated, but I thought it was the other, you know, and so I'd have to save them from their pain, which is not what they need. They need you present while they build and struggle the pain against the, the injury that they've had, not a rescuer because then they're permanently in need of rescuing. Right. So, uh, that, uh, sense of taking care of other people. Once I got that regulated, oh, the, the, the side effect of that is, you stop listening to your own emotions

because you're busy looking out there and you start experiencing yourself through other people and your own primary affects are way off in the distance. If you can feel them at all. And so my work in therapy was really getting reconnected again, regulating the feelings and being fully present. And it was a great experience. I want you to know something I've done 600 shows. This is already one of my favorite conversations ever. And the reason is, this sounds really familiar to me. Well, to a lot of people, this is the thing.

So as I said, by mid-90s, it was all cluster B personality disorders, which are the narcissistic disorders. And all these years on Loveline, all I heard about was childhood injury. It's every call, because of course course it would manifest in the relationships. The other thing about these injuries is we recreate them in our present lives. And so there's something about the human Freud called it repetition compulsion.

People call people psychologists call it need for mastery over trauma. We don't know what it is. It is a wiring thing. It's some, I guarantee you it's biological because it's so reproducible and so profound, which is when, and people don't think about how they get into these recreations and I've thought a lot about it. When we've had trauma in our relationships in childhood, we are attracted to people and places that are just like the circumstances of the trauma of our past.

People will say it's an attempt to master it or make it right. I don't know. We're just attracted. It's familiar for sure. Sometimes profoundly attractive. We always tell people if you're feeling lightning bolts, attraction to something, and you've had that kind of trauma. And by the way, you've been here before.

This is a repetition. It will happen again. You're a perfect instrument. And so you get in and you get retraumatized and the whole thing gets recreated because it's the same kind of person. It's the same person that traumatized you in the first place and you're the perfect victim for that person. So you go together and a way, way it happens all over again.

You have any theory as we talk about this on percentage of people that have a high degree of happiness in their life. I think about this a lot. Like I, you did this study on the narcissistic tendencies of celebrities. have a high degree of happiness in their life. I think about this a lot. You did this study on the narcissistic tendencies of celebrities. That was pretty fascinating. You can talk a little bit about that if you want, but you and I both have worked or are around,

let's just be real, lots of very rich, successful, and famous people. And I have found the vast majority of them are in lack of some sort of bliss in their life and peace in their life. For sure. That's why I did that study. I was well, during the, you know, they'd come on love line and they would unload their stuff on me during the commercial breaks and I'd go, Oh Jesus.

And I learned quickly that people that are celebrities and we were able to prove with our study that that celebrity itself is a bid to manage narcissistic injuries, to try to repair it. Remember that I said you gotta get from the environment what you need? Yes. Never works. Never works. In addition to that, cause by the way, I've not found that just with celebrities,

I found that with just people that have produced high levels of success that potentially the external results, they're filling this hole. And by the way, I'm describing me to some extent, but not all, but many are trying to fill this hole with external achievement. Yeah.

And it can be incredibly depressing because then they get there and they're like, and even this isn't enough. And even this isn't enough. And I, I'm wondering, even with you, with what you've achieved in your life, you've had a lot of notoriety, you've had a lot of fame, you've helped a lot of people, I wonder even with you, did it fill up what you were looking for it to fill up or unconsciously looking for it to fill up?

I think who knows why I was attracted very early to using media to make a difference. That was sort of my, by thinking on it. Uh, it's interesting in recent years that same interest isn't there the same way. I'm just not as motivated. I'm not as interested. Um, even though I think it's a great outlet and a great, it can do great good. It's not as interesting. It's also become more painful.

You're always under attack and stuff. It's crazy. A lot of that crazy stuff. Um, but I look back on the things I've done and I am extremely grateful. So that gratitude feels like it did do what I wanted it to do. That was able to, you have these interesting creative experiences where I made a difference. It doesn't get better than that. And so I, it, it's the extent that it was filling something by the time. Let's see. When, when was I, I was a lot better by around 1996.

Yeah. But there's a difference drew between, and I look at this for me too. I look back at my life. Hope this is as deep for everybody else as it is for me, but I do have gratitude for the experiences I've had. I have, um, I feel blessed that I've been able to make a difference or got to have these experiences or grow in certain ways and have the understandings of myself and others that I've created. I feel like there's a butt behind that. But I didn't enjoy them as I was doing them.

Oh. In other words, it's only in retrospect. And I'm wondering this with you too. No, I enjoyed them while I was doing them. You enjoyed the journey. I loved them. I loved everything. I was so, I was enjoying and grateful all the way along. Uh, you know, there were, there's parts in my, I was severe workaholic. That was one of the other manifestations of my thing. And, and when it was really bad, there was a certain amount of dread then.

And I don't, I do not know how my wife put up with it for many years. I, I, God bless her. I don't get it, but she did. for many years. I, God bless her. I don't get it, but she did. And, uh, once I got through that dread by, by frankly, bringing other things in and doing different things. That's, that's where I learned to really appreciate. I don't like doing the same thing all the time. I like doing lots of different things. I need to be challenged.

Yeah. So, so I, I let's look, let's look at your thing for a second. So, so not feeling fulfilled along the way, but being grateful afterwards. Yeah. It's gotta be there. Just better now. I think I've had a ton of healing and I think also, um, perspective changes over time, I've done more of the work later in my life than I, I think like many people,

I was just in a hurry to get somewhere. I wasn't. Yeah, I get it. And I wanted to get somewhere. I wasn't as quickly as I could. Hey, man. The other thing I had on top of that was, you know, I was, I was just in a hurry to get somewhere I wasn't. Yeah, I get it. I understand that. I wanted to get somewhere I wasn't as quickly as I could. Hey man, the other thing I had on top of me,

my dad and his family escaped the Holodomor in Ukraine, right, and then got here just in time for the depression. And so I had all of that intergenerational trauma put down, put upon me. And that's, I think, where some of the workaholism and had to get somewhere fast kind of feeling came from. Yeah, it did for me. Now, I also have looked at myself

in terms of habits I've developed that are either addictions or dependencies. And so a lot of people listening to this, I'm so excited to ask you these questions. Is there a difference between dependency and addiction? Oh, yes, 100%. Okay. And, and there are even ways of parsing those things out.

Okay. Let's talk about that. Let's open that up a little bit. Let's, so dependency, let's just talk about opiates because opiates can make any human dependent. In other words, if you take an opiate in high enough dose long enough, you will need more to get the effect over time and you will have withdrawal when you stop. Okay. long enough, you will need more to get the effect over time and you will have withdrawal when you stop.

Okay. An addict, when that happens to them and they stop, become permanently preoccupied and the motivations, the motivational system in the brain becomes focused on getting that drug back. So it's a motivational disturbance. A person who's dependent, while they're dependent, can look like a drug addict. They're trying to avoid withdrawal, they're trying to get drugs, they start manipulating a line to get the drugs, but when they stop, they stop

and they stay stopped. While an addict always goes back or switches to something else, because that motivational thing, once the switch is thrown, it's on. What have you're addicted to, like a person? Okay, so a little more complicated. Okay, so a lot of that out there, but there's a lot, right? So I think a lot of people, I don't have a drug addiction. I don't have an alcohol addiction, but you might have one with something else. And for me, I think my addiction was somewhat healthy in to the extent that I do think work became my drug became my addiction. By the way, now that I'm for me, interestingly, um, I've, I personally

will share that I have another overlay on the addictive quality of my work. And I've talked to you about, I was traumatized by my dad and stuff, but, um, I think it was also fighting away depression because now when I'm working less, I, I, I like that high of working a lot. And as it goes down, I start feeling the mood sink. Gosh, yeah. So I kind of think I, there's probably a sweet spot in there somewhere, but it needs to be a little more than I'm doing right now.

I told my wife this the other day and she's like, what? I'm like, I just, just what I need. It's just my thing. It's same here. Yeah. I wish you could fix this for me, but you have the same job. Well, my perhaps a medicine can help both of us, but I'm not going to do my thing. It's same here. Yeah. I wish you could fix this for me, but you have the same job. Perhaps a medicine can help both of us, but I'm not going to do that.

And in the meantime, we work out and we exercise and we sleep right. We eat, right? And all of the things that do help mood to the people that are prone this way. But I think, um, I don't know, we may have to make peace with this and be okay with having to work and be, and just make sure it's work. That's good and fulfilling. What if your addiction though is a person or a relationship or by the way, love, just people in general. It happens a lot.

This is now where this thing gets shared all over the planet right now, right? Because I really do feel like there's, at least in my own life, I have some friends that I know have chemical addictions. I do. They're in my life. I love them. Well, they're dependent trending towards addiction. I think I have a couple that are addicted based on your definition. Yeah. Well, let me define it. Addiction. So that was dependency. Addiction is a disease.

Addiction has a genetic basis. You see a family history. There's some sort of inciting influence, typically trauma. It has a characteristic pathophysiology in the brain that pathophysiologists are reflected in signs and symptoms, using and pursuing and whatever, and those signs and symptoms progress in a very predictable way. We call that a natural history and the whole thing has a predictable response to treatment. That's the disease of addiction. That's actually a definition of disease generally and addiction fits it perfectly. The question is, is addiction

a disease or a syndrome? That's the only legitimate question you can ask about it. Because it has a common genetic basis and common pathophysiology, I call that a disease. Do you believe that there's a, on drugs or alcohol, do you believe there's a chemical predisposition to be genetic? Genetic. Genetic. My dad did too. So you don't- I see, I've treated thousands and thousands of addicts. I can

only think of like five where I couldn't see a clear cut family history. So then based on that definition, I would say I have more friends that are dependent upon other people than they are addicted to them. That's the challenging thing about talking about relationship as addiction. I bristle a little bit at the overuse of the addiction construct. Though it's very useful when it comes to sex and love. It's very useful. Now, it's not a formal diagnosis. It's not the DSM-5.

It is a construct that people use to help people manage these behaviors and these experiences we call drug, excuse me, sex and love addiction. Now, if you are a sex and love addict and you have a chemical addiction, it's all the same thing. Yeah. And you have to get it all treated.

It's all a disease state because you can go from sex to cannabis to opiates to alcohol. You just switch around all you want. You're still doing the same thing with your brain. And it's hard to activate throwing the switch. As I was saying, like you, you have that genetic switch that finally gets thrown in the shell, the nucleus accumbens hard to do that with behaviors. It's hard. Usually a chemical throws it first.

Then you go to gambling, then you go to sex. It just, it's just, you're, you're just, you're, you know, you can't go over here because that'll kill you. So your brain goes, yeah, but this horse races, that's the big deal. It's just a pastime. Right? No, I'm laughing, but you're right. Yeah. You're right.

Yeah. It's how it's the unc, the crazy thing about the addiction is your brain starts, it's thinking that's effed up in, in, in addiction that your brain convinces you certain things are good when it's just that motivational system. That's, that's the problem. So a lot of sex and love addiction is a, is a challenging construct. Um, you know, I, I worry about the over utilization. If you're interested in it, uh, Pia Melody has some great books on it. Uh, I think it's called overcoming love addiction or facing love addiction.

And, uh, she talks about the love addiction level avoidance cycle and the cycles of abuse. She's all lots of great constructs in there that you will see yourself in. If there's any sense that you have one of these things. And again, they're very common built off trauma again. Uh, and, and there's various ways to manage it. Um, if you are somebody that keeps getting yourself in situations that are really problematic, either the relationships are not working or you're getting hurt physically or emotionally,

you want to look at this. You want to look at it. And it's, it's useful to think of it as a sex and love addiction sometimes. And the one thing that I mentioned it earlier, how you'll be attracted to circumstances and people that always end up being the same. Your body's a perfect instrument if you've had that trauma and you will be attracted to these things and you'll just do it over and over and over again. So when you feel lightning bolts, if you're that person that has this pattern, be aware of the lightning bolts, uh, the lightning bolts of attraction. They call it the coup de foudre en français and it's, it's gonna be

the same thing all over again. What do you do beyond looking at it with something else you can do so you can look at it, but then there's something you got to physically change, right? Yeah. I always tell people, look, you can, you can, it depends. You know, it's always hard for me. A lot of this I get when I'm just talking to people on telephone and things. It's hard for me to tell how serious it is, but I say, well, you can give yourself a try.

Try to start dating people you're not having lightning bolts with. You're just having butterflies and see if you can hang with it. Or do you sabotage those relationships? Because the nature of the trauma makes it really difficult to have real intimacy. And so intimacy becomes uncomfortable and boring and weird and all these kinds of feelings. And so they either leave or sabotage or something. And so if you can't stay with a relationship that is not a lightning bolt relationship, you have to get treatment.

Okay. Now you want, you can do various things. You can go to a 12 step program. I think this kind of thing is best professionally managed and trauma therapy does tremendous EMDR, things like that. Tremendous and quick. You start being attracted to and by different kinds of people. Do you? Wow. Now when someone's going to get therapy, by the way, people advertise on the show for it as well. But is there any advice you would give to have the right type of therapist?

Meaning is there something about them? Yeah, these are hard things. Referrals are helpful. Uh, you shouldn't, it is certainly not the beginning. You shouldn't love your therapist or feel better necessarily after therapy. You're the idea is not to feel better. The idea is to heal and that often feels not so good for a while. It's, it should be challenging.

Now a good therapist should give you tolerable doses of that. So you're not miserable and you're not depressed. You're just, you're not, you should be challenged. You should be challenging. And should they have a name of some type? Well, that's where I was going to go. And so, you know, the, the sort of, the best thing is if you have a PsyD, PhD or MD after the names, I think LCSWs make excellent therapists also. So is there training?

It's something about the kind of person that becomes a licensed clinical social worker and their training. Just they make X, I've hired a million of them, excellent therapists. Uh, and this just seems to be a consistent thing. I always worry that it's just in Southern California or something, because that's where I work with all these people. Right. But it's been my, my own therapist is an LCSW and I was just, was outstanding.

Okay. So you, you, you know, the level of expertise is generally better. The MDs rarely do therapy. So it's really hard to find an MD that does this stuff. Yeah, they refer it out. They, they refer it out, but they often know who to send to that are good. Okay. So you can. So one of the ways, ideal ways to do this, if you have the resources and insurance and stuff, first get a psychiatric evaluation. You know, what is my diagnosis? What's going on here? And given that construct, what kinds of treatment are going to be most likely to help me now? Most people don't do that, right?

And it's always you know, I always worry that you know, I Both worry that the MD is kind of over prescribed the meds And I also worry that people that need meds never get to the MD and you know wonder why they don't get better might Really need it. Hopefully somebody enlightened will be judicious and careful and not throw meds on everybody It's not the way to go. They're useful and sometimes very important. Not all the time. Uh, and then if you have trauma, you need to be with somebody with a really ideally LCSW side D PhD after their name, uh, who has explicit trauma therapy

and look for things like EMDR and various kinds of, you know, there's all kinds of ways not to hook the brain on the body up. It's all about getting the brain and the body reintegrated. Well, that's where I want to go. Yeah. So I want to talk about heart, brain, what I call coherence or whatever. And you said you wanted to talk about that a little bit today. So one of the, I said earlier that I've done a lot of work and some of that work

has been therapy, reading, having friends like you in my life that I taught, literally I've just become more self-aware. And a lot of times just my awareness of some of my behavior patterns, it's lost some of its power over me. A hundred percent. That's why, that's why there's a whole category in treatment, frankly, called psycho education. Okay. And interesting in my early, my therapy, I had to understand what was happening before I felt comfortable going in.

So I read a ton of stuff before the therapist was like, why do you, why do you, I just, I need to understand. I just need to. Well, for me, it was, it wasn't just that it was like, I've produced an externally really pretty good life. And I was afraid if I'm being candid, that if I changed some of these patterns that I had in my life, that although maybe I have a little bit more of that in peace, but I'd lose my edge. I lose my success. By the way, I think my audience listening resonates with what I just said deeply. But here's the thing about treatment and healing.

Your brain hates change. Our brain fight changes just the way we hate. We don't want our arm cut off. We don't want to change fundamentally who our brain thinks we are. But you have to be prepared to become whoever you're supposed to be. Wow.

And that is a really hard thing for people to do. I went through it myself. It's, it's, you have to kind of let go, uh, and let things happen and it, your brain fights you. And that's kind of why, when I recommend professionals get involved, that's, that's their skillset is working around and through those resistances. That's one of the most important things someone said, because what I ended up finding out, because this is like an achiever audience overall, right?

I ended up finding out that in fact, I externally produced way more abundance in my life when I had patterns that served me in my life and I gave myself the gift of a little bit more equanimity and peace in my life. And I gave myself the gift of a little bit more equanimity and peace in my life. One of the things I did also work on though, was what I would, I'd like you to elaborate on it cause you'd be better at it than me. But I've worked on small things all the way

to like my breathing. Oh, sure. To, you know, alter my HRV rates so that I've got a little bit more heart and brain coherence which most people don't know about. So just riffed on that. Well, I just, there's a guy named Stephen Porges. Okay.

If you want to read about the neurobiology of attachment and regulation, Alan Shore is your guy and Peter Fonagy, who really has worked out this, uh, socio-emotional exchange system, which is something that's, um, evolutionarily built into not just who are our bodies, but actually into our development. And so there's, I'm going to have trouble explaining this in a way that's cohesive, but I'm going to try the, the brain, the base of the brain, the

brainstem, the cranial nerves and the autonomic and parasympathetic nervous systems all developed together and are embedded in the face, the ear, the vocal cords through something called the brachial pouches, which is these things that develop into our face and neck and whatever, and the sympathetic outflow to our heart and gut. Okay. And it turns out it's obviously the face and our voice and our ear is how we

exchange emotionality. We are exquisitely sensitive to what's going on other people's faces. And what goes on in our faces can have micro, micro changes that the other person, maybe even not on a conscious level is able to read and receive as, as information about the other person's emotional states. So this, this, we, we ultimately learn to regulate our emotions through being in and around other people.

Our identity comes from being in and around other people. We, you know, we have, like we said, the brain is embedded in the body, but the brain body is embedded in a social system. And how it manifests, you mentioned earlier about, you know, trends and things and how they affect people. They do. I'm interested in that.

I'm not an expert in that, but I read a lot about that stuff these days. History is one of my weak spots. I've read a ton about it, trying to make sense of it all. But the socio-emotional exchange system is also connected through various nuclei in the brainstem to the vagus nerve, the gut, and then the sympathetic outflow, some like 70 or 80% of the Vegas is an inflow to the brain.

When I went to medical school, we were taught, well, that Vegas is a system that, you know, decreases your, you know, maybe changes your acid secretion, your stomach and slows your heart down. Right. No, 70% of it is getting information from your body and taking it back to the brain. To the brain. It goes that way. It's crazy. It goes that way. And it's deeply embedded in this socio-emotional exchange system. And he has all this data about how heart rates change and breathing change with our emotional states. It's from infancy. From infancy. Infancy. What have you done in that world for yourself?

Do you do... I like the breathing stuff? I try to do that I'm not a religious My thing has been the the psychotherapeutic process I'm not quite sure where I'm going with this but as it pertains to breathing and heart rate and facial expressions and stuff I know when I'm around great therapists that are highly attuned to their patients because when I see them work or I interact with them, I noticed I start breathing with them too. Interesting. My, my, literally my heart rate of breathing starts sinking up with that other

person. And, and I, and I, and when I become aware of, I've actually been, this one woman who I've become close with who treats, treats sex addiction, actually, I saw her in a video working with a patient and I noticed it was happening to me. And I went, Oh, this woman has got no way it was got powers. And so I got to know her and lower and behold, you know, she really is an exquisite therapist and they can just be fully present and attuned to that person on not just a attentive attentional level, but your whole body is an instrument.

And if you've ever been in a therapeutic process where your body is present like that, it's weird. Not, I've been the subject of it as a patient and I've helped other people by being the antenna and you experience things and smell things and hear things that are not yours. And you know it because you've never experienced these things before.

And they're really the, I'll, I'll tell you a story in a second about one of my favorite story with this. I tell it all the time, but the real art in, in the therapeutic process is not just you receiving, listening with your whole body, I call that, but knowing when to bring it in the room. In other words, when to go, you know, I'm having an experience. And I'll tell you a story about that. I had this guy that was severely traumatized and usually it's traumatized parts of the self that are needing attention that aren't the patient isn't

even aware, isn't there in the room with that patient at the time, it's sort of a wall off part of themselves that's screaming for some kind of attention. And, uh, this guy was coming in and as he would sit down every day, I started hearing the opening riff on Mad Men. I was like, where is that coming from? Like, I don't hear that normally. And I was like, well, isn't that interesting? And damn it, every time he would start,

when we walked in the room, well, then it got weirder. Then as we were working together, it wasn't that long, there were a few visits, I started feeling like I was that shadowy character falling through the buildings, right? Like, so I had that feeling and I was like, whoa, this is interesting, but I didn't bring it up with the patient

because he was talking about horrible trauma and all these horrible things that happened to him. And then about halfway through one all these horrible things that happened to him. And then, um, about halfway through, uh, one of these visits later, uh, music kicked in, I'm falling and all of a sudden I experienced myself as a baby falling through these buildings. As I talk about it now, it constricts my chest. It was an overwhelming experience. I couldn't, I couldn't stay with it.

It was like, it just took my breath away. It's like this incredibly traumatic feeling. And, and I thought I have to bring it in there. I have to, I have to bring it up. And I said, listen, I actually interrupted him. He was telling another traumatic story. I said, look, I'm having an experience and I'm wondering if this is meaningful to you.

And I told him what I've been experiencing. He became furious, stormed out of the room. You and your psychobabble. How dare you? You think you know what you're talking about? And just ran out of the room. Whoa. And I thought, hmm, maybe that wasn't the right time

to bring that in. Comes back in the next day and he sits down calmly and says, how did you know? He goes, how did you know? All I hear is the baby, the baby, the baby screaming in my head. It's going all the time. I, and, and it was, and because of the depth of that attunement, he and I were, he trusted

me. And then by the way, if you've been traumatized, trust is a big deal. He, we were able to kind of work together for a while. And I, and I always see that. Wow. Yeah. And so I would get people in, in working with people with trauma and addiction and stuff, I'm always getting them at the front end at the beginning of their treatment.

And I really always conceived of my role, my one other than get them through the medical stuff to teach them that you could be a fully appreciated. I can fully experience you and you can trust that you can stay close to another person and they don't abuse, they don't, it's nothing. You just be, they'll be there for you. Wow.

Makes me emotional. Just thinking about it. Yeah. It makes me emotional just thinking about it. Yeah. It makes me emotional. Yeah. And, um, the part of it that makes me emotional is that to understand how connected humans can actually be together. It's unbelievable. Right.

Unbelievable. Right. Right. And so when you ask can, can, and that's, and you know, it's weird, it's right. It's almost psychic-y kind of stuff. And every therapist who does this kind of work has had these experiences where you feel a pain somewhere that's not yours or you hear music or you see something.

And, but of course then we, we affect each other on a macro scale too, right? I don't understand why there are these huge trends, you know, why it happens. I'm trying to understand that. And it feels to me like it's sort of French revolution type trend, you know, why it happens. I'm trying to understand that. Uh, and it feels to me like it's sort of French revolution type trend, you know, like where there people are bringing out guillotines and things. Same here.

It's no secret on the show. I've been talking now for a few years. I'm sort of obsessed with sleep. And the reason I'm obsessed with sleep is it affects your HRV, which is one of the most important health metrics in the world, but also life longevity. But every anti-aging expert I've had on says the number one thing that will be a determinant in the longevity of your life in their mind is sleep. Plus it affects your energy level, your cognition, fat burning, you name it. And now I have found Helix, which has helped me tremendously. The number one thing that was affecting my sleep was my back pain, and I wasn't sleeping through the night.

I was getting too hot at night, can't dial the temperature in in the room and so Helix has changed all of that. If you check out Helix, I think you'll agree with me that your sleep is going to improve. Best mattress on the planet with all of the bells and whistles attached to it. It's designed for your sleep. Go to helixsleep.com slash ed for 27% off site-wide. That's helixsleep.com slash ed for 27% off sitewide. That's helixsleep.com forward slash ed for 27% off sitewide. helixsleep.com forward slash ed. This show is sponsored by BetterHelp. Who's your support system?

For me, it's my family and friends. And you know, one of the things I get asked often is, what are all 800 people that have been guests on your show have in common? And not all of them have this in common, but the thing that would surprise most been guests on your show have in common? And not all of them have this in common, but the thing that would surprise most people that many of them have in common is they've been to therapy, including myself. That's something most people don't talk about. Therapy can help you from things like you're working through some trauma from childhood or

a difficulty that you're going through right now, but it could also be just to get clarity of thought, a sense of direction in your life. Talk out loud about your goals and dreams or your issues and problems with somebody. Therapy from BetterHelp is helpful because you can do it online. And if you don't vibe with your therapist, you can switch out any time and get one that you do work with well. You can access a diverse network of 30,000 credentialed therapists, a wide range of specialties and easily switch, like I said. So build your support system at BetterHelp. Visit BetterHelp.ed show to get 10% off your first month that's better h e l p dot com slash ed show that's better help h e l p dot com slash ed show this is a PSA or public sock announcement experts have declared bombas socks as the best way

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You'll never miss an episode that way. I have a really unique woman on my show. Once she's one of the top attorneys in the country, but then it's sort of morphed over this time into an expert. I would call it on negotiating life. And we're gonna talk about a lot of things there. We're gonna talk about toxic people in your life. We're gonna talk about narcissists in your life.

How do I identify them? A lot of you have them. When I was researching the show today, I'm like, wow, that friend of mine is somewhere on the spectrum of being a narcissist. That one is, and I wonder even if I am in some cases. And so I'm really honored to share Rebecca Zung with everybody today.

Rebecca, welcome to the show. Thank you. Thanks for having me. The narcissist thing that you've been talking about lately is Rebecca Zung with everybody today. Rebecca, welcome to the show. Thank you. Thanks for having me. The narcissist thing that you've been talking about lately is how to negotiate with a narcissist. But to me, when I hear narcissists, correct me if I'm wrong, I think there's degrees of narcissism in life.

But it's also for me, a lot of people listening to this are in different relationships, business relationships, personal relationships, and how to identify whether or not this person is toxic to you, or just detrimental to your life or whether or not they're a benefit to your life. So what is narcissism to start out with and are there varying degrees of it?

Yeah, I mean, to me, a narcissist is a person who has a very fragile sense of self. It's the person who is the absolute most insecure person in the world. They have no inner sense of value. So therefore they have to get all of their sense of value from external sources, from either the adulation, from external sources, from either the adulation, from prestige, from people giving them compliments, from all of the things that you think about when you think of that.

But what I call the dark underbelly of that is that control, devaluing, debasing people, degrading people, that's the other side of that is that, you know, that control, devaluing, debasing people, degrading people, you know, that's the other side of that as well. So that's, you know, the one side of that. And then, you know, the other side of that is that they therefore have no ability to have any sense of compassion or care or empathy for other people. And that is because it's scarcity mentality to the extreme.

If I give to anybody else, therefore, I can't have or I won't have. So that's really what a narcissist is all the way to the end of the spectrum. And as you said, you know, I do believe that all of us, to varying degrees have some sense of that. We've all had some feeling of insecurity at times. We all want to feel seen, hurt, and know that we matter. That's part of being human. And so it's when it becomes pathological.

It's when it becomes, you know, that's the only way that you feel. So brilliant. I want to stay on it because listen, what's the most important things in our lives is obviously our sense of self. And we, like, as you said, people want to be seen and heard and felt

and they want to express themselves. They want to feel valued. That's healthy. That's okay. But right now, if you're listening to this or you're watching this, you may be in a relationship where you're like, is this the one? Or maybe you're even married and you're thinking, why are we not happier together? Maybe it's a business relationship that you have, people that work with you, for you, or a boss of yours. And so I want to hone in on this idea

that, because for me, I started to really, when I'm reading about this people start flashing well you know that that particular person in my life man they are so addicted to attention so addicted to getting accolades and admiration externally and will do almost anything to get it even do things to their own detriment so how do we distinguish between the unhealthy and the healthy I want to ask you specifically about something. When I was kind of ranking people that I know, including myself on this spectrum, so to speak, because I think there's a point where now

no longer is this person healthy in my life. They become toxic. There's a line there. And for me, the other sign of the aggressive narcissist or the more severe one, is they also will never take responsibility for any of their behavior. They immediately make you think you're the crazy one.

Well, what about you? And they constantly turn the frame and put it back on you. Everyone right now that knows someone like this is going, I know that person. Do you think that's where you distinguish the line that this person is unhealthy because they won't take any responsibility for this addictive behavior for attention

and admiration and accolades? Is responsibility one of the quotients we should be looking at. I mean, I think there's a number of different types of lines and I think it depends on the type of relationship that you're in with that person as well. I mean, is it a work relationship? Is it an intimate relationship? You know, I think it really kind of depends. I mean, are you in a business relationship with this person? Is this person like in your finances? Are they in your space?

You know, I mean, or is it kind of a more of a casual relationship? I think it really kind of depends. You know, how much control do they have over you? You know, but if, you know, you are feeling where, you know, the hairs on the back of your neck are feeling where the hair is on the back of your neck or up, your gut reaction is not feeling good. You're feeling like this relationship is not working for you in some way. I mean, I know for me, I had a very minor business

with a person, a business relationship where I had gone into a business partnership with someone. Thank God it didn't go very far and the business didn't really make any money. But it was enough that it absolutely made my life completely miserable. It was a covert narcissist. And right from the beginning, I saw red flags, but I kind of ignored them because I was like, well, but this person seems so nice.

And but yet I knew that there were these flags and I let them go. And I thought that I could overcompensate for them. And I thought that, well, there's these other things that seem good. And I continued. Exactly, yes. You know, and I ignored them because I thought that I could make up for them in other ways. And because I did that, I paid for it so dearly.

And it ended up to be one of the absolute worst nightmares of my entire life. And you know, most of the time with these people, you know from the beginning that it's not good. You said something in there, Rebecca, I just wanna jump in and ask you about it. Because to me, you said such a great distinction between business and personal.

Personal for me, one of the things I measure is, how much of my energy am I using to have to feed this person's ego and prop them up? Right now, if you're in a relationship, friendship, personal intimate relationship with somebody, measure it. How much of your energy time thinking goes to having to prop up their ego constantly, right? And how much energy are you expanding?

And is it a never ending thing you're doing? You wanna do that the rest of your life. Business sometimes though, to your point, I'm locked in now and I may need to be dealing with them for a while. Maybe I do need to exit, but if you can't, you have to deal with someone who's got some form of narcissism. You have this thing you say that is so brilliant. I want, if you'd cover two of them at once, one is slay and the other one is sort of this related as this sort of how to ethically manipulate

the manipulator. Would you sort of touch on that? So I'm in a business relationship. I can't exit it right now. How do I negotiate and deal with on all different settings? Someone who has one of these forms of narcissism? Yeah. Well, I mean, those are kind of both related with each other.

Okay. So, I mean, SLEI is, you know, developing a super strong strategy and creating invincible leverage, anticipating what they're going to be doing, and then focusing on you and your position and your case. And this is if you're having to negotiate with this person, and I call it,

and you're ethically manipulating the manipulator throughout the entire process, because these people are master manipulators. You know, I always go back to the Malcolm Gladwell 10,000 hour thing, you know, where he talks about how it took 10,000 hours to become good at something. These people, 10,000 hours was like, they hit that at toddler. I mean, they were doing this long ago, long ago. They're very good at what they do.

They know exactly how to push your buttons. They know exactly how to trigger you. They've been reading you from the beginning. And, you know, so a lot of times people beat themselves up over, like, how did I fall into this thing? How did I fall prey to this? Well, they know how to read you. They know how to, you know, manipulate you.

So you have to learn how to take what it is that motivates them, which is their need for narcissistic supply, which is anything that feeds their ego and use that to manipulate them in order to create leverage. I mean, this is within the context of actually negotiating with them for people who are negotiating with them. Well, everything's a negotiation, though. And so every single day, you may have a boss who's got a form of narcissism. And so what she's talking about with Sleigh is being very aware, right, and being cognizant of, listen, oftentimes you have to there's got to be compliments.

There's got to be feeding them and then sticking in there what you need or that you want. Right, so a good example of that, you know, not to cut you off, but I want to give you, I want you to, please, I want to give a good example of what exactly you're talking about. So a good example of that would be something that I call bartering. So bartering in the real world is, you know, an exchange of goods and services, you know, without money. So what does value look like to a narcissist? Well, it's adulation. That is the grade A diamond level supply for a narcissist.

So in the narcissism world, supply is what they feed on. It's their lifeblood. It's their food. It's their oxygen. It's anything that feeds their ego. But within that world of narcissism, there is a hierarchy of this supply. So you know, there's the good food, there's, you know, that prime rib of beef or whatever, you know, there's the grade A, and then there's, you know, like the scraps of food or whatever. So like the prime prime rib or the good food or whatever is the adulation. It's, you know, and so if you want something, you might want to say, you might want to give them some adulation. So you might want to say, you might want to give them some adulation.

So you might want to say something like, if you want them to get, you know, do the QuickBooks or something, hey, can you do the QuickBooks? You are so much better at it than I am. You know, you are way better at math and figures and you'll get it done so much faster. I'm terrible with that.

And then you beef up their ego. They'll like wanna do it. Yeah, you're right. I am so much better at it. They get motivated, they'll get it done. You get something you want and everybody is happy. And so a lot of people think, oh, but I don't, I hate them.

And now you're playing into their ego, blah, blah, blah. Well, but if you want them to do something, then you've got to like think about what it is that's going to motivate them, right? Yes, you may have a, you may be in a situation where you say, well, manipulate's a strong word. Oftentimes manipulating somebody to do things for their own good, I've had to manipulate family members of mine to go see a doctor and then they found out they had cancer. Thank God I had the ability to put the words together, the emotions together to persuade them to go do something for their own benefit. So you may not be able to escape some of these situations that you're in.

And so these are things that are important. You do need to learn how to do them and now I want to ask you about confronting someone and again guys there's degrees of narcissism, there's degrees of being self-centered, degrees of ego. We all have a little bit of it all the way to this point where it's not really healthy and we're gonna talk in a minute by the way we're gonna talk about how to get what you want regardless of who you're interacting with but what would your recommendation be about, you are interacting with someone who is behaving and acting out in a way that doesn't serve them

or you business or personal. Is there any upside in confronting a narcissist directly about their behavior? Or do you believe that that's completely useless use of energy and words? Well, I mean, there's no upside to going you know, going up to them and saying, you're a narcissist and I'm referring more about their behavior. Hey, listen, this thing you're doing here, here and her doesn't serve you or I, or if

you've already identified them as somebody who's a narcissist, are they not going to own it in any way, shape or form anyways? No, you're not going to get them to say, uh, uh, you're right. I'm so sorry. You know, blah, blah, blah. You're totally wasting your breath and your energy by trying to get them to do that. You know, you might as well, you know, go pound sand or whatever. I mean, you know, I guess, I guess it's important, Rebecca, just because I think people are constantly doing this with people in their

lives that are this way. Like, Hey, listen, just change this, just change this. And then what they like to do is they like to turn the lens and go, but you, you and you. So that's the other part I wanted to ask you. They start sending you a list of the 18 things you're doing wrong. How do you recommend you reply or respond to somebody who's got that personality type? Who's then sort of, I wouldn't call it attacking, but turning the lens on to you, do you recommend you reply specifically to all the things they're saying you're doing wrong,

or how would you best reply to somebody, business or personal? I mean, what I recommend is, you know, a lot of times I say, you know, you wanna reply in a way that's very, very, very specific. So for example, they've sent a very, very long email and a lot of times it's calculated to trigger you in a certain way. And you know, it might be 18 pages long. And there may be

one line in there that you have to respond to, like, you know, what time are we going to meet on Wednesday or something like that. And that's actually, when you distill it down, that's the only thing you actually need to respond to. And so you can, and a lot of times people are like, but I need to respond to it because I don't want the judge to be seeing this. I don't want this to be used down the road in court. I don't want this to be some trial exhibit.

I need to defend myself, you know, all that sort of thing. So what I will say is, you can respond with something like this. Thank you for your email. I am in receipt of it. I deny all of the allegations here in and we can meet at 3 p.m. on Wednesday. Sincerely. That's it. So reply to the smallest possible, most necessitated item in there. Whether that's personal email, legal business or otherwise. That's your advice.

I've received it. I deny it. Here's the only other thing I need to respond to. Really good. All right, so that's dealing with them. Now let's talk about dealing with our lives. So the first thing you wrote was about, negotiating as if you matter.

And so I wanna talk about now about negotiating our lives and getting what we want in life, because that's ultimately why everybody's listening to my show. They want more happiness, more money, more success, more peace of mind, more whatever it might be. So a broad question to begin with, what are some of the keys you believe in life to negotiating the life that you want? What are some of the keys you would suggest? The best lessons that I ever learned myself is I learned this from one of my business, well, the main business coach that I've had who's now become one of my best friends.

She taught me something. I'm gonna tell you what the lesson is and I'm gonna tell you what the story was. She taught me that people will think what you tell them to think. And I get to tell you the story of how she taught me this. And it's actually a great lesson for negotiating, but it's also a great lesson for life. So what happened was I had been practicing law for about eight years. And then I left the practice of law for about two years to go be a financial advisor, wealth advisor.

I spent two years with Morgan Stanley. I got my Series 7, my 66. And I thought, oh, I'll have an easier lifestyle. I had a little child at the time. My daughter, who's now 19, was young. And I was like, oh, I'll have a better, better hours, which didn't really work out that way. So after about two years, a friend of mine was leaving her law practice and she was moving out of the area. And she said, I've got this, these clients, if you want, you can take over

my client base and start your own practice. So I was like, okay, well, people are not going to be dropping law practices in my lap on a regular basis. I mean, I'm taking, you know, this opportunity. So I decided to take over this law practice. And I'm talking to my business coach and I was like, the people in this town are gonna think I am such a flake. Like, this girl is a lawyer, now she's a financial advisor, now she's back to being a lawyer. Like this girl does not know what she wants.

And my business coach said, people will think what you tell them to think. So true. And she said, you can tell them to think that you're a flake and you don't know what you want. Or you can tell them to think that you're the only lawyer that has a financial background. So you are actually more qualified than any of the other lawyers in town because you've got this financial background and what other family law attorney has that? So good.

And I was like, oh yeah, I guess I could do that. And so I started to kind of hold myself out as that. And I can't tell you how many people ended up hiring me because that's how I held myself out. I love this. I have to tell you something. I have to acknowledge something when like wisdom is preached. So I just I got brilliant. And just last night, I was mentoring.

I have a one of the business. I'm a there was a financial firm. I was mentoring a. And just last night I was mentoring, I have a financial, one of the businesses I'm affiliated, it was a financial firm. I was mentoring a very young guy last night and I told him, I just want to second what you said. I said, listen, most people are busy with their own lives. You can create the story. And if you tell them what to believe, they're going to believe it 98% of the time. I said, I learned this because later in my career, I ended up working with a series of doctors and the doctor said to me, he said,

Ed, listen, when you're dealing with doctors, it's different than dealing with other clients. We're really busy. We just want you to tell us what we need to do, what we need to think and let us do it so we can go back to working with our patients. And I said, really, you want me to kind of, he goes, tell us, tell us and ask us simultaneously, say things like, obviously we need to take these steps. And you create the frame, pre frame what you're going to tell me, tell me what this means, then mean it, and then when you're done, tell me what you just told me and what it meant. So pre-frame, frame it, and then post-frame it.

So I started to do it, and everyone was buying. And I said to him about six months later, I said, you know what I found out? It's not just doctors, it's everybody. I should have been doing this the entire time with everything in my life. Pre-framing what this means for everybody, then framing it. And then when I'm done saying, this is what you just heard and what it meant and you create the meaning. And so this is something for you.

You get no lesson out of this entire TV show. What Rebecca just told you is absolute truth on how to get what you want in your life. It's key number one in your life. Let me ask you about this number two. When I listen to you and I've watched your content. So Rebecca's got content that's very diverse. She's got stuff on divorce. She's got stuff on negotiation. She's got stuff on narcissism. She's also been a TV personality, which you'll get interviewed when a high profile person's going through something. And so she's learned to communicate in different settings. One-on-one, financial, courtroom, television, podcast.

You're an unbelievable communicator. How much of persuasion for you has just been your personal certainty level, just actual certainty in the way you deliver a message? Are you conscious of that, or was that just sort of like a natural gift you had when you started practicing law? conscious of that or was that just sort of like a natural gift you had when you started practicing law? My father used to say, my father was from China actually, and he came over here when he was 14 and he went to Columbia, a university undergrad and medical school. And you know,

he was the only Chinese guy actually in those days and you know it was a big deal And he used to say to me Whatever you say say it with authority and people will believe you and he just kind of you know Groomed me that way like even if you don't know the answer Don't lie me just say I don even if you don't know the answer, don't lie. Just say, I don't know. I will get you the answer, but you say it with authority. Like and so I don't know. I just think that he, he was, even as a girl, like he just was like always believed in me in that way. And I was really, really fortunate to have a father who was, who believed in me in that way.

I think there's things, Rebecca, I think some people, I watch this on my show all the time. It's fascinating to me that certain people are great at something and they're almost unaware of their greatness at it. And I think this is the case with you. You have a massive degree of certainty when you communicate. It's almost like you have a style when you speak.

It's almost like, and I mean, this is a compliment. There's a way in which you deliver a message. My audience is gonna nod when I say this. Do you have a style of communicating? It's almost like there's a tone to it that you're almost an idiot if you don't believe what I'm saying right now. That's almost what it sounds like.

It's that depth of certainty. It's not arrogance. It's not condescending, but it's an expression of certainty that's almost like you're, you just don't get it if you don't agree with me. That's what it sounds like. Well, I appreciate that. I mean, I certainly haven't always felt that way, though. I mean, you know, for people that have followed me, you know, they, they know that I've certainly had my share of, you know, stumbles in my life. You know, I, I got married at 19 the first time I had three kids. By the time I was 22, I dropped out of college. I went, you know, I got divorced. I went back to law school at night. You know, I met my husband,

my current husband in law school. I got married again. I had another child. I have four kids, you know. So I certainly like have, I feel like I've had my share of, you know, bootstrapping and getting, you know, where I need to be. You know, I was bullied as a kid for being half Asian.

I talk a lot about that. You know, I've had to deal with these narcissists in my life. And, you know, I definitely have been I've tried to be as authentic as I can to so that people understand that it hasn't always come easy for me. You know, I've definitely had to deal with my own struggles for sure. Because I want people to understand, like, I'm a human being, too. And if I could do it, anyone can do it.

It's amazing what you've accomplished. I mean, I don't know if everyone could do it, anyone can do it. It's amazing what you've accomplished. I mean, I don't, everyone just flew by, but this is a woman who's married at 19, three kids, drops out of school. And you fast forward, Bob Shapiro writes the foreword to her book, one of the most powerful, influential attorneys of all time. I've met Bob a few times, founded LegalZoom.

She's television personality. She's a sought after, she's one of the sought after experts in the world on negotiation. And it's a remarkable journey. And I'm curious, did you have you done anything specifically that you would share with us to work on your self confidence because you are at least externally a very strong, very confident woman. But now I'm picturing this little girl who's half Asian getting bullied at school. I'm picturing

this mom running around the house with three screaming babies at any given time in her early twenties, probably not in the best marriage at that time. You know, I'm picturing this, you know, precious lady at those times of her life. And then you flash forward and we have what we have in front of us right now. What have you done to change you, change your confidence? Oh, I mean, I, I always joke like that, you know, like I never leave my thoughts unsupervised.

Whoa, whoa, very good. What do you mean by that? Audiobooks, you know, just always making sure I'm working on self-development and surrounding myself with the right people, defending my light with my life at all times. Can you say that again? What did you say there?

Say that again, please. Oh, it's one of my mantras. I defend my light with my life. I know it is, but I wanted them to hear it. So what do you mean when you say that? You know, I believe that I know, I'm not gonna say I believe I know that we are beings of energy and that we are vibrational, you know, beings and we I mean, you know,

I talked about this with John Gordon. I mean, it's so funny. I'd read the energy bus years ago. And then when Erwin introduced us, I was like, you know, I know I must have manifested that because I had read his book so long ago. And, you know, I'm very, very conscious about keeping my vibrational energy at a certain level, so that I'm always attracting because I know that like attracts like and that you have to keep your vibrational energy at a certain level otherwise I'm conscious of it, you know, dipping or negative thoughts coming into my

life. I think, well, you better get rid of that unless you want more of that coming in, you know, so how can I pivot this right now? What can I be listening to? What can I be listening to? What can I be looking at? What can I do to be pivoting that? It's not that I ever never have bad thoughts or I never have bad people or I never have, you know,

dark, you know, times or whatever. I mean, everybody does because we are human beings. I'm just conscious of it now. I get, I'm aware of when it happens. And I have an arsenal of tools that I use to go to, to combat it now. I love it. See awareness of our thoughts helps them

lose their power over us. And it's such a critical key that you've just said, just being aware of our thoughts helps them lose their power over us and it's such a critical key that you've just said just being aware of your thoughts helps the negative ones lose their power over you. I just interviewed an MMA fighter named Dustin Poirier and I said because it comes to emotions the way the world works everybody just so you kind of understand how you can change what she's describing is it's not the events in our life that define our lives it's the meaning we attach to them so what happens is an event takes place, a conversation, a meeting, a failure, a setback,

whatever you think it is, you attach a meaning to it. That gives you an emotion. And based on an emotion, you take an action. So if you can go all the way back and attach the right meaning to an event that will change the emotion you experience and change the action you take. And I was asking this fighter,

he just beat Conor McGregor. I said, do you get scared and have anxiety and worry before you get into the octagon? He goes every time, still fearful for my life, afraid, worried, he said those thoughts never go away but he said they do become more familiar and he becomes more familiar with those emotions, more familiar with those thoughts and then he's in control of them, they're not in control of him. You don't have to believe everything you think everybody. And this idea that Rebecca just gave you that is absolute truth, that your vibrational frequency, the energy level that you're moving out in your life is deeply affected by the emotions you're experiencing and the

meanings you attach. So please be conscious of that. She's one trillion percent right about that. Breaking news coming in from bet three, six, five, where every nail biting overtime win breakaway, pick six, one trillion percent right about that. hockey to baseball, whatever the moment. It's never ordinary at Bet 365. Must be 19 or older, Ontario only. Please play responsibly. If you or someone you know has concerns about gambling, visit connexontario.ca. Hit pause on whatever you're listening to

and hit play on your next adventure. Stay two nights and get a $50 Best Western gift card. Life's the trip. Make the most of it at Best Western. Visit bestwestern.com for complete terms and conditions. Very short intermission here folks. I'm glad you're enjoying the show so far. Don't forget to follow the show on Apple and Spotify. Links are in the show notes. Now on to our next guest. Today is going to be an experience that you are going to enjoy so much. I certainly know that I am and the reason for that experience certainly isn't me.

It's because of this lady to my left here. She's an incredible woman and my crew will tell you I've been kind of giddy all morning about this conversation and looking forward to it for so long. She is an incredible poet, speaker, author, but I think she's become one of the great thought leaders in the world as well. Thank you, that means a lot. It's true, you make me think. And so this is Nezua Zabian, everybody.

Nezua, thank you for being here. Thank you for having me. You did say that, you have to watch this in your relationships, that he was a narcissist and you're an empath. Yes. And this is a combination that is really not good for the empath in a relationship. So just give everyone just a minute on,

so they can identify it if they're in one. Yes. What that looks like, what a narcissist does and what an empath does and why it's no bueno. Yes. So an empath is the perfect victim for a narcissist because when we were talking about you complete me, it is a complementary thing. It really, if you imagine a heart that's just the way that you would draw a heart and then an inverse heart and just put them together, they're very complimentary. So a narcissist makes a lot of mistakes and looks for someone to make excuses for them.

An empath by nature makes excuses for people. A narcissist needs fixing, needs help, and an empath naturally wants to fix people and wants to help people, gives love unconditionally, blames themselves for anything that happened, and the narcissist is always blaming and projecting blame. So when he would blame me for things, I would accept that and say, yes, you're right.

When he would say, look at the way you accept that and say, yes, you're right. When he would say, look at the way you're standing. Look at yourself, look at your body language. Like, who do you think you are? When he would say those things to me, I would think, I'm a nobody, you're right. Because as empaths, we take things, we absorb, and then we give all of ourselves.

And when you're completely depleted from giving everything within you, you have no defense mechanism to tell that person, that's not true about me. Because you're completely depleted. They take everything out of you. That's just how narcissists are. So as an empath, you would be called one of their supplies.

They come to you for whatever they need and so that is what I was. Yes and empaths love it. Obviously the empathy play. They love to build homes in narcissists and so you have to really watch this in your relationships. Because you really think that you can change them and you cannot change them. You can change you but you cannot change them. You can change you but you cannot change them. You can change you but you can't change them. And there might be short periods of time, like here's the thing, and I'm sure you know this, but when you go through an experience where

there's somebody who's very toxic to your wellbeing, at a moment when you're contemplating leaving, you think back to those very brief moments when he or she expressed to you love in their own way and you say, they can do that. I know they can. Oh my gosh, that's so true. Right? And so you hang on to those little moments, hoping that if there's one thing that you do differently, right, you put the blame on yourself. They changed because I changed.

So if I go back to the person I was when they first met me, maybe they will go back to the person they were when they first met me, or they will treat me that way, or that moment will happen again. We hang on to those moments when they've completely moved on. That's brilliant, and you just helped the millions of people with that.

I hope so. By the way, that is absolutely, totally true. That's exactly how the mind works. You go back to these little glimpses. Yes. You think if I could go back to this other, wow! That's really good. Let's talk about a couple things. We're helping people. Thank you by the way because you don't need to be doing this and I want to say one thing about about her speaking too. Nezua is an incredible speaker. Thank you. And I told her before we started the reason is that she has it, by the way when she comes speak to your organization, just so you know, nobody moves. We're talking about that?

You have the most dynamic screaming speaker in the world. This woman walks out on stage and I'm telling you, no one moves. No one's grabbing their cell phone, no one's looking around, no one's using the restroom. She has this ability to have presence in silence like no speaker that I've seen and she uses silence. She's comfortable in silence because the caliber of her content and the beauty of the way she writes things. She will literally get up there at some points and just read to you what she's written and you'll be captivated by having it have hearing it come out of the mouth of the actual author.

So I want everyone to know you can go to her website, you can go to her social media, you're talking about a speaker that will reach people. And I just know both men and women hearing this, you've made so many points that are so profound. I have such a unique woman here today. Been a fan from a distance for a long time. She's a global parenting expert, but I actually think she's more than that. I think she's a transformation expert and she's also great on TV too. And she was just

giving me some advice on how to be great myself on TV. So Joe Frost, welcome to the program. Thank you. Thank you for having me. This notion with the, I'm just curious of your feelings about this. Pushing a child. I, it's not the word I want to use, but I'm just going to, I think you'll know what I mean. I think everybody listening or watching will, where's that line of getting your child to do their best and pushing them to the point where they're like my children in sports. If you want to have a study and parents needing some help, go to a youth sporting event and watch particular parents with their children, right? It's a sometimes very scary thing to observe, almost like they're projecting all their hopes and dreams onto this child, but they didn't parents with their children, right? It's a sometimes very scary thing to observe,

almost like they're projecting all their hopes and dreams onto this child that they didn't achieve. And there's this unbelievable pressure that's put on. And then there was kind of me, I was almost the other way where oftentimes I felt like maybe I would surprise many people that I didn't nudge, encourage accountability with my children quite enough to get the best out of them.

Can you explain that? Well, I think maybe there was a balance there for you. Excuse me. Maybe there was a balance there for you in a very conscious way because we don't want that narcissistic parenting. We don't want that child having to perform and to always do good. Hey, look at me.

Can you see me now? Can you see me now? Can you hear me now? Based on performance, because I believe that, you know, men and women grow up and, you know, they kind of lose themselves, like who they are, you know? It's always about being this type of person so that you're liked, so that people

think you're the cool guy or the cool chick, you know, and we can, I think we have to ask ourselves as parents, are we living vicariously through our children? What does that make us feel? Does that mean that we can say, hey, well, my child, you know, made, you know, made the finals and, you know, again, that to me is very narcissistic, right? Because it's then teaching the child that, you know, we'll love you on terms and conditions, not unconditionally, but that has a

major impact on an adult when they're older with respects to them kind of having this mask and really not knowing who they are and accepting, you know, who they are and being okay with other people. Being okay with that as well. Yeah. So guys, everyone that doesn't have a child, I want you to hear, maybe help you understand yourself better. I had loving parents,

but one of the things I was conscious of with my children was even when they did achieve to acknowledge it and love them, but not such a dosage that was so in contrast to my day-to-day love of them. Let me tell you all why. I grew up at some point, it wasn't my parents' fault at all, it was just the way I read things, that I get attention, acknowledgement acknowledgement and love when I achieve. So I attach achievement,

winning, getting the first place, doing this, doing that to my identity and feeling loved. Be very careful, I think you would acknowledge Joe, doing that with your children where it's at one level most of the time, then they achieve its way up here, then it's back down here again, something we're not conscious of, true? Yes, absolutely. And I also feel that if parents can be less distracted with all the noise and the technology around them, because listen, it's not just kids that are on their phones, it's parents as well. If we're more in tune to our children, and their phones, his parents as well. If we're more in tune to our children, then we should learn to be more confident

in trusting our gut because we know, we know when our children are being lazy and not wanting to show up or when they're just procrastinating. Like there comes a moment when you know, because you've seen it, you know they can do better, but they're just rushing it or they can't be bothered right now or they work out with their friends or just not interested

or maybe they're tired you know because they've had a stressful couple of weeks. So again when we're more in tune and that takes us being more observant that means us not being distracted by outside stuff then we can really connect on a level where we see every detail and we start to see more as we connect intuitively with our children. And I want parents to, you know, like I said, you know, trust your gut. Like if you're in a rut, like trust your guts, because, you know, that's never normally wrong. Parents normally know when something's off, when it's just off tilt, they normally know. I love that. You know, it's funny about this presence thing

because I teach it, I teach, hey, put your phone down when you go to dinner. We were at dinner two nights ago. And, and so I want everyone to give themselves some grace because I think it's something you have to be intentional about all the time in the world today. So I'm fortunate that when I go out, sometimes people wanna come up and talk to me or take a picture of those kinds of things. Sometimes that breaks my routine.

So anyway, we're at dinner, I just wanna show this to everybody, we were at dinner the other night, two nights ago, and I looked and I watched this family, and I just noticed them, and they were all on their phone. Dad's head was down in his phone, mom's head and the two kids, where they weren't looking at each other,

they were typing, and I immediately went, gosh, that's not the way it should be, I feel bad for them and then I as I my eyes glance back to our table. My phone was up because I had just done an Instagram post, my daughter was on her phone, my son was checking the golf score and I went now we're doing it so it's something you have to be vigilant about all the time everybody I know that I do and I want to ask you about this idea let me just jump in here do you like two or three best practices you go hey you want to be a better parent here's two or three things you should be doing or thinking what would you say? I think one you have to I think one to be it's confidence it's all about confidence, right? And- Why do you be confident in something?

Maybe you grew up not in a good one and no one taught you how to do it in school and all you've got is Joe Frost. Get one of her books, or how do you display that confidence? Well, you could. I think it's practice. I think people are hard on themselves. Like they expect to, they want it right now.

Immediate gratification. Like they want to be able to pick something up and get it, right? They're getting patient with themselves. But you know, what I've learned has been over thousands and thousands of hours in the trenches with families and lots of different types of families. So I say, in order to build that confidence, you know, one, you have to be realistic

with identifying what those challenges are. You have to face them head on. You can't run from them. You have to be real with yourself. What are we really dealing with here? That's the mirror. And then secondly, you've got to have an action plan. Like how are you now, how are you now going to change this?

Like how are you going to take the first step on the ladder? What are you going to do? Are you going to buy a book? Are you going to take this? Like, how are you going to take the first step on the ladder? What are you going to do? Are you going to buy a book? Are you going to take an online course? Are you going to call somebody up, you know, like, you know, people call me, right? Are you going to call up and we're going to do the work together?

And are you going to make a commitment? Because you can talk a good game for five minutes, but can you walk it? Are you going to commit to the changes, You know, and that's really important. Like, when I help the families that you see me help on the show, they give me their undivided time and attention. And they are committed to the process of wanting to change. Now, the journey challenges them, and there are hurdles hurdles but it's not looking at the hurdle or the brick wall as unclimbable. You can climb that wall if you want to. You'll find a way.

So it's got to be, everything's got to be about stay open, stay open. This is about us working as a team and families get into a space where it becomes that. It's you, it's you, like you're on the same side. So how will we talk about an issue together to resolve it together, you know, and really taken into consideration how the other person is feeling and why they're showing up that way. And again, it comes back to ego. A lot of that ego gets in the room where it's about being right, rather than really being happy with what the outcome could be.

It's about an immaturity. It's about somebody feeling sighted and the communication is off where somebody felt they weren't able to communicate how they felt without being attacked or without hearing a defense. So again, it's unblocking. It's unblocking for those parents

so that they can continue moving forward. But you've got to commit. You've got to give the time. You've got to surrender and identify what those issues are. And you've got to keep going because we all come off track but you've got to get back on the horse you know you've got to get back on it you know and we do tend to helicopter parent we don't want our children to feel disappointed we don't want our children to feel upset we don't want our children to feel angry. So we pacify. We don't want them to feel what makes you mentally

stronger. You know, a kid's got to fall off a bike and graze their knee and feel the pinch and feel that little bit going on the knee to make it better. Ouch, right? To get better at their coordination and ride like, sometimes you've got to fear the fear and do it anyway, right? And face it head on. Recently, we had our grandson, you know, my husband's son, son, right? So we had him, he's got his helmet on and he's ready to ride his bike. You know, a husband taught him how to ride his bike. He was well proud of himself. I want to go out on my bike and ride it down the street. We're like, okay. And I said,

he's going too fast and he's going to fall. So my husband was like, Eli, slow down, slow down. You're going to fall. I said nothing. And he's looking at me like, my husband's looking at me like, you're not saying anything. I'm like, he's going gonna fall. And when he falls, it's how we're going to react to that. That's going to make the difference and him getting back up on that bike and riding. And he fell and he grazed and he cried. And we said, you know, oh, look, come on, let's have a look at that.

But as soon as we did that, we're like, all right, well, you see, you've had your first fall, get back on that bike, let's do it. we did that, we're like, all right, well, you see, you've had your first four bit back on that bite, let's do it. You know, and he was like, all right, so dad, let's go. And there he was. So, he's a tattooed. What a magic lesson.

Shoot, where were you? 15 years ago. I should have been reading one of these books of yours. What a magic lesson that is. I gotta tell you that, by the way, you wanna raise a kid that can stand out in the world, you do a little bit of what you just said, that's a huge difference.

So I gotta tell you- It's about snow plow. You know, we've heard a lot of it. You know, parents snow plowing, making it easier. You know, where's, look, you can be really, really intelligent, but that's only gonna get you so far. Like the grit and the character to not give in.

Every time you get knocked down, you back up again. Like that grit is what's gonna take you the extra five miles. And that's about having mental strength as well. I left a post the other day, don't give up on your children. So you teach them never to give up on themselves. That's so powerful. I did do a couple things right. Like you're making me feel good. But

a couple of times there's things at school where the teacher wasn't unfair, it was unfair to one of my kids or something. And every parent's going in negotiating with the teacher. I remember telling my wife, I said, you know what? Let's just let them handle this. And even if they are being treated a little bit unfair, they're gonna have this happen in their lives when we're not around, let them navigate this, let them deal with it.

So it's not that I wouldn't intervene in something if it was dramatic, but there's too much intervention. There's not enough of letting them metaphorically fall in life, right? And you're doing such a disservice to your kids. Now, as a parent, is there a way to give our children more confidence? Like one of the things I wanted for my children when they left my home, I wanted them to have their faith or their moral compass. I wanted them to have self-confidence and I actually wanted them to be really good communicators, which I'm, which I also

put under that banner, the ability to be present with people and listen. I think a high form of communication is listening. Yeah. Anything that you recommend to a parent who's listening to this, or by the way, it could even apply to an individual. I think you've hit it. Okay. I think you've hit those points already. Being able to teach by example, communication starts with listening first. So this your style of communication, having the patience to listen, to give children a platform to recognize the difference between them voice in their opinion and not mistaken

it for back chat. Sometimes I hear a lot of parents say, my kids back chatting. And I'm like, no, back chat is when you deliver your opinion and you're insulting and you're cocky and you have an attitude, you know, that's not the case. You know, when a child is giving their opinion respectfully, that's them voicing how they feel. And we can mistake that sometimes with back chats. So we also must give our children the breathing space to learn themselves. Not everything has to be structured.

Like that genuine self-esteem and confidence comes from them having the ability to work things out and do things themselves and to see that they're capable. And they have the ability to be able to do that just like you exercise with the school. Not everything's about intervening, like step back, like don't try and fix everything. Don't try and snow plow and make everything good

because life isn't like that outside the house. They're gonna struggle. And it goes with, I feel it goes with a very delicate line in teaching our children resilience and teaching them the importance of still recognizing emotionally when they're overwhelmed and needing to voice and to talk and knowing that they can come to you as children

when they're struggling, when they're feeling overwhelmed. There's a very fine line, there's a balance between that. Because I do want children to have mental resilience, you know, and we are caught, I believe, in a time where we have a generation of people that wouldn't communicate as well. They wouldn't have had a higher emotional intelligence that just suck it up and deal with it, you know, and then children can't talk. And then you have this whole generation of touchy feeling, it's all about the feelings and then no self-discipline, like none at all.

So really the compromise is meeting in the middle. It's truly about recognizing that it's not one particular parenting style. It's being able to think very quickly on your feet, to look at scenarios that's happened before, because parenting is also a moving target. So look at everything. Why is the child behaving this way emotionally? What are the circumstances surrounding that? What is the best way for me to respond and not be reactional? You know, we can then build, you know, certainly this infrastructure in our homes that really

honor the importance of mental resilience, but an emotional compassion and empathy, but our children know that they can always come to us, even if they, which they will in their older teenage years, they'll make decisions and they'll screw up and they'll learn by it. I have to tell you, Joe, you're so brilliant because I love being vulnerable. That's something I didn't do a good job of. I did not do a good enough job. I set standards.

I was loving. We had our faith. We had goals as a family. But one thing I didn't do that a dear, Teddy Mellencamp actually pointed this out to me. One of my friends recently, and she said, well, does so and so feel like they can call you and say, hey, I've made this mistake, I need your help.

I said, I think so. Well, have you told them that? No. And I promise you, they don't know that because they wanna make you proud, because you're a good example. So as you as a parent, please make sure you hear what she just said. The other thing you said that's just profound that made an impact on me is why is my child acting this way? I didn't ask myself those questions until the last few years when they were little.

I wish I asked myself why are they behaving like this? Why are they acting out like this as opposed to just reacting? I think in families, correct me if I'm wrong, but because of our proximity to each other and the regular frequency in which we're together, there's like this boiling pot of reactions happening all the time. They do something, you react, you do something, they react and it's reacting all the time. Whereas in business or in other areas of our lives, or even with our friends were we're like, let me think about what I want to say here. Let me process this.

Let me be intentional to some extent, but in families, we are reacting all the time, unless we're conscious of not reacting and asking ourselves these questions. Don't you think it's even more true in a family structure than anywhere else that the reaction is? Yes, because we're emotionally invested because this is our family

and there's nothing more sensitive to a family when you start talking about their partner or their children, because it's a reflection of us. And we start to think about that. And what does that say about us? Again, it's the ego. What does it say about us? Again, it's the ego. What does it say about us? This is The Ed Myron Show.