Ramani Durvasula (on narcissism)
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- Welcome, welcome, welcome to Armchair Expert, experts on expert. I'm Dan Rather, I'm joined by Monica Padman. There's a Dan Rather documentary on the marketplace. Have you seen it? - No, have you? - I didn't watch it yet, but I watched the little trailer for it on the streaming platform. I forget which one it's on currently, but he's got his own doc. - Wow, and do you feel really connected already? - Well, I feel like I was first in.

I've been trying to get him in at the peak of the zeitgeist for a while now. That's right. The footage in the trailer is him getting physically assaulted at one of these political conventions back in the day. He's been around for so long. He has, and it's a good reminder that craziness has been happening the whole ride. Yeah, it's true. This has been a shit show from the jump. You're right. Okay.

Okay, today we have Dr. Ramani Dervasola. Dr. Ramani is a clinical psychologist and best-selling author. This will interest everybody. She specializes in narcissism. She has a book out now that is so fascinating called It's Not You, Identifying and Healing from Narcissistic People. And once again, this was one of these episodes with an expert where we found out a pretty significant chunk of the population. Hmm.

Many millions of people. Lots of people. Suffering from narcissism and or in relationships with narcissists. And one of those weird ones where most are undiagnosed because there's no reason to go get diagnosed unless you think you have a problem, an inherent problem.

And narcissism is that you don't think you have a problem. So it's interesting. Yeah. Another pop word I've been saying a lot, non-falsifiable claim. That's another, it's kind of non-falsifiable. That's the Easter egg for the fact check. Yes, it is. I admit to my words, I've been over-indexing it. Ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding. But anyways, I think for people who love the sociopathy episode, this is in keeping. And I think everyone will be listening going, hmm, am I? Yeah.

Hopefully you are thinking that because I think it's a pretty good indicator that you might not be. Yeah. Please enjoy Dr. Ramani Dervasala.

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I would love to bring you up to speed on something that just happened to us recently as we enter into this discussion of narcissism, because there were some go-tos you felt very free to use haphazardly. You want to describe someone as basically amoral, you'd go, oh, they're a sociopath. And then we recently interviewed a diagnosed sociopath. You know about this? Patrick. Here's the thing. I'm never going to touch the third rail of castigating a guest, but I'm not loving sociopathy's moment in the

son. Oh, interesting. Great. Well, because, and I said it in the interview, which is, man, is there nothing we can really throw under the bus anymore? And on some level I agree. And you'll tell us how this is formed, but certainly people are born and I really can't be upset or terribly judgmental. Like if you're born on the spectrum, you're born on the spectrum. If you're born with sociopathy, that's something you're born with. Right. That's different than narcissism. Yes. Okay, great.

I found myself like, wow, now I got to have compassion for sociopathy. You don't have to have compassion for something. So that's but that's nutty, right? That's like a psychopath. Yeah. Harvey Weinstein, Bernie Madoff. Do you have to have compassion?

According to whom? Well, I guess how do we define compassion? Understanding. Here's what I would aspire to have is a kind of a lack of judgment. I wasn't born with sociopathy, so I don't know what it's like. No one chose it. How about that? No one went to the grocery store and was like, I think I'll pick sociopathy or I want to be on this spectrum or that spectrum.

So in that there's no fault, I can only be so judgmental of it. It doesn't mean I don't safeguard myself from people. That's the key. It's the safeguarding. Even with a narcissistic person, you're going to say this person didn't choose this. It's a social developmental phenomenon. The way they were parented, the circumstances of their life, some piece of biological temperament, biological vulnerability all comes together, gets mixed up. And now you have this narcissistic person who is very,

very interpersonally harmful, who's very systemically harmful. No two ways about it. Now, my positioning has always been, I am not a fan of mistreat this person. If someone's narcissistic in your life, don't be deliberately cruel to them. It's never good for any of us to be deliberately cruel to anyone. But this will never be a healthy relationship. Right.

It's not going to get better. Never going to get better. And it is never going to feel psychologically safe. But what gets tricky is a lot of people can't get out of these relationships. So they're getting harmed on the daily and they're not inherently mean people and they just don't know what to do. Yeah. And then I'll be curious to find out if it also then develops this cycle that I experienced in childhood, which is an abusive guy in the house that's horrific and traumatic, but then there's

The winning you back over part, the please forgive me, accept me back into this group, that is then heightened. So you get into this cycle of highs and lows and you kind of get addicted to this weird cycle. It's partly addiction, but it's also what we call the trauma bonding, right? The narcissistic relationship by definition is one where every day is not bad. People will say, we have fun watching TV together or we have great sex together or they know a lot about wine and we have fun when we have a few drinks.

There's these things where they'll say, you know, my mother was terrible, but my gosh, I have these really unique memories with her.

trying on her clothes or baking something with her, whatever it may be. So there'll be these narrow sprinklings. It's like a slot machine. You put the money in and why do we keep going to casinos? Why do people keep going to play these machines? It's intermittent reinforcement. Yeah. Right. And intermittent reinforcement is the stickiest version of reinforcement there is because if I knew that every 10th time I was going to do something, I'd get $10. Okay. But that wouldn't release dopamine. But the hope for a jackpot, every so often you put in the buck and five bucks comes, ooh,

That's kind of exciting. You forget then conveniently that I just put 10 bucks in and nothing came out. Right. And we don't walk away from the machine because the jackpot always hangs out there as this tantalization. And that in a narcissistic relationship is this idea that maybe if we just get past this, maybe if we just do this, maybe if I try this, you know, you watch people playing a slot machine, they're praying.

They're rubbing. They're dancing. And they're doing all they can to see if I can get lucky. But they don't want to walk away from their machine, especially if they've been on it for a few hours. Why don't people want to walk away from slot machines? Because they think that the odds will eventually tilt in their favor. Bingo. And let's take that a step deeper. Not only do they think it's going to work in their favor, if they walk away, then what? They wasted all that time, money. Go one deeper. I like this. I feel like I'm in class.

Worse than, okay. I don't want to walk away from this machine. It would have made all of that a waste. I lost. I lost. Keep going. You're missing one last piece. Oh, this is exciting. I'm a piece of shit, but the world revolves around me somehow. I don't know how this works. What happens? What happens? Shame. Oh, you got a guess? Someone else gets. Oh, someone. He got it. Good job, Robin. He gets the star.

I'm not a star. Someone else might sit down. Someone else is going to come up to the machine. And get your reward. And they're going to get your jack. I did all this work. Wow. I did all these things. I made them better. And now someone else is going to get this. Oh, hell no. Reap the rewards. But my job is to say, there's no better version. This machine doesn't pay. No.

Yeah. Right, right, right. I have heard that from a lot of people. Like, I did all this work and I fixed them. But no, you didn't. You're leaving it. Or the narcissistic person leaves you and you think it's, oh, well, they cheated on me with this next person and now they're going on to live their best life. There's no best life for them. It's really kind of...

hollow, not so nice life for them. I think what I'd love to first start with is I have my explanations for why I was drawn to what I was drawn to. And I guess I'm most curious right out of the gates why you were pulled to study first psychology and then more specifically narcissism. Psychology might have been my one Indian girl rebellion because, you know, when we're raised, you're younger than me, but in my generation, your options were doctor, doctor, doctor, me.

be engineer. So my big rebellion is like, I'm going to get a PhD and not an MD. I'll show you mom and dad. You're crazy. Right. Where'd you grow up? I grew up in Connecticut. Were you in an area that had other Indian folks? I'm about as old a native born Indian as you're going to find.

Because the Immigration and Naturalization Act didn't kick in until 65. So whatever Indians that were coming in before that time were coming in. You're the first wave. Limited student visas and stuff like that. My dad came in probably the mid to late 50s. Range marriage, a whole nine yards. So I'm as old as you're going to find. I'm 58. Maybe there's probably a 59 or a 60 out there. There's a different wave of Punjabi immigration that came in. Like in Northern California, they were doing stuff on the railroads. There you will see from that immigration group, people born in states who are older than me. But at 58...

I'm old. You were born here. My mom's in her 60s. She was born in India and she came when she was six. Right. And so in that way, I was the only brown kid in small New England town. It was a very much a sense of otherness. Well, also, let's just add, even as a hillbilly, you can feel out of sorts in Connecticut. It's very waspy. I mean, it's the whitest of the white. It's like apex whiteness. Yes, it was apex whiteness. And definitely multicultural was not a word people used in the 1970s.

Right. So people don't want you to play with their kids and they couldn't pronounce my name. And so the aesthetic was white, white or white. So you never felt attractive. That was a profound developmental kind of thing. We didn't fit in the town. People would vandalize our house. And did you feel like no boy was ever going to like you? I felt hideous and was kind of told that as much. Didn't go to the prom, like all the things. Look at you two babes. You two babes thinking that. It makes me happy to see the power of younger Indian women.

It's everything to me. But I had that. But you had it too. It's not that far from the tree, unfortunately. It is, unfortunately. And I still have daughters who are mixed race who struggled with that sense of like, oh, no one's going to fit in because my elder daughter resembles me. It's probably about your skin tone. Lucky her. Well, you're very kind. So the university I went to, they had a very special, you could do this integrated study where you would bring together film, literature, psychology. I'm like,

Well, that sounds cool. This was at UCLA? No, I went to University of Rochester for a year. I stayed on the East Coast. I stayed there only a year. I ended up finishing my degree at UConn, which was such a blessing because University of Connecticut had one of the strongest psych departments in the country. And it's like as an undergrad, you don't even know the genius you're in the midst of. And that was UConn. In fact, I'm their commencement speaker on Sunday. Oh, my gosh. Congratulations. I hope you cry like I did. I can't even believe they asked.

I'm still in a state of shock that they asked such an honor. But that was where my interest got piqued. It's sort of the why. I struggled my whole life. Why do people do the things they do? And then I went to UCLA. Sorry. Did you have a parent whose behavior was inexplicable to you? Yes, but that was not what was driving me. I think I really sort of felt, why do I feel so odd, so out of place, so out of sorts? Did you think you might feel safer if you truly understood how people thought?

Absolutely. And so when I finally got to UCLA, I worked in New York City for three years doing HIV research, actually. Oh, no kidding. And that's sort of the psychosocial. And it was a really extraordinary and painful time to do this work because there were no meds yet. So people get HIV and die. And so the privilege, this little research tiny person, because I was so junior, to work in this huge study in New York City, which ended up becoming sort of the turning point for me because it's

It got me introduced to the area of HIV, which would be a research focus for me for years. Oh, really? And then at that time, we were focusing on injection drug users and women who got HIV at that time either got it through sex work or injection drug use. And so it was a whole different game. And then I came to UCLA and I got my PhD. This is neither here nor there, but now that you've done all this work in this, I think this might interest you. I'm in AA. Several of the gay dudes in my meeting while COVID was happening pointed out

To me, they're like, we already did this. To be intimate is to potentially die. The way they reacted to it was just interesting. It was observable and they actually vocalized it. It was really cool. Gay men went through it times a million because of the bias and the stigma and the fear and the unwillingness to do anything about it.

it because they were so devalued. Exactly. So that's part of what drew me to it because it was the othering. HIV was such an othering state. So I think anything that involved othering, I was drawn to it. You become a champion for all underdogs. Monica has this too. Sometimes she thinks certain underdogs are underdogs, but maybe they're not. But yes, big, big. No, basically

still are. I don't know who you're talking about, but I'm sure they are. Yeah. Obsession with justice a little bit. Yes. And then I did a postdoc at UCLA. Then I took an academic position and it was there where the narcissism thing got hit for me the first time. I had student research assistants that were going to labs and hospitals around the city. They'd come back. We'd meet. One day, one of them came back and they looked like they'd been through war. And I said, what's the deal? Like you kind of come back very demoralized from these sites. What's going on? And they said, it's just like this one or two patients. And they come in. They're terrible. They're abusive to

me. They're abusive to the nurses. They're abusive to the doctors. And I'm listening to them. I'm like, this is interesting. They're describing people who sound quite narcissistic, entitled, selfish, no empathy. Everything's about them, really dysregulated. And for context, at that time, this is what? 2001. Okay. And in 2001, the understanding and the studying of narcissism out of 10 was what? How much did we know at that point? We were probably at a five or a six. I still think we're only at a seven or

Oh, wow. Okay, okay. We were most of the way there for where we're at today. I think when I say most of the way there, the psychoanalysts have been writing about it forever. If you go back late, late 1800s, we saw the first mentions of it. Otto Rank, what was that, 1912? Freud then writes on narcissism. It's a bedrock that nobody pays attention to. It's a bedrock that no one studies because it kind of makes you feel helpless. It doesn't feel good to be the

doctor, if you will, who takes on the incurable condition. Well, of course it appealed to you because you were taking on HIV when there was no cure. Well, I was trying to understand what would make people more vulnerable.

to HIV. And was it possible that these people who are angry and acting out, were they more likely to behave more irresponsibly sexually or around substance use? Those are the things I was interested in. But interestingly, what I did come to find out is the narcissistic people actually did wear condoms and did protect themselves. They did use substances. I mean, addiction and narcissism are highly overlapping.

Do they over-index or is it the country average? I think they over-index. And I think that part of that is one would argue either the substance user is trying to manage the negative emotions of the narcissism. They're also great for self-aggrandizement. I was going to say, either you're a stimulant user who's using it to get the pump

up or you're using alcohol, weed, opiates to manage the negative emotionality. So it really depends. And I've worked with substance users using so many different substances that were narcissistic. The backstory had a lot to do with how that would show up. But that's how I got into it. And then at the same time, I had a private practice and people kept coming in with the same story about their marriage. It was

always about these very antagonistic, unempathic, entitled, manipulative, gaslighting, cruel partners, but who to the world seemed like well put together and successful. And so that actually led to my first book in 2016 because I actually kept writing the same notes to my clients to give them. I'm like, I might as well get

I paid for this. - Also, you just grab anyone's notes. - And so, yeah, I would just went to the two, three, four. - Let me guess, he denied he had any wrongdoing and you've never heard an apology from him? - That's right, perfect. We'll put that down for all of it. So that's what led to that book. And then ironically, people say, was this your origin story? It wasn't until I was deep into doing this research

And I was in therapy. I've been in therapy for a long time. And I thank goodness for that through lying in my life. Well, can I just add, ironically, a lot of therapists aren't in therapy. And that's not cool because we have to carry away too much pain to not address this. Right, right, right. Do you know what I'm saying? The stuff I hear. Because you understand it doesn't mean you're above it. Hell to the no. I have a nervous system and that nervous system is getting activated by what I hear in the room. And if I'm going to be present.

and not triggered in that room, I better have a place to work on it. So my therapist years into it, she's like, I was wondering how long it was going to take you to get to this. And I was like, bitch, why didn't you tell me? That's a side note we should talk about. But nobody talks about it in the field of mental health. I'm still a bit of a renegade and a pariah for doing what I do. And I'm willing to take that on because this is not meant to be grandiose. I think just this conversation on narcissism has helped millions of people who are saying, I no longer feel crazy.

- This is one of the rare positive outcomes of social media is I think it's getting amplified 'cause so many people are finally addressing it. But we kind of blew past the therapist said, "Okay, when were you gonna get to this?" So I imagine what you discovered is that you- - I've been through it in family relationships. I've been through an intimate relationships. I've been through it in friendships. I've been through it in workplaces and they all harmed me.

But they were often turning points. Like I ended up leaving careers I thought I was going to stay in because it got to be too toxic. I thought there was something really, really wrong with me. And I sort of integrated that into my sense of self. And so once you lifted the lid off of it and I said, oh, now I see it clearly, that was it.

Yeah, because I would have to assume you yourself have been a victim of it to be so passionate and driven to expose it. Let's start with how would we define a narcissist right out of the gates? Like what would be the clinical? Is there a DSM criteria? One thing I always tell folks is the way I want to have the conversation about narcissism is not diagnostic. It's a personality style. You've got a personality. You've got a personality. I've got a personality. And they were shaped.

by the experiences we've had in our lives. We had a biological temperament and that came up against all the experiences we've had and that now results in our adult personality. Personalities are kind of who we are. They're like a psychological fingerprint. The healthier the personality, meaning the more pro-social, the more flexible, flexible,

the more amenable it is to a little bit of change. An agreeable person could learn to set better boundaries because they'd be open to that change, but it's not going to be easy for them because they're agreeable and they want to be warm and connected. I'm giving you this backstory only because I want people to understand what I mean by the word personality. People have kind of gotten too caught up in this idea of narcissistic personality disorder. I hate the diagnosis. It's not helping. It's muddied this conversation. What is it doing that has a negative outcome? The

vast majority of people who are narcissistic have not been in a clinician's office to be diagnosed. You have a great explanation of this in the book. Right. They're not suffering. The tricky part here is that when we hear somebody has NPD, we assume that it's more severe in them. Frankly, I've met walking out in the wild narcissistic folks who've never seen the inside of a shrink's office who are the most severe narcissistic people I've ever seen. And the people walking around with the NPD diagnosis just happen to be in therapy and

And so it's almost evidence that they're low on the spectrum. Maybe it's not as bad. So narcissism, the personality style is characterized by entitlement, low, invariable empathy, selfishness, egocentricity, sort of self-centeredness.

An excessive need for validation and admiration. Superficial kind of vapid quality. Difficulty with intimacy, closeness. They really view relationships as benefiting only them. There's no care for the other person. There is a need for control, power, domination. I just want to point out that I bet people are listening the same way I'm listening. You say one and I go, ooh. Everyone's doing it. And then you say another one, I go, ooh. And then you say another one, I go, ah. And then you say another one, I go, oh.

Is it narcissists that we're thinking of ourselves? Some dude, I think, put out a TikTok video recently, something I've been saying for a while, but he did it really cutely. And he's like, if you think you're narcissistic, then you're not. And frankly, a lot of people who've been in narcissistic relationships, they're the ones who walk around wondering if they're the narcissistic. That makes sense. So the grandiosity, the low empathy, the entitlement, the need for admiration and validation. Because I have that one. We don't need to highlight every single one. I just want to own my...

They don't tolerate frustration or disappointment well, so they'll rage. That's the stuff of narcissism. Now, it's on a continuum. So the mild side is your annoying, immature Instagram narcissist who at 55 is still wondering if they got a lot of likes on their sunset cocktails picture. That's going to be tough to hear for a lot of people. Yeah, exactly. And the other side

the thing is they're getting upset they're not getting likes. It's one thing you want to do that. I love when people post their happy cocktail pictures. I'm like, good for you. But when they're angry, I can't believe people don't think I'm the coolest. Or monitoring who didn't like their thing. That's the next level. What were you doing that you couldn't? But that's still on the mild end. I've heard that from a lot of people as well. They're like, well, you're monitoring who's liking. Someone who didn't like my thing. Oh.

Like the one, look who liked. And I'm like, oh my God, that sounds dark. For a grown person. Right. I'll cut Grace until 25. Okay, great. After that. That prefrontal's done. Exactly. And at the far end, though, we're talking about malignant narcissism, which in the book, as I put it, malignant narcissism is sort of the last stop on the train before psychopathy station. And we veer into something a lot darker.

Because that's what's confusing for the layperson is like so much of it seems to overlap with psychopathy or sociopathy. At the severe end. At the severe end, it's more manipulative, more exploitative. You see more isolation. You see more coercive dynamics. It's just an unsafe relationship. Sadism maybe? When you talk about sadism, you take me to the dark tetrad. And the dark tetrad is where we see the overlap of psychopathy, Machiavellianism, narcissism, and sadism.

Okay. This is horrible. I would like to add the fifth piece of paranoia because these are folks that are very suspicious and really thin skinned. So they're really provocable. They're like, what are you looking at? And then they'll get into a scrap or a scrape or a fight with them. And you're like, literally you're looking at something behind them or they'll pull on the tiniest thread and assume you're criticizing them and become very vindictive. People,

You have to walk on eggshells. So the dark tetrad, and I would love it to be the dark pentagon. Is that when you have five sides? Yeah, yeah, yeah. I guess it feels satanic. But at that level, what we're acknowledging is all this stuff does overlap. That's the inherent flaw with the DSM is it tries to break off and compartmentalize. But it's like, oh, all this stuff's just a big stew of shit.

Or make it dichotomous. Or arbitrarily dropping a landmark here and there. Well, that's why we talk about the P factor. And the P factor is where sort of all psychopathology comes together. And we really separate out psychotic versus non-psychotic. And it's much broader strokes than you would think. Okay. Now, what...

Because were we to believe the statistic brought in by our sociopath guest, 5% for sociopathy? That's higher than I would think. A colleague of mine just gathered data in what's called a general population sample. So meaning we literally dipped our ladle into not college students, nothing like that. And we were pulling back numbers closer to 10% of narcissism, not sociopathy.

Great. So that's quite high. But again, spectrum. But on the spectrum. Yeah. In that case, that would be narcissism at a level that would be enough for a partner to notice it. Okay. Well, this is a later question, but you just said it. So I'm going to ask now. No, I'm going to save it. Partners, I'll remember. The part on the spectrum that you're talking about the social media cocktail picture like

feels a little bit to me more self-absorbed. Is there a difference between self-absorbed? To be at the mild side of narcissism, it's not just a self-absorbed. You have to be entitled to, right? The entitlement is sort of the one ring that rules them all. Entitlement is what cuts universally across all types of narcissism. I'm more special than you. I deserve better treatment than you. And the rules apply to you and not me. I.

So this is an inherent hypocrisy there. And this specialness, that's the grandiosity. I am more special. Why am I waiting in this line? Wait a minute, what's happening here? Every time you're in an airport, there's a person who bounds right to the top of a line that's got 200 people in it. What are you doing? That's entitlement. So you have to have that low empathy, that entitlement.

And the selfishness. If somebody is just all about, why don't people like my pictures? That's not narcissism. It's the sense of they're being a little bit snippy with the waiter and that why isn't everyone liking my pictures? And they're the friend where you listen to them talk every day for three hours a day for a month about their breakup. But when you call them two months later for a problem, they don't have time for you. Right.

That's what you're talking about. How do people become narcissists? So it's a social developmental phenomenon, just like most personality styles. So the strongest argument would be that there's some form of biological vulnerability, and that's what we call temperament. Anyone who's a parent, you're a parent, you said, right? Do you have more than one child? Two. So you saw already at a very baby age, they had different personalities. Same with mine, very different temperaments. Yeah. Because you're like, same house, same parents, same everything. And yet...

temperamentally, how you soothe them, all of that. Well, that temperament gets shaped by the environment around it. So what we know is that narcissistic people, and I'm simplifying it a bit, but there's sort of two primary pathways. What is the pathway of what I call a pathway of adversity? These are kids who had that difficult temperament, difficult to soothe, lots of attention seeking, couldn't self-regulate, very externalizing. Take that temperament and you combine it with adversity like trauma, neglect,

abuse, attachment fails, chaos in the home, devaluation, emotional abuse. That's one formula for narcissism. Now, the second pathway is more new research. It's folks in the Netherlands doing this research. I think some folks in the United States now, and they still have a little ways to go. But what they're picking out is that people who tell their child that they're more special than any other child. Oh, so all parents? No, mine didn't. I was going to say, hell no. Why aren't you doing

Where's the A? You're so careless. It's not that you're telling your child they're special. It's that you're saying that you're more special than the others and these rules don't apply to you. I'm going to talk to the coach. I'm going to talk to the teacher. And the child is really given this sense of you're better. You're more special. And then that starts becoming the seed that's shaping up. They're being overvalued. They don't learn to regulate their negative emotions. They assume someone's going to fix their stuff.

That's going to be probably more the birthplace of grandiose narcissism. These narcissistic folks, the people who came to that adversity channel, you're going to tend to see more of the vulnerable narcissism, which is a more sullen, passive, aggressive, victimized, resentful narcissism. Or you're going to see the malignant narcissist, those mean, isolating, coercive narcissists. That's where we tend to see that. So there are subtypes of narcissism. It's on a continuum. So it's not one flavor.

Right. And then is there any treatment to correct? We interviewed Phil Stutz. He said what shocked me. He said you can treat it, but it takes like seven years and the person has to be crazy willing when you just don't see much. I don't disagree. When you say treatable, what is treatable mean? What's the end game?

That you would have a set of tools you're applying that would prevent you from repeating this pattern you put partners through. I don't think that. You don't think that's an option? The reason I'm saying that is that some people say, well, what are you basing that on? That kind of sea change, to be fully aware of the other, to regulate yourself, to be...

fully present with them, attuned to them. That is a take it down to the studs makeover. That's a lot. I was giving you the example before of a person with an agreeable personality, right? It's a more flexible, changeable personality. But you know what you couldn't do with that agreeable person? You wouldn't be able to turn them into someone cold and

If I can't do that with the agreeable person, why would I be able to turn around the narcissistic person? And I might argue again, simply because this was my experience. If you are forced to go to AA because your life's in danger, you can make some pretty radical changes. But again, I think short of your life being in danger, these kind of massive changes. They don't think of themselves as costing though.

But here's where I want to push back. I'm saying like your narcissism would rarely threaten your existence. Yeah, but you wake up one day, fourth wife has left. None of your kids are speaking to you. Your business is crumbled. So your life has actually crumbled. But does the narcissist recognize? Because here's my understanding. I got to give you one anecdote. The bottom line is a therapist explained to me someone I was dealing with and they had met them too, was a narcissist.

And they said to me very clearly, you need to understand the rules of a narcissist. You will never hear them say, I'm sorry. So you have to get your expectations correct about how this is going to go. They will never say they're sorry. And when you say you're sorry, even though you don't need to, they're going to become the victim in this situation. And they're going to really indulge in that. And hopefully on the other side of that, we're going to get them to agree to this one boundary. So my question is, if a narcissist can never see their own fault in something,

Would they ever even change? Even if the obvious landscape around them was in ruin, I don't know that they would do what an alcoholic would do, which is go like, well, I'm clearly the source of all this wreckage. I'm at the center here. It's never going to be reflexive. And you bring up an interesting issue, which is the issue of 12-step, something I speak about a lot because I talk a lot about addiction and narcissism. A lot of the folks I speak with are using 12-step models in their treatment centers. And this is the big question because I'm sure you're aware of the term the dry drunk. To me, the dry drunk is a narcissist. Oh.

This is a person where they're sober, but they're unempathic. They just took away the medicine. They're selfish. So they're all the stuff, the addictive character, the step six stuff, but they're not using. And I've worked with enough families where family member goes to treatment four to six weeks. Family member comes back. Now family member is sober, but family member is still a dick. A drunken horse thief sober is still a horse thief, they say. The family's devastated. And in fact, sober, they're a little bit more mean. Yeah.

They don't have their medicine. So the dry drunk element, when I was reading the big book, I'm like, this is a narcissist. And this is one of the interesting debates in the field is could 12 step be just as useful a program for narcissism treatment as any? Because so much when you think about the core to me of 12 step as a psychologist is humility. It's taking responsibility.

It's understanding that you are not all powerful, that we are all just nothing more than ordinary human beings. And that ordinariness is what brings narcissistic people to their knees. Terminal uniqueness is terminal. Exactly. And so if you could get people to commit to the program. Now, I've had mixed success. I've had some clients, narcissistic, who have been in recovery for years, who are very committed to working their program, but the narcissism still persisted. It still pushes through. They're sponsors, everything. They're very committed.

My favorite step of the 12, the one if I got to only have learned one of them, it would have been the fourth step in that I learned an actionable process through which I could discover my own culpability in every situation I've been in. And through that, illuminate my fears that are driving all of this behavior. So they couldn't do that. Right. So step four is such an important step when we're dealing with narcissism. Right.

Because that unwillingness to take responsibility, which is really all anyone in relationships with them want, own it. Sometimes if a narcissistic person would own it, people who love them wouldn't even necessarily expect them to change it. But they don't own it so the other person feels crazy. Yeah. Yeah. To your point about treatment, I've had clients where I've worked with them for years and I don't disagree with Stutz's characterization of seven years. I'm seven years, twice a week, great therapist and motivated. So that's a lot of unicorny stuff coming together, right? Yeah.

I've worked with clients where we did the work, they came in every week, deeply motivated, intelligent, engaged. I wouldn't put up with their BS. And at the end, I remember one guy came in and he's like, so I'm clear, after this is about two years, what you're telling me is,

healthy in a relationship is that I have to listen to them. I have to listen to their emotions. I have to do things they want to do that sometimes I don't want to do. Compromise. I said, yeah, that's pretty much the punchline after two years. And he's an incredibly smart guy too. And he never missed sessions. Like, I want to take next week off. I'll come back in two. Come back in two. He had filed for divorce and broken up with his mistress. And he's like, I'm not going to do that. And he said, this feelings thing, I can't.

I can't listen to this crying. It's nonsense to me. And he said, but sex matters. And so he had some money. He's like, I pay her every two weeks. It's consistent. She leaves at 2 a.m., does what I want. That's the closeness I need. He was incredibly successful. He had a life full of friends, experiences. He had made a ton of money. He was at a stage of his life where he didn't have to work. He had a very rich, full life. Ironically, though, other people had known of him and the word had gotten back to me that he was back to the same old patterns with women. It doesn't

change. You know, as much as even when a person has a revelation, relationships for narcissistic people are a place where they regulate themselves. They get their admiration. They get something called narcissistic supply. That's what they get in the relationship. Either narcissistic people are always relationship jumping or they're angry at people for not getting into relationships with them. Right, because they're entitled to a great relationship. Stay tuned for more Armchair Expert if you dare.

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Okay, what is the impact and is there a predictable impact and pattern for children of narcissists? So the most common thing that's going to happen when a person has one or occasionally two. Yeah, because that's going to be a follow-up question. Can two narcissists be in a relationship? So let's just say with one narcissistic parent for now. And when a child has a narcissistic parent, the most likely outcome is they're going to be a very anxious person.

self-doubting, drops in self-worth grown up. You often feel like you're not enough. These are people who might be prone to perfectionism. How can I be better? How can I do more? Could you got to regulate mom or dad? It's a reversal. You have to make mom and dad feel good. You can't have needs. You can't have wants. You can't have emotions. If you do, you're shamed. How could you do this to me? I do so much for you. So it's very much a reversal situation. Okay, this is interesting. I'll just drop this anecdote on you. I know someone who's

Dad was a narcissist, no question about it. And I noticed when we're together, she tries to regulate me. How so? I can feel her monitoring my mood a lot.

and offering me kind of some unsolicited compliments and stuff. And I think because I am charismatic and a little grandiose and stuff, it makes sense to me that I'm kind of reminding her of her dad. And I can see the panic and anxiety, like I'm someone that needs to be regulated and I got to be monitored a lot and I can feel it.

Assuming that what your friend or this person in your life is doing- Let's say I got all that right. Okay, let's say you got all that right. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But assuming what she's doing is not conscious, like if she'd say, you know, it's funny when I'm around you, Dax, I just do this. That's something we call the Fawn response. And the Fawn response is a sympathetic nervous system response that's not unusual for people who've had a narcissistic parent to engage in. It's not only just a form of regulation. What I'd argue for your friend is that it's how she keeps herself safe. It's a survival mechanism.

safety. Right. I'm exhibiting these familiar character qualities and she's waiting for the shoe to drop, I think. Yeah, exactly. And I want to say to her like, hey, you know, the shoe never drops. I never kind of fly off the handle or do any of this stuff. You can breathe easy. She's trying to feel safe around you. So she's doing what she did with dad. She's complimenting you. And that is how she can feel more in her body when she's with you. Because if she doesn't, then I don't know what her fear is. Everyone has different fears depending on what

their origin story was, but that's what's happening there. But one thing I want to make clear is that the fawn response is involuntary. We often think of fawning as an active state. I'm going to compliment that person so they like me. A lot of people think it's voluntary because that feels manipulative. Oh, no.

I see someone panicked. It's exactly what it is. It's a fight, flight, fawn. Yes, exactly. Fight, flight, fawn, freeze. Yeah. It doesn't feel manipulative. It just feels exhausting to her. But I think just that awareness and that it doesn't need to be this, but also patience with it because it takes a minute. I have a friend actually writing a book on the fawn response. So we talk about it a lot. It's really misunderstood and under addressed. But I think when people start to understand it and it doesn't go away, sympathetic

nervous system responses are actually really great because they're designed, our body's keeping us safe. So we can't just say, oh, I'm not going to fawn around Dax anymore. It's more to be kind to herself when she does. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Not fault herself and self-flagellate. I would imagine people who had a parent who was narcissistic, did they disproportionately find themselves in relationships with narcissists? A lot of people have this framework of if I had a narcissistic parent, then I'm a magnet for this or I'm choosing these people. We choose

Choose narcissistic people because they're charming, charismatic, confident, compelling, attractive, successful. Like who doesn't go for that person? Right. So there's that piece of it. The narcissistic people are also not going around sniffing for the person with the broken leg, like the lion with the broken gazelle. The narcissistic person is looking for people who are good sources of supply. So that could be someone who's successful, attractive, helpful, whatever is their supply. That's what they're looking for.

And what I've heard as well is adding to their own facade. They're an extension of their accomplishments and achievements. If you're tall, if you're rich, if you drive a great car, if you're from the right family. What happens is when a person is a narcissistic parent, it's not that they're more likely to get into these relationships. They're more likely to get stuck in these relationships. Because even as the red flags start popping up, because it's so familiar. Well, I would imagine too that they're going to be

easier for that person to extend because they know the playbook. Like someone else would have to learn it. Why is he in a bad mood? Oh, I find if I tell him he looks handsome that, you know, they already came with the instruction manual. That's right. Because what also happens is pretty early on, there's gaslighting and stuff happening. When any of us are gaslighted, in most cases, the first few times we push back to like, yo, that's not what happened.

I didn't say that. But then the narcissistic gaslighter is so skilled. And again, especially if you had a narcissistic parent and there's any of that self-doubt inside of you, they're so skilled at playing on that vulnerability. And now you are doubting yourself. Now, that doesn't happen once or twice. It happens many, many times. A narcissistic relationship is death by a thousand cuts. Yeah, it's a chapter of your book. Thank you. Dex did his homework. He sure did. I'm very proud. I'm a high-functioning narcissist. Oh my God.

Oh, we're getting there. When you described yourself as charismatic, I was always like, hmm, sit back a little bit. So that vulnerability is you're more willing to fall for their subjugation. That's really what it is and get sucked into it. It goes from love bombing to subjugation and you don't clock that transitional moment.

- Right. Did you happen to watch Couples Therapy? - Some, it's a little bit of a busman's holiday. I was like, I can't. - What's a busman's holiday? - Oh, because you- - A busman's holiday is when the busman went on a bus to go on his vacation. - Because it's her life, it's hard to- - I know you say that. - It's like us listening to podcasts, even though I do like- - Though I did love Succession. - Yeah. - I loved Succession. - Oh my God. - And I watched Succession. So Succession was like the mother load of narcissism.

So like that kind of show I'll watch because it's fiction. But when it's real people's lives, it's just too much. Well, that's what I was going to say. And again, I'm not in a position to have labeled one of the participants as a narcissist, but one appeared to be one to me. And to watch the dynamic, what this man was putting this woman through. I was thinking, boy, if I was a therapist, I could handle it one-on-one. I could sit and talk to a narcissist all day long. But it'd be very hard for me to watch it all unfolding and not call it out immediately. Yeah.

I'm curious because I didn't watch the show. What did the therapist do? You know what was happening? Well, you could see the magic of what was in. We got to be very careful. We're not seeing the specific person because I don't want to get sued by this person. But what Orna was great at was...

letting the wife know the reality you just told me is the reality. And you could see that when she had a comrade in the room, it wasn't being overpowered by that. So I think maybe her focus, which was probably smart because there's nothing to do with this guy. So I'm just going to let her know that her reality. Right. She's un-gaslighting her. The role of the therapist is to un-gaslight the gaslighted client. And it only takes one person. Sometimes it only takes one time.

I felt like the woman in the couple was there to get that. That's what she needed. She needed someone to just see her that was not wrapped up in this bad dynamic. But for anyone that might feel the shame, I would imagine some of the shame about being in one of these relationships is similar to that of having been conned, where this is a very underreported crime because you feel stupid. All the time. And so what I observed is, man, you got to be real quick to outmaneuver this narcissist. This gentleman was furious.

Oh, my God. He was brilliant. The way he could be caught dead to nuts and then just buy himself enough time. It was fascinating to watch. And then the counter move. Yeah, because he would say things that I was like, I guess that does kind of make sense.

But I know that's wrong. You yourself as the viewer are like getting gaslit by him. They're clearly good at it. That's why they can do it. Right. Well, it works. At the end of the day, we are rats in a maze. For the narcissistic person, their central motivation in an intimate relationship is power, domination, and control. Nothing else. It's not affiliation. It's not love. It's not connection. It is power.

So they're playing a ground game that's designed to get them power, which means destabilizing the other person. Okay, now, can two narcissists be in a relationship? All the time. It happens all the time. So how do they coexist? These are incredibly volatile relationships. It's like all of reality TV is

predicated on two narcissistic people getting together. There's a lot of jealousy. There's a lot of criticism. There's loud arguments. There is breakup makeup cycles that go on over and over and over again. So it happens all the time. You just kind of hope they don't reproduce. I'm like, good for all of you. Let's put you all together. You deserve each other. We just don't have kids.

Now, what would be interesting is I assume they have to somehow assume the other role at times for it to function. So they are probably a narcissist at one point, but then they are also serving the other role that's required. To a point. But I think actually it just stays volatile. I remember working with a couple like this and he was 20 years older than her.

So there's already a power difference. He had a lot more money than her, but she knew how to get him off. And so that was her, if you will, power. But he definitely was the more powered person because he held the money and she was in it for the money. I hate to stereotype, but I feel like it would over-index in these couples where it's like a super rich older man and then a super bombshell. Yeah, it's like two narcissists getting married. Because it doesn't make sense. She's using him, he's using her. Exactly. It's parasitic. It's like a remora on a shark. A symbiotically parasitic relationship. Symbiotically parasitic, right. Mm-hmm.

But ultimately, I guess good for them. No. I mean, I'd rather them pair up than one of them pair up with a nice guy. It tends not to last. I was speaking with someone recently where they had an affair with someone and then they got into a committed relationship with that someone and they were shocked when that person cheated on them. I'm like, past behavior predicts future behavior. There's a lot of exceptionalism here. I will be the exception in this narcissistic relationship. Sure. There's no such thing. Is it equally distributed through the...

It depends on the type of narcissism. So with grandiose and malignant narcissism, it's more men. Kind of a male thing. Vulnerable narcissism, again, that more sullen, socially anxious, resentful, sad, victimized, equal gender distribution. Okay. And are there occupations that over-index? Yeah. CEOs in high corporate positions, entertainment, athletics. Ding, ding, ding.

Well, there's a lot of money and power in all of these. Finance, politicians. And then from there, any occupation that is high status, high pay, and hard to get. Tech has a lot of narcissism. So these are high return, high status, risk-taking. Any job that has those characteristics. I could imagine a narcissist...

coming about later in life. This is why I say this. He's not. But we were with Bill Gates for a solid week in India and we're watching him move through the world and he does bend the whole reality around him. It's not his fault. No, everyone is bending to him.

And he's not asking for it. It's just like there is a force field. You know what I'm saying? I know exactly what you're trying to say. So then the reality becomes, now I'm going to be very fucking clear, he's not at all. But I was watching it thinking, how does he not become one? Because everyone around him is putting their best foot forward. You bring up something interesting. I actually wrote about it in my second book. The one we're talking about today is my third book on narcissism. My second book on narcissism, I get into this topic. And it's when we get into ideas of privilege and entitlement. So to your point, this idea of can something develop over a life? His feet don't touch the ground. That

Doors are opened. Jets are waiting. He's not going through TSA pre-check. The military is following us through the airport. Nothing. He doesn't do stuff like regular people. He doesn't wait in line at a restaurant. He's removed from the human experience on some level. He's removed from the human experience. So that can result in a, the only word that fits here is supercilious. I've never met the man, so I don't know. But I've been in the presence of people who have that kind of

feet never touch the ground money. There's a remoteness to them. There is a can't quite get in there with them. I was worried for him because he actually is a really beautiful, sweet man. And I thought this feels very isolating. Everyone's too aware of your presence when you're around. You never get a down moment. Like I'd imagine the Queen of England might have had. But you walk through the world in a very certain way. I'm guessing, though, I don't know because I've met

people like this. I haven't met him. Also, I've been around a million movie stars and I myself have some fame. I have to police it all the time. I'll say this to my wife. She's a very wonderful, optimistic person and believes the best in everyone. And we'll walk into Starbucks and the person will like bend over backwards to get a thing and she'll go, that person was so nice. And I'll be like, well,

And we're on TV. We can't necessarily assume that person is that. I try to be aware of it because it just becomes reality. And so if you're not constantly remembering. My point about this whole idea of the privileged entitlement, feet not touching the ground folks is are they checking in with themselves and how are they treating those more vulnerable around them? So how are they treating household staff? How are they treating people on a set? Let me just say my wife couldn't be nicer to everybody. No one thinks she's a narcissist. No, no, no, not at all.

She's not. But she has such a benevolent view of everybody. She also misses that we do get special treatment sometimes and it kind of blows over her head. But that's just because she really trusts and believes everyone. It's kind of a beautiful quality. Yeah, it's a beautiful quality, but it's a tricky quality too, right? But I have to tell my kids, like I point it out to my kids. Hey, we got in because of this thing and that's not how it works. And just so you know, like this is this abstract thing that we got lucky.

Right. So it's the awareness of that, but it's how dismissive someone might be because they have that power in the world. I don't know that they're necessarily narcissistic. And imagine if somebody had like a bazillion trillion dollars, people must always be hitting them up for money. Exactly. All the time. So there has to be something that you ultimately must create a little bit of a cage around you because it's exhausting.

And I think people make you other. What I think I've observed was some people I've known go through the ride where they just go to the top of the mountain. I think I have observed if they're not on top of it, it does affect them. I'm not going to say that it makes them a narcissist, but I just think if you're not really on top of it,

And I don't even fault them. It's just like the whole world changed around them. But they have a responsibility because they don't have to deal with the stuff all the rest of us have to. So with that, the one tack that should be on them is look alive. Yeah, here's the price. Because everyone else is struggling. Yeah, exactly. Okay, so what's important about It's Not You is I'm asking you to just explain in great detail what the narcissist is. But this isn't just a manual about narcissism. This is to help people that find themselves in relationships with narcissists. Yeah. So...

Let's talk about death by a thousand cuts. What is the pattern of the relationship that people might recognize? What's tricky is, especially when we're talking about intimate relationships, these relationships can start like a fairy tale. Attention, great experiences. Good night, my queen. How is my princess this morning? You know, like it's all that kind of stuff. It's a lot of attention.

Within whatever means someone has, it might be reservations at an impossible restaurant or a picnic on the beach. It's gifts. It's little scavenger hunts. Sometimes it's that gamesmanship of you have a great day. It's good night, queen. And then crickets for three days. Now they're already playing the slot machine early in the relationship because they know three days later when they drop that message in, the other person's like, woo, woo.

They're flooded with that relief. And now you're buying in. That's actually how addiction works is that taking away that bad feeling. Reward is not how people become addicted. It's taking away icky feelings is how people become addicted. And so you're so relieved and you're like, I want to be the cool girl. I don't want to tell them that I didn't like that they didn't text me. And so now you get caught in their subjugated system quickly. This love bombing phase can last anywhere from six weeks to six months, usually not much longer than that because I don't think the narcissistic person

going to play that game. And once they feel confident that they kind of gotcha, whether it's I love you, whether it's you move in, then they start pulling back. And I always say, you know, for a while it feels like 99% great and only 1% bad. Then it's 90% good, 10% bad, 80, 20, 70, 30. At those numbers, you feel like,

that's just a relationship. It's settling in pains. I did want to flag that because I do have some concern that we're also talking about overlap of just falling in love with a non-narcissist. Well, wait till you hear the rest of this trajectory. Okay. Okay. So 70, 30 people are still saying like, this is life. Everyone's putting their best foot forward at the beginning. At 50, 50, it starts becoming a problem because half the time it's good, but half the time it's gaslighting and manipulation and being lied to and narcissistic relationships. The

consistent core of all of them. It's about betrayal, not necessarily lying, cheating betrayal, but just not being attuned, not being mindful, not being aware. Then it becomes 40% good, 60% bad, 30, 70. Now when you're at 10, 90, 10% good, 90% bad, as soon as we get under that 50, 50 point, that's when we get into this trauma bonding where the person in the relationship is

justifying it, trying to make sense of it, blaming themselves. I'm trying to be perfect for this person and thinking it's me. Maybe if I lose weight, maybe if I make more money. And so they keep digging themselves into a deeper and deeper hole, more and more and more confused. Why is nothing working? Because nothing is going to work. That's sort of the lifespan. So what happens is when, and many people don't

and their narcissistic relationships. But when they do, it's often the catalyst to that wasn't even the big, I caught you in bed with my best friend. It's they gaslit them in front of a boss. It was one more thing. And I can't, or they get into therapy and the therapist is like, yeah, no, this is not okay. Yeah.

Oh, man. Yeah. It's intense. Yeah. It's intense. It seems like a pretty well-worn strategy for the narcissist to isolate the person from outside people. A, is that a pattern? And B, is that a conscious move on the narcissist part? The more severe the narcissism, the more, I think, awareness there is of the isolation. Yeah. You hear about this boyfriend's like, I don't want you hanging out with your friends or I don't like your friends. I don't like your friends. I don't like your mom.

No man, okay, that's, I guess. Take all your exes off social media. And I wonder how aware they even are that they're doing that because obviously the threat to them is that they will run one of these ideas by a trusted friend and discover they are being gaslit. But the narcissistic person's not seeing the threat that specifically. You're isolating your supply.

And other people are competition. It is support if it's a couple and their best friend's always like, oh, come on, don't say that to her. She's so great that narcissistic partner's like, I don't need her to have her agent in the room. Out. Okay, what is the fallout of this relationship? It's bad. People in these relationships are confused people.

They're anxious. They feel helpless and powerless. They ruminate all the time. Like, God, I've said that differently. Like, what was happening? So you get very distracted. People are very hypervigilant. They're on edge. I got to say it the right way. Did I say it the right way? Let me make sure the house is clean. Let me not mention that. People are lonely. They're isolated. They feel like nobody gets it. They feel like they look foolish. There's a lot of shame. How did I let it get this bad?

people have trouble with sleep some people get physically ill I'm thinking of the cortisol and the adrenaline yeah autoimmune I imagine okay so if someone does recognize that they are in a relationship like this you have a prescriptive course of action one of them being radical acceptance so what is radical acceptance and how does someone embrace it and it's most simple term it's aware of this is it it's not going to change and

and have realistic expectations for what this relationship is moving forward. Stop taking responsibility for their behavior, and nothing you do or say is going to change their behavior. That's it. It's that simple, and it's that complicated. It's funny how similar that is to dealing with an addict. Very similar. As you'd imagine, I get called all the time with people who are dealing with someone they love

in their addiction. And I'm like, you're not going to like this. You got to throw them to the wolves. That's how this works. They have to have consequences. They got to get abandoned. They got to get to a low point. That's how it is. That becomes a slightly different conversation than this person you love, who a lot of people in the world think they're cool and great. Because remember, the narcissistic person is great at public appearances. But once they're in a car with you, or once they're closed inside a space with you, they'll go off. So you will be in a dinner party with them. And you're having a great time. You're even thinking, oh, I've read this relationship wrong. Everybody

loves him. I know. And then you're in the car on the way home and it's like, rah. And you're like, did anyone see that? And no one saw it. Nobody saw it. So they just think you're with a great guy. I am realizing when you describe that there is only one person I think I dated that wasn't actual narcissists. And I do remember when I wanted to break up with them, I was conscious of the fact that everyone else liked them and that I was losing something everyone wanted. Mm-hmm.

Ugh. Yep. I mean, it was a pretty powerful force, to be honest. It's also a self-doubting force. How could everybody be right about this person and I'm the only one who doesn't see it? Have you ever heard of Solomon Asch's research? Basically, in that psychological research, think about eight people in a circle, right? And two people in the circle were in the know. They were Confederates, all right? Everyone else, just students. They were given a piece of paper with three lines. Clearly,

Clearly one was longer than the other, right? And they had to pick the longest line. And then the people in the study were like, obviously line B is longer, line B is... And then they'd get to the first confederate, it would be like line A. You'd start to see people changing their judgments. Yeah, this is kind of halo effect too or something. Halo effect, but it's also just that social contagion effect and all that happens that we're very affected and we all have some level of suggestibility. But there is this sense, especially when it's human beings, and especially after you've been through this relationship for a while and you're indoctrinated and you're already full of self-doubt, when you're thinking...

Everybody likes them. I don't. It's got to be me. Well, also, there's something deeply primitive from an anthropological lens, which is we are a social primate obsessed with status. So when we are linked to something with high status, for all of time until now, that was our road to high status.

which increased our survival and the survival of our children. So you're really breaking a very primitive instinct to turn your back on status. And we're a hominid species, but we obviously broke off and we are a status-oriented species. But even the way status works, also, if you take it back anthropologically, and you know this better than I, you studied it, is we also see differences in terms of were they herding cultures? Were they hominids?

hunting cultures, farming cultures, all of that would even change how status would even evolve in those kinds of communities. Have you interviewed Robert Sapolsky yet? Yeah. And he talked about his baboon research with you? Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. I taught that study every semester I taught from the beginning of my career to when I retired. Tell me your favorite part because I have a very favorite part. So I'll tell you my favorite part in that one troop of baboons died

that the alphas all got killed by eating the meat. Okay? So they ate the tainted meat in the safari park. They all died, leaving an alpha-less troop. And Sapolsky watched very carefully. And what did he do? Kept measuring cortisol levels. And what did he find? They all dropped. Oh, they dropped? They dropped. You remove the alphas...

and the stress went away. Cooperative grooming remained between the non-alpha males and the females. The health of the troop improved. Think of it institutionally. You work in a job where there's a bunch of narcissistic people, and then the narcissistic person left, and the cohesion and the harmony was palpably felt.

Well, it's just like when an abusive person leaves, then the relief. But also grief. The challenge is, it's so complicated that sometimes you sort of still feel in it. And so the radical acceptance, you would think like, okay, now I get it. No, there's a grief. I've lost. I thought I was going to be in a happy marriage. I thought there was something that could be done. I thought I came from a normal family of origin. So all the dreams come crumbling in. And now you realize that this marriage will never be happy or unhappiness.

I may have to get a divorce and now my kids are growing up in two separate homes. People will say, I don't miss the narcissist. What I miss was the life I thought I was going to have. That's a lot of grief. Yeah, you got to mourn that. And you do. Some people say, I should be happy they're gone. I said, no, you shouldn't because you had invested a narrative and you in it. So grieve it. It is a loss. And we call it ambiguous grief because a lot of people don't identify it as such, but grieve it. And then when you come to that grief, giving it the time and space, now we can do the big work, which is the discernment,

the awareness, the disengagement, because not everyone can leave. I'd say all of us have at least one narcissistic relationship we cannot get out of. It's a family member, it's a colleague, it's just someone we just can't get out of the relationship. We still have to interact with them. That's where radical acceptance makes a big difference. Because I always tell folks, I know radical acceptance is working.

when you're no longer surprised by their bad behavior. - Interesting. Yeah, 'cause if you have a parent that has it, that's the hand you were dealt. And so you're deciding whether your kids are gonna meet their grandparents or not. And so you're highly incentivized to maintain some version of a relationship.

Interesting. So you think if those people just had radical acceptance over the reality of the dynamic, it would have less impact?

Stick to Topanga Canyon's closed. I'll tell you one part of that equation that benefits the oppressed in my personal experience with it is this very, very tasty habit we have of self-righteous indignation. So there is a great deal of pleasure when you observe the narcissist, be narcissistic, and you call it out amongst each other. And there is this kind of moral superiority that falls in.

That in its own way can get a tiny bit addictive. We get to go into the bedroom at night and be like, oh my God, you see this? And then I recognize like, we're getting a little bit of a bump out of this. We also enjoy the righteous indignation. I'm going to pull it away from you as a bump, Dax. I'm going to say it's an intimacy. It's a shared experience that you could have with each other in a workplace.

It's actually some really interesting literature that shows in the face of a toxic boss, the cohesion that can happen, like, can you believe this? It can actually lead to innovation and better mental health in those people. I think this happens on sports teams, too. I agree. Yeah, like it bonds the team against...

Well, it's also two people are then validating each other's experience. Like not one person isn't crazy. It's we can see this is not healthy. That's true. I just know to police myself when I'm enjoying something a lot or I'm like, oh, I'm really enjoying this. We love telling the stories. But it's also.

- Also being analytic. - Bonkers behavior. - Yeah, I don't disagree with you. And I think where it gets challenging is if the status quo doesn't shift. In any case where there's a narcissistic person and people are sort of talking to each other and if you will, creating greater alliance around that, that's all good as long as it doesn't keep in a static toxic thing going. But if it's someone who might pop, like let's say it's a consultant.

that jumps into an organization from time to time and everyone's like, "Here we go." And then you all chuckle about it, but it beats the heck out of going home and staring at the ceiling at 3:00 AM and saying, "I can't believe this person said this." And to your point, Monica, there's this attunement and intimacy, empathy, you know, shared ickiness.

can actually bring people together when you're sort of able and it ungaslights people too because you feel like I did see that correctly how can someone become narcissist resistant know what it is and know that it won't change so that when you're in the face of it like oh I see this and we often

to feel this in our body. We often feel something about this person is making the hairs on the back of my neck stand up. Most people say, yeah, no, I wasn't thrilled with them, but I thought I was being judgmental by thinking that. I'm like, no, your body always tells the truth. Your mind gaslights your body, but your body's usually on point. So trust that experience, number one. Number two, you need good social support. You need people around you. Even if it's just one person who will say, whoa, that was messed up. And you're like, really? I thought so too, but I wasn't sure. That

That one interchange can save a person to say, okay, I am not crazy. And you might learn to slowly trust your judgment. And I know a lot of people talk blah, blah about meaning and purpose. In this case, where it matters is you need something that gets you out of bed in the morning that has nothing to do with the narcissist.

It could be work. It could be a creative pursuit. Do kids help sometimes? Kids can help a lot. As you start observing the narcissist do to the children, because I find people can be more protective of their children than they can themselves. But the key becomes, there's a radical acceptance around

A narcissistic co-parent is only going to participate in parenting in a way that works for them, that aggrandizes them, that regulates them, that satisfies them, that fits with their schedule. So I think a lot of times people get frustrated because they're saying, I'm doing everything. And the radical acceptance piece, what I've worked with so many times,

so many people in the situation. I say, and you're always going to do everything and you're going to actually make it more messed up for your kids if you keep getting into the argument about why they're not helping with this. They're not doing it. If one day he's feeling it and decides to take the kids to the water park, just take it as the gift it is instead of trying to get this person to get up and do the breakfast thing with them because they're not going to consistently. Yeah, that sounds spectacular enough.

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Okay, so learning the fine art of discernment. Are there really obvious things people can look for right out of the gates? Is it too nuanced to actually give something quite prescriptive? I would imagine a narcissist that's good is smart enough to, on a first date, ask you about yourself, whether they're listening or not. They must have a playbook.

to some degree to dodge detection at the beginning? What are some telltale signs? A couple of things. One is, are they interrupting you a lot? Is the conversation just sort of have that jagged edge of you feel like they're interrupting you or they're not really listening to you or they're distracted, they're looking at their phone a lot. It just sort of feels like they're not present or they're just sort of rude. Number two, watch how they drive. Narcissistic people, the research is very clear on that. They are

bad, scary drivers. If I was in a car with them, I'm like, no, I can tell you this person's narcissistic. Oh, God. There's at least a dozen published research articles about this. You mean...

I mean, what do you mean? Drive fast. They come up behind someone quickly. The zig, zig, zig, zig, zig through the lanes. There's a lot of entitlement. There's a lot of entitled driving. I exhibit that. Okay, you gotta stop, Jax. Because you don't want me to be on the freeway and not know who you are and say, narcissist. They will. Okay, but then this is where you start parsing everything out, right? Because yes, on paper, that's not good for you. No, it's not a good look. But!

But also you grew up- I race cars. You race cars and you grew up in Detroit. Let me ask you this. Someone's in the car with you and they're like, hey, hey, hey, could you slow down? I'm a little anxious. Every trip I'm with my wife. Okay. And what do you say to her? I drive slower. There's the test.

If you said, oh my gosh, grow the hell up. What is wrong with you? Stop being a baby. Stop being a baby. That would be the narcissistic response. Okay, there we go. I'm just barely dying. You can't get into their car with them. But other things that you might see in the beginning is how do they take feedback? You might even give them the most innocuous feedback like, hey, the theater's over there. We could park here. What do you think? I don't know how to park a damn car. Now they do park in the wrong place and you're walking this long way. And now they realize they're wrong and they're like, oh, I know.

I know. Yes, you're the genius who knows where to park the car and I'm the idiot. And you're like, oh, wow. Okay, that's a lot. You're a know-it-all. They're a victim. One woman had told me how she had been dating a guy early and he had worn, I don't know what it was, like a jacket or something like that. It was blue and he had blue eyes. And she said, I love that you're wearing that jacket again. And I love how it brings out your eyes. And he's like, what are you trying to tell me that I only have one jacket? I have a whole closet full of clothes. So she was like, oh my God,

And so run away. That kind of sensitivity to feedback, sensitivity to criticism of any kind, or even just sort of pointing something out. You might see that kind of early on. You might see how they treat people in any kind of a service profession of L.A. Parker. Are they either inappropriately flirty or are they rude?

entitled. What do you mean my table's not ready kind of stuff? Those would be some of the ringers that I would say that we often see that sort of dysregulation, the entitlement, making fun of someone who's struggling, kind of getting off on humiliation. That's an early sign. Okay. Did you have any fear? Because let's just back out of narcissism for one second. Most

people leave a relationship and they can list you all 10 things the other person was doing wrong. That's very common. You break up. Why'd you guys break up? She did X, Y, and Z. He did X, Y, and Z. Then they have 10 relationships and same thing. They had that. And there's never what they did. Are you at all fearful that because that might be a little bit of a predisposition of us that we might be arming people to

quickly assess someone as a narcissist and just hop out of relationships and never explore what's going on with them? I don't because the vast majority of people, first of all, these signs I'm giving you, whether it's the driving fast or being sensitive about the blue sweater, are embedded in all these other things that feel dazzling. So in all that dazzle, the one little argument in the parking lot, now you go into the best concert ever and you have a great time. You've even forgotten about the parking lot.

I think that actually most people will never attune to the icky stuff that happens in the beginning. That's number one. We're a social species. We are an attachment-oriented species. We want to be with other people. So when a person finds someone they're attracted to, drawn to, and enjoying their time with, they're much more likely to stick around for more abuse than they are to leave at the sign of red flags. That's another thing that we know. Unless somebody really has been burned in these relationships before.

And what's very interesting is that modally, when a person's been through a narcissistic relationship, even as they're going through a breakup, as a therapist, I'll tell you what I hear in the room is, I'm so confused, doc. I hope I did the right thing. I was upside down, like he cheated on me, but it's still a lot of self-blame.

More of what I hear in that room is not he did this, he did this, he did this. It's, is this me? It's not you. That's why the book's called It's Not You. It's like, what's wrong with me? What did I do wrong? Maybe I didn't try hard enough. Narcissistic relationships pull for much more of a strong threat of self-doubt by people who are not narcissistic in those relationships. Yeah.

Now, quick question. You're listening to this. How does someone, I guess we've laid out a bunch of them, but how do you know if you yourself are a narcissist? It's very promising if you're actually asking yourself that question. Number one. Number two, are you present with other people? Do you listen to them when they have problems? How do you feel about other people's emotions? Do you truly believe you are entitled to special treatment? I think

what we have is there's one group of people who is never going to ask themselves those questions. They're not listening to this episode. They're not interested. Let's take them out. Okay. You have a group of people who are not at all narcissistic, but were told they were narcissistic or selfish in the course of a narcissistic relationship. And those poor folks, I'm saying it's not you. Then you've got this group in the middle that is an interesting group that might have some of those unicorny features of, yep, now that I look back at my divorce,

There's a little bit of taking accountability, going over what's happened, saying, I've been told this by other people. I've noticed that I've burned a few bridges. You might have some people who are doing that, to which I'd say, get thee to a therapist's office and talk it out and talk about what's happening for you. Now, narcissistic people are 60% more likely to drop out of therapy and they tend to drop out when the heat gets turned on.

when the work becomes more vulnerable, when it becomes more emotional. They can't gaslight the therapist. Well, they can often gaslight the therapist if they're not really experienced. But the other thing is when the therapist puts their feet to the fire and doesn't want to just engage in storytelling, because a lot of narcissistic people will come into therapy and just tell stories. It's an audience. And when you try to push them to feeling, they'll often sort of brush off the therapist contemptuously. If you push too hard, they won't come back.

I had a moment when I was making an argument that I wasn't a narcissist. This is what happened. I was driving to work and I weirdly was narcissistic to tell the story, but here we go. I was driving to work and I was kind of just like going through my checklist. I have a great fear of being a narcissist. I'm not sure why. Well, A, I exhibit some of these behaviors.

But I go into work and we're in a scene rehearsing and one of the actors, she is complaining about her dialogue. And this is going on and on. It's taking up all this time. And I just had this one moment where I was like, okay, well, here's something that I think is unique to a narcissist, which is I don't like my dialogue either, but I recognize no one likes their dialogue. I don't think I uniquely have bad dialogue and the rest of the script's brilliant.

She thought everyone else was brilliant. Again, specialness. Yeah, special. Like she was being uniquely punished. She was victimized by them. Yeah. And I was like, I might be thinking I'm being put upon, but I recognize everyone else is being put upon in the exact same way. It was like helpful. I was like, okay, well, don't do that.

Yeah, but it's that perspective taking. And there might be times in an airport and you're waiting and there's a weather delay and they change the airplane and you're in a different seat and you might feel like, I can't believe I'm being punished with this middle seat. And a narcissistic person would be throwing the fuss of the century.

But a healthier person would say, okay, number one, if the other plane was broken, thank goodness they changed it out. Number two, can't control the weather. This sucks for everyone here. And so that capacity to take perspective in that way is all the difference in the world. Listen, every one of us has a moment where we've behaved in an entitled way. We snapped at a receptionist. We rushed a friend off the phone.

We were selfish and we chose what we wanted to do. And it might have hurt someone. What a healthy person does in contrast to a narcissistic person is a healthy person will register that, feel uncomfortable and attempt to make amends very quickly in a meaningful way. Call the friend and say, I am so sorry. I did not listen to you. And I'm not even going to sit here and give you the litany of excuses. You deserve better. I hurt you. I'm sorry.

That kind of an apology is reparative and relationships move forward from that. A narcissistic person would blame you. How could you ask me this when you know I'm so busy and it's all about projection of blame and that's a whole different experience for the other person. Man, so if 10% of the country is narcissists, that's 30 million people. That means 30 million.

million other people are in a relation. I mean, not everyone. More than 30 million. Are you only in one relationship? Good point. Yeah. How many dozens of people do you work with that are your friends, that are your family members? So every person probably has a little world around them of 30 to 50 people. When you start doing that math, that's a lot of people. I would imagine all of us are affected. Yeah. Fascinating.

Well, this is such a riveting topic. I'm really glad that you've studied it so much and have so much to share with us. I think everyone should check out It's Not You, Identifying and Healing from Narcissistic People. Also, you have a podcast. I did. Navigating Narcissism. The episodes are still out there. You may do other seasons. And we're doing this whole new thing with Fireside, Mark Cuban's new company, starting a network on there. It's much more interactive, so you can go check that out.

I think that's going to be huge. Again, I really feel a swell of awareness around this. So much awareness. But you know what it is? This isn't about being able to say, can I pin someone as a narcissist? That's not interesting to me. It's about giving people permission to recognize when something that's happening in a relationship feels unhealthy or unsafe.

giving themselves permission to call it out to themselves, not to the other person. And also letting people know, again, it's not you. I can't tell you how much human potential we've lost because people have been shamed for who they are because the narcissistic person wants to hold power. I'm actually not even that interested in the narcissistic folks. Right, they've got enough attention. I really care about the people who are in these relationships. I want to let people know there's always room for an act too.

Oh, last question. Is it advisable? Is it someone's right if they are concerned and love someone that they feel like is in one of these relationships to call that out? Not call it out because if the person's not ready to hear it, they're going to defend. It's a bit like what we see in substance use, right? If you push that on that person and say, I'm not drinking too much, they don't have a problem.

So what you want to do is you might see a narcissistic person talk to them at dinner. Take their friend inside and say, hey, I wanted to touch base. Are you okay? I saw that and I don't know, that felt disrespectful to me, but I just wanted to make sure you're okay. Your friend might even say, no, no, it's nothing. But then you've planted a seed. I promise you that seed's going to take flight. Okay, great advice. I wouldn't know how to do that. I'd be like, hey, dude, she's a narcissist. A little bit more of a soft touch. A little bit more of a soft touch. You need a ride? You need me to bring the truck over and move everything out? Done.

Dr. Romany, thank you so much for coming. This was really, really fun. Thank you so much for having me. One part confident, one part scary. We got to know. We got to know the stuff. Thank you so much. I hope everyone checks out It's Not You. Be well. Stay tuned for the fact check. It's where the party's at.

Okay. I'm going to start by saying I'm disappointed. Why? From the description of your face until now, your face. Oh, yeah. I almost want to read what you wrote because I had the highest expectations. Okay. All right, let me just find out. I sent a text to Rob and Dax yesterday. Warning us that your face would be, let's see. Hey, team, I got a herbal peel. Shh.

at my witch yesterday and it takes multiple days and the first part of that all the pigmentation comes to the surface of your face so just prepping you both that my face is going to look absolutely hideous and crazy tomorrow

I'll bring Zofran so everyone doesn't gag. And you said, this is like someone spattered random dark purple paint on my face, smeared it all around, and then did it one more time. One more time. Yeah. So I was looking forward to like some purple spatterings as promised. Okay. Well, yesterday was worse looking than today. Yeah.

Big gains last night? Well, it feels a little scary because it's supposed to get worse before it gets perfect, right? Yeah, so when you texted us, that must have been at the nadir of the experience, like the worst. And you thought maybe it was going to keep getting worse. Well, no, because it hasn't even started peeling yet. So, yes. But the pigment part. The pigment part. I was most excited about the pigment. Like peeling, I've seen.

I've never seen someone's pigment completely change. Yeah, it looked very splotchy, dark purple spots. Okay, what is the process? What happened? What is the treatment you got? What does it do? It's like a chemical peel, but not chemical. It was herbal. So she put all this stuff on. And also, by the way, it's only on one part of my face. What do you mean? She only did one part of my face. We didn't do my full face. Tell me why.

Because that is the part of my face that has the most scarring or hyperpigmentation. The other parts don't really have it. So no need. So no need. Don't fix it so it's not broke. Exactly. Okay. So she put some goop. And it's herbal?

Yeah, it had like ginger. It had all this stuff. Okay. You know I don't ask too many questions, you know? Yeah, yeah. So first it had all these herbs and she like rubs it all over. I'm like picturing twigs and leaves and like was it a chutney? Yeah, I think it was. Okay. Where is it happening? Where? In like a dark cave or? What? No, at my witch's office. She has a fancy office in Beverly Hills.

And she smashes that all around, right, for a bit. And what's the feeling like when it's covering your face? That part. Any pain? It hurts a little. It does, okay. But nothing crazy. But then she's putting other stuff on it. And I don't know what that is, but I think it's like acids and all kinds of stuff. Okay. And it hurts really bad. Then it really takes off. Yeah. Like as she's doing it, she's like –

It's going to feel like glass is cutting you. Wow. Shards. And it did feel like that. Did you scream at all? I didn't, but I did for a second have to like breathe deep. Center yourself. And before you lost control of your. Bowels. Because herbal, I just want to remind everyone like poison ivy still herbal. Oh, for sure. Like just because something's herbal doesn't mean it can't be like terribly harmful to your skin. Right. Yeah.

Yeah. I don't think it's harmful because she knows what she's doing. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm just saying like making it relative to acid. Like, well, it's not acid. I was like, well, I'd rather have acid peel than poison ivy. True. Yeah. So she puts acids on, I don't know what acids. After the chutney. Exactly. And then...

That was kind of it. How long was the treatment? 35 minutes, 30 minutes. 30, 35 minutes. Yeah. And when you left, was your face on fire? Did it feel like it was on fire? Yes, it hurt. I looked crazy. Right immediately, you looked crazy. Very, like so red. Oh, and at first it was all white.

Whoa, what? How come white? Salts and stuff. Okay. And were you allowed to put like any ice packs on it or anything? No. Absolutely not. You got to live through the... The pain. Oh, wow. How long did it last? All day.

That was Saturday? This was Saturday. And I had a lunch plan. I had to cancel it. Sure. Because I could not be in public. You probably couldn't even move your mouth to eat. You'd have been in searing pain along the creases. Well, it was just embarrassing. It was one of those moments where you remember some people might recognize you. Uh-huh. Yeah. And you look insane. You look crazy. So...

So I decided that I was going to cancel all my plans for the day. I went home and I started Six Feet Under. Oh, wow. Blast from the past. Had you ever seen it? No. Great show, right?

so good. I'm loving it. I watched eight episodes. Wonderful. Young Peter Krause. I know. And I wanted to tell you it's so funny to see him then. He's so good in it. And his character on that show. Is Crosby on Parental? Yes. Yeah, he would tell me that all

the time because I was working with them before I had seen Six Feet Under. I then fell in love with him and then went and watched Six Feet Under. And he said, you know, sometimes I'm envious of your role because I used to have it. And it's really fun to be the good time Charlie. Yeah, it was definitely. I was like, oh, these two are brothers. This character in this show is actually Crosby's brother. Right, right, right. It's fun to see that range of people, right? Because like Peter and I could do an entirely different thing.

And it would be a totally different dynamic. It did make me- Peter, if you're listening, I'll do it. It did make me think when I was watching him, because he's so good and so believable, and then he's so good in parenthood in such a different role. But he's also like sexy in Six Feet Under, which is fun. He's so sexy. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Peter, you're so sexy in Six Feet Under. It should have been called Sex Feet Under. Oh my God. It's just weird though, because-

I mean, I guess it just shows how good of an actor he is, but it does make you think like, who is he? Because when, when I watched parenthood, I definitely thought, oh, he must be like that. But like, yeah, I almost said Peter Braverman. No, Adam Braverman. Yeah. Like a little more straight laced. No, not at all. No, he's not straight laced at all. So that, it was just so fun to see that connection, but it was a very fun day because I just watched TV all day. Like you had a cold. Yeah.

Like I had relegated the day to just like be a TV day. And because of it, I was in a very kind of... Rascally mood? A little bit. I was kind of in a fantasy world that day, which was fun. I like giving myself that once a year. Yeah. Do what I kind of shouldn't do. Which is like live in fantasy. Yeah. So what were you living somewhere with Peter in this fantasy? No. I mean...

Lots of fantasies were scrolling through the day. And I just wasn't living presently at all, you know? Which is fine. Yeah, it's your drug. It is my drug. And I let myself have it for the day.

Now, does it come with any hangover on Sunday? No. Great. Unless it would have if I couldn't snap out. Snap out, okay. That probably would have been bad. But you woke up and you were back to present day. I felt fine. It was sunny out. There's no way you can be outside, right? Well. Or can you? Did she give you any aftercare instructions? She typed out some instructions, but. You didn't read them? They're not. She made me read them out loud. Oh, wow. But they're just not.

They're written in which? Yeah. It's in a language I don't understand. A bunch of symbols. Yeah. No, it just says kind of normal stuff. But she just wants me to be checking in. She's going to tell me what to do. Now, how many times has she pitched you this treatment?

Have you said no to this treatment in the past and then said yes? No. Okay. That was the first time. She just hit you with that out of the blue. She was like, I think we need to do this. Okay. I think this is what we got to do next. Yeah. We got to really shock the system. Basically. Because my skin is not in very good shape. She tries, like this is not extreme, but it's more extreme than what we do normally. And normally she does all these acids. More.

But she calls it a peel, no peel. Right. So my skin needed a little something extra. Okay. But as I was leaving, there was an Indian lady in the waiting room. And my witch was like, oh, Monica, this is blah, blah, blah. She's had a lot of peels. Oh, she outed her. And then I was like, hey, my first one. And were you feeling insecure because your face was a flame? Of course, yeah. Now, do you stereotype people?

Like, remember when Sanjay was in here and it turned out you both didn't have coffee for the first time until after 30 years old, which I think is so interesting. Yeah. And I said, it's hard for me not to assume, oh, I guess Indians don't drink coffee till late in life. Right. So when you, if you bump into an Indian at the derm and they, oh, she's had a million things. Do you think like, oh, this must Indians must deal with.

These skin issues here in LA. Oh. Do you draw conclusions? Interacting with another Indian that's got the same story as you? Oh. Are you inclined to guess that that's a common story? I think in certain circumstances, yeah. And then others, no. I didn't think that this time. I wasn't like, oh, us Indians have all these skin problems. I just thought, oh, her skin looks really nice.

This is probably going to be good for me. Like my skin is probably similar to that person's skin type. Yeah. And so if it's working on that, like if I see a white person who's had like a laser treatment. A whitey. Yeah. And they've had a laser treatment. They might be like, this is so good. You should definitely do it. But my skin is different from their skin. Right. You're inclined to not take their advice. I just can't.

Trust whiteys. No. No. I just know that it's different. Yeah. So I can only take that to heart so much. But this woman has the same skin as me. So then it felt like, oh, this is going to be good. I did it as recently as yesterday. Say it. So...

I noticed like Molly can stay in the sauna indefinitely. She could probably do three hours in there. Her discomfort seems to be lowest. Uh-huh. Other than yours. Mm-hmm. And she's half Ecuadorian. Yes. And of course, people live on tropical climates. Yeah. They have a different setup. I know.

And so I literally just yesterday was like, yeah, Monica and Molly, they have tropical background. That's probably got to be part of it. I assume it is. Yeah. Now, if you're an Indian that's very sensitive to high heat, please hit me in the comments and say. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Or Ecuadorian. Let us know. And if you see some like blonde, some toe heads with translucent skin chilling in the

snow in a t-shirt, which I can do. Yeah. I'm sure if I were you, I'd go like, these fucking white people, man, they can really tolerate some cold, which makes sense. We've been living in a northern climate for so long. I think what you're saying makes sense. It's not where my brain goes. Right. I don't do that. Yeah, you're not... Well, so I feel bad because I do do it a lot with people, but...

I'm really categorical and I'm really obsessed with patterns. And I don't think that you're as obsessed with patterns as I am. Or are you? I'm very obsessed with psychological patterns. Okay. But I wouldn't say I pay much attention to racial patterns or like historic patterns. Male, female? Yeah.

I care less about gender patterns. Yeah, I'm constantly like, if I'm with my guys who ride at the motorcycle track and I'm like listening to this banter and I'm like picking up things that are different from the banter in my actory friends thing. Yeah. And then I'm with some other subset of people I like to hang out with. I'm like really conscious of all these different patterns of

That they have. Yeah. And how they were drawn to each other. And I just can't help but see it or be aware of it. Yeah. I mean, that's an anthropological thing, I'm sure. Yeah. A lens. Like, you go to, I was at Monster Jam this week. Oh, yeah. Yes. How was it? So fun. Of course. I mean, it's the greatest show ever. There's fucking pyrotechnics. There's destruction. There's horsepower galore.

It was the world finals. There were so many trucks. There's also one truck that's the zombie and they play Thriller. And the zombie thing has arms on it, like zombie arms. And everyone has to go like this. I'm making the Thriller, the famous Michael Jackson movie's arms back and forth. Yes. And the entire arena does it. I know. That's so fun. It's so funny because it's so stupid. No one looks cool doing this. And so to watch everyone just play along. I like it. Yeah. Yeah.

I really like it. But again, I imagine the people who are going to the Philharmonic, they're not those people. Right. For the most part, probably not. Probably not going to do the zombie arms. Well...

And maybe this is why I don't think of life in that way, maybe. Yeah. Because I've crossed so many of those boundaries. Like that zombie arm thing reminds me of in college at Georgia games in the fourth quarter, the beginning of the fourth quarter, everyone does this whole like motion. You're kind of, you're holding like four hands up and you're just like,

It's so stupid. Yeah, of course. But yeah, but everyone does it. You're all doing it together. What's funny, though, about the zombie arms is like I'm watching and I'm like, ooh, and I go like, oh, I'd be so embarrassed doing that. I'm going to do it because everyone's doing it.

And it makes you feel fun. It does. It actually reverses into yourselves and you're now having fun because you're doing something so stupid that is inexplicable. Also, it does make you feel like you're a part of the tribe. Like you are included in something. Also, there's an absurdity to we're doing it to this truck.

So it's almost like actually no one's taking it seriously and yet everyone's abiding by it. That's like there's some magic to it. I agree. Yeah. But I did that and do that. Uh-huh. But then I would also go to the Philharmonic. Yeah. So I guess it's harder for me because I bounce around a bit.

And so it's not as interesting to me to like do harsh categories because I think I quickly feel like, but like, not really, because I can't even fully relate to that.

And I think anyone that would join any one of the cultures would change. I'm just identifying the pattern within each subculture. Like what are the things that cue each other into the fact that we're an in-group? Yeah. It's very fascinating to me. Definitely. Yeah. Yeah. And there's certain things at the track and then there's certain things in F1 and there's certain things...

I was up getting interviewed and then grand marshalling. So I had to scream at the top of my lungs, Los Angeles, this is Monster Jam World Finals. And I made a commitment to myself before I started, I'm gonna go to 11. Wow. I'm gonna look right in the camera. Did you practice? No, 'cause I knew I'd be so embarrassed by what I was doing that there was be one, leave it all on the court. One and done. Yes. And I fucking went nuts. I was at peak volume. Was there a video?

There has to be. Yes, it plays live on YouTube and then it's on TV some delayed thereafter. But what was fun is now as much as I say that there's this shared culture, I can't even guess who's going to be there. So I start getting texts from people. Once I kick it off Grand Marshal style. Make yourself known. Nate talks like, holy shit, we're here. Oh my God. The boys just saw Uncle Dax.

Almost popping a vein, screaming to get excited for monster trucks. And then my old agent, he's there with his boys. Yeah. So it was, it was really fun. And then I guess the thing I wanted to say is that Charlie ate, we were there for a while. We got there at five. We did not leave until nine 30, nine 40 in Charlie ate for 100% of the time he was there.

Wow. It just never stopped. What did he eat? What was he eating? Every single thing. Chicken wings, chicken tenders, hot dogs, hamburgers. Wow. Smart...

Popcorn. Yeah, popcorn, Fritos, a couple brownies, then back a salad. He would eat and that would take whatever. He'd make a plate. He'd eat that for about 30 minutes and he'd get up and then he'd return with another plate and then another and it just never stopped. And I had eaten a lot myself, but what he did was... Epic. I felt like he was in a competition with somebody, but we didn't know who. And then in the box next to us, John Legend.

Oh, my God. I'm not guessing he's there at the Monster Truck. Right. But anyone with a little kid, you might find yourself at Monster Jam. Interesting. Because the little ones love Monster Jam. You know, the adults do, too, once you go. Yeah. Alba was in our box. Cool. Yep. It was a real throw a dart at a board. Who's going to be there? You'd picture all the rednecks like me would be there.

there. Well, I guess you're sort of defying what you just said. I know I am. I know. I know. I know. But let's be honest. You feel harmonic when you're talking about John Legend. Okay. We have a cliffhanger.

Did you cry on Friday? You did the ancestor. Okay, so I don't know how much to say because it'll air and I don't want to ruin anything of their show. I get that. But I did not cry. Okay. I laughed so uproariously for such a long period of it because, and I can't wait for this to air. Yeah. There's so many more stories about the Honchels. Oh.

And I thought, there's no way there's more. I have all the newspaper clippings, multiple murders, multiple jailbreaks, multiple robberies, kidnappings. Yeah. Oh, no. There was still a couple major doozies that they had found. And then I guess I just found out that side of the family is like one of the first in on Kentucky. Like they were in Kentucky since like 1740 or something crazy. And then same with Michigan. Like one of my relatives is the oldest person

existing settler of Monroe, Michigan. Oh, cool. You know what's so weird is I've already said, and I told him and warned him, I don't feel any connection. And even while I was hearing a lot of the stuff, I'm like, yeah, those sound like people in a history book or something.

But I did find myself getting a bizarre amount of pride knowing that we've been in Michigan forever. That's lovely. Yeah. I like that. I love Michigan. And I love that we've been set up there since way before it was a state. Yeah. That's cool. When you're talking, it's... Putting you to sleep a little bit? No. It's not putting me to sleep, but it is reminding me that my brain does not register time.

Like when you say 1740, I black out when you say that. Like I don't know what that means really. Well, I want to give you a couple of markers I use to make it relevant. Okay.

I go 1492, we got here. Sail the ocean blue. Is that the same? Columbus, sail the ocean blue. 1492, we got here. Early 1600s, Mayflower. Okay, that's helpful. The Enlightenment, I got kind of preoccupied with this. He wanted me to move on, but-

My French relatives that left France, my paternal grandfather's side, they left in the 1600s. And I was like, oh, wow, that was during the Enlightenment. Okay. Like, if you think of there's like some, you only have to remember like four or five of them. There's some huge compartments of history, which is like,

you get the Renaissance in Italy and that's, you get Galileo. We start figuring out we revolve around the sun. It's a humongous, you know, advancement, huge leap forward in what we understand. And then in France, you get the enlightenment in the 1600s. And,

And you have Rene Descartes and you have the first atheists and you have science and Newton and all this. So those are huge. Those ones I remember. And then, of course, 1776, we declare our independence. Right. So whenever you're finding out someone got here in 1740, you're like bonkers. They came here when it was British and the Revolutionary War hadn't happened yet. Yeah, that's true. Okay, cool. Cool. Yeah. The Hancho's own slaves. Surprise. As we knew. Yeah. That was ridiculous.

But the people in Michigan never did. - No. - The majority of the family didn't. - That's good. - Only one threat. - That's pretty good. So, but it was fun. - He's so sweet. - Yeah. - By the way, he's very much like us. He's an irreverent motherfucker. He is so rascally and playful. Like the way he's talking to his crew and he clearly has a great relationship with everybody. - Yeah. - And he's like, he's a provocative, rascally guy. - Yeah. - So yeah, we had a really good time and he had ordered lunch from somewhere

And I said, Skip, we are like eight blocks from the best pastrami in North America. Langers. Langers. So I talked him into getting a corned beef and pastrami platter, which he got and I got. That was a highlight of the day for sure. Yum. And that knocked him right on his ass. He was floored with how good it was. So I felt pretty cool that I had hit him with a legendary historic. That is cool.

But it was totally fun, and he's lovely. I went to a children's play on Friday. You saw Lily's? I went to Lily's play. She was Wednesday? Yes, she was Wednesday in the Addams Family at a private school here in Los Angeles that's very artsy, and it was so good. Kristen said the production value was off the charts. It was like watching a real Broadway play. Yeah, it's incredible. But also just...

Seeing these kids just really give it their all, and they're really good. They're very talented. It was so life-affirming and heartwarming. It was just lovely. And it made me so happy to see all these beautiful children. Yeah. Okay. Just seeing these kids being so confident.

and playing with comedic timing. Yeah. It was sweet. And you know what's great is she said, unanimously they all thought Saturday's show was the best by far. They thought Friday's show was a disaster. Damn it. And that's what I went to. Yeah, yeah.

But isn't that funny? It wasn't at all. I know. It was so good. That's just like the mind of a performer. Yeah, exactly. Because that's what Eric was saying. He's like, do you think that there's really any difference between these shows? Like they're all certain of what one was great and bad. And I said, yeah, it'd be interesting if like AI could watch the show and objectively say whether it was good or worse. I mean, it would be like 1%, which to them, I'm sure Friday was just – I mean, there was like – there was a couple sound – like there was a couple sound things. Tech issues? Yeah, a couple tech issues. Okay. But like – Come on.

Barely. Not like when you go see a play at my kid's school. No. It's just one tech issue after another. Yeah.

But that's so fun in a different kind of way. Well, they got to really be thinking on their toes. Yeah, they do. It gives you a different skill set when you're going to the public school. So funny. But yeah. Anyway, so that was very sweet. Oh, quick update. Yeah. In classic me, and you were the victim of one of my underestimations of a task, which is I thought I could paint the fence red.

around the property in a day. Sure. And what it ended up taking us like seven, eight days. Yeah, a while. Yeah, yeah, a long, long time. Well, similarly, I'm like, now that I played pickleball one time and loved it, I'm like, I gotta convert my driveway to a pickleball court. Yes. So that was Thursday. I was like, okay, I'm doing this. It involved like moving my little portable carports to a different area, cleaning out a whole area, getting the bus all the way up against the fence,

And then I'm like, okay, now I got to power wash the driveway so that when I put the tape down for the lines, it sticks. It's not dirty. Yeah. I might be able to do this in one hour for sure. Power wash rip right through this. Five uninterrupted hours of power washing. Never stopped for five hours. My lower back. Oh, I did an honest day's work. And that wasn't even the point, but it just occurred to me because I was in so much pain that I was like, yeah, that's an honest day work. I almost need to go to the doctor.

But yes, it turned out to be way bigger project than I thought, but I did get the tape down and we did play for the first time as a family Saturday morning. And Lincoln's obsessed, which I love. And she's good. You can play. You can actually play with her. Yeah. And now I'm debating whether or not I go all the way and paint the pavement. Oh. Yeah.

It's really hard to know if this is something we're going to like for a week or for the rest of our lives. Because I think once that paint goes down, that's that. Like sport court paint. Maybe you give it a minute. I would give it a minute. I wish there was like some kind of.

Halfway step you could take. Like paint that you knew would wear off. It's also because it's right in front of your house. It is. Yes. It'd be a full... And we got a net. It's got wheels on it. So we can just roll it in, roll it out. I like what it's looking like now. Yeah. It would be really nice though, right? If it was also painted. It would be really nice... When you're playing. When you're playing, probably. But also...

It's a big swing. The funny thing is, is I learned no lesson with the power washing. Because I'm telling you, I know I could have that court painted. Oh, my God. In two hours. For sure. I've already thought it through. I'm going to get all my buckets of paint lined up and my trays and my rollers. Definitely be able to knock that out in two hours. All right. Chris is like, you're going to have to hire someone to come do that if you're going to do that. And I'm like, absolutely not.

I know I can do it in an hour. Why would I have someone do it? Can you undo it? Can you paint over it regular? Well, I would have to then power wash it with a really strong power washer to get that paint off. Yeah.

- Yeah, it's a pretty permanent. - I think you have to wait. - It's a tattoo. I'd be putting a tattoo on the driveway. - Oh my God, you need to wait. - Can't do that. - You literally just. - Just did it. We've only had one weekend with it. - Yeah, and you just got the house to like where you guys wanted it to be for five or six years. - The workers are just about to leave, yeah. - And just wait. - Okay. - I know it's hard to wait. - I mean, there's 100% the addict in me, which is like, I did it once and it was so fun for two hours. I'm like, I wanna do this now all the time. - I know.

- You might. - You might. I did get some great shoes. I'm happy I made that decision. - That's fun. I really, really wanna learn. - It's right there. - But you have to teach me. - Yeah, so easy. - Okay. - I'll teach you in one second. - I love that. - You'll be paddling around. I bet once you play, you'll be like, "Yeah, you gotta paint this."

This is how I could get you on my side, probably. Well, does Kristen not want to? No, Kristen's more rash than I am, weirdly. She wants to. Weirdly, our dynamic, I have to pump the brakes on her. She also will be like, yeah, let's do this whole thing. Yeah, you guys are kind of similar in that way. Yeah, we kind of like gas and matches when it's like, let's do this crazy thing. Yeah. Yeah. It's really turned into a sports complex. I know. With the volleyball court and now the pickleball court. Volleyball.

Volleyball is easier to be rid of. It's just a net. Yeah, and the grass is the grass. Yeah, so... We need an ice rink in the winter. I think that's next.

Over the pool? No, I got a bunch of driveway I can use that's all the cobble. I'd turn that into an ice rink. You didn't even go classic basketball court, which would have been easy. That's coming because. Oh, it is? Yeah. That's no sweat because Lincoln has showed just a tiny bit of interest in that. So, of course, I'm going to have to put up a. Basketball hoop. Basketball hoop. But that's nothing. I put one up in my old house. Yeah. That was also a thing. I was like, I'm going to half hour.

Dig this hole, mix this cement, put this pole in. And again, it was like, the sun's going down. I'm like trying to level the pole. Oh my God. You know what is good about it? It is a blessing. Yeah. Because if you were more like me, it just won't happen. I wouldn't tackle any of this stuff. Yeah. Sometimes you win, sometimes you lose. Does Lincoln use her pavilion? Never. That I know of. Maybe. Oh.

That one doesn't bum me out because it's really the lesson we're always trying to live by, which is like, it was all about the process. I know. I don't really give a fuck if she uses it or not. Like her and I building that thing was one of my great memories. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, it's not about. And we'll convert it into a weed smoking shack when they're teenagers, I guess. Speaking of process, I had therapy on Saturday, not the end of our session. She was imploring me to do more present awareness exercises. Yeah.

So I'm going to start doing. Did she teach you some or did she refer you to any resources? More like I need to probably start meditating. Breathing stuff maybe. Yeah. Gratitude list? More meditation.

More meditation. It's just like instead of like future and past, like living in those areas. Yeah. It's a reminder that all I have is this second. That's gone. Now I have this and that's gone. So it's just being here. And so meditation is great for that. So I'm going to start doing that. I might start reading some Buddhist stuff. Oh, okay. She was talking about that.

Well, a lot of people in the comments ask, what's the book I'm reading? I don't have the author's name memorized, but the book is called What the Buddha Taught. Okay. Walfa Rahula Thero. I assume you did a good job, but I can't know for sure. Well, there's no way to know. Well, we've been getting a suspicious amount of...

We've had like four experts in a row that their whole scientific thing really ended up being Buddhism and they acknowledged as much. Yeah, and Camila Cabello. Yeah, she was saying it, but then the memory expert and James Doty. Yep.

And then I sat next to a guy at this dinner at this conference I went to last week. And he teaches at Madison. Same thing, neuroscientist, obsessed with Buddhism. Oh, cool. Anyway, okay. This is for Dr. Romany, narcissism. Very interesting. So interesting. Yes, very. So addiction and narcissism connection, link, connection, whatever. There's a article, Medical News Today.

Okay, both grandiose narcissism and vulnerable narcissism show a strong link to substance use disorders. A 2019 article in Frontiers in Psychiatry looks at the relationship between the problematic use of substances and narcissism, concluding that self-esteem plays a major role. Both fluctuating self-esteem and low self-esteem can lead to the use of alcohol, drugs, or other addictive behaviors as a method of validation, which is important to people with narcissism.

The authors of the article also note that grandiose narcissism is a factor in several other forms of addiction, such as social media use, smartphone use, compulsive shopping, gambling, compulsive working. There are widely accepted parallel traits between people with narcissistic tendencies and those who abuse drugs, including the ability to see the consequences of actions known as invulnerability, a lack of empathy, feelings of superiority, problems with fluctuating or low self-esteem, defensive behaviors to deflect scrutiny. Okay.

So... Oh, a few different people have pointed out in the comments that my new favorite word is over-indexing. And I've been very forthcoming in admitting that in the comments. But in case you're not on the comments and you've been thinking, I just want to acknowledge, yes. Yeah. I am...

Over-indexing is my favorite word. You're over-indexing on saying over-indexing? So just owning it, a thousand percent I use it. Probably too much. But I will say, it weirdly comes up so much on this show. We're talking about things where people have a... Here's why I love it. It's so much more efficient than disproportionate outcome. And then you got to specify whether it's high or low. I agree. I think...

It's fine. Okay. I mean, it's not bad. But it is the word I have been obsessed with using for the last few months. Yeah, we all circle in it. We all do this where we circle in and out of words. Yeah, I know. But what's weird is I can't imagine letting go of over-indexing. Like, I would have to have a different job. What's my word?

What is your word? What do I say? Do you know? I don't. I'm not aware. Bader-Meinhof frequency, ding, ding, ding. I mean, these aren't really vocab words. Say sim a lot. Another word I use with enormous frequency is counterintuitive. I feel like I use the word counterintuitive way more than your average person. Yeah, I know I have them.

- Juxtaposition maybe a little bit. - Oh, see, I didn't even know. - I don't even know that either. Did you just make that up? - No, I do say it. - I think you say that a lot. - Oh, you do? - I do, but I don't realize I'm saying it more than others, but maybe I am. - I haven't said juxtaposition in years.

I don't think. Yeah, it takes an outsider. When's the last time you said counterintuitive? I think I'd say it. It a little bit betrays what you're interested in. Like, I'm interested in things that are counterintuitive, and I'm interested in things that over or under index. Things that stick out. Yeah. To help with my categorical. And I'm interested in juxtapositions. Yes. I am. And mixed messages. It is.

I'm going to think on yours and see if I can. Maybe the one will come up as I'm talking. Yeah, and I'll just pay attention more. I'll look for it a little more. Okay. Let's see if we can't figure out what one you're using a lot. But I don't think there's one that jumps out like mine over indexing. I mean, that thing is – I'll use that three, four times in one episode sometimes. Yeah. I try to cut it. Yeah, I bet. Cut it.

There's probably more. You say incongruous. Incongruous. Yeah. I don't say that one because we have a friend who says it's incongruous. Right. And I don't know which one is right. There's debate. I just don't say that one. I actually think the majority think it's incongruous.

I don't like that. You know what else you say a lot? Tell me. Scattywampus. Yeah, that's intentional. Well, I love that, but it's cattywampus. And scattywampus sounds a lot more fun. It sounds way more fun. I learned that word from a sketch in the Groundlings. Oh. Some girl had written that in a sketch, and I thought that was the best. It was the first time I ever heard it. Yeah. I think it's a Southern saying, maybe. Maybe. Something like cattywampus. It sounds Southern. But scattywampus sounds so much better. Yeah, it does.

Okay. So the Sapolsky research, I mean, there's so much Sapolsky research about the baboons, but the one she was talking about is very interesting. I had not heard of it. I would say that I was going to push back in that whole moment, and I appealed to the better angels of my nature, and I just let it lie. Because, yes, cortisol levels do

Dip, but that's not to say that that's the ideal scenario for a troop of baboons because they would be murdered by another troop. They need their alpha. It kind of insinuated that the problem is alphas in those troops. And also I wanted to point out, which I didn't, that the gamma males slice the throat of the beta males the second they're tranquilized. So everyone lower on the hierarchy is acting just as scumbaggy. There is an article in New York Times saying

And if baboons can do it, why not us? The bad news is that you might have to first knock out all the most aggressive males to get there. Yeah. In a world where you're not competing with other troops or predators, it's great. Right. It works great. Right. But we just, we're not in that world yet. Humans are. Humans don't need aggressive males. Yeah. There's a lot. It makes me want to read a lot more about his work. Sapolsky? The baboon work. Ah, ah.

Uh-huh. Look into that. Read about that. Read up on that. There's another one about baboon study shows benefits for nice guys who finish second because alphas are notoriously more depressed. Yeah. They have a miserable existence. Yeah. Okay.

That's it. That's it. Oh, no. One thing. I only feel the need to bring this up because I just had my own experience with it. Because you were talking about how you worked with a person who was a narcissist. Yeah. And for you, it was you liked that.

I liked seeing it because it showed you that you weren't. Yeah, or that minimally I didn't have that characteristic. Right, because hers was very evident. But I learned this kind of from you that that's sort of a trap. Like, that's like an addiction trap, right? Like, well, I'm not as bad as that guy. So I'm fine.

I did that the other day. Someone was talking about a shopping thing, a shopping addiction. Yeah. And I was like, well, I don't know. Then I definitely am fine because I don't do that. Right. But then I was like, oh, you're not supposed to do that. Well, right. I think where I think that's most evident is when people are trying to decide if they're an addict or not. Yeah. And they just look at someone worse. And the example I always give is there is that HBO doc about addiction called

And there was a guy who was buying crack, then melting crack and shooting it. Yes. And I'm like, well, great. As long as that guy exists, everyone else can go like, well, I'm not melting down crack and then shooting it interveniously. But, um,

I'll say to be a little more specific, it's not that I felt superior to her, but you're right. I was trying to come up with what my definition of narcissism is. And then when there was this one aspect on display, which is like, it's only happening to you, that specific thing was...

I felt liberated by it. I'm like, yeah, I don't ever think I'm the only one freezing when it's cold outside. Right. Or the only one that's got shitty lines on a show or the only one. Totally. You know? Yeah. So I certainly think about myself all day long. Sure. And I think about what I need and what can make me more comfortable or happier. Yeah. And so I start worrying. This feels like a lot of time thinking about myself. Yeah.

Is this normal or is there? But it's also not connected to what you just said, but it is all a spectrum. What was the shopping thing you heard that you were like, oh, yeah, I don't do that? Oh, she, this woman just buys stuff and like has stuff shipped and stuff, but she doesn't open the boxes. Oh, my God. It's like it's just to buy. Yeah.

Yeah, did she return? She didn't return. Probably not. She must be rich, right? Or is she in debt? Well, she's probably in debt. I think that's how a lot of shopping addictions come to the surface. I want to interview Elton John on his. He's been very open about having a shopping addiction. Oh.

Because you couldn't make more money than Elton John. And he, at one point, I think bankrupted himself just from buying stuff. Yeah. Yeah, we should talk to him. Cautionary tale. I would love that. Armchair Anonymous. Yeah, just an Armchair Anonymous episode. Ooh, that's a good shopping addiction prompt. Or kleptomania. Yeah, narcolepsy. No.

Kleptomania and shopping addiction. I'd like to hear the craziest. What if I wrote in? Add it to the list.

Yeah, that's a good one. But I will say that our guest, who is very knowledgeable and I really enjoyed talking to her, I think she took a really hard line against this. And I just, it wasn't necessarily in keeping with my position on it. Well, I do think there are other people on planet Earth. And I just wanted to say there was some, I don't know, palpable hatred towards these folks. Well, they can be extremely destructive. They can. Absolutely. But I'm just not ready necessarily to go like, oh, yeah.

They're evil incarnate. No, they're not. I have compassion for... At the end of the day, they don't have relationships. They don't have actual relationships. They don't know what that feels like to evaluate how much love they've given and feel that wave of purpose. Yeah.

Well, they might. They might think they are. Like, that's the thing. They might convince themselves that they are giving love. Well, I think per her definition, the ones I've heard, the score they're keeping is how much approval of validation and adornment are they receiving. Their main objective is to receive and take as much. And so I don't think they're in the process of...

and providing and dedicating. Well, unless the sacrifice is very grandiose, because that's part of it too, because it's a self-aggrandizement. What they can't do is make someone flourish and then have the pride in having helped someone flourish. That they're completely not. They have no access to. They can't experience on planet Earth. And that might be the...

sweetest joy of being on planet Earth. Yeah, it's sad. And they don't have that. And so I feel bad that they don't. I agree with you. But I also think her goal is to protect the people in the relationships, which is why she's coming at it with that perspective.

Yeah. She really wants people in relationships with narcissists to know reality. And I said it in the episode, but I do have some fear that people are just going to label everyone they're not having a successful relationship as being narcissists and not look at themselves. So I'm a little... Yeah, I agree. That's a fear I have. Yeah. Anyway. Anyways. Very fascinating. Such an interesting topic. And that's that. All right. Love you. Love you. Bye.

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