Speaker 1: Having a narcissistic parent can be incredibly damaging, destabilizing, and
Speaker 1: have lifelong effects. In fact, it's one of the dynamics
Speaker 1: I'm asked about most. What happens when someone you rely
Speaker 1: on for love, safety, and attachment also invalidates, manipulates, and
Speaker 1: discards you. On this episode of Navigating Narcissism, I'm joined
Speaker 1: by doctor Lilly Dunn, whose strikingly honest memoir Sins of
Speaker 1: My Father unravels the mysteries of her delinquent and narcissistic dad.
Speaker 1: Lily was just six years old when her father abandoned
Speaker 1: the family and traveled thousands of miles to join the
Speaker 1: Bugwan Rajniche Sanyasen cult seen in the Netflix series Wild
Speaker 1: Wild Country. From that moment, he lived the life he
Speaker 1: wanted without regard for Lily or her family safety, well being,
Speaker 1: or financial stability. Lily's story reveals the harm caused by
Speaker 1: an antagonistic father, the effects of yearning for his love,
Speaker 1: approval and validation, and answers the quintessential question all children
Speaker 1: of narcissists eventually ask, if I have a bad parent,
Speaker 1: what does that make me? From Red Table Talk Podcasts
Speaker 1: and iHeartMedia, I'm doctor Rominy, and this is Navigating Narcissism.
Speaker 1: This podcast should not be used as a substitute for
Speaker 1: medical or mental health advice. Individuals are advised to seek
Speaker 1: independent medical advice, counseling, and or therapy from a healthcare
Speaker 1: professional with respect to any medical condition, mental health issue,
Speaker 1: or health inquiry, including matters discussed on this podcast. This
Speaker 1: episode discusses abuse, which may be triggering to some people.
Speaker 1: The views and opinions expressed are solely those of the
Speaker 1: podcast author or individuals participating in the podcast, and do
Speaker 1: not represent the opinions of Red Table Talk productions, iHeartMedia,
Speaker 1: or their employees. Doctor Lily Done, It is such an
Speaker 1: honor to welcome you to Navigating Narcissism. Since writing your
Speaker 1: brilliant memoir, you've actually earned your PhD. So I want
Speaker 1: to acknowledge that because it's a tremendous accomplishment. Congratulations, Thank
Speaker 1: you so much.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm still getting used to it, but yeah, thank you.
Speaker 1: Now your book Sins of My Father, They can't put
Speaker 1: down book for me. It earned rave reviews and it
Speaker 1: landed alongside Michelle Obama's The Light. We carry on the
Speaker 1: Guardian's Memoirs of the year, so huge, huge deal, and
Speaker 1: I want to read to you. One of the guests
Speaker 1: we had on Navigating Narcissism, doctor Yanya Lalich, said about
Speaker 1: your book unput Downable, a love story, a horror story,
Speaker 1: the unmasking of an unfortunately still much beloved guru, a
Speaker 1: soul searching that can teach us much about how to
Speaker 1: analyze and escape from a cruel narcissist. It is horrifyingly
Speaker 1: real and brilliantly written. So to fill in everyone who's
Speaker 1: listening to our interview, who was that cruel narcissist that
Speaker 1: you were escaping?
Speaker 2: This is my father. I probably didn't set out to
Speaker 2: think that he was a cruel narcissist, even perhaps when
Speaker 2: I started writing the book. I always knew that he
Speaker 2: had narcissistic tendencies. But he followed me around like a ghost,
Speaker 2: as these people do, in terms of the way that
Speaker 2: his behavior, his betrayal of me, had embedded itself into
Speaker 2: my behavior, my life, and I just couldn't really shake
Speaker 2: him off. So my father, he was not famous, but
Speaker 2: he was quite an extraordinary man, and that he was
Speaker 2: quite adventurous, and he took risks, but he was incredibly
Speaker 2: self centered, so he followed his own impulses and he
Speaker 2: lived an extraordinary life.
Speaker 1: Tell us a little bit about your dad. He left
Speaker 1: your family when you were six years old. Can you
Speaker 1: talk about the circumstances under how he left and how
Speaker 1: it affected all of you who were left behind.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Absolutely.
Speaker 1: So.
Speaker 2: My dad was born in a sort of small town
Speaker 2: in the south of England. He was sent to boarding
Speaker 2: school at a very young age at age seven. Met
Speaker 2: my mother when he was nineteen, sort of lied his
Speaker 2: way into their first date, but my mom was not
Speaker 2: aware of it at the time, so he was already
Speaker 2: sort of lying in his late teens, and then they
Speaker 2: fell in love, deeply in love. They got married very quickly.
Speaker 2: They had two children, me and my brother, and they
Speaker 2: lived a very charmed life. They were seen from the outsiders,
Speaker 2: quite a golden couple. They ran their own publishing business.
Speaker 2: We lived in North London, lovely big house. Then one
Speaker 2: day my dad woke up and he disappeared. He didn't
Speaker 2: tell us where he was going, and he didn't tell
Speaker 2: us when he was going to come back. And I
Speaker 2: was six, my brother was eight. He had met a
Speaker 2: woman at a strip club in Soho and she had
Speaker 2: introduced him to her guru. So he got a one
Speaker 2: way ticket to India to meet Bagwan Sheri Rajhnish, who
Speaker 2: later became Osho, who was the notorious Guru, a very
Speaker 2: controversial guru who was the star of world wide country fame,
Speaker 2: which brought that onto the international map. It was an
Speaker 2: increasingly popular cult, which of course they didn't see as
Speaker 2: a cult at the time. My dad went to India
Speaker 2: and he was gone for six months and we really
Speaker 2: thought that he had died. And then when he came back,
Speaker 2: he told us that he had been reborn, and so
Speaker 2: the man that we knew before was no longer and
Speaker 2: that was a huge severance for us and a.
Speaker 1: Shock when he was gone. Would he attempt to call
Speaker 1: you to inquire on how you were doing, your mother, you,
Speaker 1: your sibling?
Speaker 2: Well, he called once, so my mum received a phone
Speaker 2: call reverse charges, and of course he had gone and
Speaker 2: left us with no money. And yes, she did recall
Speaker 2: a very sort of poignant conversation with him where she said,
Speaker 2: you know, have you thought about your children? Your children
Speaker 2: are suffering. They want to see you, and he said
Speaker 2: that is their responsibility, that if they feel sad, that's
Speaker 2: their responsibility. It has nothing to do with me. And
Speaker 2: this was very much the culture of the Sinacin movement.
Speaker 2: People were drawn to it, and it appealed to people
Speaker 2: who wanted to give up that sense of responsibility. They
Speaker 2: wanted to give up their secure family home or what
Speaker 2: they saw as the tie of nuclear family, of mortgage,
Speaker 2: of job, of conventional life and absolutely just wash their
Speaker 2: hands of any kind of responsibility. And coming back and
Speaker 2: saying that he had been reborn was basically a get
Speaker 2: out card from being our father.
Speaker 1: Oh is that what it was? He's reborn? I have
Speaker 1: to tell you when I hear this bugwan raginiche kind
Speaker 1: of you know, cold stuff. It was a cult of
Speaker 1: literally codified selfishness. They had taken the construct of absolute
Speaker 1: selfishness and organized it into a cultic structure. In this way,
Speaker 1: you have no responsibility and sort of sense the conventional
Speaker 1: life means you're trapped and imprisoned. And this idea at
Speaker 1: six years old that your feelings were your responsibility and
Speaker 1: that he held no responsibility for the pain that he
Speaker 1: had issued upon a child at a very very exquisite
Speaker 1: and significant developmental juncture six years old. It's a very
Speaker 1: very delicate time for any child, and it's it seems
Speaker 1: like he came back to tell you he was reborn,
Speaker 1: with absolutely no inquiry on how you were doing, either
Speaker 1: emotionally or financially.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Absolutely, And I mean that really was the kind
Speaker 2: of trail that he left in his way. Really from
Speaker 2: that moment on, it's extraordinary when I think back to
Speaker 2: that time, how little he asked about me, you know,
Speaker 2: how little he knew me actually, because he was so
Speaker 2: kind of wrapped up in his own stuff and his
Speaker 2: own complex.
Speaker 1: Stuff, Doctor Lily. When he left, did he have a job?
Speaker 1: Could you explain to us sort of financially, yes, he
Speaker 1: walked out, but what did he really walk out of
Speaker 1: in terms of the financial responsibilities he left behind and
Speaker 1: the burden he had shouldered your mother with.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean he was a very good businessman and
Speaker 2: continue to be a good businessman throughout his whole life.
Speaker 2: He had a good instinct about business, and he earned
Speaker 2: a lot of money. But at the time that he
Speaker 2: left to go to India, he had overstretched himself. He
Speaker 2: was very extravage so you know, at the first whiff
Speaker 2: of money, he would be spending more than he was
Speaker 2: taking in. So they were in trouble at that point
Speaker 2: financially with the publishing house. So when he left, he
Speaker 2: left an entire business. He left people waiting for their checks,
Speaker 2: he left people not getting paid, he left his staff.
Speaker 2: He also was in debt and we almost lost our house.
Speaker 2: So my poor mom, she had to take the company
Speaker 2: through bankruptcy and she was threatened with losing her car
Speaker 2: and having to give over all her assets. He put
Speaker 2: us in a lot of danger.
Speaker 1: And he felt entitled to go do what he wanted,
Speaker 1: no sense of consequence. There was absolutely no even allowance
Speaker 1: for that. And this cult had allowed a way to
Speaker 1: even handle that issue of personal responsibility by basically telling
Speaker 1: people the only thing that matters is how you feel.
Speaker 1: But what was troubling it was he returns home to
Speaker 1: your family home in London, six months away in India,
Speaker 1: and he had a proposal for your mother when he
Speaker 1: walked in the door with his girlfriend.
Speaker 2: Yeah. So he came back with the same girlfriend that
Speaker 2: he had met in the peep show in Soo and
Speaker 2: my mom had never met her, but they came round
Speaker 2: to the house and they sat together and he proposed
Speaker 2: to my mother that he moved back into the house
Speaker 2: and he moved back into the marital bed, and that
Speaker 2: his girlfriend should move into the basement, and that he
Speaker 2: would basically pirouette between my mom and this woman. Perhaps
Speaker 2: this felt justified because he had just come from the
Speaker 2: Rashnish cult, which you know, people know about it. It
Speaker 2: was all about free love and free sex and let's
Speaker 2: all kind of share couples and share our partners and
Speaker 2: everything's fine. But you know, my mom was not having
Speaker 2: any of that. She stood up and told him he
Speaker 2: was bonkers. He was just like, no, that's not going
Speaker 2: to happen.
Speaker 1: It's just the entitlement to a point of absurdity, such
Speaker 1: asks could be made. There was absolutely no filter for
Speaker 1: this man of how does my behavior affect others, how
Speaker 1: would it be received, what might someone else be feeling.
Speaker 1: It was a literal almost absence of empathy.
Speaker 2: Yeah, absolutely, And that had been going on for some
Speaker 2: time before he made his escape from us, with the
Speaker 2: affairs that he was having. He was emotionally absent from
Speaker 2: us even before I was born, because he was playing
Speaker 2: the field, you know, with multiple different people behind my
Speaker 2: mom's back. So yeah, the lack of empathy and lack
Speaker 2: of engagement emotionally was pretty chronic.
Speaker 1: After he abandons the family and then comes back. What
Speaker 1: was your relationship like with your father after that?
Speaker 2: I mean I was very young, I was very hurt.
Speaker 2: I was very confused. I loved him enormously. Even talking
Speaker 2: about it now, I can feel that love despite everything,
Speaker 2: and I felt really, deeply, deeply hurt. It sort of
Speaker 2: started this sort of horrible sense of longing in me
Speaker 2: that I never really had enough of him. And so
Speaker 2: he moved to a commune in Suffolk in England called Medina,
Speaker 2: and my brother and I would go and spend our
Speaker 2: weekends with him, but we never saw him. We basically
Speaker 2: spent our time sitting on the sofas outside the meditation room,
Speaker 2: playing Donkey Kong on our consoles, and he'd occasionally come
Speaker 2: over and give us a pound note or something and say,
Speaker 2: you know, go often, get yourself some sweets, or find
Speaker 2: yourself a drink or whatever. And I remember seeing different
Speaker 2: women with him. So after breaking up with this lady
Speaker 2: that he had met when he left us for India,
Speaker 2: he met a very young woman who was at university.
Speaker 2: She was eighteen, and they got together and got married
Speaker 2: very quickly. So in a way he sort of repeated
Speaker 2: that pattern that he had had with my mother, you know,
Speaker 2: marrying someone for young and very quickly. And she was
Speaker 2: absolutely beautiful, very stylish, and I adored her. She was
Speaker 2: like a sister. But in our ages being so close,
Speaker 2: I found it very difficult because I felt that I
Speaker 2: had been usurped by her, and his attention was always
Speaker 2: on her because he was slightly insecure about her. But
Speaker 2: I think the most damaging thing for me was that
Speaker 2: I was exposed to his sort of sexual virility or
Speaker 2: his sexual performance at such a young age, and I
Speaker 2: was put in this slight sort of place of competition
Speaker 2: with these women, which I didn't understand. I was exposed
Speaker 2: to too much sex at Medina. The whole kind of
Speaker 2: cult was based around sex. I started to sort of
Speaker 2: understand my dad and he had been behaving like that
Speaker 2: since before I was born. It was all about sort
Speaker 2: of sexual conquest and his sexual sort of power. He
Speaker 2: was much more interested in himself as a sexual being
Speaker 2: other than a sort of loving beer. That was very
Speaker 2: damaging for me. And my mum had a friend who
Speaker 2: was a psychotherapist at the time, and she suggested that
Speaker 2: because my dad hadn't ever really been a parent to me.
Speaker 2: I hadn't had the opportunity to grow as a daughter.
Speaker 2: I was sort of stuck in that place from when
Speaker 2: he left, you know, which was a place of longing
Speaker 2: and a place of heartbreak. Actually I was heartbroken. You know.
Speaker 2: He is so narcissistic and so kind of hard to
Speaker 2: love in many ways, but he was also incredibly charismatic
Speaker 2: and actually quite a pathetic man. He was a needy man,
Speaker 2: and he was weak. So there's this awful kind of
Speaker 2: conflict in me and the people who love him, where
Speaker 2: we want to protect him, we want to care for him,
Speaker 2: we want to be there for him, but also we're
Speaker 2: being betrayed, we're being hurt. We're dealing with someone who
Speaker 2: just doesn't have the emotional capacity to care for us.
Speaker 2: And that's what's so damaging about it.
Speaker 1: A can call these relationships trauma bonded relationships, because you
Speaker 1: do feel a love. He is your father. There had
Speaker 1: to have been moments there that were meaningful to you,
Speaker 1: and that hanging in there because of the need for attachment,
Speaker 1: because of the love and holding on in those terrible moments,
Speaker 1: of which there were a lot, and then trying to
Speaker 1: ride them out for these possible good moments creates this
Speaker 1: very unique kind of connection with another human being that
Speaker 1: is a signature of almost every narcissistic relationship. You were
Speaker 1: a child, you didn't even have the intellect to know
Speaker 1: that this is not okay. Adults get into relationships like
Speaker 1: this too, and even armed with that intellect say they
Speaker 1: find it. It's almost physically impossible to think about pulling
Speaker 1: themselves out of this kind of a loop. With parents,
Speaker 1: it literally as physically felt like, I can't imagine walking
Speaker 1: away from this person. I love them, Yeah, And I.
Speaker 2: Think it's made worse when they are so unavailable. You
Speaker 2: never ever feel that you fully get them. You can't
Speaker 2: hold them, you don't even know them, so they're slippery.
Speaker 2: That makes it even worse because there's always that sense
Speaker 2: of grasping at something that's just out of reach.
Speaker 1: Correct. And I think at some level, the only person
Speaker 1: that would really get a glimpse at him, if you would,
Speaker 1: is somebody he needed for narcissistic supply. His young, beautiful
Speaker 1: wife would be a great example of that. She was young,
Speaker 1: she was beautiful. Of course he was going to marry her,
Speaker 1: and there was always that sense of an insecurity that
Speaker 1: she could slip away that kind of person would receive
Speaker 1: his attention and it might be fleeting until the next
Speaker 1: sexual partner whomever rolled around. Was your mother aware of
Speaker 1: what the circumstances were like at this Medina place? Who
Speaker 1: was pushing for you to continue having contact with your father?
Speaker 1: Was this something that your mother thought was important?
Speaker 2: This is a good question. I think my mom had
Speaker 2: a very, very challenging situation on her hands. She came
Speaker 2: from a very loving family with a very loving father.
Speaker 2: She was completely in love with my dad, obviously when
Speaker 2: all this kind of imploded on her, but I think
Speaker 2: a small part of her was always retained that innocence.
Speaker 2: That's not making an excuse at all. My mom is
Speaker 2: an incredibly strong, positive, trusting person. But she was not
Speaker 2: happy about Medina. She came to Medina once and she
Speaker 2: cried when she was there. She didn't like it. The
Speaker 2: dilemma that she had was that we wanted to see
Speaker 2: our father. I think I particularly needed to see my father.
Speaker 2: She said that I was like a clockwork toy that
Speaker 2: when he left, I would start to wind down until
Speaker 2: I just sort of slowed down and I became very
Speaker 2: quiet and very introspective and very sad. And then as
Speaker 2: I was building up to seeing him again, I would
Speaker 2: build up again she was coming back. I was excited.
Speaker 2: I wanted to be with him, and then I would
Speaker 2: go through that process again on leaving. So she knew
Speaker 2: that it was important for me to develop a relationship
Speaker 2: with him. The biggest dilemma for her was that she
Speaker 2: was worried that if she said no, it would build
Speaker 2: his image into an even greater force. You know, he
Speaker 2: would be this huge sort of enigma, you know, who
Speaker 2: she had stopped us from seeing. And I respect her
Speaker 2: for that, and I think she also felt when we
Speaker 2: were growing up as adults that actually we needed to
Speaker 2: experience our father for who he was, and even if
Speaker 2: that was a painful process, it was better that we
Speaker 2: came to that rather than feeling that we weren't able
Speaker 2: to meet him and actually really try and understand him.
Speaker 2: And I really respect her for that. But it was
Speaker 2: not easy for her.
Speaker 1: I understand that as a mother, as a psychologist, I
Speaker 1: fully understand where that painful and conflicted drive must have
Speaker 1: been coming for her. What was I mean, especially in
Speaker 1: your early year six seven, eight, nine tens, what was
Speaker 1: so compelling about your father that was drawing you to
Speaker 1: want to spend so much time with him.
Speaker 2: I loved him. He was very affectionate, he was very funny.
Speaker 2: When I look back on my memories of before he left,
Speaker 2: he kind of comes across as the archetypal dad come
Speaker 2: home from trips abroad, and he'd bring us all these
Speaker 2: special suites and toys from America and Christmas. He would
Speaker 2: pretend to be Father Christmas, and he'd put talconpowder on
Speaker 2: the bottom of his shoes, and there'd be a trail
Speaker 2: of sort of fake snow coming through from the attic door,
Speaker 2: and we'd have all these amazing stuff in our stockings.
Speaker 2: He was funny, he was entertaining, he was really affectionate.
Speaker 2: He had lovely big hands, and he was warm, and
Speaker 2: he was cuddly and was my dad.
Speaker 1: Thank you for showing that, because what you describe here
Speaker 1: is the father who would bring the gifts from his travels,
Speaker 1: and there were the sort of playful holiday memories, and
Speaker 1: he was entertaining and affectionate. And then you'd go for
Speaker 1: these weekends and time in Medina or other places he
Speaker 1: was living, and you couldn't get access to what you
Speaker 1: knew was going to be fun and loving. It's very
Speaker 1: very frustrating if you were always on the edge of
Speaker 1: your seat because you knew once you could get him,
Speaker 1: you would have a very pleasant circumstance, and then they'd
Speaker 1: sort of be these big periods of time waiting for
Speaker 1: him to come around. So to me, that's the paradox
Speaker 1: of any narcissistic relationship.
Speaker 2: It's interesting you saying it in those terms because I've
Speaker 2: not really thought of it like that before. But I
Speaker 2: think you're absolutely right. I think it's almost like a drug,
Speaker 2: isn't it. It's like that first hit. You know, you're
Speaker 2: searching for that first hit. You're searching for that sort
Speaker 2: of ultimate moment of connection, and you know when he
Speaker 2: moves to Italy, I would sort of go in search
Speaker 2: of him and he'd give me a hug and that
Speaker 2: became my medicine and it would fill me up again,
Speaker 2: you know, just to have that contact with him. I mean,
Speaker 2: he was holding all the cards and he had an
Speaker 2: incredible amount of power because of my need.
Speaker 1: We will be right back with this conversation. Scarcity makes
Speaker 1: anybody the most interesting person in the room, right. I
Speaker 1: might even argue a little differently to you, doctor Lilly,
Speaker 1: that was it a drug? I actually think that that
Speaker 1: almost undersells what it was to you. I think it
Speaker 1: was so much more profound than that. It was joy,
Speaker 1: it was connection, it was safety in the world. It
Speaker 1: was happiness. I don't think it was just a quick hit.
Speaker 1: I think what you wanted is what every human being
Speaker 1: wants most of all from a parent. It was love,
Speaker 1: and you knew how much love could be there at
Speaker 1: that moment if you could actually get him to sit
Speaker 1: down long enough. So you were forever on this chase.
Speaker 1: But the thing you were chasing wasn't all superficial. It
Speaker 1: was incredibly deep, and that is a very very confusing
Speaker 1: place for a child to be sort of stuck. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I have to say. Something you wrote here is on
Speaker 1: page one hundred and four of your book. I read it.
Speaker 1: It's right before I was going to sleep. I closed
Speaker 1: the book, I turned back on the light. I read
Speaker 1: it again because it dawned on me that what you
Speaker 1: had written here in a very short paragraph, captured not
Speaker 1: only this incredibly powerful dynamic in your relationship with him,
Speaker 1: it would inform anybody going through one of these relationships.
Speaker 1: And let me just give some contact you're now talking
Speaker 1: about when you were spending summers in Italy. He had
Speaker 1: moved to a house in Tuscany. You paint this gorgeous
Speaker 1: picture of what Italy was like, the smells, the sensations,
Speaker 1: the heat, the rain. I mean, it was absolutely beautiful,
Speaker 1: but against this backdrop still of this very inaccessible father.
Speaker 1: At this time, your father's married, and you're talking about
Speaker 1: the complexity of noticing how he was so adoring of
Speaker 1: his wife, who was only about seven years older than you,
Speaker 1: and you were left with this yearning. But there's something
Speaker 1: you right here. And my father did not want or
Speaker 1: need this kind of enslavement, but he needed my puppy
Speaker 1: like devotion so he could continue to behave as he wanted,
Speaker 1: the indulged man accountable to no one. But I was
Speaker 1: also a nuisance to him, hanging on his sleeve so often,
Speaker 1: unable to contain my noisy grief, and it reminded him
Speaker 1: of what he had done. Can you share what that
Speaker 1: passage meant to you? And I'd love to share with
Speaker 1: you why it had such a profound impact on me.
Speaker 2: I remember writing that when he got married to his wife,
Speaker 2: I went along to the wedding, but I spent the
Speaker 2: whole time hanging on to my dad, and I wouldn't
Speaker 2: even let them have any photos of themselves on their
Speaker 2: own because there was me hanging on to him and crying.
Speaker 2: And I must have been a real pain in the
Speaker 2: ass for my dad. Must have been really awful on
Speaker 2: one side, just to have your daughter a kind of
Speaker 2: hanging there crying, But also I was reminding him of
Speaker 2: the pain that he had put me through because I
Speaker 2: couldn't contain it myself. For years and years, every time
Speaker 2: I saw him, I would cry, and I did sort
Speaker 2: of walk around as a slight mirror to him.
Speaker 1: What you said in that last sentence here was the
Speaker 1: I was a nuisance to him, right, And I don't
Speaker 1: know that a child should ever conceptualize themselves as a nuisance.
Speaker 1: But I was a nuisance to him, hanging on his
Speaker 1: sleeve so often, unable to contain my grief, and it
Speaker 1: reminded him of what he had done. That's the piece.
Speaker 1: It had reminded him of what he had done. That
Speaker 1: jumped out at me, doctor Lilly, because I think that
Speaker 1: line is all about the narcissistic shame, which is the
Speaker 1: core dynamic, especially in a narcissistic parent, that the presence
Speaker 1: of the child in perpetuity evokes that shame right, which
Speaker 1: is the manifestation of that ego getting injured in that
Speaker 1: narcissistic parent, and sh is the most uncomfortable space the
Speaker 1: narcissistic person can live. And so what do they do?
Speaker 1: They try to eradicate that source of shame. Parents do
Speaker 1: that in different ways. Some people rage at their child,
Speaker 1: some people ignore their child. And in this way, you
Speaker 1: simply trying to get your attachment needs met was evoking
Speaker 1: shame in him. That was a toxic dance that you
Speaker 1: were never going to get right. And I think when
Speaker 1: I read that part of the book, I was so
Speaker 1: devastated for the girl and the young woman that you
Speaker 1: were becoming at that point, because you captured what you were.
Speaker 1: You were literally a stimulus for this man's shame.
Speaker 2: It's interesting that you pick up that extract because there
Speaker 2: is that thing that he says to me in Italy.
Speaker 2: He is high on ecstasy and I've fallen off my
Speaker 2: motorbike and I'd hurt my leg and I couldn't sleep.
Speaker 2: And he turned to his wife and said, Lily is
Speaker 2: the only person who knows me. And I took this
Speaker 2: on board as truth. You know that I was the
Speaker 2: only person who knew him, and that that made me special,
Speaker 2: And I carried that with me. But it's interesting that
Speaker 2: you pick up on that passage because in a way
Speaker 2: he was right, because actually I was reminding him of
Speaker 2: his shame. I was that truth. I was the walking, talking,
Speaker 2: crying product of his betrayal. So in a way I
Speaker 2: did know him as much as he was able to
Speaker 2: allow anybody to know him. But he also used that
Speaker 2: statement to me that night as a manipulation. He used
Speaker 2: it to make me think that I was special in
Speaker 2: order to keep me hanging on. So you know, it's
Speaker 2: a double edged sword, isn't it. It's a double bind.
Speaker 2: It's not a simple, straightforward kind of relationship in any way.
Speaker 1: But it was also an acknowledgment that you were dangerous
Speaker 1: because you actually did see him, you paid an enough
Speaker 1: attention to see him. You had not sort of knitted
Speaker 1: that together. And I guess that goes to my next question,
Speaker 1: when did you connect the dart in your life and
Speaker 1: your relationship with your father that his behavior was a
Speaker 1: manifestation of narcissism.
Speaker 2: I started to realize that something wasn't quite right with him.
Speaker 2: I mean, you know, obviously I knew that there was
Speaker 2: quite a lot that wasn't right with him, but I
Speaker 2: started to kind of think, maybe this is sort of
Speaker 2: slightly more sociopathic. When there were a couple of times
Speaker 2: when I confronted him and he would turn on me
Speaker 2: and he would be really cruel. He would either tell
Speaker 2: me that he never wanted to see me again or
Speaker 2: say something really nasty. I'd see a side of him
Speaker 2: that I'd never seen before, and I realized he did
Speaker 2: not want to be crossed, he did not want to
Speaker 2: be challenged, and that that was incredibly wounding for him,
Speaker 2: to the point that he would be irrational to tell
Speaker 2: your daughter that they never want to see you again.
Speaker 2: You're the adult here, and you're telling me when I'm
Speaker 2: nineteen and I'm asking you to take some responsibility for
Speaker 2: what you've done to me, that you never want to
Speaker 2: see me again. I was just like, what, that is
Speaker 2: not right. I think at that point I started to
Speaker 2: recognize actually that his behavior was not okay, and it
Speaker 2: was not normal and you know, slightly frightening. But I
Speaker 2: think that the real dawning came really when I started
Speaker 2: to write this book and do my research and even
Speaker 2: looking at the myth of Narcissus. I thought was fascinating
Speaker 2: because it just felt like, Oh my god, that's my dad.
Speaker 1: So interesting you bring up the myth of narcissus. For
Speaker 1: how long we've been doing this podcast, I don't know
Speaker 1: that we've ever fully talked about it. The myth of
Speaker 1: narcissus is an interesting one because it's been written and
Speaker 1: rewritten by different poets in different myths. What part of
Speaker 1: the myth of narcissus explained your father?
Speaker 2: It was the need for someone to reflect or something
Speaker 2: to reflect your beauty, and that that's only skin deep.
Speaker 2: To kind of go beyond the surface is dangerous for
Speaker 2: that person. I think also that I was very struck
Speaker 2: by echo and that relationship and questioned what my part
Speaker 2: of this dynamic was. Clearly, people who are narcissistic need
Speaker 2: to have that adoration, They need to have the echo,
Speaker 2: They need to have the person who is going to
Speaker 2: keep bolstering them, you know, and keep making them feel
Speaker 2: that they are this beautiful soul, that they don't need
Speaker 2: to go beyond. They don't need to face the truth,
Speaker 2: they don't need to see themselves for who they really are.
Speaker 1: What is so interesting about the myth of Narcissus is
Speaker 1: that everyone in that myth was being punished, both Echo
Speaker 1: and Narcissus. Narcissus's fate, his punishment was that he could
Speaker 1: not love another right, and it wasn't even love. It
Speaker 1: was about admiration, reflection of the physical image, and ultimately,
Speaker 1: in the pain of all of that, he ends his life.
Speaker 1: But Echo was cursed too, and Echo's curse was to
Speaker 1: only be able to repeat and not say something new.
Speaker 1: And so Echo, in that way was sort of stuck
Speaker 1: in a relationship with no identity except sort of repeating
Speaker 1: and pingponging off of Narcissus. They were both cursed, and
Speaker 1: I think it's a reminder that not only is the
Speaker 1: narcissistic person cursed, the people who get drawn into these
Speaker 1: relationships are as well.
Speaker 2: Yes, that absolutely resonates. It is like a poison. And
Speaker 2: I mean, I didn't want to end up like my father,
Speaker 2: and at times I was worried that I would, you know,
Speaker 2: if I didn't face it.
Speaker 1: Well, it's the curse of these relationships that we do have,
Speaker 1: that fear that will will happen. I want to talk
Speaker 1: a little bit about your father did go into a
Speaker 1: cultic system? Could you just sort of give us an
Speaker 1: overview of the Bagwan raj Niche cult. I think it's
Speaker 1: called the Sonyasen movement.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so on. Shri Rajnish was an intelligent, well educated
Speaker 2: man in India who started a spiritual movement and had
Speaker 2: a local following of Indians who came to him when
Speaker 2: he was a young man. He was quite clever because
Speaker 2: he combined the Indian spiritualism with Western psychoanalysis and different
Speaker 2: ways of looking at psychology, and this hadn't really been
Speaker 2: done before. So this appealed to a generation of young
Speaker 2: people who were growing up in the sixties and seventies
Speaker 2: and there was the Summer of Love and you know,
Speaker 2: sexual liberation and a sense of kind of radicalism in
Speaker 2: the youth. You know that they wanted to get away
Speaker 2: from the influence of their parents, which they saw as claustrophobic,
Speaker 2: and you know that there was a bigger world out there,
Speaker 2: there was more life, there was international travel, They could
Speaker 2: learn from other cultures. The Beatles were doing it with
Speaker 2: their maharishi. So his spiritual movement, it grew and developed
Speaker 2: and word got round and the Europeans started to join
Speaker 2: and at that point, you know, it was a utopian place.
Speaker 2: You know, it was beautiful, and it was warm and loving,
Speaker 2: and everybody worked for a common good. People were doing
Speaker 2: therapies and meditation, and it was all about developing the self.
Speaker 2: A lot of people who came from Catholic upbringing or
Speaker 2: had been to boarding school or you know where they'd
Speaker 2: felt restricted and they'd been told what to do. It
Speaker 2: was letting go of all of that and getting in
Speaker 2: touch with yourself. And I think it was a good
Speaker 2: way for lots of people to live in those early stages.
Speaker 2: But there was also a dark side, which was that
Speaker 2: Baguan was mischievous and some of the therapies were quite provocative.
Speaker 2: People who came in as couples were encouraged to split
Speaker 2: up and try new partners. Some of the therapies in
Speaker 2: the early days were quite violent. And then it grew
Speaker 2: Puna and they moved into America, which is when he
Speaker 2: had a secretary called Sheila who kind of took command.
Speaker 2: And she found this ranch in Oregon where they basically
Speaker 2: built a city, and they did all the plumbing and
Speaker 2: the infrastructure and the electricity, and they built this from scratch.
Speaker 2: They started to behave in secretive ways and suspicious ways.
Speaker 2: There was a whole salmonella attack. The FBI got involved,
Speaker 2: and bug one then got confiscated from America and he
Speaker 2: got sent back to India.
Speaker 1: You astutely pointed out in your book this seminella attack
Speaker 1: was the only bioterror attack that ever occurred on American soil.
Speaker 1: I had no idea but your dad. I think your
Speaker 1: dad was somewhat suggestible and impressionable, but really gets into
Speaker 1: that sort of harmful, tyrannical, self sacrificing, subjugated system. Did
Speaker 1: your father have that experience within this cult? It seems
Speaker 1: like he managed to harness the cult in a way
Speaker 1: that worked for him.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I think you're right. Yeah. So, no, he wasn't
Speaker 2: really like the other disciples, and he would not have
Speaker 2: liked to have aligned himself with the other disciples in
Speaker 2: that way. He was naturally a leader, and he went
Speaker 2: in with a kind of business mind, so he would
Speaker 2: go in and advise people on running their own businesses.
Speaker 2: People admired him and they looked up to him, and
Speaker 2: that suited him well. So in a way, he sort
Speaker 2: of took on a guru persona as a disciple. I
Speaker 2: think you're absolutely right that he harnessed it to fit
Speaker 2: in with the way that he wanted to live. So
Speaker 2: it enabled him to behave in the way that he
Speaker 2: wanted to behave without having to pay any consequences for that.
Speaker 2: So my dad didn't really fall for all the therapies.
Speaker 2: He didn't really meditate, he didn't really take all that
Speaker 2: that seriously. I think he was in it because he
Speaker 2: could have multiple lovers. He was revered within that community.
Speaker 2: They didn't really know him like we knew him.
Speaker 1: I want to give listeners some other context because I
Speaker 1: think this is a really important piece of your father's puzzle.
Speaker 1: Here he is in occultic system, feel some power in it.
Speaker 1: Something that was very compelling about your father's history was that,
Speaker 1: at a relatively young age, his parents sent him to
Speaker 1: a boarding school, and that boarding school was a very
Speaker 1: harsh and cold and cruel and abusive place. His parents
Speaker 1: seemed to send him there so they would improve his
Speaker 1: station and maybe even the family's station in life, but
Speaker 1: it was a horrific experience for him.
Speaker 2: My dad was sent to boarding school at the age
Speaker 2: of seven, and he was very devastated by that from
Speaker 2: day one. He never really talked about it, but he
Speaker 2: did tell me about the day that he was left
Speaker 2: on the step outside the school for the first time,
Speaker 2: and that he cried and cried out to his mum
Speaker 2: and dad and they just walked away. They didn't even
Speaker 2: turn around back to him. And he swore from that
Speaker 2: day that he would never ever love his parents again.
Speaker 2: So the betrayal was very, very deep for him. He
Speaker 2: was a very pretty boy, He was a very dreamy boy.
Speaker 2: He was a creative boy, and I think it was
Speaker 2: seen as a victim and he was bullied and abused.
Speaker 2: He did say that he was raped. They have this
Speaker 2: whole sort of ritual in boarding schools where they treat
Speaker 2: certain younger, weaker boys as servants, and my dad had
Speaker 2: to sort of go through all of that, I think,
Speaker 2: probably over years, so very undermining experience and very alienating.
Speaker 2: I imagine it probably felt that he had been evicted
Speaker 2: from the center of his family. His mother was very
Speaker 2: adoring of him, She was his golden child. She favored
Speaker 2: him over his sister, even though his sisters got to
Speaker 2: stay at home because she was a girl, and he
Speaker 2: was from that moment almost split, you know, between the
Speaker 2: person he had to be at school and then the
Speaker 2: person he had to be at home, and I think
Speaker 2: it's possibly where he cultivated that sort of persona of lying,
Speaker 2: of cheating, of not really being fully himself, because that's
Speaker 2: probably how you have to survive when you're in an
Speaker 2: unhappy situation like that.
Speaker 1: Can I call you out on an interesting Freudian slip
Speaker 1: you made because e when you were speaking about his mother,
Speaker 1: you said she was his golden child, you know, really,
Speaker 1: as Freud would say, there are no mistakes. The slip
Speaker 1: was so telling to me because it seemed like your
Speaker 1: father there was a real adoration between them. He was
Speaker 1: her golden child, for sure, but I do wonder how
Speaker 1: much she was what to the degree a parent could
Speaker 1: be that that idealized figure, and he was being rested away,
Speaker 1: you know from that space, the disruption and attachment that
Speaker 1: that creates, and that your father in a way was
Speaker 1: sort of chasing that attachment that he had lost, and
Speaker 1: it's very difficult to go back and get obviously, if
Speaker 1: not impossible, that actual attachment. Your father was horribly abused
Speaker 1: in that boarding school situation where he had very little power.
Speaker 1: When we hear about him in this cult, in the
Speaker 1: bugwont Reginie cult, what we hear is a man who
Speaker 1: now actually is sauntering through there and taking that power
Speaker 1: back to me. The boarding school felt like a cultic
Speaker 1: system where he was abused, and the adult cult was
Speaker 1: a place where he actually got to hold that power. Yeah.
Speaker 2: And also he took the power into his hands by
Speaker 2: leaving us as well. So he was evicted as a
Speaker 2: seven year old, and then when my brother was eight
Speaker 2: and I was six, he left us. He evicted himself
Speaker 2: in a very similar way. You know, it was very
Speaker 2: sudden and very it was a severance, It was a trauma,
Speaker 2: and I think, I mean, what's interesting about the cult
Speaker 2: is that, on the face of it, how could you
Speaker 2: compare a free loving, free sex kind of liberal radical
Speaker 2: cult with a very stuffy British boarding school. But actually
Speaker 2: what started to happen, particularly in the Oregon days when
Speaker 2: it did become very cultish, was that it was totally
Speaker 2: rule bound and it had a very strong hierarchical structure.
Speaker 2: People had to behave or they were pushed out. You know,
Speaker 2: everyone wore the same clothes or similar clothes, so it
Speaker 2: became very institutionalized actually, and I think that was possibly
Speaker 2: quite familiar to my.
Speaker 1: Dad, absolutely familiar to him. Also probably One of the
Speaker 1: biggest questions I get as somebody who's so focused on
Speaker 1: work on narcissism is why do they bec this way?
Speaker 1: Why does a person become narcissistic? But I always tell
Speaker 1: people I answer this with an asterisk, and by that
Speaker 1: I mean this does not lift responsibility for their behavior,
Speaker 1: does not obviate that what they did was harmful. None
Speaker 1: of that is taken away. We know that narcissism is
Speaker 1: often a byproduct of a disruption and attachment of that
Speaker 1: kind of loss. So that sort of violent pulling away
Speaker 1: not only from what felt like a securely attached family system,
Speaker 1: but then being thrown into a system that abused him,
Speaker 1: to not be rescued from that system, and then have
Speaker 1: to keep a foot in the two systems, it steals
Speaker 1: all of that sense of safety, and it plays on
Speaker 1: that idea of nothing is safe. And so this fragile ego,
Speaker 1: then is all kinds of defenses grow up around that,
Speaker 1: entitlement and grandiosity and validation, seeking anything to find some
Speaker 1: sense of safety in the world. As your father came
Speaker 1: up into adolescence and was revealed and made him attractive,
Speaker 1: he now I'm sure found that's regulating through that through admiration,
Speaker 1: through validation, and then ultimately through sexual gratification he could get,
Speaker 1: especially given the Golden child mother, shall we say it,
Speaker 1: It really speaks to where this comes from. All of
Speaker 1: that set. We can psychoanalyze this twenty different ways. There
Speaker 1: was no responsibility taking. I mean, if we were to
Speaker 1: go back in time and give him proper trauma therapy,
Speaker 1: there might have been a shot at some normalization. But
Speaker 1: these are patterns that are really really resistant to change.
Speaker 1: And so yeah, I absolutely agree that what happened and
Speaker 1: getting pulled into another system and having a different kind
Speaker 1: of power within it, especially as it became more rule bound,
Speaker 1: it was very telling. But interestingly enough too, it also
Speaker 1: feels like this cult system he was in almost emboldened
Speaker 1: his existing narcissistic qualities because there was no call for accountability.
Speaker 1: There is no call for responsibility. So it was a
Speaker 1: bit of a disaster that him and that cult coming
Speaker 1: together took away any shred of hope that he would
Speaker 1: be able to ever step up as a present father.
Speaker 2: Absolutely. Yeah, no, that's amazing. You've summed it up brilliantly there.
Speaker 2: It's interesting that he didn't take part in the therapies
Speaker 2: because he would have to start to untangle some of
Speaker 2: that stuff, which would have been really frightening for him.
Speaker 2: And so cherry picked, he took those things that he
Speaker 2: wanted that were helpful to him. The other thing I
Speaker 2: wanted to say was that people involved in that cult
Speaker 2: are made to believe that they are special, that they
Speaker 2: are different from your run of the mill ordinary person
Speaker 2: from outside. And of course that is one of the
Speaker 2: main fueling narcissistic parts of the temperament, isn't it that
Speaker 2: you know, you, as an artissist, have to feel special,
Speaker 2: and boarding schools do the same. You know, our country
Speaker 2: and the UK is run by entitled men who went
Speaker 2: to boarding school who still don't have to see themselves
Speaker 2: as ordinary, who were primed to go to Eton and
Speaker 2: then to Oxford Cambridge and to then rule the country.
Speaker 2: And they never ever come down to the normal kind
Speaker 2: of level of the people that they are supposedly protecting.
Speaker 2: And you know, I'd say that my dad was the same.
Speaker 2: He would have learnt that sense of entitlement at school
Speaker 2: and then he continued to have it in the cult.
Speaker 2: And it's incredibly difficult to break through that because it
Speaker 2: is this kind of protective armor isn't it.
Speaker 1: I mean absolutely, and it's the new age narcissistic kind
Speaker 1: of pick a new age thing. It very much does
Speaker 1: play into that sort of that idea of specialness, of
Speaker 1: cherry picking what works and really only cherry picking the
Speaker 1: pieces of various therapeutic models or selected Eastern philosophies that
Speaker 1: are just being put out there that will allow a
Speaker 1: person to maintain that sense of specialness of no accountability.
Speaker 1: I mean, that's really all that does at some point.
Speaker 1: It's a self destruction that ultimately that destroys other people because,
Speaker 1: as you pointed out, these people in these boarding school systems,
Speaker 1: which really seems like a standardized bullying curriculum, then go
Speaker 1: on to take that mindset into how they run governments
Speaker 1: and companies and things that do harm to people because
Speaker 1: they still continue to bring that deeply entitled mindset to
Speaker 1: all of it. With your father, he also did drink.
Speaker 1: Was his drinking always an issue?
Speaker 2: Well, no, he wasn't a drinker. He didn't drink until
Speaker 2: he moved to America. This was around the time when
Speaker 2: he renounced the whole spiritual movement, which you know was
Speaker 2: not like a big dramatic renouncement at all. He was
Speaker 2: involved with the cults inadvertently about twenty years, but he
Speaker 2: wasn't living in a communal sense. In the later years,
Speaker 2: he moved to Mill Valley in California with his wife,
Speaker 2: and I think he started drinking wine and it was
Speaker 2: never a worry. We didn't realize that it was as
Speaker 2: bad as it was until only a couple of years
Speaker 2: before he died. So his wife left him. That was
Speaker 2: quite a big shock for him, and he also got
Speaker 2: embroiled in a scam, which we were very surprised by.
Speaker 2: But I think by that point he was quite deluded
Speaker 2: because he fell for this scam, which was just unbelievably ridiculous.
Speaker 2: You know. It was kind of one of those scams
Speaker 2: that we've all had, you know, those emails saying that
Speaker 2: you've got a long lost relative who's died in a
Speaker 2: car crash and we've tracked you down as the next
Speaker 2: of kin, you know, which my dad would have known
Speaker 2: was a scam in his right mind. But he fell
Speaker 2: for it and he lost a lot of money to that,
Speaker 2: and I think that that, combined with his separation from
Speaker 2: his wife, he kind of fell into free at that
Speaker 2: point and then had a very very kind of dramatic,
Speaker 2: catastrophic last couple of years of his life where he
Speaker 2: was in and out of hospital and lost everything. He
Speaker 2: lost his business, he lost his home, he was deported
Speaker 2: back to the UK, and he basically died homeless on
Speaker 2: his own in a B and B.
Speaker 1: I mean, it was a catastrophic fall. Wife leaves him.
Speaker 1: That's a huge narcissistic injury for him, that rejection, the abandonment,
Speaker 1: more drinking on top of that. But the scam part
Speaker 1: was interesting. I think your father was so caught up
Speaker 1: in the loop of grandiosity and magical thinking that it was, Oh,
Speaker 1: I need money, and look how convenient, and it's coming
Speaker 1: to me because I'm special. Of course money's coming to me.
Speaker 1: And I think that we often think of narcissistic people
Speaker 1: as the scammers, which they often are, but we forget
Speaker 1: how vulnerable this personality style could make someone to a scam.
Speaker 1: There's a certain suggestibility he went into the cult and
Speaker 1: fell for that hook line and sinker. But when you
Speaker 1: take that suggestibility and you mix it up with entitlement
Speaker 1: and a perception of specialness and delusional grandiosity, you actually
Speaker 1: have a bit of a disaster there, because there's literally
Speaker 1: a willingness to say, oh, well, then look at this.
Speaker 1: Of course everything worked out because I deserve it too.
Speaker 1: And then you add to that that he's drinking, and
Speaker 1: so his judgment was off. You could see how he
Speaker 1: was really a prime candidate for that kind of a scam.
Speaker 1: My conversation will continue after this.
Speaker 2: Break, magical thinking, absolutely, that's exactly what it was. And
Speaker 2: he also, for as long as I can remember, he
Speaker 2: wanted to be a millionaire, and so yeah, suddenly this
Speaker 2: kind of supposed thing lands in his lap and he thinks, oh, yeah,
Speaker 2: of course this is my destiny. I'm going to be
Speaker 2: a millionaire.
Speaker 1: The other thing your father did, because whole idea with
Speaker 1: your dad was from a very young age, his power
Speaker 1: was keeping you in his orbit and in essence keeping
Speaker 1: you from fully individuating, you know, fully becoming your whole
Speaker 1: for self. There was this gravitational pull. Well, one thing
Speaker 1: you talk about is yes idea of your father dangling
Speaker 1: carrots to keep you around. Can you explain and talk
Speaker 1: about what some of those carrots were.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean he never paid my mom maintenance for us.
Speaker 2: He only ever gave us gestures, so you know, he
Speaker 2: would buy us really fancy designer clothes. When he came
Speaker 2: to London, he take us to Selfridges and splurge hundreds
Speaker 2: of pounds on us, take us out for fancy meals,
Speaker 2: and he'd drop bits of money into our bank account.
Speaker 2: But he also always withheld his promises. So he made
Speaker 2: promises and we would then be on the end of
Speaker 2: the phone or the end of an email and promises
Speaker 2: wouldn't happen, and so it'd be like, Dad, you said
Speaker 2: you'd send me that money for this important thing I
Speaker 2: have to buy. Oh yeah, yeah, darling, ya, I'll do it.
Speaker 2: I'll do I just to wait for some money to
Speaker 2: come in. And then you know, five days later, Dad,
Speaker 2: it's still not in the bank. You know, I'm back
Speaker 2: in contact with him. Yeah, yeah, it'll be there. I'm
Speaker 2: just waiting, you know, honey, just wait, wait, you know,
Speaker 2: just be patient. And then you know, a week later,
Speaker 2: two weeks later, just trying to get his attention again
Speaker 2: and again just waiting. And this happened all around my
Speaker 2: wedding as well, where he'd promise to pay for certain things,
Speaker 2: and right up to the wire we were waiting and
Speaker 2: not even aware, you know, whether we were even going
Speaker 2: to be able to follow through because we were still
Speaker 2: waiting for that money. He also would do those sort
Speaker 2: of manipulative things where I would phone him and he'd
Speaker 2: pick up. I'd be like, hey, Lily, honey, I was
Speaker 2: just thinking about you. You must be psychic. We're psychic,
Speaker 2: We're connected, And so there was that sort of manipulation
Speaker 2: as well that we were special, we had a special bond,
Speaker 2: we had a special connection, and yeah, I mean that
Speaker 2: just kind of kept me there to side feeling like
Speaker 2: we had a special relationship despite repeated abuses really and
Speaker 2: neglect and pretty bad behavior.
Speaker 1: That carrot dangling behavior you talk about, Lily, is something
Speaker 1: in narcissistic relationships we call future faking. It's coming. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm going to do this. I'm going to do this
Speaker 1: thing you ask for, especially when it can be quite grandiose.
Speaker 1: I'm going to pay for all this. I'm going to
Speaker 1: take care of that. But what it does is it
Speaker 1: keeps people on the chain, right, so they keep getting
Speaker 1: the ongoing contact, and they just keep moving those goalposts
Speaker 1: and people just sort of keep marching along in a
Speaker 1: much like a slot machine. Every so often they do deliver,
Speaker 1: the money does show up, the thing does get paid for,
Speaker 1: so you're thinking, well, it does happen, you know, hearing
Speaker 1: the magical things like we're psychic, there's still the little
Speaker 1: girl inside of you that wanted those things to be true,
Speaker 1: and that is powerful, and that future faking dynamic is
Speaker 1: a very classical narcissistic dynamic that will sometimes people say,
Speaker 1: you know, I stayed in this much longer that it
Speaker 1: was help for me because there was always this idea
Speaker 1: that around the next corner would be something promised, some
Speaker 1: form of change, something would be different.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and there was always a wish in me that
Speaker 2: I would eventually have my dad. However naive that was,
Speaker 2: I think I always secretly wished even when he was
Speaker 2: dying and I had just got married and I went
Speaker 2: out to America to try and save him and get
Speaker 2: him into rehab. There was a little voice in my
Speaker 2: head that was like, he's on his own, He's going
Speaker 2: to need me. Finally he needs me, you know, his
Speaker 2: wife's not there. Finally I can step up. I can
Speaker 2: be that person for him. And I was willing to
Speaker 2: leave my husband, I was willing to leave my life
Speaker 2: in order to look after him. It was my brother
Speaker 2: who kind of kept on trying to wake me up.
Speaker 2: But then, interestingly, in the end, our dad didn't want
Speaker 2: us to stay because he couldn't carry on doing what
Speaker 2: he wanted to do, which was drink himself to death.
Speaker 1: I'm so glad you shared that, doctor Lilly, because I
Speaker 1: think that's what so many people experience when they have
Speaker 1: a complicated, narcissistic parent. Some people say, what the heck
Speaker 1: was I holding on for? I said, because that child
Speaker 1: in you, that thing you quested for, that doesn't go
Speaker 1: away from us. That's all you ever wanted. You simply
Speaker 1: wanted his presence. So how did having a father like this.
Speaker 1: We've understood how it affected you as a child, but
Speaker 1: then you came up into adolescence and adulthood. How did
Speaker 1: it affect the relationships, especially with men, that you had.
Speaker 2: I think it dramatically affected the relationships I had with men.
Speaker 2: There was an incident in Italy when I was thirteen
Speaker 2: where one of my dad's friends groomed me, and he
Speaker 2: was my dad's age. He made me think that I
Speaker 2: loved him, even though I knew I didn't love him,
Speaker 2: but he basically wanted to have sex with me. I
Speaker 2: was a virgin, I was a child, and my dad
Speaker 2: knew about it and didn't stop it, and I think
Speaker 2: that was, you know, a big betrayal for me. I
Speaker 2: wasn't aware at the time that this was quite common
Speaker 2: practice within the Snelson group, that you know, older men
Speaker 2: sort of initiated young girls first sexual experience. Thank god
Speaker 2: it didn't happen for me, but I think it set
Speaker 2: me off on a trail of finding older men attractive,
Speaker 2: wanting to be with someone who was like a father figure,
Speaker 2: you know, wanting to be protected, that kind of imbalance
Speaker 2: in the relationship. I would kind of absorb myself in
Speaker 2: the presence of this person, you know, whether they be
Speaker 2: older or more dominant. I chose men like that for
Speaker 2: most of my teens and sort of twenties, and then
Speaker 2: I finally met a really lovely man and got married.
Speaker 2: He was my age, a very sort of equal good relationship.
Speaker 2: But unfortunately that relationship didn't last because I was still
Speaker 2: so much in the shadow of my dad and he
Speaker 2: got really ill with alcoholism around the time I got married,
Speaker 2: and that kind of took me over in a way.
Speaker 2: But now I went through Jungian therapy for years and
Speaker 2: that was massively helpful. It was a combination of having
Speaker 2: babies getting to know myself and then going through therapy
Speaker 2: which really really helped me bring all aspects of myself
Speaker 2: together because I think I also I was very scared
Speaker 2: of the parts of me that were like my father
Speaker 2: to let those parts out, and I think the Jungian
Speaker 2: psychoanalysis really helped me do that. So now I'm in
Speaker 2: a very happy relationship with a wonderful man, thank God.
Speaker 2: But you know, it wasn't actually just my father, It
Speaker 2: was also my mother. My mother was a big influence
Speaker 2: on me because of my father being so destructive. I
Speaker 2: think I leaned more into her and needed her guidance
Speaker 2: a lot as I was growing up, and I had
Speaker 2: a very close relationship with her, So actually I had
Speaker 2: to find myself apart from her as well as my father,
Speaker 2: and that, Yeah, it was definitely triggered by having both
Speaker 2: my children, feeling that sense of deep, deep love and
Speaker 2: responsibility for two little humans and not wanting them to
Speaker 2: be affected by the things you have been affected by.
Speaker 1: Did having your own children watching them cross those developmental stages,
Speaker 1: be those ages? How did that affect you in terms
Speaker 1: of where it placed his behavior and what it actually
Speaker 1: would do to a child.
Speaker 2: Well, I gave birth to my daughter very soon before
Speaker 2: my father died, and I did not want him anywhere
Speaker 2: near her. I mean, the sense of anger actually and
Speaker 2: fury and protectiveness of this little child, this baby was profound.
Speaker 2: But the shocking thing for me was that me and
Speaker 2: my husband their dad separated at exactly the same ages
Speaker 2: that my dad left. So we separated when my son
Speaker 2: was six and my daughter was eight, and that felt
Speaker 2: like a very sad repeat of my past. My dad's
Speaker 2: trauma was the seven year old on the step, and
Speaker 2: then he left us around that time, and then I
Speaker 2: was doing the same. And I know that there are
Speaker 2: those sorts of patterns, and even if you're aware of it,
Speaker 2: you're still victim.
Speaker 1: To it, absolutely, And yet in your experience shows us
Speaker 1: that there is a process here, and it's a process
Speaker 1: of healing, and it's a process of grief, and that
Speaker 1: you do get to another side, but there's a lot
Speaker 1: that happens in between, and these cycles are intergenerational in
Speaker 1: ways that are so close that can it feel eerie
Speaker 1: and unsettling. And then I'd imagine writing about it must
Speaker 1: have been an extraordinary revelation.
Speaker 2: The writing was very healing, actually, I mean, at times
Speaker 2: it was painful, but in the end it became a
Speaker 2: way of me understand standing him more than I did
Speaker 2: when he was alive, which I found really interesting. It
Speaker 2: was almost like his death kind of liberated him from
Speaker 2: me so that I could really properly get to know him.
Speaker 2: It's ethically problematic to write about somebody when they're dead
Speaker 2: in the way that I've written about him, Yeah, but
Speaker 2: I justify that because of the dynamic of our relationship,
Speaker 2: and I think it was necessary for me to do
Speaker 2: that in order to liberate myself from him.
Speaker 1: It's not easy to do, doctor Lily. A lot of
Speaker 1: people say he's gone, let the stories go with them,
Speaker 1: but it could very well be that ultimately freeing yourself
Speaker 1: from that subjugation required you to actually peer all the
Speaker 1: way in and see what it was all about, so
Speaker 1: you could finally understand it, to see it, to release it.
Speaker 1: Towards the end of your book, you write, one night,
Speaker 1: in a fitful sleep, two words bubbled up from my consciousness,
Speaker 1: bad dad, oh go up, asking myself, how does a
Speaker 1: man drop so rapidly from such heights? Bad Dad is
Speaker 1: what he was? The realization of this set solemnly in
Speaker 1: my stomach, My parent is a bad person is not
Speaker 1: an easy thought because where does that leave me? That
Speaker 1: to me was an extraordinarily powerful part of your book.
Speaker 1: Could you share more about that, because in that you
Speaker 1: captured what so many people I've worked with clinically share
Speaker 1: and struggle with.
Speaker 2: A really odd experience. Because when I sold the book
Speaker 2: it had a different title. It was called Starman, and
Speaker 2: I had come to the realization that because my dad
Speaker 2: had had that experience at boarding school, he was traumatized,
Speaker 2: and that was kind of my answer. That was why
Speaker 2: his life had been such a disaster, and why he
Speaker 2: couldn't love us, and why he left us. All the
Speaker 2: puzzle pieces fell into place. But when my editor, who's
Speaker 2: very perceptive, took on the book, she said, look, you
Speaker 2: know you're going to find this quite tricky to hear,
Speaker 2: but I think you need to readdress this. It's not
Speaker 2: simply that your dad went to boarding school and then
Speaker 2: that led to him doing all those things. You know,
Speaker 2: I think your readership is going to feel slightly kind
Speaker 2: of put out by this because you're making excuses for him,
Speaker 2: You're still keeping him on that pedestal. I was taken aback,
Speaker 2: but I was also really struck by her perception. I
Speaker 2: just thought it was extraordinary that she had seen something
Speaker 2: that I had not been able to see. And that's
Speaker 2: when I had the dream, and it was so clear
Speaker 2: to me that, you know, my father could potentially be
Speaker 2: a bad man. And actually, when he died, he had
Speaker 2: a couple of notebooks on him, you know, his poems
Speaker 2: and his reflections. In amongst all this kind of drunk
Speaker 2: stuff was this key text, which was I'm a bad person,
Speaker 2: and you know, I'm frightened that people are going to
Speaker 2: see how bad I am. And I just realized actually
Speaker 2: that that was the crux of it for him, was
Speaker 2: that he was masking his fear of being bad, or
Speaker 2: that he really believed that he was bad, or that
Speaker 2: actually he was bad. You know, that's a difficult thing
Speaker 2: to acknowledge in a parent. It's a difficult thing to
Speaker 2: acknowledge in a loved one or someone that you've invested
Speaker 2: all this time loving, because it's sort of, yeah, I mean,
Speaker 2: where does it leave you? You know, it sort of throws
Speaker 2: you back on yourself for loving that person, but also
Speaker 2: as a daughter, being part of that person and inheriting
Speaker 2: that who am I as his daughter?
Speaker 1: It is a complicated one. I think it is the
Speaker 1: absolute struggle of working through significant narcissistic relationships. And a
Speaker 1: technique I use with clients all the time is this
Speaker 1: concept of the multiple truths stacked up like so many pancakes,
Speaker 1: you know, higher and higher, which was, he did so
Speaker 1: many bad things. He abandoned a family, he abandoned his
Speaker 1: own children, he put them in harm's way. He left
Speaker 1: a young wife, your mother, to fend for herself with
Speaker 1: her family, and he gave you moments of fun and joy,
Speaker 1: and you felt connected with him, and he made you
Speaker 1: laugh on Christmas morning. And I think that the multiple
Speaker 1: truths is that all of those things are true. And
Speaker 1: he did have a terrible experience in a boarding school
Speaker 1: and that explains it, and that's not an excuse. And
Speaker 1: it becomes so many jagged edges when we try to
Speaker 1: tell these stories. But that idea when it's a parent
Speaker 1: is who does that make me? Because I come from this,
Speaker 1: and the work I've always done with people who have
Speaker 1: gone through this is it's made you a survivor. It's
Speaker 1: made your experience more difficult. It's not destiny. If he
Speaker 1: had only been a bad man, doctor Lily, this would
Speaker 1: have been easy much more than that, and the seeing
Speaker 1: of that is what's so painful.
Speaker 2: But I also think when you've held someone on a
Speaker 2: pedestal all that time, it can be quite a relief
Speaker 2: as well to actually just say, okay, maybe he was
Speaker 2: just a bit of a shit, right.
Speaker 1: And not only that, but I actually think, doctor Lily,
Speaker 1: in a strange way, when you have a healthy parent
Speaker 1: with whom there's a secure attachment, you don't put them
Speaker 1: on a pedestal. You sit right with them at the table.
Speaker 1: It's when the parent is unavailable invalidating, narcissistic, toxic, that's
Speaker 1: when we put them on the pedestal. And the only
Speaker 1: way to take them off the pedestal is to call
Speaker 1: a thing what it is, which was he had no
Speaker 1: place being a father. But mercifully it gave us to you,
Speaker 1: doctor Lily, and your story, which is going to do
Speaker 1: so much and is doing so much good in the world.
Speaker 1: I mean, at the end of the day, the world
Speaker 1: needed Lily done, and this is the way we got
Speaker 1: Lily done. And there's a grace in that so and
Speaker 1: I think that there's a certain acceptance we have to
Speaker 1: have around that too.
Speaker 2: Well, that's lovely, Thank you. So much. That's such a
Speaker 2: sweet way to end an amazing conversation.
Speaker 1: My goodness, thank you so much, doctor Lilly. I mean,
Speaker 1: your book is extraordinary. I want every clinician, graduate student
Speaker 1: psychology to read it and anyone out there who's had
Speaker 1: the experience of a narcissistic parent of any kind. This
Speaker 1: is a must read book. It hit every bit of
Speaker 1: the nuance of this experience. And I can't thank you
Speaker 1: enough for your time.
Speaker 2: Well, thank you, and it's just been such a pleasure.
Speaker 2: What an amazing show that you have here. I can
Speaker 2: see how hell thank you this is to all your listeners.
Speaker 1: Thank you. Here are my takeaways from my conversation with
Speaker 1: doctor Lily. First, the cult which her father belonged to,
Speaker 1: the Bugwan Shri Rajnich Sinyasen cult, is yet another example
Speaker 1: of a cult just being a narcissism social club. The
Speaker 1: stance they took that your feelings are your response, which
Speaker 1: basically allowed her father to abdicate any responsibility for his
Speaker 1: children or family, is a prime example of the codified
Speaker 1: selfishness that many cultic organizations exhibit, as well as pathologizing
Speaker 1: emotion and feeling in other human beings to subjugate them.
Speaker 1: For our next takeaway, Doctor Lily is not the first
Speaker 1: and will not be the last guest who will reflect
Speaker 1: on the fun of a narcissistic parent, the sort of
Speaker 1: care free, engaged, and even childlike spirit that some people
Speaker 1: look back on with their parents during childhood. And obviously
Speaker 1: this is not all narcissistic parents. Most don't do that,
Speaker 1: but in this episode, Doctor Lily holds on to some
Speaker 1: of that, and even as her father repeatedly lets her down,
Speaker 1: makes poor financial decisions, future fakes her with money, and
Speaker 1: then position himself in a way that compels her to
Speaker 1: have to step away from her adult life to clean
Speaker 1: up the messes he made to his very dying day.
Speaker 1: Speaks to how tight these trauma bonds can be wound,
Speaker 1: and how the complexity and confusion of these relationships, our
Speaker 1: ability to hold on to the small handful of good
Speaker 1: memories and the eternal hope that it could be different,
Speaker 1: can keep us stuck in a poisonous space. In this
Speaker 1: next takeaway, a dynamic that often unfolds in a narcissistic
Speaker 1: relationship of any kind, and a dynamic that doctor Lily
Speaker 1: shared in her story, is that the narcissistic person makes
Speaker 1: themselves psychologically scarce enough so that we are always craving
Speaker 1: a little more. And for a child, this is an
Speaker 1: almost impossible situation, because every child wants as much of
Speaker 1: their parents as they can get. She shares the poignant line,
Speaker 1: I didn't have enough of him. And because narcissistic parents
Speaker 1: are not attuned to their children, the child is forever
Speaker 1: left with a longing that they carry into adulthood and
Speaker 1: can be an unfortunate yearning that drives children of narcissistic
Speaker 1: parents into unhealthy relationships in which these cycles are perpetuated.
Speaker 1: At the end of her story, you can see that
Speaker 1: she still hoped that he would come around, and for
Speaker 1: any child of a narcissistic parent, in most cases, the
Speaker 1: wish that the narcissistic parent will come around never goes away.
Speaker 1: For this next takeaway, the intergenerational losses and pivots in
Speaker 1: families so often repeat on a schedule. It's almost eerie
Speaker 1: how it happens. Doctor Lily's dad being abandoned to an
Speaker 1: abusive boarding school at the age of seven, her dad
Speaker 1: abandoning his children when they were the same age. Doctor
Speaker 1: Lily got divorced when her child was around that age too.
Speaker 1: Whether it is doing what we know, learning from observation,
Speaker 1: or some deep, unprocessed psychodynamic issue, then it's likely a
Speaker 1: combination of all of the above. Many of us can
Speaker 1: resonate with this and the grief it raises when we
Speaker 1: look back on it, it can all feel somewhat tragically predestined.
Speaker 1: And lastly, it was interesting to hear doctor Lilly Schaer
Speaker 1: that when she originally titled her book Starman and tied
Speaker 1: it to the narrative she had long held about her
Speaker 1: father's behavior, all tracking back to his abandonment and the
Speaker 1: boarding school, and that her editor's more objective eye pulled
Speaker 1: her back and reminded her that it wasn't quite that simple.
Speaker 1: We can often get stuck in these origin stories, and
Speaker 1: we tell them to ourselves so often that they become real.
Speaker 1: The problem with these origin stories is that we can
Speaker 1: forget that the harmful behave behavior that these mythologies hide,
Speaker 1: harmed us and irrevocably affected our lives.