Speaker 1: So the way gaslighting works is it's a denial of
Speaker 1: a person's reality. That's step one. I never said that
Speaker 1: that never happened. Now you're already a little off balance
Speaker 1: because I'm very authoritatively saying something didn't happen. That by
Speaker 1: itself is not gaslighting. Now the step two of gaslighting
Speaker 1: is then I tell you there's something wrong with you.
Speaker 1: Do you know what I'm sick of. I'm sick of
Speaker 1: living with an unhinged, paranoid lunatic. That's what I'm tired of.
Speaker 1: There's the gaslight. Now there's a step three. Hey everyone,
Speaker 1: welcome back to On Purpose, the number one health podcast
Speaker 1: in the world. Thanks to each and every one of
Speaker 1: you who choose to come here to become happier, healthier,
Speaker 1: and more healed. And I'm so grateful to our incredible audience.
Speaker 1: It's been phenomenal to see how much you've been listening, learning,
Speaker 1: applying in your lives over the past few months. I
Speaker 1: love seeing the reviews, I love seeing all the tags
Speaker 1: on Instagram and on Twitter and the video on TikTok.
Speaker 1: It means the world to me that you're also sharing
Speaker 1: and passing this forward. And I'm so excited to be
Speaker 1: talking to you today. I can't believe it. My new book,
Speaker 1: Eight Rules of Love is out and I cannot wait
Speaker 1: to share it with you. I am so so excited
Speaker 1: for you to read this book, for you to listen
Speaker 1: to this book. I read the audiobook. If you haven't
Speaker 1: got it already, make sure you go to eight Rules
Speaker 1: of Love dot com. It's dedicated to anyone who's trying
Speaker 1: to find, keep, or let go of love. So if
Speaker 1: you've got friends that are dating, broken up, or struggling
Speaker 1: with love, make sure you grab this book. And I'd
Speaker 1: love to invite you to come and see me for
Speaker 1: my global tour Love Rules. Go to Ja Shettytour dot
Speaker 1: com to learn more information about tickets, VIP experiences, and more.
Speaker 1: I can't wait to see you this year. And Today's
Speaker 1: guest is someone that I've known for a couple of years.
Speaker 1: We've interacted in some really interesting environments, and I have
Speaker 1: to say that whenever she speaks, I'm like wow, Like
Speaker 1: I'm completely in awe. Her insights are phenomenal in real time.
Speaker 1: I've been parts of like almost group thinks, And whenever
Speaker 1: Today's guest shares an insight or shares some wisdom or
Speaker 1: shares a perspective. It's so powerful that you know that
Speaker 1: there's years of experience, there's decades of learning that go
Speaker 1: behind it, and so I feel really honored that I
Speaker 1: get to have this conversation. She's been on the show
Speaker 1: once before, but we were just talking beforehand about how
Speaker 1: he was doing the pandemics that was very pandemic focused.
Speaker 1: But I think today is going to be really truly
Speaker 1: powerful for you. I'm speaking about the one and only
Speaker 1: Doctor Ramany, who's a licensed clinical psychologist in LA, a
Speaker 1: professor at California State University LA, and the founder and
Speaker 1: CEO of Lunar Education, Training and Consulting. Doctor Ramany is
Speaker 1: an author of several books. I recommend them all, including
Speaker 1: Should I Stay or Should I Go? Surviving a Relationship
Speaker 1: with a Narcissist and Don't You Know Who I Am?
Speaker 1: How to Stay Sane in an Era of narcissism, entitle men,
Speaker 1: and incivility. Now, Doctor Romany will be adding the role
Speaker 1: of hosts to her resume. She launches a new podcast,
Speaker 1: Navigating Narcissism with Doctor Romany, a show that focuses on
Speaker 1: narcissism at its impact on relationships. Now, I know all
Speaker 1: of you are fascinated by relationships, narcissism, and your mind.
Speaker 1: There's no one better than doctor Romany. Doctor Romany, thank
Speaker 1: you so much for doing this. That's a very big introduction.
Speaker 1: So I hope I can live up to It's true,
Speaker 1: and I think we have. We've been in so many rooms.
Speaker 1: We have a lot of mutual behind yeah, people that
Speaker 1: we work with, And I really mean it, like, I
Speaker 1: love the way you listen, and I love the way
Speaker 1: you articulate what you're hearing and connecting and putting the
Speaker 1: dots together. And you're so in demand, so to actually
Speaker 1: have you here today is really really special. I wanted
Speaker 1: to start off by understanding a bit about how you
Speaker 1: came to this work and how narcissism, because today you're
Speaker 1: known as the person who knows literally everything Nazism yet
Speaker 1: deeply studying it. When did narcissism become an obsession or
Speaker 1: a focus or a point of study for you? Sort
Speaker 1: of around two thousand and four, two thousand and three thereabouts,
Speaker 1: and it was in a research capacity looking at what
Speaker 1: was happening in healthcare settings when you had really demanding, antagonistic,
Speaker 1: entitled patients and the toll that was taking in healthcare settings,
Speaker 1: which seems so obvious, but that led me to do
Speaker 1: a deeper dive and I realized how little this had
Speaker 1: been researched in sort of healthcare situations. I was specifically
Speaker 1: working in the area of HIV, and so that started
Speaker 1: a research program. At that same time, I also had
Speaker 1: a clinical practice, and in my clinical practice, you know,
Speaker 1: more and more people were kind of coming in with
Speaker 1: the same relationship story because I was studying narcissism in
Speaker 1: my research, I'm thinking, how interesting, let me just shed
Speaker 1: this light on the patterns they're seeing that are quite
Speaker 1: antagonistic and that just knowing that, and they said, well,
Speaker 1: can this change in The answer to that's pretty much no.
Speaker 1: Once they knew it could really be shifted that much,
Speaker 1: it totally changed their point of view and lifted a
Speaker 1: lot of self blame. So those were the two things
Speaker 1: kind of happening, and that honestly, should I say or
Speaker 1: should I go? My first book on narcissism came from
Speaker 1: after the sessions. These clients were so overwhelmed they'd often say,
Speaker 1: could you just put this in an email? Right? And
Speaker 1: I really felt for them because I could see it
Speaker 1: was a real deer in the headlights experience, so I'd
Speaker 1: knock out, you know something in an email. It also
Speaker 1: helped me organize my thoughts and then I thought, okay,
Speaker 1: I keep writing the same email, so let's just make
Speaker 1: that a book. So when the world started sort of
Speaker 1: going upside down, I thought, this is interesting. I am
Speaker 1: going to approach this topic because I thought, well, this
Speaker 1: is actually what's happening right now. And everyone was using
Speaker 1: the word A lot of people weren't using it correctly,
Speaker 1: and that's where that came from. Then from there was
Speaker 1: where it got interesting was writer, that's what I do.
Speaker 1: But two young people approached me, former students, and had
Speaker 1: said they were students. They were finishing school at the time.
Speaker 1: They said, you know, you should really be on YouTube
Speaker 1: and I said, that's ridiculous. You know, at my age,
Speaker 1: it didn't make sense. It wasn't how I consumed media.
Speaker 1: And they said, let's take a few months, let's see
Speaker 1: what kind of how this space works. And over time,
Speaker 1: years of sort of honing it and tuning it and
Speaker 1: all of that, that was actually where all of a sudden,
Speaker 1: this reach happened on this YouTube channel. So it was
Speaker 1: an evolution. But what I found was where the real
Speaker 1: sort of pivot was for me. The worlds of mental
Speaker 1: health was not recognizing what was happening to people in
Speaker 1: these relationships, and that's when I got angry. And to me,
Speaker 1: anger is a great motivator. I thought these people had
Speaker 1: gone to therapists and being invalidated, and maybe it's how
Speaker 1: you communicate, and maybe you aren't trying hard enough. And
Speaker 1: I thought, oh my goodness, and that's really for me
Speaker 1: when it sort of felt like a revolution, I thought,
Speaker 1: something's got to give. And if this means that people
Speaker 1: are going to say, you know what's wrong with you
Speaker 1: and you have a target on your back, I mean,
Speaker 1: I've been called every name in the book, and people
Speaker 1: said this is an unempathic therapist. How could she? And
Speaker 1: I thought, oh my goodness. I thought people are trying
Speaker 1: to shut this discourse down through shame, and I thought, nah,
Speaker 1: let's just keep going. I'm old enough to not really
Speaker 1: care what people think about me anymore. And so that's
Speaker 1: really where it came from. And now that's just sort
Speaker 1: of the focus. The narcissism peace to me is interesting
Speaker 1: from a scientific framing and all of that, but the
Speaker 1: real passion for me is working with people who have
Speaker 1: been through these relationships and have never really felt recognized, seen,
Speaker 1: or heard, to help them with their healing and help
Speaker 1: them find themselves so they feel that they can stand
Speaker 1: on their own in the world and actually have their
Speaker 1: voice again. That's the mission. Yeah, so important and so needed,
Speaker 1: and I'm so glad that you're doing it. I feel
Speaker 1: like this is more common as an currents today than
Speaker 1: ever before. And do you think that's because narcissism was
Speaker 1: somewhat hidden for many years in the sense that it
Speaker 1: just happened behind closed doors, or like, why is it
Speaker 1: only now that we're talking about it so much? That's
Speaker 1: such a good question, Jay, you know, and it's almost like,
Speaker 1: without giving you two pedantic a history lesson is that
Speaker 1: people have been the word narcissism in this application, like
Speaker 1: about other people, didn't really even start coming into the
Speaker 1: literature until maybe the very late eighteen hundreds early nineteen hundreds.
Speaker 1: Then some psychoanalytic theorists talked about it, but it was
Speaker 1: a really quiet backwater in the world of mental health,
Speaker 1: and mental health and psychology are new fields. It wasn't
Speaker 1: even until nineteen eighty where we saw it come with
Speaker 1: the idea of narcissistic personality disorder, which is its own issue.
Speaker 1: That's just very recent to me. What is that you
Speaker 1: know forty not even fifty years ago? And so the
Speaker 1: people have been narcissistic since there have been people, and
Speaker 1: it actually and interesting framing on it can actually come from.
Speaker 1: There's fascinating work and if you've never read it, I
Speaker 1: can't recommend this book enough. The book Behave by Robert
Speaker 1: Zapolski maybe one of the most extraordinary books I think
Speaker 1: has been written in the last ten years. And to me,
Speaker 1: Sapolsky is a giant in all fields related to psychology,
Speaker 1: and he makes his incredible He lays, he's talking about
Speaker 1: aggression sort of why why do people behave aggressively? Why
Speaker 1: do people behave badly? And we do know the science
Speaker 1: has shown it narcissism is associated with aggression and violence
Speaker 1: like this isn't just like these people are handful. There's
Speaker 1: actually a risk here and we're not addressing this risk.
Speaker 1: But when you look at what he says is he
Speaker 1: look when you look at the evolution of human history.
Speaker 1: He said, what we do see is a greater level
Speaker 1: of antagonism in people who came more from cultures where
Speaker 1: they were hurting, hurting animals, goats, whatever, cows. Why because
Speaker 1: you steal those things. But people who are pastoralists, people
Speaker 1: who farmed, you really can't go get up and steal
Speaker 1: a field. I guess you could steal some of the
Speaker 1: ears of corn, but you're not going to make off
Speaker 1: at the whole field. Farming is more collaborative, hurting is
Speaker 1: more individual. So if you go back and that is
Speaker 1: we're talking hundreds, if not thousands of years of human history,
Speaker 1: how people sort of interacted through the world economically, you
Speaker 1: look at history lessons. I remember it's my daughter was
Speaker 1: taking world history. We had a very long drive to school,
Speaker 1: so I said, why don't you teach me what you
Speaker 1: learned on the way to school. She'd study. I'd learned something.
Speaker 1: But what I thought over and over again over five
Speaker 1: hundred years of world history, a lot of drives over
Speaker 1: many years, is that what we were seeing is that
Speaker 1: these people in the history books were all very antagonistic.
Speaker 1: They were all very narcissistic. They didn't have empathy. They
Speaker 1: were arrogant, they were aggressive, they were controlling, they lacked empathy.
Speaker 1: They had to be the hero like it was always
Speaker 1: the same story. So I actually think narcissism, narcissistic relationships,
Speaker 1: all of this has been around since time immemorial. It
Speaker 1: was only because psychology is a field in its relative
Speaker 1: infancy that we're only talking about it in this way now.
Speaker 1: And it is only in the last fifteen years that
Speaker 1: we have actually started paying attention to the harm this
Speaker 1: personality style does to the other person in a relationship.
Speaker 1: It's incredible, isn't it when you look at it from
Speaker 1: that perspective about how long people have suffered from or
Speaker 1: suffered with something because our learning was still catching up
Speaker 1: with its experience, and you think about anyone who hasn't
Speaker 1: lived in the last fifteen to twenty five years, they
Speaker 1: potentially were called names, outcasts, misunderstood, unheard, unseen. As you're saying, absolutely,
Speaker 1: I mean, Jay, I have worked with clients who are older, Okay,
Speaker 1: so they've been in thirty forty fifty year marriages that
Speaker 1: have been difficult from the very very beginning, and they said,
Speaker 1: you know what, it wasn't until I watched your videos.
Speaker 1: It wasn't until I read your books. It wasn't until
Speaker 1: the last five to ten years that this finally had
Speaker 1: a name and until then, I assumed it was my fault.
Speaker 1: I wasn't trying hard enough. I was complaining, I was
Speaker 1: being unrealistic about what a marriage should look like. That's
Speaker 1: what they were. They were basically, in essence, turning it
Speaker 1: back on themselves, blaming themselves. And culture wasn't helping. You know,
Speaker 1: people are saying, well, I guess you're not. Marriage is tough.
Speaker 1: You have to make compromises. That's just how they are.
Speaker 1: They don't mean it. Their bark is worse than their bite,
Speaker 1: and so people would internalize that. And if you really
Speaker 1: want to look at it this way, even historically, we
Speaker 1: didn't really start talking about domestic violence until the late sixties.
Speaker 1: In the nineteen seventies, that's when Leonora Walker made the
Speaker 1: whole sort of you know, the circle of abuse in
Speaker 1: a relationship and all of that. This is all new
Speaker 1: and NAT was in the seventies. To this day, we
Speaker 1: still do not accord emotional abuse the same level as
Speaker 1: we do physical abuse. And yet I got to tell you,
Speaker 1: everyone who's physically abused is emotionally abused. But emotional emotionally
Speaker 1: abused people are showing up with the same level of symptomatology.
Speaker 1: Often the same level of post traumatic kinds of decrements
Speaker 1: and functioning, you name it. So we're seeing is this
Speaker 1: is all slowly evolving. Interestingly, the field of mental health
Speaker 1: is still slow to catch up. That's something that's got
Speaker 1: to change. Yeah. Absolutely, no, I'm so glad we're having
Speaker 1: this conversation, and thank you for letting us go on
Speaker 1: a history lesson, because I think it's really important, quite frankly,
Speaker 1: to understand to really get context of where we are seeing.
Speaker 1: As you said, these words are thrown around now and
Speaker 1: they're also everywhere, and you've probably done this a million
Speaker 1: times before our audience. Could you please define narcissism and
Speaker 1: then narcissistic personality disorder because I do feel now, as
Speaker 1: you said, a lot of people are using this on
Speaker 1: a daily basis. And while it's healthy that our language
Speaker 1: is evolving, I do often find that people also get
Speaker 1: wrongly labeled or early labeled, or whatever it may be.
Speaker 1: I totally agree this is a big problem struggle. Call
Speaker 1: it what you will. Is that, So narcissism's a personality style? Okay,
Speaker 1: So if a personality style could be anything including narcissism, agreeableness, introversion, neuroticism.
Speaker 1: Those are all personality styles, right, So narcissisms on the
Speaker 1: shelf with them. Now we would view narcissism, which sits
Speaker 1: under a bigger umbrella called antagonism, as a more maladaptive
Speaker 1: style because their behavior can often put them at odds
Speaker 1: with other people. Things like the entitlement, the arrogance, the manipulativeness,
Speaker 1: the grandiosity, sort of really uncomfortable patterns. That's narcissism. Okay,
Speaker 1: Now when we jump the rails to narcissistic personality disorder,
Speaker 1: it's a whole different game. The reason people really get
Speaker 1: kind of a bee in their bonnet about this needs
Speaker 1: to be diagnosed by a licensed mental health practitioner is
Speaker 1: because in order for a person to be diagnosed with
Speaker 1: a mental illness, not only do they have to have
Speaker 1: a laundry list of whatever is associated with that, whether
Speaker 1: it's depression anxieties. Because if any a bipolar disorder, substance
Speaker 1: use disorders doesn't matter, personality disorders are the same. So
Speaker 1: you have to have that list, and this is the ringer.
Speaker 1: You have to be able to show that that person
Speaker 1: is either experiencing something we call subjective distress, meaning that
Speaker 1: they're uncomfortable or social and occupational impairment, meaning that their
Speaker 1: life is kind of getting wrecked by this and they're
Speaker 1: aware of it. It's a lot of awareness and discomfort
Speaker 1: that many people who are narcissistic don't have. In fact,
Speaker 1: they're kind of sitting on top of the world. They
Speaker 1: got a partner, they got a side piece, they've got
Speaker 1: they've got money, they've got success, they've got power. They're thinking,
Speaker 1: I ain't got no problems. Now they're burning down everyone
Speaker 1: around them. But you cannot diagnose someone because someone else
Speaker 1: is unhappy with their behavior. That's not what our diagnostic
Speaker 1: systems were designed to do. So when we get into
Speaker 1: these antagonistic disorders like narcissistic personality disorder, it's pretty rare
Speaker 1: that people with these personalities get into treatment. And when
Speaker 1: they do, it's for some other reason. Their marriage is
Speaker 1: blowing up, they're using substances. In some cases, they're depressed,
Speaker 1: something's gone wrong at work, They've been involved in something
Speaker 1: sort of publicly that makes them look bad, so they
Speaker 1: go to therapy to say face. So the thing that
Speaker 1: gets them into therapy is not like, oh, I've noticed
Speaker 1: I don't have much empathy and I'm really entitled and arrogant.
Speaker 1: I'm looking for help with that, said, no one ever. Okay.
Speaker 1: So when they're coming in with something else, often very arrogantly,
Speaker 1: like okay, I see your fancy certificates on the wall, doc,
Speaker 1: So how long is it going to take you to
Speaker 1: fix me? I'm paying a lot for your time. Very dismissive,
Speaker 1: very arrogant. Now, every so often you'll see a narcissisting.
Speaker 1: Not every so often, not uncommonly. In people who have
Speaker 1: stasistic personality disorder, they may also have something else going on,
Speaker 1: like depression or anxiety, or, like I said, a substance
Speaker 1: use disorder. The therapist is going to focus, as we do,
Speaker 1: on the more acute issue, the depression and the anxiety
Speaker 1: substance use disorder, and they'll try to manage that right
Speaker 1: through combination of therapy, maybe medication, whatever they use. Time
Speaker 1: goes on, the mood's lifting a little, or the anxiety
Speaker 1: is managed, or they're sober, but they're still really awful
Speaker 1: and entitled and arrogant and all this other stuff. And
Speaker 1: because a lot of therapists don't bring personality stuff into
Speaker 1: the room, they don't think about it. They're thinking that
Speaker 1: maybe I'm not doing this right. This person still is
Speaker 1: not like they're still not behaving nicely, but they're not
Speaker 1: using anymore and they seem to be Their sleep seems
Speaker 1: to be better. And so you see what I'm saying
Speaker 1: is the personality is like the baseline. It's the thrumb
Speaker 1: under the other stuff that's happening on top. That's the
Speaker 1: disorder a person. You have a personality. I have a personality.
Speaker 1: For example, I'm introverted, Okay, believe it or not, incredibly
Speaker 1: introverted person. That is my personality. It is not going
Speaker 1: to change next week. I Am not going to be
Speaker 1: the life of the party. Okay, on any given Saturday night.
Speaker 1: I'll tell you the probabilities. I am home reading a book,
Speaker 1: watching TV, or doing something ridiculous at home. But I
Speaker 1: am at home, Okay, I can't change that. If you
Speaker 1: said to me, well, come on, doctor, we're gonna make
Speaker 1: you extroverted up, like, no, you're not. And if you said,
Speaker 1: but you have to become extroverted, I might be able
Speaker 1: to stretch myself, but I'll collapse or I'll be exhausted,
Speaker 1: or you know what I'm saying. So that's personality. It
Speaker 1: is who we are. It's a psychological fingerprint of sorts,
Speaker 1: but it's always right under the surface. So you're not
Speaker 1: going to make the introverted extrovert. You're not going to
Speaker 1: make the neurotic person more sort of relaxed and impulsive.
Speaker 1: You're not going to take a conscientious person and turn
Speaker 1: them into someone who is sort of acts out, impulsive
Speaker 1: and doesn't plan. These personalities sort of set who we are.
Speaker 1: And so this is in the case of people who
Speaker 1: have narcissistic personalities, they have very disagreeable personalities. They have
Speaker 1: antagonistic personalities. That's the difference. And so before people say it,
Speaker 1: I'm like, I'll say, does this person have a lack
Speaker 1: of empathy? Are they entitled? Do they seek validation? Sometimes
Speaker 1: people say, well, I think he's narcissistic because he cheated
Speaker 1: on me. I'm like, well, he cheated on you, that's
Speaker 1: all I got here. I don't know if this dude's narcissistic.
Speaker 1: You'd have to tell me a little bit more about
Speaker 1: this person's behavior. And I think people are using this
Speaker 1: as a buzzword to label or talk about someone who
Speaker 1: did something that aggravated them. And you got to remember,
Speaker 1: narcissism is not a one off. Okay, so if one
Speaker 1: day someone did something like having a bad week, But
Speaker 1: in general they are a very even tempered, warm, compassionate, kind, mindful,
Speaker 1: self aware of person. That's who they are most of
Speaker 1: the time. But then twenty things are going wrong. Parents
Speaker 1: are sick, child is sick, job is going badly, and
Speaker 1: they're a little bit more short fused. But they're even
Speaker 1: saying I am not at my best, I am so sorry,
Speaker 1: cut me a wide berth, you know, I'm so so.
Speaker 1: And they're very aware that they're not behaving well. They're
Speaker 1: they're not behaving well. In that case, isn't narcissism. It
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Speaker 1: I hope everyone who's listening in watching, I hope that's
Speaker 1: giving you a real context and a wider perspective on
Speaker 1: how this will fits together. Thank you so much for
Speaker 1: that genuine masterclass, says I guess what I want to
Speaker 1: start is do we have any understanding or how much
Speaker 1: is our current understanding on how people end up with
Speaker 1: a narcissistic personality, because I think that's healthy for people
Speaker 1: to have context over too. Like you said, like, whatever
Speaker 1: personality we are, we can't change that core root base
Speaker 1: of it. So it's worth knowing how we ended up
Speaker 1: there because again, whether we're parents, whether we're thinking of
Speaker 1: being parents, whether we're navigating the world and concerned about
Speaker 1: ourselves or someone in our life, it helps us understand
Speaker 1: what are some of those facets or elements that brought
Speaker 1: people into being narcissist as a personality. Right, So this
Speaker 1: is where it gets interesting. Right, So personality of these
Speaker 1: a funny little thing where it's it's there's a little
Speaker 1: bit of a genetic piece to it. A genetic piece
Speaker 1: is something we call temperament. Okay, so we all have
Speaker 1: temperaments and we see it even in babies. Some babies
Speaker 1: you hold them in their arms, your arms, they soothe
Speaker 1: like this. They're easy, they're smiley, they're often they're just content,
Speaker 1: you know, and they and they're often kind. And even
Speaker 1: as soon as that point where they're sort of aware
Speaker 1: of who other people are in toddlerhood, they come into
Speaker 1: preschool age, they're very aware. They'll take their cookie, they'll
Speaker 1: split it in half. There's some kids like that. Right
Speaker 1: then there are those kids who, no matter what you do,
Speaker 1: they arch their back and they cannot be soothed, and
Speaker 1: they're ru and they always need attention, and they always
Speaker 1: want attention, and they're mean to their siblings. And they
Speaker 1: take not only the one cookie, but they take all
Speaker 1: the cookies. Right. That stuff, that biological stuff, is foundational
Speaker 1: in many ways to our personalities. I'd say to everyone,
Speaker 1: if you have access to anyone who knew you early
Speaker 1: in life, see how well like they describe your infancy
Speaker 1: or your toddlerhood, and how well it tracks to who
Speaker 1: you are now. Every so often, as a shrink, I
Speaker 1: get to talk to like a parental figure in that
Speaker 1: person's life. Never been wrong, yet every time that baby
Speaker 1: temperament toddler temperament tracks and jump, sure you were a
Speaker 1: sweet baby. I am so sure. Say Jay is the
Speaker 1: sweetest little baby. Oh my god, No, they'll say, oh,
Speaker 1: this one, you know, definitely not. And I was a
Speaker 1: super super super sweet baby, you know. And I think
Speaker 1: I'm a pretty sweet adult actually, you know, but a
Speaker 1: little intense but sweet, you know, you know. But I
Speaker 1: bet bet you were. And so that temperament forms like
Speaker 1: a seed. All right, that's a seed right there. That
Speaker 1: temperament is how the world reacts to us. That kid
Speaker 1: who's won't be soothed and needs attention and needs to
Speaker 1: cart wheels through the living room. The world doesn't like
Speaker 1: the kid. That kid that much, right, They go through
Speaker 1: Babysitters don't like them. Parents are just a little bit
Speaker 1: of eye rolling. Kids are perceptive, and it might even
Speaker 1: affect attachment because the parent is so exhausted to dealing
Speaker 1: with that tough child. It could even impair attachment experiences.
Speaker 1: And then they go into school. Teachers don't like them
Speaker 1: as much. Even peers might be frustrated by them. They're
Speaker 1: having more invalidating experiences. Right, that's a little bit of
Speaker 1: some of the seed of what we see can be narcissism, right,
Speaker 1: because narcissism also has an attachment piece to it. In general,
Speaker 1: people of narcissistic personalities often have more anxious or avoidant
Speaker 1: attachment styles, a little bit more anxious than anything else.
Speaker 1: And why that might be. It might be that there
Speaker 1: was chaos in the family. There may have been a
Speaker 1: bad relationship between the parents. The parents may have been
Speaker 1: distracted with their own lives. They couldn't be bothered with
Speaker 1: having kids. There may have been literal violence, mental illness,
Speaker 1: whatever substance use. Something was happening in that early environment
Speaker 1: that may have impacted the attachment experience. That's also associated
Speaker 1: with narcissism. We know that cases trauma early in life
Speaker 1: is associated with narcissism, But that gets tricky because in
Speaker 1: the vast majority of cases it's not because the person
Speaker 1: might say, well, I had trauma and childhood, I'm not narcissistic. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's the bet I would take. But we do see
Speaker 1: that sometimes, especially if that impacts attachment, that's going to
Speaker 1: make a difference. Those are sort of what I consider
Speaker 1: more of the sort of the difficult early circumstances, the
Speaker 1: adverse childhood experience origins of narcissism. However, there's another side
Speaker 1: to it, which is the overindulged kind of pathway to narcissism.
Speaker 1: It's like, think of narcissism as rome and multiple roads
Speaker 1: coming into Rome, right, And in the sort of overindulged pathways,
Speaker 1: this is where you see sort of your standards, spoiled kid.
Speaker 1: The parents will give the kid anything, things and experiences
Speaker 1: and money. But here's the ringer. And there was a
Speaker 1: very interesting study that came out a couple of years
Speaker 1: ago where it's not just the spoiling, but it's telling
Speaker 1: the child, you're more special than any of these other kids.
Speaker 1: Not just that you're special. That's a lovely message, but
Speaker 1: you're more special. You don't that line's not for you.
Speaker 1: You know the other kids wait in that line. I'll
Speaker 1: figure you're you're too special to wait in that line.
Speaker 1: That's sort of that you're better than the others, you're
Speaker 1: more special than the others, which a narcissistic parent may
Speaker 1: do to their child. And that's how we'll sometimes see
Speaker 1: narcissistic parents may be get narcissistic kids, but not as
Speaker 1: a rule. So but all these pathways I'm describing don't
Speaker 1: always end up in narcissism why some end up that way.
Speaker 1: I do think the temperament piece probably pays a bigger
Speaker 1: role than we think. And I've worked with many, many
Speaker 1: narcissistic clients over my years of practice, and I've seen
Speaker 1: all of these ideology origin pathways play out. But depending
Speaker 1: on the origin, that will affect how the narcissism looks
Speaker 1: in adulthood. The more kind of traumatizing neglect origin will
Speaker 1: result to narcissist people who are a bit more sullen, resentful, aggrieved, sad,
Speaker 1: socially anxious, whereas the spoiled child narcissism will end up
Speaker 1: a little bit more grandiose. Wow, So that that if
Speaker 1: hope that makes it? Yeah, Yeah, that's a lot of color, right,
Speaker 1: I mean, I think one of the biggest challenges we
Speaker 1: see is that when I speak to people, whether I'm
Speaker 1: working with them or I meet them, or when they're
Speaker 1: working with a therapist and then I'm connecting with them
Speaker 1: in another part of their life, most people don't realize
Speaker 1: they're with someone narcissistic until after they leave. Like when
Speaker 1: you write a book, should I stay or should I go?
Speaker 1: I've I found a lot of people figuring out towards
Speaker 1: the end. It's not something you spot very quickly, at
Speaker 1: least when people I know, and I would love to
Speaker 1: hear your experience. Obviously you've done this for so long,
Speaker 1: You've had so many conversations around this. I found that
Speaker 1: it's not something that people spot very early, or sometimes
Speaker 1: they're early signs of it even seem positive or it
Speaker 1: seems that it can be attractive, Like you said, a
Speaker 1: lot of people who are narcissistic can be ambitious, they
Speaker 1: can be successful, they could have achieved a lot of
Speaker 1: things through that pain, that trauma. So walk us through
Speaker 1: now if we're in that should I stay or should
Speaker 1: I go? Mode? That's the name of doctor Romany's book
Speaker 1: as well, so as we're talking about it, feel free
Speaker 1: to order that book. When you're in that position and
Speaker 1: you start to sense there's some narcissism in the person
Speaker 1: you're with, A what are you going to sense? What
Speaker 1: are the things that people usually notice? Why don't we
Speaker 1: notice it early on? Like? What about narcissism is somewhat?
Speaker 1: Is it? Can it be attractive? It's very attractive, And
Speaker 1: here's the ringer in these relationships. People want the narcissistic
Speaker 1: people to be the cartoon villain, right, they want it
Speaker 1: to be in your phase bad mean, lying, deceitful, betraying
Speaker 1: all the time. Right, Well, that would be easy. No
Speaker 1: one's going to put up with that. The challenge with
Speaker 1: these relationships, whether it's apparent, whether it's a partner, colleague, friends, sibling,
Speaker 1: you name, it is that there's often enough good days
Speaker 1: in there to keep you hooked. All these qualities charm, charisma, confidence, ambition,
Speaker 1: being fun, loving, being extroverted, wanting to have all kinds
Speaker 1: of interesting experiences. Narcissistic people are very sensation seeking, their
Speaker 1: novelty seeking. It can be really fun. That's why we
Speaker 1: talk about the love bombing that happens at the beginning
Speaker 1: of these relationships. And what happens is when I've worked
Speaker 1: with people, especially those who have been in longer term relationships,
Speaker 1: will say, Doc, it isn't always bad, it wasn't always bad,
Speaker 1: but the bad is really bad. Like the bad leaves
Speaker 1: me wondering if I'm any good and I feel like
Speaker 1: a bad person, and I feel like I'm the one
Speaker 1: with the problem, and on and on and on. Right,
Speaker 1: but then there are those good days and the person
Speaker 1: will often say, see, I was the one who is wrong.
Speaker 1: I'm I'm being too demanding. I've got this silly notion
Speaker 1: of what a relationship supposed to be, and I can
Speaker 1: set a clock on the fact that it's going to
Speaker 1: go back into the downward. So I think that that's
Speaker 1: one thing I want everyone listening to this to know
Speaker 1: is that people say, well, maybe this person in my
Speaker 1: life isn't that antagonistic. Maybe they're not that narcissistic because
Speaker 1: we have these good days. Plan on the good days.
Speaker 1: It's like being in a relationship, or it's like living
Speaker 1: someplace where the weather is always extreme. It's either like
Speaker 1: eighty five degrees in sunny or like the most horrific
Speaker 1: hurricane blizzard, and that weather alternates like on an every
Speaker 1: few days basis sometimes, And so as a result of that,
Speaker 1: it confuses people to no end. It isn't always bad.
Speaker 1: There were good moments, There are good memories, and that's
Speaker 1: what confuses people. So this idea of recognizing someone. In
Speaker 1: my own podcast, Navigating Narcissism, we've done now thirty episodes, right,
Speaker 1: thirty episodes, thirty conversations about narcissism, and in in many
Speaker 1: of these cases, what I've seen, especially in the intimate relationships.
Speaker 1: Somewhere around one, two three years, things were becoming clear.
Speaker 1: Although you see the red flags as soon as the
Speaker 1: first month, the piece is turning into somebody's like pixels, right,
Speaker 1: A couple of pixels teach you nothing. Lots of pixels
Speaker 1: make a picture, and it takes a couple of years
Speaker 1: for a lot of folks to get enough pixels to say, Okay,
Speaker 1: there's no not seeing this. But by then they may
Speaker 1: be so deep into it that cognitive dissonance kicks in,
Speaker 1: and you want it to work, so you tell yourself
Speaker 1: whatever story you need to tell yourself so the relationship
Speaker 1: can sustain. Well, we have enough good times. Maybe it's
Speaker 1: my fault, I'm being too demanding. And you'll see this,
Speaker 1: especially if a person is trying to find a relationship
Speaker 1: at a pressured time of life. They want to have kids,
Speaker 1: they feel pressured to get married, whatever it may be.
Speaker 1: But even in a family, a person will say, I
Speaker 1: can't walk away from my parents, even though every interaction
Speaker 1: the person has with them is wretched. And my job
Speaker 1: is to help people find that middle ground of having
Speaker 1: realistic expectations. But I do think that when people red
Speaker 1: flags are always a story that can be told retrospectively, like, okay,
Speaker 1: there was a red flag on the first day, there's
Speaker 1: a red flag in the first month. Yeah, everyone, I'll say, like, okay,
Speaker 1: all that being late or you know, all that telling
Speaker 1: me that they told me not to apply to that
Speaker 1: school because they cared about me and didn't want me
Speaker 1: to feel like I was. You know, they didn't want
Speaker 1: to watch me go through the school telling me that
Speaker 1: I couldn't get in. But in fact, what they were
Speaker 1: doing is holding them back on their dreams, like the
Speaker 1: pixels turn into a picture, and I think that that
Speaker 1: it does take time, and a lot of people will
Speaker 1: feel embarrassing. How did it take me two years to
Speaker 1: see this? To which I say two years is fast?
Speaker 1: Good for you. And when the love bombing ends, and
Speaker 1: love bombing lasts anywhere from six weeks to a year,
Speaker 1: I think that's about the range. And so when the
Speaker 1: love bombing ends and they do valuing starts, people are
Speaker 1: almost on this weird addictive treadmill of like how do
Speaker 1: I get back to that? Yeah? And and what do
Speaker 1: I need to change in myself? Never stopping to think, Okay,
Speaker 1: this person brought their a game for about three months
Speaker 1: they've shifted, I have not changed. So if you can
Speaker 1: see it clearly, you can see the patterns clearly, things like,
Speaker 1: you know, they'll get incredibly sensitive to criticism. That's a
Speaker 1: very common pattern in narcissistic folks. And so everything will
Speaker 1: be going well and a person's feeling more comfortable, and
Speaker 1: they might give them feedback. I don't know what they're
Speaker 1: wearing or the restaurant they chose or their job, and
Speaker 1: a rage that feels like a tsunami will enter the
Speaker 1: relationship and the person will be like, what the heck
Speaker 1: just happened? Those ego injuries can really result in these
Speaker 1: volcanic kinds of you know, sorts of shows of emotion.
Speaker 1: That's when people start getting confused and saying, maybe I
Speaker 1: was harsh, maybe I shouldn't have said that. And so
Speaker 1: what we see invariably is the survivors in these relationships
Speaker 1: take it upon themselves to try to change everything about
Speaker 1: the themselves, believing they can change the other person. And
Speaker 1: if there's only one takeaway here, it's that narcissism, like
Speaker 1: all maladaptive personality styles, is really resistant to change. The
Speaker 1: more maladaptive the personality, the more rigid it is. The
Speaker 1: more healthy and flexible the personality, the more given take.
Speaker 1: So agreeable people are incredibly flexible. So even if they
Speaker 1: don't want to do something, they might think like, I
Speaker 1: love her, you know she wants to go and I'm
Speaker 1: you know what, They've always been there for me, so
Speaker 1: I'm going to go to the horror film festival. Might
Speaker 1: cover my eyes, but then think that that's the give
Speaker 1: and take of a relationship and won't be angry about it.
Speaker 1: That's the flexibility. Narcissism is the opposite. It's like as
Speaker 1: solid as a brick. Yeah wow. And I think that
Speaker 1: when people end up in the scenarios those experiences we
Speaker 1: have this You raise this point that we almost try
Speaker 1: and counteract bad memories with good memories, Like that's how
Speaker 1: we like to make sense if someone is well, if
Speaker 1: they do a bad thing, how many good things did
Speaker 1: they do? If they do a good thing, how many
Speaker 1: bad things did they do? Right? If we don't like
Speaker 1: someone overall, will come up with a list of mistakes
Speaker 1: they made. If we like someone, will come up with
Speaker 1: the list of compliments they made. What's a healthier way
Speaker 1: of making sense of someone? Because I don't find good
Speaker 1: and bad to be that healthy. As you said, he
Speaker 1: could mislead you. I always say to people, you've got
Speaker 1: to be able to be comfortable with this concept of
Speaker 1: multiple truths. Multiple things can be true at the same time.
Speaker 1: You could have had a wonderful courtship. You may have
Speaker 1: great sex. This person may regularly gas like you. This
Speaker 1: person lies to you. You really love how they cook spaghetti.
Speaker 1: They're wonderful with your infant. They often raise their voice
Speaker 1: at you. Do you see what I'm saying. All of
Speaker 1: these things are happening at the same time. The hardest
Speaker 1: thing I believe a human being can do is to
Speaker 1: sit with those multiple truths and not run away. It
Speaker 1: is the ultimate test of mindfulness because we want cognitive dissonance.
Speaker 1: Our brains are wired. They're not wired for inconsistency. They're
Speaker 1: wired for consistency. And when things are inconsistent, we feel
Speaker 1: very tense, We feel very uncomfortable, and the human species
Speaker 1: gears towards homeostasis. I need to not feel tense. The
Speaker 1: best way to not feel tense is figure out, Okay,
Speaker 1: I want to stay in this relationship. So he's a
Speaker 1: good father. What more could you want? Right now? You
Speaker 1: can argue the flip side of that too, When a
Speaker 1: person for some reason feels ready to leave a relationship,
Speaker 1: they may say they may cherry pick all the few
Speaker 1: bad things and forget how much you know that this
Speaker 1: person's actually really well regulated and kind and compassionate and
Speaker 1: all of that. I think part of the struggle becomes
Speaker 1: what constitutes a healthy relationship in any culture Without that
Speaker 1: agreed upon definition, I think that's half the battle. And
Speaker 1: so when people say to me, what's a healthy relationship,
Speaker 1: I'm like, oh, easy. It's kind, it's compassionate, it's flexible,
Speaker 1: it is respectful, it is cooperative, it's collaborative. There's there's
Speaker 1: you know, equitability, and it may not it may be
Speaker 1: that there's very clear roles but there's a perceived sense
Speaker 1: of equitability in the relationship. There's self awareness, and there's
Speaker 1: an investment in the growth of your partner. That's a
Speaker 1: healthy relationship. And people they'll look at our sissistic relationships
Speaker 1: that would say I don't have any of those. Yeah, okay,
Speaker 1: But unfortunately culture will often dictate what makes things healthy.
Speaker 1: And then they'll be like, well, they have a good job,
Speaker 1: they make a lot of money. We are of the
Speaker 1: same religion. I like how they look. Yeah, that stuff
Speaker 1: is I understand why someone would value it. It's not
Speaker 1: the stuff of a healthy relationship. Yeah, those are the
Speaker 1: things we start convincing ourselves through and coaching ourselves through
Speaker 1: and walking ourselves through. It gets harder and harder and
Speaker 1: harder because we get so addicted, especially going back to
Speaker 1: what you're sing about love bombing, Like being love bombed
Speaker 1: is really addictive and it's really intoxicating because it's like, Wow,
Speaker 1: this person's really into me. And if I could count
Speaker 1: the amount of friends I have this year that have
Speaker 1: been love bombed, like it's insane, Like how common it is,
Speaker 1: And it's at the short run two, it's at that
Speaker 1: six weeks mark or you know, three months mark where
Speaker 1: people are showing their their full self. I guess is
Speaker 1: the right way of saying it. How do you stop
Speaker 1: yourself from being love bombed? Like how do you avoid
Speaker 1: being love bombed? Or how do you navigate being love bombed?
Speaker 1: Because I think that's the conversation, Like we're not going
Speaker 1: to be able to stop being love bombed, but you
Speaker 1: are going to be able to slow things down, You
Speaker 1: are going to be able to rethink, You are going
Speaker 1: to be able to, but we just love being loved
Speaker 1: so much, and you know, it's kind of like the
Speaker 1: confidence boost we never had, and it's it's the influx
Speaker 1: of positive compliments we never had. So how do we
Speaker 1: what do we do? It's a tough one, Jay, You know.
Speaker 1: I means if you put like a bunch of I
Speaker 1: don't copcakes or sweet starting to eat it right knowing that, okay, rominy,
Speaker 1: you don't need to, you don't need the sugar. You
Speaker 1: know we're going to turn. Then I'd say, you don't
Speaker 1: need the sugar. You don't, that's not good for you.
Speaker 1: Then that's easy, I think easier when it comes to food.
Speaker 1: I think that what happens with love bombing might actually
Speaker 1: be more addictive than drugs because it's often addressing a
Speaker 1: deficit many people believe they've experienced in their lives that
Speaker 1: they weren't seen, they weren't recognized, they weren't valued. A
Speaker 1: lot of people didn't get that in the early part
Speaker 1: of their lives, so that someone's coming along or in
Speaker 1: their dating life, they didn't get it with other people.
Speaker 1: So when someone comes along and is offering it, it's
Speaker 1: almost feels like an offset to those other relationships. Where
Speaker 1: a person didn't feel valued or seen or any of that.
Speaker 1: I think part A number one is that you need
Speaker 1: to know what it is, so when it's happening, you're
Speaker 1: more aware of It's like it again us a hurricane analogy.
Speaker 1: It's like preparing for it. So if a person says, oh,
Speaker 1: hurricane is just rain and wind, I'm like, m maybe not.
Speaker 1: Like let's get those you know, let's board up your windows,
Speaker 1: let's sandbag your house, evacuate like, it's not just a
Speaker 1: rain and storm. So knowing what it is means you're
Speaker 1: going to prepare yourself in a different way. That's one thing.
Speaker 1: The second thing is love bombing becomes a place for
Speaker 1: you to test the waters. Okay, so I tell people
Speaker 1: pull back on that throttle. Let's come down in altitude.
Speaker 1: Let's fly this plane a little slower. Now. In most
Speaker 1: narcissistic relationships, if a person tries I'm not saying end it,
Speaker 1: but tries to pull back, like we go a little slower,
Speaker 1: or you know what, we don't need to go to
Speaker 1: that place, Let's just go to this simple restaurant. Or
Speaker 1: I don't know about traveling yet, Like I'd like to
Speaker 1: get you to know you better you put those lines
Speaker 1: down and set those boundaries. In the majority of cases,
Speaker 1: the narcissistic person's going to jump. They're going to do
Speaker 1: things like doubt your commitment. I guess you're not that
Speaker 1: into me, or oh yeah, okay, I get it, you're
Speaker 1: not you're not vibing because what you've done is you've
Speaker 1: taken away their game. Right now, if they were really,
Speaker 1: really a good, solid person who just happened to be
Speaker 1: super into dating you, then they'd say, oh, you know
Speaker 1: what I was, I'm so interested in you. Let me
Speaker 1: slow this, let me slow my role. I think, I
Speaker 1: let my enthusiasm, and they'll be I let my enthusiasm
Speaker 1: get the best of me. They'll be self aware of
Speaker 1: what they're they're doing and might say, you know, I
Speaker 1: think that I just you're really wonderful and but thank you.
Speaker 1: And they'll receive the feedback and say and say, you
Speaker 1: know what, let's go to that hole in the wall restaurant.
Speaker 1: It sounds great and it won't be an ego injury
Speaker 1: and they won't view it again because you're taking away
Speaker 1: their game. That's that's the example of gaslighting, which, by
Speaker 1: the way, today was designated as the word of the year.
Speaker 1: Why yes, Miriam Webster Dictionary called gaslighting the word of
Speaker 1: the year, which to me, let me tell you, I
Speaker 1: literally started crying. I thought, after fifteen years of talking
Speaker 1: about this stuff quietly, I cannot believe that this is
Speaker 1: finally entering into the mainstream. But people still use the
Speaker 1: word wrong. But the fact of the matter is when
Speaker 1: when you simply say something like I'm really enjoying getting
Speaker 1: to know you, but can we just step it back
Speaker 1: a bit, and a person says, well, I guess you're
Speaker 1: not that interested in me, then you're being gaslight because
Speaker 1: that's actually not your experience. You actually are quite committed.
Speaker 1: I want to slow it down to see what it's like.
Speaker 1: But that's a great way to test the waters. That
Speaker 1: would be like that would be me saying, can you
Speaker 1: take all those cupcakes away? I'm not interested, Yeah, and
Speaker 1: I'd still like I really want one. Yeah. So it's
Speaker 1: that exactly. Yeah. Let's now that you've said that, I
Speaker 1: didn't realize that's that is incredible that it's the word
Speaker 1: of the year, in the sense that at least we're
Speaker 1: understanding it. It's sad that it's the word of the
Speaker 1: year because it means more people are experiencing it. It's
Speaker 1: like that, you know, but can you again properly clarify
Speaker 1: as what gaslighting is again so that we don't misuse it?
Speaker 1: And absolutely, And when I saw that, I'm like, I'm
Speaker 1: going to bring this up with j Yeah, because it
Speaker 1: just when it came up as the word of the
Speaker 1: year gaslight. A lot of people are confused by gaslighting
Speaker 1: right now. The origin of the word is actually is
Speaker 1: only in the last less than a hundred years. It
Speaker 1: was a name of a play that became a film,
Speaker 1: and you know, it was literally about the psychological manipulation
Speaker 1: of a woman by her husband and how she psychologically
Speaker 1: sort of falls apart because that's happening fast forward. The
Speaker 1: only people who talked about gaslighting were therapists. It was
Speaker 1: a therapist talk and we talk about it. Oh God,
Speaker 1: her husband's gaslighting him, you know kind of thing, and
Speaker 1: my shrink would say it to me, right, and I
Speaker 1: was like, oh, if you're being gaslighted, So it was
Speaker 1: shrink talk. Nobody else talked about it, and then those
Speaker 1: of us working in this space, it was, you know, like, oh,
Speaker 1: that's the primary tool of the narcissistic person because it's
Speaker 1: a tool of domination. So the way gaslighting works is
Speaker 1: it's it's a denial of a person's reality. That's step one.
Speaker 1: I never said that that never happened. You're what are
Speaker 1: you saying? Like I don't even see what you're talking about? Right,
Speaker 1: So you're like it didn't or this isn't happening. So
Speaker 1: you're now you're already a little off balance because I'm
Speaker 1: very authoritatively saying to you something didn't happen. But that's
Speaker 1: not that's that by itself is not gaslighting. Oh okay, no,
Speaker 1: you gotta go now. The step two of gaslighting is
Speaker 1: then I tell you there's something wrong with you, right,
Speaker 1: you're so sensitive, like why do you see this everywhere?
Speaker 1: Or like ooh god, you know paranoia much? You know
Speaker 1: what I'm gonna tell you the name of a shrink.
Speaker 1: You need to talk to someone because you keep imagining
Speaker 1: things that aren't happening. Okay, So imagine a person in
Speaker 1: a relationship or there's infidelity and they're getting suspicious their
Speaker 1: partners hours whatever it is messages and they say to
Speaker 1: their partner, what is this thing at work? You keep
Speaker 1: staying and you know you're traveling, like is there anything
Speaker 1: going on that I should know about. No, there's nothing
Speaker 1: going on. A Step one. We am not gaslighted yet,
Speaker 1: though gaslighting is. But you know what I'm sick of.
Speaker 1: I'm sick of living with an unhinged, paranoid lunatic. That's
Speaker 1: what I'm tired of. There's the gaslight. Now there's a
Speaker 1: Step three is that it's not a one off, one time. Yes,
Speaker 1: that's a gaslighting episode, but the true gaslighting abuse happens
Speaker 1: over time, over and over and over, and it won't
Speaker 1: just be about one issue. I never said that what
Speaker 1: is wrong with you? Oh, I'm getting so tired of
Speaker 1: your paranoida. You're so sensitive. And what happens then is
Speaker 1: that other person being told repeatedly by someone they do trust.
Speaker 1: Because gaslighting is predicated on trust, it's harder for a
Speaker 1: stranger to gaslight you, partner, family member, healthcare provider, teacher,
Speaker 1: people who have some power over someone. Politicians in gaslight,
Speaker 1: entire societies gaslight right when everyone is coming in on
Speaker 1: one party line and denying reality and then telling the
Speaker 1: people who don't believe that that there's something wrong with them,
Speaker 1: and do it over and over and over again. You
Speaker 1: break the other person's spirit. You leave them completely doubting themselves,
Speaker 1: completely blaming themselves. And so what happens is when a
Speaker 1: person's chronically gaslighted, you'll see things like no, no, you
Speaker 1: know what, this is my fault. They start saying, they
Speaker 1: start apologizing before they get in the row, I'm sorry,
Speaker 1: I'm sorry, and I'm like, what are you sorry for?
Speaker 1: It's just they got so used to saying it, so
Speaker 1: they're there. They really get shattered by this where they
Speaker 1: literally lose a sense of up and down night and day.
Speaker 1: They're just it's such a cruel thing to do to
Speaker 1: a person. It is qualifies as emotional abuse. So this
Speaker 1: idea of gas lighting great that it's in the public consciousness,
Speaker 1: but it's not just lying. Everyone says doctor Rombeney. What's
Speaker 1: the difference between lying and gaslighting is a denial of evidence. Right,
Speaker 1: So today we had our time to get together and
Speaker 1: make it up. You say, oh kay, you're gonna be
Speaker 1: here at two o'clock, and I'd say, that's not true.
Speaker 1: You told me to get here at one o'clock. It
Speaker 1: was one o'clock, one o'clock, one o'clock. I know it
Speaker 1: was one o'clock, and I insist on that. Then you
Speaker 1: bibles show me the email and say, romany look at
Speaker 1: as two o'clock and then and then and then I
Speaker 1: went with that. Right then we were just clothed. The
Speaker 1: lie got lies get shut down by evidence. Gas Lighting
Speaker 1: is a lie, but wrapped up in this invalidating bow.
Speaker 1: And that I mean when I hear that, it breaks
Speaker 1: my heart because I there's so many people who have
Speaker 1: been on the end of that. And you see how
Speaker 1: someone may even have started off with an anxious or
Speaker 1: avoidant attachment style, and now that anxiety is through the roof,
Speaker 1: or that self criticism is you know, the self doubt
Speaker 1: is even greater. Now that person can trust again. Now
Speaker 1: the persons struggling with their value and their worth. And
Speaker 1: I know this is a bigger question and I do
Speaker 1: want to get into it, but that individual, what could
Speaker 1: they have done differently to avoid going inward? Because what
Speaker 1: I've found is that when someone is potentially probably one
Speaker 1: of the other personality types, it's natural for them to
Speaker 1: think that there's something that they need to change. That's
Speaker 1: the natural default of the other personality types. It's like,
Speaker 1: when something's not working out, maybe I should change because
Speaker 1: then it could be better, right, well, take responsibility exactly
Speaker 1: and so and I've seen that in myself, even when
Speaker 1: someone would say the meanest thing about me, even if
Speaker 1: I know it's not true to my core, there's a
Speaker 1: part of me that will still reflect on it because
Speaker 1: I'm like, what if maybe maybe it's something I'm missing
Speaker 1: about myself. But how do you avoid letting it affect you?
Speaker 1: Or are you saying there is no way and it
Speaker 1: is going to affect you. I think that it's a
Speaker 1: mix of things. It's interesting when people get savvy about
Speaker 1: gaslighting and they know they're being gaslighted in real time. Now,
Speaker 1: the one thing you can never, ever, ever do is
Speaker 1: tell a gaslighter that you know that they're gaslighting you,
Speaker 1: because then they're going to double down. Yeah, okay, So
Speaker 1: when it's happening in real time is and this is
Speaker 1: what's so hard, because it becomes sort of a cart
Speaker 1: before the horse thing. Most people haven't done the therapeutic
Speaker 1: work of who am I? What am I about? What
Speaker 1: is my identity? How do I stand as a person,
Speaker 1: what do I believe in? What do I care about? Right?
Speaker 1: Very few people do that work because then when you
Speaker 1: do that again, I get this I get this a
Speaker 1: lot in online spaces because a lot of people out
Speaker 1: there who are very pro narcissism apparently, and so when
Speaker 1: I come out, but it is, they're a big organized community.
Speaker 1: Doctor Rominey is a terrible therapist and she's very unempathic.
Speaker 1: That was one of last week's comments. Okay, it has
Speaker 1: us impact j because I don't know this persu a
Speaker 1: stranger on the internet. But I have to catch myself
Speaker 1: because I know there's parts of me that have that
Speaker 1: neurotic structure where I believe that's plausible, just because that's
Speaker 1: just sort of how I'm right. Yeah, the work then
Speaker 1: becomes I have to and it's literally talking myself out loud,
Speaker 1: like rominy, you are empathic, you're solid, you are a
Speaker 1: very good therapist. You've seen really meaningful change your clients. Literally,
Speaker 1: I'm saying this out loud. However, and this is the
Speaker 1: interesting rub. This hurts you, even though this is from
Speaker 1: a stranger. To give yourself a second. And that might
Speaker 1: be talk to someone I care about who cares about me,
Speaker 1: to see if they can uplift me. It might be
Speaker 1: do something pleasurable. It might mean doing a brief workout.
Speaker 1: It might mean whatever it means. You know that there's
Speaker 1: a moment when I'm saying I need to show some
Speaker 1: compassion to myself right now because this person has hit
Speaker 1: me someplace that hurts becomes a different call to arms
Speaker 1: at that point? Does that make sense? But the work
Speaker 1: is who am I and what am I about? You know?
Speaker 1: And I think that this is why journaling becomes so
Speaker 1: important because having these places you've written things down where
Speaker 1: you can look back and say, I really have comment
Speaker 1: things from the heart, and sure I've made mistakes like
Speaker 1: everyone does, but listen, this is a this is a
Speaker 1: high falutin. This is me having been in therapist therapy
Speaker 1: for fifty thousand years, you know, So that's also there's
Speaker 1: a place where that work has been done. And having
Speaker 1: gone through a life and had to learn from all
Speaker 1: of that, that was not something I was doing when
Speaker 1: I was twenty five years old. So a therapist, though, could,
Speaker 1: if a good therapist, would be a place where somebody
Speaker 1: could say you're being gaslighted. And I can't tell you
Speaker 1: how many times I've sat with a client and said,
Speaker 1: it sounds like they're gaslighting you're the client, bag what
Speaker 1: And then we'll walk through what is their reality, who
Speaker 1: are there, And then when that session is done, the
Speaker 1: Latin say, I feel like a big weight has been
Speaker 1: lifted off of me because I was literally doubting the
Speaker 1: very essence of who I am. And this is where
Speaker 1: therapy becomes so important, because it's sort of bringing a
Speaker 1: person back to doing that work of who they really are,
Speaker 1: what they really stand for, what they're about. So in
Speaker 1: real time, it's really about listening to it. I have
Speaker 1: to be honest with you. When I within the presence
Speaker 1: of someone who is gaslighting me and they're actually somebody
Speaker 1: who I do value, I tend to disengage a bit.
Speaker 1: You know, I'll just sort of let you know, I'll say,
Speaker 1: you know, I'll often give the okay, we're just seeing
Speaker 1: it in different ways, and I'll sort of soften and
Speaker 1: I won't get into it with them anymore. I will
Speaker 1: I don't. In fact, one of my techniques I give
Speaker 1: the clients I work with is don't go deep, don't defend,
Speaker 1: don't engage, don't explain, don't personalize. So I'll disengage a
Speaker 1: bit and realize, Okay, this is no longer a safe space. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And that sort of feels self protective and I think
Speaker 1: that that's almost like retraining an inner critic to say,
Speaker 1: can I also have an inner bodyguard so that I
Speaker 1: could just have someone's like, heyn, let's just pull you
Speaker 1: back a little bit. Yeah. Yeah, it's so interesting. I
Speaker 1: had an episode with a coaching client because obviously that's
Speaker 1: my way. I had an episode with the coaching client
Speaker 1: earlier this year, and I have a similar approach where
Speaker 1: I'm like, I know who I am, I know what
Speaker 1: I care about, I know with what intention I work towards,
Speaker 1: and ultimately, if that's an opinion someone has of me,
Speaker 1: they're entitled to that. But but I'm not going to
Speaker 1: go deep with it because I know that's just not
Speaker 1: my truth and that's not where I am. But like
Speaker 1: you're saying, that takes a lot of self work beforehand,
Speaker 1: and like you said, there's also still an openness to feedback.
Speaker 1: There's still an openness to being better. It's not like
Speaker 1: you think you're complete and you're perfect and your intentions
Speaker 1: perfect either. So I really like that you brought it
Speaker 1: back to that because I'm glad that we got back
Speaker 1: to that that at the end of the day, it's
Speaker 1: about who you are, your intention, the essence of who
Speaker 1: you're trying to be, and that's ultimately all you have
Speaker 1: to go back to before and often but it's hard,
Speaker 1: it's really really and for people who've been through lifelong
Speaker 1: narcissistic abuse, long term narcissistic abuse in a relationship, they'll
Speaker 1: be like, I have no idea who I am, so
Speaker 1: so I do say that honestly, and the film, the
Speaker 1: original film Gaslight, portrays this as part of the storyline. Ultimately,
Speaker 1: ultimately she got ungaslighted if you will, because it's just
Speaker 1: one person. It only takes one person. And I always
Speaker 1: tell everyone you can be the person who turns the
Speaker 1: gaslight off for someone else. You may witness something and
Speaker 1: say that's you know, you might be at a meeting
Speaker 1: and someone might say that's not what they said, and
Speaker 1: so now you're ungaslighting them in real time. It might
Speaker 1: be you do it after the meeting, if that's safer.
Speaker 1: Someone will tell you what's happening in their relationship and
Speaker 1: you don't doubt them, say oh, come on, it couldn't
Speaker 1: have been that bad. You don't say that, you're like,
Speaker 1: I am so sorry this is happening to you. That
Speaker 1: sounds absolutely terrible. Are you okay, because what you've done
Speaker 1: is you've given permission to this person who's just told
Speaker 1: you they're going through something terrible. Minimizing it in many
Speaker 1: ways is a gaslighted approach. Right, Oh, it's not that bad,
Speaker 1: because if our discomfort with someone else's discomfort, we can
Speaker 1: hold this space for other people and sort of turn
Speaker 1: that gaslight off for others, And you'd be amazed and
Speaker 1: how quickly that can turn the ship around. Yeah. Well,
Speaker 1: what are some of the realistic expectations for someone who
Speaker 1: says I think I can change them? I think I
Speaker 1: can be the person that helps this narcissistic person evolve, grow, change,
Speaker 1: whatever word they use, Like, what have been realistic storylines
Speaker 1: as to how those episodes and scenarios go. They don't
Speaker 1: I am? In my book? Don't you know who I am?
Speaker 1: There is a letter in that book and I had
Speaker 1: been speaking in some public forum. This woman heard me
Speaker 1: and in somebody was asking me a question in this form,
Speaker 1: and she was in a relatively new marriage. They've been
Speaker 1: together a couple of years married. All the narcissistic top
Speaker 1: notes were and her partner and she was asking the question,
Speaker 1: I don't know, can I stick this out for another
Speaker 1: ten years. I'm just trying to figure this out. And
Speaker 1: then this woman just did it herself. She's one of
Speaker 1: the people who's decided to stay the next ten years,
Speaker 1: and she beautifully lays out, honey, this is what's going
Speaker 1: to happen if you stay for another ten years. Just basically,
Speaker 1: ten more years of gas lighting, ten more years of
Speaker 1: broken heart. I've worked with clients jay who weren't ready
Speaker 1: to go, and so they say they sometimes even drop
Speaker 1: out of therapy, and a few times I've had those
Speaker 1: clients call me back three, five, seven, eight years later,
Speaker 1: sometimes tearful and say nothing changed. And there's no sense
Speaker 1: of triumph in me for that. I recognize that they
Speaker 1: needed to see it the way they needed to see it.
Speaker 1: I don't get to dictate their rock bottom. I don't
Speaker 1: get to dictate when someone sees something. I do all
Speaker 1: the psycho education stuff, I do online education to see
Speaker 1: if I might be able to push the fast forward
Speaker 1: button on that, but it's still you get there when
Speaker 1: you get there. But like there has been, I can
Speaker 1: say it probably counts ten instances of people ten of
Speaker 1: the thousands I've heard that where people have said, you
Speaker 1: know this person actually when I said I'm done, I'm
Speaker 1: over it. I'm in fact recently came up in one
Speaker 1: of the seminars and my healing program, and this person
Speaker 1: said I'm done, I'm out, and she moved into her
Speaker 1: own place and her husband ended up going to twelve step.
Speaker 1: He ended up going to therapy. He had become more
Speaker 1: self aware, and she had found herself thriving living by herself.
Speaker 1: But she did love him, and he said, I want
Speaker 1: you to move back in, and she said, you know what,
Speaker 1: I'm still growing and finding myself. So the answer to
Speaker 1: that is no, we can continue having tentative conversations. And
Speaker 1: he didn't rage at her. That was one of the
Speaker 1: more hopeful stories I've heard in the last few years,
Speaker 1: and that's one in five years. And so you know
Speaker 1: that in this case that this person became more well regulated.
Speaker 1: But her telling me that twelve step helped led me
Speaker 1: to realize that perhaps addiction was probably the more powerful
Speaker 1: piece of that story. Will sometimes see sort of competing
Speaker 1: kinds of patterns, but by and large I have not.
Speaker 1: I mean, it is the realistic expectation. Though to your point,
Speaker 1: the reason that book is called should I Stay or
Speaker 1: Should I Go? Is about fifty percent of people stay
Speaker 1: in these relationships. That's what they do, and the reasons
Speaker 1: vary from finances to children, to religion to culture. I
Speaker 1: still love this person too, I'm afraid whatever their reasons are,
Speaker 1: no one, not me, not anyone gets to judge those reasons.
Speaker 1: What I believe in as a therapist is to meet
Speaker 1: them where they are at with that and say, okay,
Speaker 1: so that's I understand. I hear you. I don't get
Speaker 1: to sit here and tell you you don't love this person.
Speaker 1: You love them, you love them. I'm here to tell
Speaker 1: you this is what you can realistically expect if you
Speaker 1: stay right. And I use this sort of metaphor of
Speaker 1: going into the tiger's cage when I'm talking with survivors,
Speaker 1: which is there's a tiger, there's a cage. If it's
Speaker 1: really a tiger, and you go in that cage, you're
Speaker 1: going to get torn apart. If it's not a tiger,
Speaker 1: if it's a sweet little cat, and you might have
Speaker 1: a nice little experience, but maybe the only way you
Speaker 1: and I'm telling you, and even if I tell you
Speaker 1: it's a tiger, you may not believe me until you
Speaker 1: get in that cage. So I know that sometimes my
Speaker 1: clients say I have to let them go and let
Speaker 1: them go into the cage when they get torn apart.
Speaker 1: My job is to help bring them back together again.
Speaker 1: And so going into the tiger's cage is something sometimes
Speaker 1: people need to do. Say I just need to be
Speaker 1: sure that's what yeah, yeah, And I say, I understand
Speaker 1: that's part of your journey, and I'm going to support
Speaker 1: you in that. I'm here because I think some clients think, like, well,
Speaker 1: doctor Roman, he's going to be a friend. And if
Speaker 1: I go, and I'm like you as somebody who has
Speaker 1: gone back, who continues to maintain more than a few
Speaker 1: narcissistic relationships in my life. For reasons of culture, we're
Speaker 1: both South Asian. We know that there's a tremendous pressure
Speaker 1: in South Asian milist are actually in many cultures to
Speaker 1: sustain committed relationships and family. So I can't roll into
Speaker 1: those cultures and say, yeah, you got to go, that's
Speaker 1: not an option. But saying to people that you are
Speaker 1: not going to get a depth of emotional need met here,
Speaker 1: you are going to be invalidated. The work has to
Speaker 1: be in you not believing what they're saying. They are
Speaker 1: not going to grow empathy. They're going to remain entitled.
Speaker 1: You need to develop other sources of support, and that
Speaker 1: might be through friends, through family, through spirituality. However, however,
Speaker 1: you find those spaces where you feel seen and heard,
Speaker 1: like I said, whether through other human beings, the universe, God,
Speaker 1: whatever that looks like for you, that's your work. So
Speaker 1: when you realize that maybe the normal depth of a relationship,
Speaker 1: of a healthy relationship is this, you got this, yeah,
Speaker 1: and you're going to have to be ready for that
Speaker 1: roller coaster of the bad days the good days and
Speaker 1: not personalize it. But in the long term, Jay, staying
Speaker 1: in that toxic setting is going to take a toll
Speaker 1: on those people, even with all the realistic expectations, it
Speaker 1: takes a toll on a person. Well, I think you've
Speaker 1: just hit something there that that's the real growth that
Speaker 1: whether you decide to stay or you decide to go
Speaker 1: the work of figuring out who you are and what's
Speaker 1: important to you, what your self worth is based on
Speaker 1: what your value is, that's going to happen either way. Hopefully,
Speaker 1: well that's going to be a path that hopefully you'll
Speaker 1: have to take either way. And so whatever you're going
Speaker 1: to do. Please take that path, because that's a path
Speaker 1: that stays with you forever, but to take that path
Speaker 1: quietly so you don't get it. So the ultimate healing
Speaker 1: in the narcissistic relationship comes from a process called individuation.
Speaker 1: You become you out. It's imagine like a tree, so
Speaker 1: that's so shadowing that the plants under it can't grow
Speaker 1: because they're blocked from the sun. Our goal is to
Speaker 1: get you out of the shadow of their branches, to
Speaker 1: no longer have to serve as a in psychological servitude
Speaker 1: to them. That you get to individuate. The problem is
Speaker 1: they don't want to hear it or see it. Sort
Speaker 1: of psychologically alive in a narcissistic relationship, you have to
Speaker 1: skirt a very challenging line of being authentic in other
Speaker 1: spaces but not in that relationship because that's really hard
Speaker 1: because your authenticity will be shaved away. But if you
Speaker 1: make it a very conscious act that once again that
Speaker 1: inner bodyguard, I'm protecting myself right now. They don't get
Speaker 1: to see all of me because they are not able
Speaker 1: to hold me safe, and I deserve that. So I'm
Speaker 1: going to put authentic me away for a minute. I'm
Speaker 1: just going to show up, not going to be cruel,
Speaker 1: not going to be unkind. I'm going to show up
Speaker 1: and do what I gotta do. You know, whether that's
Speaker 1: just sort of keep the trains running on time. I
Speaker 1: work with clients honestly, Jay coming up with a list
Speaker 1: of neutral conversation topics. The weather with someone who said,
Speaker 1: beautifully the other day they said, sports news, weather. You know,
Speaker 1: like that's pretty much all you can talk about in
Speaker 1: these relationships, right, and weather it tends to be the safest.
Speaker 1: Can you believe this rain? It's really cloudy? I wonder
Speaker 1: when it's gonna get warm again? I mean is And
Speaker 1: people say, but that's not a relationship. I said, he
Speaker 1: never was. So you learn that piece. But you allow
Speaker 1: your authenticity to bloom in safer situations. It's like a
Speaker 1: plant that can only bloom in the night, but not
Speaker 1: in the day. Right, the flowers gorgeous at night, but
Speaker 1: there's reasons that can't be bloomed in the day. You're
Speaker 1: still going to bloom. But you become a much more
Speaker 1: intentional and mindful person in your life that you really
Speaker 1: say yourself consciously, even like you might be pulled in
Speaker 1: front of a friend's house and say I can't bring
Speaker 1: all of me into this. You breathe in and you go,
Speaker 1: and you show up as sort of part of yourself,
Speaker 1: but not all of yourself. And you know what, you
Speaker 1: know who the real loser in that is that fool
Speaker 1: of a person who doesn't get to participate in the
Speaker 1: full glory, the full authentic glory of who you are.
Speaker 1: They lost, not you, and you protected yourself. And that
Speaker 1: part require the reason why I'm hearing from you, why
Speaker 1: that path after ten years in the letter, as you said,
Speaker 1: is is even so tough, is because being a less
Speaker 1: version of yourselves takes so much strength and so much courage.
Speaker 1: It's not weakness. It takes so much energy to be
Speaker 1: a less version of yourself because someone doesn't allow you
Speaker 1: to be your full self. Correct, it's a restraint, but
Speaker 1: it's not. And I think for too many people in
Speaker 1: these relationships, they are this attenuated, less authentic version of themselves.
Speaker 1: They think that they're actually less than and I say,
Speaker 1: you're not less than. You are actually caring for yourself.
Speaker 1: You're learning that you can't bring that in And I
Speaker 1: have to be frank with you, Jay, when people really
Speaker 1: get this right, they're like, oh, okay, I'm not doing
Speaker 1: this anymore, because what they were doing before was they
Speaker 1: really were acting in a way that they thought, if
Speaker 1: I do it this way, they'll change. If I do
Speaker 1: it that, I said, changes off the table. From here
Speaker 1: on forward, you're moving forward with change off the table.
Speaker 1: And I'll tell you that pressed the accelerator for many people,
Speaker 1: saying even if they didn't leave entirely in intimate relationships,
Speaker 1: they often left. But in family relationships they'll say, I
Speaker 1: think I'm going to take a pass on Thanksgiving this year.
Speaker 1: I think I'm going to I'm only going to go
Speaker 1: for one day of the family wedding. Like, they start
Speaker 1: setting some real boundaries, and they learned to tolerate other
Speaker 1: people saying, well, isn't she upity for not showing up?
Speaker 1: Like that, tolerance of people engaging this sort of enabling
Speaker 1: discourse of oh, you're not a team player, or now
Speaker 1: you're the one who's difficult to recognize that when people
Speaker 1: take these rather revolutionary steps of taking care of themselves
Speaker 1: that again, I do believe that self care and that
Speaker 1: restraint in these kinds of toxic relationships is literally an
Speaker 1: act of rebellion. Yeah, and I love what the example
Speaker 1: you gave that certain cultures, whether it's cultural, societal, financial
Speaker 1: pressures that stop us from walking away, What are some
Speaker 1: of the healthier boundaries people can set up? So one
Speaker 1: boundary is I'm going to make time for myself to bloom,
Speaker 1: to be authentic in my own space. I'm going to
Speaker 1: find friends in community that I take strength from. Are
Speaker 1: there other healthy boundaries that people can set if they
Speaker 1: are currently staying in this situation based on financial, societal,
Speaker 1: or family expectations or pressures not to engage in the
Speaker 1: same way. I think a lot of people would get
Speaker 1: sort of with the dog with a bone kind of
Speaker 1: a fight with them, right, it's just sort of letting
Speaker 1: it go. People will say I don't want to relent.
Speaker 1: I'm like, then, don't relent with people you actually who
Speaker 1: are healthy and can be very sort of deep, mindful
Speaker 1: circumspect people. Don't get into that argument with them unless
Speaker 1: you just want to get into an argument for the
Speaker 1: sake of getting into an argument. Something else that people
Speaker 1: need to be prepared with in these sort of narcissistic
Speaker 1: relational situations is that there's a lot of baiting if
Speaker 1: you're not giving the arguments and being as gaslightable as
Speaker 1: you once were. That's not very satisfying for them. So
Speaker 1: they're going to find a way to go for the jugular,
Speaker 1: to make you bleed and make you fight back. And
Speaker 1: I say to people, you've got to know sort of
Speaker 1: your true north, as it were, and you might not
Speaker 1: take ninety percent of arguments, but if they go after
Speaker 1: some of those things you hold sacred, it could be
Speaker 1: your children, it could be a belief system you have,
Speaker 1: it could be people other people you care about, whatever
Speaker 1: it is, if they go for that, then you're like,
Speaker 1: you know what, I'm going in. I'm a tiger's gage.
Speaker 1: I'm going in. I am going to I can't listen
Speaker 1: to this, I can't do this, but recognize it's not
Speaker 1: going to change anything. And it's a question of which
Speaker 1: depletion is work worse at that point, holding yourself silent
Speaker 1: at such a point or actually having the argument. And
Speaker 1: then I tell people, if you decide to go in
Speaker 1: and do that, you need to engage in some form
Speaker 1: of just coming back down, whatever that looks like for
Speaker 1: you after these kinds of interactions, because many many people
Speaker 1: will say after they've had to spend time with a
Speaker 1: very toxic, difficult, antagonistic, narcissistic, call it what you will, person,
Speaker 1: they'll feel really depleted. And if you keep having those
Speaker 1: episodes of depletion, you're going to get sick. Yeah. I've
Speaker 1: also found that, I mean more from an experience one
Speaker 1: of view, that the more you're associating with that energy,
Speaker 1: the more likely you become or adopt certain behaviors too.
Speaker 1: I don't know if you've seen that where certain people
Speaker 1: start adopting similar pattern similar behaviors in order to be
Speaker 1: able to fight back and defend themselves as a defense mechanism.
Speaker 1: Not saying that you become narcissistic, but that you also
Speaker 1: respond by gaslighting or trying to you know, you're using
Speaker 1: that person's game against them because that's the only play
Speaker 1: to survive, and you doing it consciously. But eventually, I mean,
Speaker 1: it just becomes unconscious to some degree. And if you've
Speaker 1: seen I've seen that. I think I've definitely seen it
Speaker 1: where people will say change you know that. No, I
Speaker 1: think that people will say, I don't know how often
Speaker 1: you'd be willing to steal food, which you'd steal it
Speaker 1: if you were hungry. Yeah, it doesn't make you a thief. Yes, yes,
Speaker 1: you know, and that's the um. We would all do
Speaker 1: things we don't ordinarily do to survive. And I think
Speaker 1: that some people, until they understand this personality style doesn't
Speaker 1: change that you have to have these realistic expectations all
Speaker 1: of that. Until people get that, they do keep sort
Speaker 1: of getting into the tango with them, which may mean,
Speaker 1: you know, shifts in terms of frustration just regulation their
Speaker 1: own empathy may wane. We know that there's something called
Speaker 1: compassion fatigue. Compassion fatigue is very contiguous to burn out,
Speaker 1: and people in these relationships will say, my empathy has
Speaker 1: gone to hell, like people are telling me their problems.
Speaker 1: I'm like, I don't have it anymore. And it's not
Speaker 1: that your empathy has gone away, but it's almost like
Speaker 1: it's been a one you've just it's almost like a
Speaker 1: vessel where the compassions only going out and very little
Speaker 1: coming in. Yeah, doctor Romany, this has been incredible to
Speaker 1: talk to you. And I just want to recommend the
Speaker 1: books because we only touch the tip of the iceberg
Speaker 1: the book. There's two books here that I highly recommend.
Speaker 1: One is called Should I Stay or Should I Go.
Speaker 1: You're going to hear about chapters about how did you
Speaker 1: get sucked in? How do they make you feel? And
Speaker 1: of course answering the questions should I say or should
Speaker 1: I go? If you're a friend or in a tough
Speaker 1: position in this kind of a relationship, then this book's
Speaker 1: going to help you make that decision extremely practical, applicable advice.
Speaker 1: And the other book is called Don't You Know Who
Speaker 1: I Am? How to Stay Sane in an Error of Narcissism, entitlement,
Speaker 1: and Incivility. This book is also available right now, and
Speaker 1: so I highly recommend both these books. Doctor Romeny is
Speaker 1: anything that you didn't share that you really want to
Speaker 1: share from your heart, or something that's on your mind,
Speaker 1: or something in the moment that you feel inspired to
Speaker 1: a cold upon to share with us today. I think
Speaker 1: that for me is the I'm tired of the loss
Speaker 1: of human potential I'm seeing in these relationships, whether it's
Speaker 1: a five year relationship or sixty year relationship. And while
Speaker 1: it is very hard for a person to actualize and
Speaker 1: give light to their best self while they're in these relationships,
Speaker 1: it's not impossible. And I have worked with people who
Speaker 1: have been in long, long term relationships like this, and
Speaker 1: yet I see this their empathy and compassion are deeply retained.
Speaker 1: They still do laugh deeply and they'll say, you know,
Speaker 1: and they'll say, listen, I can't in my world, in
Speaker 1: my life and my culture, I can't end this. But
Speaker 1: that doesn't mean there's not joy in my life. And
Speaker 1: I think for me, what I want to do is,
Speaker 1: I think everyone's been misplacing their hope in the arcissistic relationship.
Speaker 1: The hope needs to be in oneself, and that the
Speaker 1: hope has to be that there is this this tremendous,
Speaker 1: untold story in you and it is your story, not
Speaker 1: the story of them in your life, but you and yours,
Speaker 1: and to give sort of flight to that narrative of you,
Speaker 1: that to me is that's the work. That's the healing,
Speaker 1: and to let when people say, what does this ever
Speaker 1: fully go away? And the answers, no, it doesn't. It
Speaker 1: is something that's there. And I'll say, survivors have a
Speaker 1: unique beauty. Right, it's roomy, and it's the wound where
Speaker 1: the you know, the wound is where the light enters
Speaker 1: you and all of that there. Always say the survivors
Speaker 1: can see each other in the room, right, They're the
Speaker 1: ones in the audience that are sort of like you know,
Speaker 1: with I'm finally being heard and seen kind of thing,
Speaker 1: and they they've had a different journey. It's I'm not
Speaker 1: saying it's better or worse or more virtuous, but there
Speaker 1: is a there can be this sort of depth you
Speaker 1: bring into your life after having been through it. It's
Speaker 1: a loss of innocen I have to say you will.
Speaker 1: You'll never sort of laugh and be in the same way,
Speaker 1: but you may sort of When the laughter comes, it
Speaker 1: feels like a gift. And I think that that many
Speaker 1: survivors say I'm ruined, not only not ruined, there's a
Speaker 1: depth to your inner beauty that really comes out. I'm
Speaker 1: not saying anyone should seek it out, by the way
Speaker 1: it will find you. That's the problem with narcissism in
Speaker 1: our culture. And so, like I said, this is being
Speaker 1: done through storytelling. In my podcast, I try to teach
Speaker 1: about it, but above all else, to me, the work
Speaker 1: is helping people heal from this, because I don't believe
Speaker 1: anyone is defined by this. Yeah, now that's so powerful.
Speaker 1: Everyone's been listening and watching the podcast is go navigating
Speaker 1: narcissism makes you go listen and subscribe YouTube channel as well.
Speaker 1: Doctor Romany, and of course on Instagram, make sure you
Speaker 1: tag us across platforms, whether you're sharing clips on TikTok,
Speaker 1: whether you're sharing in your stories or your posts on Instagram,
Speaker 1: makes you tag doctor Romany and I letting us know
Speaker 1: what stayed with you, what stuck with you, what you're
Speaker 1: going to share with a friend. Maybe there was a
Speaker 1: moment that you know someone in your life needs to hear.
Speaker 1: Make sure you pass this episode along to them. I
Speaker 1: hope this episode very clearly defined and described for you narcissism, gaslighting,
Speaker 1: love bombing, really trying to break down what these terms
Speaker 1: actually are, how you can get an instinct for sensing them,
Speaker 1: knowing when they're there, and then the steps that you
Speaker 1: can take, which are laid out beautifully in the books
Speaker 1: and the content that we've recommended. Really hoping that you
Speaker 1: find the help and support that you need in order
Speaker 1: to navigate narcissism in your life in any form. And
Speaker 1: we're going to be welcoming doctor Romany back onto the
Speaker 1: podcast many many times to have future conversations about this
Speaker 1: theme in different areas of our lives as well. So
Speaker 1: Doctor Romany, thank you so much for your time and energy, Honestly,
Speaker 1: your work is needed and so powerful. And what I
Speaker 1: love from sitting down with you every time is not
Speaker 1: only is my mind stimulated, not only do I feel
Speaker 1: my intelligence has gained, I always feel moved the words
Speaker 1: you share as well in my heart space, and I
Speaker 1: really appreciate that, so thank you, Thank you so much
Speaker 1: for opening your heart and letting that happen to you