How To Spot A Narcissist | Dr. Ramani

On any journey using Uber, it helps to know you're getting into the right car. Pin verification adds an extra step to make sure your ride is your ride. Before the trip begins, your app gives you a unique pin. Just tell it to your driver, and they'll enter it in their app before the ride can start. Hey, what's your pin? Mm-hmm, 2538. That way, you know you're in the right car taking the right trip, and your driver knows you're the right passenger. Make sure your ride is your ride with pin verification from Uber. One more way Uber is putting safety at every turn. Learn more on the Uber app. I don't think I can be your friend, Isabella said. Rebecca's stomach flipped. This is the love story of real hinge couple Isabella and Rebecca, written and read by me, Temi Denton-Hurst. Listen to the free audiobook now. Now at Kroger, your points add up to more ways to save every trip. Use them your way to take dollars off groceries at checkout or save at the pump. You can even save up to $35 on your next fill-up. Same points, more choices. And with low prices on fresh, quality food, plus digital and personalized offers tailored to how you shop, your dollar goes further. Redeem your points online or in the app. Kroger, fresh for everyone. Restrictions apply. See site or store for details. Is there one behavior that is the biggest identifier for being a narcissist? I'm going to bring up two. Entitlement is like the trunk of the narcissistic tree. And the other piece that I really think is, consistent in narcissism is Dr. Romani. Dr. Romani. Dr. Romani, thank you so much. Expert and clinical psychologist. One of the world's leading experts on narcissism. You had at one point a stalker. I was only 18 years old at the time, and I felt bad for him. And I'm like, oh, everyone's being mean to him. I don't have enough fingers and toes to tell you how many of those situations have turned into homicides, have turned into assaults. How did you end up moving forward? Trauma doesn't go away. And then it dawned on me that the entire world of mental health is ignoring what's happening. If I'm going to be this vulnerable on your show, I'll be very honest with you. I love somebody, but they have hurt me. Run, run away, run away fast and far. If somebody is a narcissist, can they overcome that? So here's where the story gets interesting. And I really hope your listeners hear that. Dr. Romani, I'm so thankful that you're here today. I'm so excited to chat with you. So. I'm sure as people are listening to this, they're either wondering, am I with the narcissistic person? Am I a narcissist, right? Is there one behavior that you would say is the biggest identifier for someone being a narcissist? When we really think of the whole sphere of narcissism, it's low empathy, variable empathy, entitlement, grandiosity, arrogance, an excessive need for validation, over-focus on status and superficial stuff. People who get really angry and upset if they're frustrated or they don't get their way, that kind of thing. All of that kind of has to be happening together. And these are people who at the core of themselves are actually quite insecure, have fragile egos, have a lot of shame. So there's a lot going on, right? But if I had to say there were two ringers, entitlement is a big one. And entitlement can show up as expecting special treatment. The rules apply to you, but not to me. It's intrusive boundaries. It's I can call you when I want. I can do. I can do what I want. I can say what I want. Get over it. I'm your whatever. Fill it up. I'm your husband. I'm your partner. I'm your mother. I'm your boss. There is a lack of awareness of how their behavior is affecting entitlement. And the other piece that I really think is consistent in narcissism is lack of accountability. It's the inability to say, I did that. And I'm hearing for, and I can see how that was not okay. And I'm sorry I hurt you. And not make an excuse. Just sit with that and hear the other person's pain and say, I hear you. I am genuinely sorry. I did say do whatever that. And then really lean into changing that behavior in a meaningful way. That's accountability. And that's repair. Because a narcissist doesn't want to change who they are. They want to keep that behavior going. It's not that they don't want to. They don't think they have to. They don't think they're doing anything wrong. They think everyone else is the problem. So the blame shifting is a key element. Okay. You know why I got so angry? I got so mad at you because you keep pushing my buttons. You know why I get so mad at you? Because you keep showing up late. There's never an accountability that my anger is excessive or my anger is scary. It's the only reason I got angry. It's your fault. I hear all the time. People have said to me, their partner will say, yeah, I cheated on you, but that's because you gained weight. Yeah, I cheated on you. But since the baby, you haven't been paying attention to me. But that, you know, you, you just haven't been paying attention to me. That's not accountability. That's making an excuse for hurting someone. So how do you, determine if somebody is a narcissist or has, is that the correct term? Or do you say they have narcissistic behavior syndrome? Nope. Nope. I don't, I never, I don't think it should be viewed diagnostically. Narcissism is a personality style. It's characterized by a collection of traits and patterns that hang together. Like just because a person's selfish doesn't make them narcissistic. Just because a person's entitled doesn't make them narcissistic. Just because a person's passive aggressive doesn't make them narcissistic. You need a lot of things happening at the same time. The analogy, I always give is if I handed you a dozen eggs, you wouldn't thank me for a cake, right? You need the eggs to make the cake, but the eggs by themselves are not a cake, right? So entitlement by itself is not narcissism. It's a decent signal that it could be common, but I'd need to ask more questions. We need to know more about a person. The reason the word is important is that these traits do hang together. They result in certain kinds of behaviors like manipulation and gaslighting and dishonesty and, and betrayal and all this other stuff that's really unhealthy for relationships. But the tricky, tricky, tricky, tricky part about narcissism, and this is why it's so unique is narcissistic. People are often very socially skilled, charming, charismatic, successful, ambitious. They have a lot of traits that on paper are what we're told are great and important and considered to make for good partners and all this other stuff. Those are all interesting traits. You got to look for the other stuff too. And these are often used to eclipse that. And because many narcissistic people can actually keep this sort of, of good look going for long enough to draw someone into a relationship. By the time someone starts noticing these unhealthy patterns are like, this doesn't make sense because they were cool in the beginning and they were actually kind of cool over the weekend and then they were a jerk, but then they were cool. Then they were a jerk again and then they were jerking me in private, but then they were cool to their friends. It's a lot of ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba that shape-shifting is unique to narcissism. We don't really see it anywhere else. And because the forward facing traits in many cases, not all, but in many cases are so, so valued that people who get into the relationships doubt themselves. And that's the issue of saying this is not healthy. And frankly, we over value charm, charisma, and success as interpersonal factors. I understand you want to get into business with someone success matters. If you want to get into a committed relationship, maybe not so much. Is there a certain like percentage of the world that you feel like have narcissistic behavior? The research that looks at narcissistic, personality disorder, very specific diagnostic framework, which I'm not even a fan of. There's been research done on that. And that's anywhere between three and 6% of the population. But how does that compare to something like a bipolar disorder? Bipolar disorder is 1% of the population. So that's pretty common for context. But I think even narcissistic personality disorder is a bad index to use because it's so often not diagnosed. A lot of narcissistic folks don't go to therapy. When we've done some research where we've been looking at these traits and sort of what we call, general population samples, like you just randomly pull people out. We were seeing rates as high as 10 to 12% of enough narcissistic traits that somebody else would notice. Does that make sense? So it's, I'm not talking about the person who might be a little bit, a little bit too fond of themselves and obsessed with their Instagram likes. And like, that's their whole, they just sort of superficial and a bit vapid and that kind of thing. That's not, I don't even know that I'd call that narcissism because they could actually be a nice person. They might be ridiculous. They might be immature, but they're not that they're able to have them. That's not empathy. That's not narcissism, but really enough narcissism that other people would call out the trades. Eight to 12%. Is it safe to say if somebody has a lot of traits of narcissism, but they are empathetic, but they take accountability. I just don't see it. It doesn't line up right. It doesn't make sense. Like a person who is two prerequisites to narcissism. And if a person's entitled, grandiose, superficial status seeking has an excessive need for admiration and validation is capable of maintaining longterm close relationships. Their anger is dysregulated. I just don't see where the empathy comes from there. Do you see what I'm saying? Like it, and remember narcissistic people, it's not that they don't have empathy. They actually can have quite a bit of it at times, especially when they're having a good day. I see. When they know it's going to work well in that situation. So narcissistic people aren't psychopathic. Narcissistic people aren't unaware of the importance of empathy. It's as though they can't be bothered when they're struggling. They're not good. They're just going to have absolutely no care for anyone else. Whereas in a healthier person, even on their worst day, they may not be perfect, but they'll say, I know you're having a hard day and I'm struggling a bit too. I want to listen to you and I'm so sorry. I'm not here for you. There's even been awareness. I'm not attending to you. So, but having their own bad day, that awareness goes out the window when a narcissistic person's having a bad day. So it's more so like a scorecard that if somebody has a majority of these traits, they're more likely to be a narcissist. It's not like a, you have to have a hundred percent. It's not an either or, it's a continuum. So it's narcissism goes from pretty much mild to severe. And on the mild end, you really are talking about someone who looks emotionally immature and stunted. I don't know, they may make a joke about someone who's going through a hard time. That's gonna read as lack of empathy. It's mostly because they are so immature and juvenile and all of that. But they are entitled. They feel like, well, what do you mean we can't? Okay, so what if her boyfriend just broke up with her? Can we still go out? Like it's that, it's that kind of thing, right? When you get to the severe end, you're talking about something that's exploitative, dangerous, isolating. I mean, these people may actually be in harm for violence, for again, severe isolation and other dynamics that are dangerous, okay? Or if not physically dangerous, psychologically dangerous, right? And most narcissistic people, like anything, it's a bell curve, are in the middle. And it's just, it's enough to cause some real problems in a relationship and make people uncomfortable. And it can take a real psychological, real toll on the other person. And I gotta say, it can't be a picnic to be narcissistic either. For the narcissistic people, for as difficult as they are, I will tell you this, there's a lot of shame for them. And they constantly feel like they're on their back foot. They always feel people are kind of out to get them. They, they're never quite comfortable. There's like an edginess to narcissistic people. They're like, what are you looking at? Like, why do you think that person has a problem with me? They're very attuned, there's a lot of attunement to threat, to competition, you know, feeling like people are trying to, to beat them, win them, look smarter than them. So they're, there's an edgy, there's an, they can't quite sit still. They're always seeming like, I always say that the person at the cocktail party, who's talking to you, but looking right through your body to see if someone more interesting is gonna walk in the door. - How does one get into studying narcissism in the field that you're in? - I wish I had a more exciting story. I kind of got into it in a very geeky way. And geeky with a twist though. I was a university professor, early in my, very early, brand new newly minted professor. And we had, I was doing research studies and we had sort of field, you know, field sites for the research. And some of the research assistants would come in from one of those sites, looking like they'd just been through battle. And they said, why are some of these patients so mean? And I'd say, tell me more. And they were really talking about people who were entitled and disruptive and would yell at the, you know, at the, at the reception staff and the nursing staff. And I thought about that on my drive home and I said, hmm, does anyone really study difficult disruptive people in healthcare? At the time I was an HIV researcher. And that led me down the rabbit hole of looking at personality and what are called personality disorders in relation to how people with a certain disease, in this case, HIV, would intersect with healthcare. That led me to researching more and more. And all the money was in the antagonistic personality styles like the narcissistic, by all the money, I'm like all the interest. And that just sort of sent me in a research track, looking at how this associated with things. It turns out narcissistic people actually take very good care of their health. But what we, what it led me to is I also at the same time had a private practice, small private practice. And repeatedly what was happening was I was sitting in, as a researcher in one place and how these patients were coming in and talking about the same kind of relational patterns over and over again. Entitlement, arrogance, invalidation, manipulation, gaslighting. And I was like, hmm, why don't I just sort of give them some gentle education about these patterns and personality and all of that. And it was like someone turned the lights on. So instead of let's talk about your depression, let's talk about your anxiety. The angle I said is that sounds really hard. That's not okay. Are you okay? And they said, that's not okay. They were so used to this being their relationship. Just the simple recognition that of somebody coming in and saying, I am so sorry, this is happening. Are you okay? 'Cause their behavior isn't right. That they said it was one of the first times, somebody said to them, it wasn't okay. And so it dawned on me that if we could teach people about this without coming, I'm not gonna come out and say, hey, your husband's narcissistic. That doesn't make sense. I haven't met their husband. But we can stack up these patterns and say, this is what this is. And one thing we know is it's probably not gonna change that much. It changed these patients. It's almost a 180. 'Cause now they had something to work with. Now they had realistic expectations. Everyone's like, don't you have a backstory? The funny thing is, only after doing all these years of research and scholarly work and clinical work, did I actually then start connecting the dots in my life. And oh boy, had I had a lot in my life, I'd had it in my family system. I'd had it in intimate relationships. I'd had it in friendships. I'd had it in workplace relationships. Then all the lights went on for me. And to which I was sort of like, oh, hell no. What is happening? And then my therapist sort of sat there gently and her whole thing was, you just needed to get there. And I said, well, why didn't you tell me? And she said, you know what? You're the one who's devising this model of therapy. It didn't cross my mind too. She said, none of us are talking about this. And then it dawned on me that the entire world of mental health is ignoring what's happening to folks in these relationships. And I said, this isn't okay. And that was it. That's where it began. And then slowly found ways of using, you know, any kind of platform to teach people about it. And here we are. - Yeah, what an amazing story. And it's one of those things that once you start to see something, you can't unsee it. And your mind just starts to look for the things that you become recently aware of. Like if you're thinking about getting a certain type of car, suddenly you see that car everywhere. And so, yeah, it's interesting. As you start to become aware of any sort of new information, then you can tie it back to either yourself or your history. And then a light bulb goes on. What, was there a specific moment or relationship that you think of growing up where you realize now that, wow, I, was dealing with a narcissistic person or somebody with NPD? - Listen, Dara, I'm not going to pull punches. You're Indian. - Yeah. - You understand how our culture works. - Right. - It's very patriarchal. There is a lot of sort of, this is how it is. There's a lot of, we're going to hide everything from the world so we look good to the world. There's a lot of shame, shame kind of thing. - Right, right. - So this is any culture that has that construction. It's not unique to South Asian culture. There's a lot of other cultures in the world that have that very patriarchal, sort of authoritarian. We're going to keep our dirty laundry absolutely hidden. We look good to the world. You don't speak out of school, all of that. That is a breeding ground for these kinds of personalities to go unquestioned, right? And so many of the sort of, I saw the cultural tenets and the religious tenets sort of let this keep going. And what I saw it did to me, very frankly, and I'll be very transparent about that. I grew up in a very different time, right? My childhood was largely spent in the seventies and eighties. I graduated high school in 1984, right? I was born in the mid sixties. And where it left me was a sense of I'm not enough, full of self-doubt, constantly questioning myself, underselling myself and all of it, all of it, all of it in the name of maintaining psychological safety. We have only started talking about psychological safety in a consistent way in the last 10 years. That vocabulary didn't exist. When I look back at myself, I'm like, of course, it is a miracle I'm sitting in this chair with you, to be honest with you, really speaks to how much can happen when we do have therapy, when we do have support, when we do have other healthy friendships, that kind of thing. So it was rife in my family system, but it was only by almost looking at the bag of self-loathing I was carrying and understanding that my self-loathing was protective because then I didn't have to view this whole family as having a problem. I was the problem. And that allowed sort of business as usual to keep going and going and going. And the moment you questioned it, well, that's when everything started, sort of the wheel started coming off. And that's what's happening for people all over the world, especially I work with a lot of folks from South Asia, from throughout, you know, not just India, but all the regions and in the Middle East and many other cultures where these are the patterns. And it's a tricky moment when you're actually able, like we said, once you see something, you can't unsee it. Well, once you see this in your family, I always call it a really dangerous inflection point because in a way the energy of the family shifts because it's almost like they're like, "Ooh, she sees us." With Share My Trip from Uber, you can send your live trip location to the ones who matter most, like Dan and Hannah, who always wait up to make sure their daughter gets back to her college dorm room, or Tiffany, who's running late as usual and her friends are tracking her trip to make sure she's actually on her way. Look, she's right there. She's three minutes away. Or Sam, who never goes anywhere without her roommate knowing exactly where she is. Some journeys are meant to be shared. Share your ride in real time with Share My Trip on Uber. "I just want to give you the space to process it," Michael said. Elena paused. "I don't think I want to see anybody else." This is the love story of real hinge couple Elena and Michael written and read by me, Raven Smith. Listen to the free audio book now. You know, what's interesting is so I have a therapist that I talk to on a regular basis. And you know, I'm now in a position in my life, I'm so grateful. For a long time, I've been trying to be successful. I've been working, you know, diligently. I've always had ambitions. And finally, I've got to a place in my career where I'm starting to have a little bit of momentum. And you know, it's, success is an interesting thing because in order for me to know that I am successful, it's other people saying, "Wow, congrats "on your success, right?" And I'm just like, "Wait, you see me as a successful person, because psychologically internally, I am like, I'm not S-H-I-T. Like I'm just, I constantly feel that way. Like I have done nothing with my life. I'm a failure. These types of thoughts cross my mind all the time. And I do share that openly with people that, you know, will congratulate me on things. And they'll be like, are you crazy? Like, what are you talking about? Like you've done this or you've done this. They'll point to like objective, you know, milestones that I might've achieved. But internally, I don't really feel that level of success that others might see. And so I tell my therapist this and she goes, well, what was your upbringing like? And I'm like, you know, well, I grew up in an Indian household and it was very common. And, you know, a lot of people tell the story of you get an A-minus and you're considered a failure, right? Like if I was not working like seven days a week, I was considered somebody that was lazy. I was throwing my life away. If I didn't get a degree, nobody would marry me. There was just like so much pressure that was put on me constantly that now I realize that I've internalized these things. And what's interesting is as soon as I came to find that out, it suddenly changed my relationship where I had to have some distance from those that I grew up with. And so as you started to see these patterns and like you grew up in such a household and did your relationship start to change or? It did. I mean, remember a family is a complicated place and an Indian family is a uniquely complicated place because they tend to be big, right? And we have these big complicated systems of relatives and all of that. My mother has always been, I mean, honestly, I would say my, a hero to me. I mean, her, her intellect was prodigious. I mean, she was a woman way ahead of her time. And so there was a whisper in her ears, no matter how dysfunctional this is, and I know I'm contributing to the dysfunction, run, run away, run away fast. And then she'd be the dutiful woman in the sari, right? So it was, it was a bit like the prison guard giving you the key and saying, get out. You know, so I, again, the person I will till the end of my days and always have admired more than, and she's literally heroic. Like she would say, as soon as you turn 18, like get as far as away. It's okay. Go, go, go away. And I get an opportunity to go, go take that opportunity. Right. And what was so bad at that time that she wanted you to get away from? It was, I mean, it was tense. It was just as tense in the family. Like, again, it's the, some of this is just the immigrant experience, right? You've come to a country, a country that is often quite racist, quite biased. No one can say your name. It was all those things. And, you know, you learn to keep your head down. It's all the stuff that people who are immigrants to this country go through. And being a woman on top of that, there's even more expectations that you have to, right. It was much, much worse. Do you have any brothers? I don't have any brothers. No, it's me and a sister. Right. So that was a huge disappointment. I would even say like my early psychology was etched by people literally mocking my mother for the failure of this. Oh my gosh. Look at this. And I was a beautiful little girl and they would laugh at her like, oh, look at you, you silly woman with your silly daughter. So it was, I'm convinced of the sort of the epigenetics there. I knew this wasn't the win. Now it was never directly communicated by my mother. I think in her way, she's like, I'm going to breed a feminist icon. Right. And I'm like, go mom, because I'm doing it. But it was, I do think that there was that sense of all the stuff that immigrants go through, all the entitlement of the men in the culture, all the stuff, all the stuff was happening. That instills something in you, like I'm going to prove everybody wrong, or did that instill something that I am just sort of born to fail? It's two things. There's something I talk about, which is whenever I looked at a very successful person, you inclusive, one of the first questions, you're like, I need to, and the first thing I'm going to say, I'm going to look at you. And I thought it even before I, I got here, Dara, I thought, what is Dara's wound? Because you don't build all this without being hurt. Okay. I have never met a successful person at the highest levels who wasn't really badly hurt, especially people of color. Okay. You were fighting against something. And I would argue some of the, I need to count on the outside because I can't count on the inside is the safety behavior. And if you undersell yourself, then you're safe because then there's, you're not going to call poppy syndrome and all of that. But I think there were two things happening. One was the underselling was it's, it's, it's actually a real psychological phenomenon where if we buy into the undersell and in some ways we're buying into the narrative of the system, right? That was the one thing like, I'm, I'm going to say I'm not that great. And then I'm going along with the, I'm not all that kind of thing. But I think the second thing is like I said, what I call the achievement wound, right? When I, when I wrote, it's not you. I looked at my team and I said, if it's the last thing I do on this planet, this book is getting on the New York times list. Cause that felt like such a legitimized cultural marker of success. And I said, and I'm doing it legitimately. There's going to be no little crossy thing next to my name. I am selling my own books. I honestly almost, I mean, I was so exhausted and sick by the end of that process. I actually thought I was going to end up in a hospital. It's that exhausting. It's the a minus, right? No one asked like, what did you have to go through to get that a minus? It's a tremendous grade. What was your experience like in that class? What did you learn? It's just a minus, right? But it might've actually been the most important class you'd ever taken. No one asked that question. So it's the same thing to get these external indicators. And it, so it becomes something you're punching against it. It's this, this, it's this pain, it's this wound. And I don't think it's the healthiest part of myself. It may be a very successful part of myself, but it sure as hell not the healthiest part. I mean, and when bringing it back to what I do, which is narcissism, I'd often argue that the narcissistic folks are never willing to be enough to reach into those wounded parts of themselves. So they just punch harder. So you talked about, you know, how amazing your mom was and still is. And, you know, I know you didn't talk too much about your dad, but I assume that maybe some of that pressure came from your dad. But I know right before we started talking, you were telling me that you spend so much of your time like traveling to take care of your dad. So that's amazing that, you know, you grew up in a childhood that was complicated. And I'm sure that was challenging and it created some trauma for you that you held, carried with you throughout your adulthood. But still to this day, you are caring for somebody that might've instilled that. And so I just think that's interesting and powerful because I'm sure a lot of people listening to this struggle with, I love somebody, but they have hurt me. Like, I guess, how do you decide when you're going to create distance from someone and versus when you're going to just lead with empathy and kindness and say, I understand where you came from? I think a person can always lead with empathy and kindness and still distance. I think the most core thing, and this is very much relates to existential work in the field of psychology. What are your core values? Who are you? What are you about? That's it. That's my question. What are you about? And once you know that you're guided by your core value and not just reacting to a situation, right? As people are making those decisions, distancing, not distancing, when do I step into care? Maybe in many ways, it could be argued that caring for my father is the most selfish thing I could do because it's very much me saying intentionally, whatever that story is between him and I and all of it, I, Romani, I'm a compassionate person. I see an older person who's struggling my, you know, because they're sad, but perfectly fine in many other ways. My calling, is to show up that this is, this is the hand I was dealt. Life is patently unfair. It is. So if I'm looking for fairness in this, I'll go mad. But when I say this is who I am, and this is, I have to live with me. The only person who has to live with me is me. If I make a decision from a place of ego, it would be like, I owe you nothing. You weren't nice to me to hell with you. Now, are there relationships in my life where people have really done uncomfortable things? And I'm like, no more. I'm not having anything to do with you. Absolutely. I'm not walking around here like a sucker and a doorman saying, I'll just do anything you want. I'm very clear on what I do, for example, in caring for an older person in my life. But it's not like I'm sitting there sharing my vulnerabilities and expecting something. I think the biggest mistake people make in human relationships, I always say is like, you keep going to the wrong store. You go, you go to the hardware store to buy a bracelet, probably not a good call, right? They're not going to have it. So we're actually not really informed and aware about what our relationships can and can't do. Not everyone can do everything. People have limits. Relationships have limits. And so once you work within that, but you really keep checking in with yourself, what feels right here. Some people are truly dangerous and harmful, and you do have to disengage from them, or you're going to lose yourself, or you're going to get hurt. Some people just feel a little unsafe in your body even. And you're like, yeah, no, I don't need to do this. There may be intimate relationships you have with someone, but you're someone and say, this is not working for me anymore, but still feel like, oh, I can keep a cordial relationship with them. And there's some where you're like, it's like the 4th of July in my body if I spend time with this person. I think we so often lead with ego in relationships. We get ourselves into trouble. And a lot of people don't do the deep dive into what are my inner values with regard to compassion and empathy and kindness. I'm sure there's people out there saying, this woman, she cut me off. How could she say she's compassionate? I'm like, no, because I had to sit down and make that call in this particular, it's what was felt right for me. And not everyone's going to agree with that. But in this particular, case within my family, this is the right thing to do. But sometimes it gets more complicated when you're in a relationship or you have a spouse. So for instance, in my relationship, my wife has incredible parents. They're just so pleasant to be around. They're the type that always add to your cup whenever we're together. You just walk away feeling so much positivity, laughs, fun, right? The whole thing. My parents, they're a little more complicated, right? It's more old school. It's less about let's have fun or let's do activities. It's more about let's talk about what's wrong in the world and serious topics. And so my wife has a little bit of a harder time getting along with my mom. And so with me, I understand the reasons why my mom is the way that she is. I have dealt with it my whole life. And I have seen the struggles that she's encountered that others have. And I have seen the struggles that she's encountered that others haven't. And so that gives me some level of empathy, but also I've seen how she has done things to cause some sort of hurt and pain. And so what happens when you're choosing to continue having a relationship or let someone active in your life, but your spouse may disagree? That's a great question. And I'm glad you queued it up the way you did. What's so crucial in your situation is that you do not give that why explanation to your wife, but that you empathize with what she's experiencing. The biggest mistake people make in that situation is, let me tell you why my mom's doing this. That does not at all soothe the pain that someone's going through, whatever that may be, is criticism or offhanded comment or an invalidation, gaslight, whatever, that your wife is going through something. And she's your wife, so she needs to believe you're her ally, right? You're in this together. And that the danger is to get triangulated into saying, no, no, no, let me tell you her backstory so you can understand her more. It's not your wife's job. So for you, again, more than one thing can be true at the same time. You can have empathy for your mom's way of, you know, your mom's life and how her behavior is a manifestation of some of that. You can simultaneously have empathy and validate, it's key that you validate your wife's experience. You can say, what she said was not okay. All right. And then with your wife, knowing that you're aware of it, whatever solutions are crafted, it may very well be, you may see your parents 10 times in a certain time period and your wife will only see them five, right? You'll take your kids to see them separate, give your wife a day to just sort of go see her friends or have a day to herself, right? You come with a compromise solution that recognizes what she went through. And frankly, your wife having her experience validated and not being told, oh, come on, you can figure it out. She doesn't want to hear that from you. I would guess that your wife is wise enough to say, I got to figure this out from you. She needs to hear that, that just happened, that wasn't okay. But you don't bring the why to her because the why is actually not fully her problem. And I'm guessing your wife can figure out that why on her own. You're her validator. Okay. The why may work for you to navigate with your mother, but never open with the why, always open with the validation. Wow. Okay. I'm using this podcast for a free therapy session. And I hope Dara's wife there, I hope you'll be appreciating me, girl. She's going to be like, yes. And now I'm wishing I handled that conversation just a little bit differently because I did lead with the why. Yeah, I know. Let's stop leading with the why. Yeah. Just tell it to your driver and they'll enter it in their app before the ride can start. That way you know you're in the right car taking the right trip and your driver knows you're the right passenger. This is the love story of real hinge couple, Isabella and Rebecca, written and read by me, Tammy Denton Hurst. Kroger helps keep you moving with easy to prep meals and convenient snacks from our exclusive brands. Pack a microwavable cup of private selection mac and cheese for a deliciously quick meal that's ready in just minutes. Snacks like simple truth baked chickpea crisps and hot honey pistachios are perfect for on-the-go munching, delivering bold flavors and a satisfying crunch. Discover new favorites today. Kroger, fresh forever. Everyone. Okay, well, let's get back to sort of your journey. I read that you had at one point a stalker that was following you. You know, and it was interesting. I was so young. I was only 18 years old at the time. So that would have been 1984, 85. We didn't talk about these things. We did not talk about what assault on campuses. We didn't talk about emotional abuse, domestic violence. None of this was spoken about on college campuses. And it was a real eye-opener for me, that particular circumstance. I'm going to leave out some of the details for a variety of reasons, but, you know, that experience, when I think about it, it was like six months spent in absolute terror. I ended up leaving that university in very large part because it was just too terrorizing. But at the time, I didn't connect it to this was a traumatizing space. Again, absolutely thrilled I went to UConn. UConn was perfect. It was such a great and is still such a great university. My best friends in the world are still from UConn. So the universe had to have some hand in bringing me to UConn. It was just amazing. But in that particular experience, there was no languaging. I can see now that university students, especially a woman at a university, would have so much more languaging about what had happened. But it was such an interesting time. There was no tech then. The phone in my dormitory room was a rotary dial phone. And the way some of the stalking began was this person would call that phone number and then not hang up the phone. And these were such old, you can't even get your head around how old these phones were. If you called a phone and you didn't hang up, now the receiving phone no longer worked. So now I had no way to get help. That's terrifying. Yep. And I couldn't figure out what was happening. Then some of my items kept getting stolen. But in those days, you'd have to leave your book, your book bag, your backpack outside of the bookstore. Items kept getting taken. The bag would get taken. Notes would get taken. And then they'd show up in random places. Did you know who the person was at the time? I did not know at the time. I started slowly putting it together. And what was interesting, and this is a really interesting, the first time I've ever shared this outside of like, you know, my closest spaces in my life is I so wanted to be the pleaser. Yeah, it was the people pleaser, that sort of fawn response, be nice, be nice to men, right? And this was a really odd, socially unskilled person, guy who lived in the dormitory. And I found it so interesting. And I felt bad for him. I'll be nice to him. Oh, wow. And how many women out there have the story that I was nice to the kind of unusual guy with really bizarre boundaries and, or to be the coworker where they're like, they really want to say, step off, you creepy guy. But they know that might inflame them. So it's the woman trying to keep safe by being nice to the uncomfortable guy. And that's all I was trying to do. Cause I was a sweet, nice person at the time. And that's how you grew up to be nice to everyone, to not have, not be argumentative. To be easy breezy, never difficult, never anything. And so when this happened, I would, in essence, at that point, I was pretty much locked in my dorm room. And a lot of people around me saying, you're making too big a deal out of this. Gaslighting. Little did I know that gaslighting was going to be a big future in my career. Because that term was not, it didn't exist then. A handful of therapists would have used it back in the 1980s. So I didn't get this. I was not doing well in my classes. So now the Indian girl's not doing well in classes. So now that my family's mad at me, you're paying all this tuition, you're not doing well. But I was literally in acute PTSD. There was no way to get help. There was no help for it. There was no one to talk to. When I did, people told me I was being insane. So it ended up culminating in the person assaulting me. It changed me forever. And I had to get okay with people thinking I was a B word. Why is she so cold? Why is she kind of standoffish? Why does she keep to herself? I really lost so much trust. And I really got afraid of men in many ways. Because it was, all I did was be nice to someone who I thought, actually, a lot of people didn't like this person because they were just sort of interpersonally odd. And they waited until a moment where many people had gone on a skiing trip. So I was alone. And then I figured out where this person was stealing my stuff. And then it all culminated in a strange thing. I figured out what phone was the one on campus that was left not hung up. And I walked over to that phone. And that's, that was it. Then I, yeah. So it was awful. I mean, it was absolutely awful. That So you would think that was what made me a psychologist, major. You would have think that would made me interested in trauma. I didn't even clock it. We didn't have the words. And this, Dar, is why words matter. Words like trauma, words like narcissism, words like abuse. People's like, don't use those words. They're judgy. They're diagnostic. Like, no, a word like trauma has meaning. And had I had that meaning, I would have actually gotten the appropriate guidance. But you know what? No one in the world at that time had the ability to give the guidance. So, you know, and I, to this day, I am, when I read these stories and they never end, I'm like, oh my gosh, when, what do we, how do you find that middle ground of teaching, especially a woman, how to feel safe, but how to break out of societal program around trying to stay safe through the fawn response and people pleasing and not push too back, but be able to read the room so she doesn't get the wrong, hard-to-get response. A hypersensitive man upset because he's so vulnerable because he's so fragile. And then she ends up, and then she, she ends up harmed or killed. You know, that's the, that's a lot of what I do is that how do we pick on the, up on these patterns that make us uncomfortable? But sadly, sometimes even when a person picks up on them, many of the people in positions of authority don't listen and say, I'm a little uncomfortable with this person. Well, we need a little bit more than uncomfortable is what a lot of people think. And I think that's a really good point. I think a lot of people hear in the pushback. That's what I heard. We need a little bit more than you just feel a little uncomfortable. I was the bad one for even raising a problem. Oh my gosh. That's how it goes down. And did you share what happened with your family? Never. That's why I'm saying I'm, I'm, I'm really sort of being obtuse here. And why were you, were you felt like you would be judged? Shame. Yeah. And that ties back again to the way that you were raised. And I mean, as a mom of two daughters, like I can't imagine you'd ever want a relationship where like your daughters can't communicate to you something, but. Back then. But remember for me, Dar, and I think from, I'd argue even for some degree you, based on what you're saying, that safety comes from protecting the family. So not sharing something that would shatter them keeps you safe because you're not shattering the system. Correct? My, I hope my daughters think, know that, and they have, they have brought uncomfortable things to me and that they're safe with me. They're safe with their dad to talk about these things. And we're only going to act in a way to protect them, that there is absolutely nothing shameful or that they could say nothing that they will be judged. They're absolutely loved. That's it. You know, that is, that's a huge quantum leap from where, what it was for my parents and the world they brought us in. And I don't even think I could have articulated this. They wouldn't have stalking them, but like, what are you talking about? As I do this work and I work with women who are going through this all the time. I, it's, I mean, in many ways, it's like that part of me that got hurt in that way that got threatened in that way. You know, I had to live with that sense of threat for months and months and months and nobody knew and nobody knew. How did you end up moving forward from that experience? So the traumatized person is, is, is, is in many ways a very innovative person. I mean, there's all these systems in our brain and body that kind of let us keep on keeping on, but in a more dissociated way. And I did have trouble finding my footing and I kind of went to another school for a minute. I moved back home and then I applied to university of Connecticut, got in, had another kind of not great experience where like a roommate threatened me. I mean, I was like, I couldn't win for losing at this point. And then interestingly, another gal was nice enough who didn't have a roommate show up that semester. And she said, I could have had a single, but a friend of yours said, you're a nice person. And I moved into that room and then lived amongst the people, like I said, who would become lifelong friends. And like bump at the beginning of UConn, everything was great. And then I went to UConn. I was a very good student. I found my footing again. You know, we don't ever really forget, right? I mean, the brain is a funny thing. It just encodes it in a way where it's sort of like, we don't want this to keep you up at night, but then we experience it in other ways. And again, in our bodies and our, the self doubt was always a fellow traveler for me. So I was always thinking, I'm not all that. I'm not all that. Then I went to New York city. I was lucky to get a really great research job at, at Columbia, university affiliated with a, you know, research Institute way uptown in Manhattan, got to live in New York city, got to work with, again, fantastic researchers, even spent a year at NYU, but then decided to make the switch to UCLA and then came to UCLA, another phenomenal educational experience. Again, those, those, those traumas got in a way we didn't talk about. Even when I went to graduate school, we didn't talk about narcissism. We didn't talk about trauma. We didn't talk about. So what were the psychological issues that people talked about back then? Really kind of like we talked about, you know, a good old TSM diagnostic and statistical manual, like this is schizophrenia. This is depression. We talked about it very diagnostically. What the word I would use sort of the technical word is syndromally, almost like you would like, this is what anemia looks like. It's like diseases, right? That's what we learned more about when we learned the clinical assessment and diagnosis. And there wasn't this sense of being trauma informed and thinking about the way, you know, that, that the role that takes, I look at the work of people. Like, you know, Judith Herman and Gabor Mate, these people who have so shaped how I think about things. Now we didn't read any of that then none of it. And so we were not ever thinking about what these core wounds were. Either we were airing too much in the direction of neuroscience, right? Or we were still stuck in these old school lie on the analyst's couch and talk about your childhood, but we weren't really thinking about how the body holds trauma, how the body's actually quite in the mind. Can I be quite resilient and do all these things? And so we were not really thinking about these workarounds. Clearly I was, it didn't stop me. I got the PhD from UCLA. I got, went on to get my clinical training at what's called the UCLA Neuropsychiatric Institute. I was great. Like I did all, I did my postdoc there. Like I did all the things, I got an academic job, did that for years, got early tenure. Like it was all good. Like I was being the good Indian girl, but that wound stayed within me and it probably popped up here and there and there and here. And it doesn't, and I think that the, the piece that we have to remember is trauma doesn't go away. We process it. We, we integrate, we realize we are trauma happened to us, but we are not the trauma. We are not the wound. We are not the perpetrator. Something was done to us and we can care for the, we can have compassion for ourselves instead of what is, what is the biggest question we ask a person? Why were you there? What were you doing? Why did you talk to that person? Why did you wear that dress? We always blame the person who was harmed. You know why we do that? So everyone else can live in the illusion that the world is going to change. And we can live in the illusion that the world is a safe place. Help connect the dots for me because I know you're taking your meeting with patients and you're a professor, right? Exactly. So help connect the dots for me. So I'll tell you what happened. What happened for me is an interesting thing. It'll be interesting for you to hear this given your path, but in, it was around 2007, eight, nine, I was watching television and there was a talking head, psychology person, therapist, something like that, giving feedback on something. And I'm like, well, it was just, it was back. This was before Netflix. And I still we were all on still, you know, normal TV, I guess you'd call it. And I looked at this and I said, wow, this woman couldn't be more wrong in what she's saying. This is Los Angeles, right? And so there was a mom at my kid's school and I, and I knew she worked in the industry. I said, how did those people, those therapist type people get on TV? Because I just listened to one and I was like, wow, like this was so wrong. This person was really sounded foolish. And I said, it's a real disservice because a lot of people will never end up in a therapist's office, but they do watch the, they watch TV. And I realized the profound power of the, of the medium of most people won't end up in a therapist's office, but a lot of people will watch will, and things like podcasts, none of that existed at this point. So she did some digging and she said, this is actually how it works. That led me to get connected to an agent, show up on TV a few times. And did you find that, did you have that calling? Like I want to build a name for myself. And I, you know, I, there's two things that happen there. I'll be very frank. One was, I did, I thought there was a real power in this. Why don't we level up psychology? But there was another piece. I mean, this is, if I'm going to be this vulnerable on your show, I'll be very honest with you. When I was a kid, no, no one had really much interest in me, especially like when my dad and all the uncles were around, like I could have cartwheeled to the living room. No one would have paid attention, but they were always transfixed by the television. They'd watch tennis. They'd watch TV. They'd be fascinated by the people. And you can imagine tennis was often people in their teens. And I was like, Oh, I wish I was good at tennis. I tried to I was so bad at like, I am the most unathletic. Like I just was clumsy. So I thought if I could play tennis, they'd notice me. No. But then I thought maybe if I could get on TV, they'd notice me. I can tell you this in the early 1980s, a person of color was not getting on TV in the United States of America. So I think there was still that little girl that thought maybe if I could get on TV, I could be loved. I could be seen. It was never wanted to be famous. That had no interest to me. Right. It was like, but maybe if I could get on TV, I would, the little, little girl would be loved less. So me, but you know, I think years of teaching undergraduates who didn't want to be in the room and me pretty much having to do a whole show for them. I'm like, okay, maybe I could do this. I kind of had some knack for it, I guess. And so, and I did it for a long time and it, cause I was trying to go through legacy media, normal media, nothing worked. Yeah. Nothing worked. And little did I know those gatekeepers were never going to let anything new, innovative, or interesting onto the screen. And I thought, okay, so in 2017, I made the decision to end my media career. And I made, it was a very formal decision. And I thought I have a new plan. and I knew both my kids would be graduated by a certain year, and I thought, I'm going to keep at this university job, then I'll be old enough to retire, and then I'm going to leave, and I've always really cared about women's health and gender-based violence in the developing world. And I said, then I'm going to try to work with WHO, like the World Health Organization, or with non-governmental organizations, NGOs in India, other parts of the world. I'll leave. I'll move there. It was actually now that I'm that age now, I'm like, it was a dumb plan because my parents are getting elderly, but at the time, I'm like, that's what I'm going to do. So I'm like, I'm done with media. Because I said, I'm getting too old. Nobody wants to listen to an old lady on the television. They want young people like you. They want to see young, vibrant, beautiful people. I'm like, they're not listening to me. Oh, people. I'm much older than most YouTubers. But you ain't as old as me, sweetheart. So I was like, this ship has sailed. It was a fun ride. I got to do some interesting things. So here's where the story gets interesting, and I really hope your listeners hear that just when you think it's over, it's always like that thing, the end of the movie, where the monster actually does come out like so. This young man, he invites me onto his show. Back then, I don't know, you might remember back in the day, if you got a lot of YouTube viewers, they gave you camera equipment. Oh, wow. Yeah, they give you camera equipment and lights. Like the more you get more views, they give you stuff to set up a studio. Like that's what YouTube was like back in the day. And he was one of these early people. And he asked me, he's like, hey, I read something that you study narcissism. Because one of my books had come out. My book, Should I Stay or Should I Go? So was narcissism like a known term at that time? It was a known term at that time. It just wasn't popularized. Yeah, not until 2016 did it become really popular with the changes in the political landscape. So he said, you know, would you come and show up at my show? And I thought to myself, well, you know what? Now that I'm leaving media, I might as well help the kids. And he was young. He was in his 20s. I'm going to help the kids. I'm going to feel good about it. His studio was out of his apartment in Hollywood somewhere. And what was your view of YouTube at that time? I had no view. I think I once used it to unclog my sink. And that was it. The extent of my interaction with YouTube was like, how do you unclog a sink? YouTube video, oh, there you go. You undo that pipe. And I think I used it once for that and once to fix a thermostat in my house. Like I used it to fix two things. I didn't think it was a source of entertainment. My kids were watching it. But everything was ridiculous. I'm like, there's a kid playing. I said, you're watching someone play a game. Are you aware of that? Like why don't you at least play the game or go outside? But what is this? And so I really just felt like this adolescent, childish, ridiculous space to me. So I thought, it's time to help the young folks. So I'm going to help this poor kid with his silly channel. And then I'm going to go home. And I did help him with his not so silly channel. And what happened with me knowing it, and this was back in 2017 where a million views was a lot of views, 1.4 million views on that video. That, interestingly, still didn't think about it. It was a talk format like this? It was a talk format like this, right? He asked good questions. And then I didn't think about it again. And was living my not media life. And then a mental health education startup reached out to me. And they said, hey, we're doing these videos. And we don't have much of a budget. And we can give you like $200. I needed $200. At the time, I was struggling quite a bit financially. And they said, I can give you $200. We don't have a studio, but we can set it all up in your house. I'm like, I need the $200. And so they came. And we talked about a series of personality issues that I knew about. And then those got 1, 2, 3, 4. And now, I had two students I worked with at the university who said, they're like, you're a really good writer. But have you ever thought of getting a YouTube channel? I'm like, that's ridiculous. That's where you go to get your sink unclogged. And they're like, we don't know what you're talking about. But they said, most people don't read, but they do watch YouTube. And I said, that's dumb. But there were these students who I still adore. You know, I'm looking at YouTube. They're great. And they said, try. They did. They took out an iPhone. And at the time, I had a YouTube channel because someone created it for me to gather clips so I could keep them all in one place if I needed to hire a job. So I didn't think about it. And they said, you have enough subscribers to get money. I'm like, a lot of money? I think our first YouTube check was for $15. Yeah, that was about what my first month's check was. But we had 1,000 subscribers. And those subscribers came from all these weird mental health videos I was doing at the time and that young man's video and all of that. So you weren't even posting? You weren't posting your own content? No, nothing. Nothing. I was doing nothing. And so we got this non-existent channel, got subscribers. And they said, you might. Well, let's try. So they did. And they took out an iPhone. And we took the top off of a lampshade. And I sat there and I talked off the top of my head. And we kept going. And nothing was happening. $15, $20. They worked for nothing. And then one day, we did the 30 days of narcissism. I want to say that was 20, maybe 18. And now all of a sudden, we got up to 10,000. And the numbers climbed. And then one day, there was the tragedy of a pandemic. And everyone was home. And we shot in my garage. And they'd wear masks. And we put curtains over the boxes. And we did the best we could. And then we made enough money to invest in a camera. And then we made enough money to invest in a microphone. Do you think the success was outside of COVID? Do you think it was because of the 30 day of narcissism program? I think that program, people were like, oh, I didn't know this. Because people were at home and just probably now more than ever seeing it. They're seeing these bad traits of these relationships they're in. Correct. That's exactly right. And they're trying to figure out-- What is happening. Yeah, what is happening. And then we were off to the business. It's easy to ignore it when you're just at work all day. And then you spend two hours with your partner. And you're like, hey, I got to go to bed. I got to wake up in the morning. I can dust this under the rug. But now you're forced to deal with your actual problems. And it was-- I look back at it now. And it was literally, it's as though-- I mean, it looks so version 1.0 kind of thing. But it was from the heart and heavily researched. It really put a lot of time into going in, and reading, and researching, and making sure I was saying things that were correct. And then off it went, off it went. And then from there, more things built out. And then it grew into this. But where it really shifted for me is that I also diversified and started focusing on training therapists, which is extraordinarily rewarding work. I love working with therapists. I love teaching them how to work with clients going through this. And that's every therapist you train is going to impact dozens of clients. If you teach thousands of therapists, you've now impacted tens, if not hundreds of thousands of clients. That was always the goal. The scale up for me is lots of therapists learning to do this work. And so that-- and now we've now books, and healing programs, and all kinds of things that have happened. But only when media got democratized through the likes of YouTube, and then podcasts, and all that, was there ever going to be a chance to use media to actually teach people about mental health. Up to that point, when you had to go through the gatekeepers, nothing could happen. So if somebody is a narcissist, can they overcome that? We all have personalities. You've got one. I've got one. Everyone in this room's got one, OK? Personality-- I know there's different schools of thought. My beloved colleague of mine, Dr. Dan Siegel, talks a lot about the movability of personality. I believe that the more unhealthy the personality, the less likely it is to change. And even for those of us with healthy personalities, I think our healthy personality doesn't change. And the healthier the personality, the more flexible it is. So I'd say some of the healthiest personalities are those that are more open, that are more agreeable. They get along with other people. Humble, empathic-- don't always do well in business, though. Aren't always like-- they don't make the most money. So it really depends on what world you want to live in. But the agreeable folks definitely are great relationship material, if you will, because they are kind, and empathic, and compassionate, and all the things that we know make for a good relationship. I don't know that in therapy I could take an agreeable person and make them disagreeable. So if that logic can be applied here, why the hell would I be able to change a narcissistic person? And their personality is even more rigid, right? Because they're so defended. You know, there's nothing wrong with me. Something's wrong with you. So that rigidity of the narcissistic personality means that there's a lot of resistance to change. When there are successful outcomes with narcissistic clients, it usually takes a very long time with an absolutely outstanding therapist over many years, who balances, it's very carefully paced, you can't go too fast, you can't go too slow, you can get to the trauma, but you can't do that too quickly. It's a dance, and I've done this work with clients, and it is rewarding, but it's like a 16-hour neurosurgery, right? You're not-- you have to take your time. This isn't a quick zip them up appendectomy. This is slow, slow work. And most people do not have the money to go to that. They don't have the kind of work, nor do they have the motivation. A lot of folks will say, "Why should I, you know, there's nothing wrong with me, it's her." So when narcissistic people do end up in therapy, a lot of it is because either someone's saying, "You go into therapy or else," it's for optics. They've made a big gaffe in the public world, in the business world, and people are like, "You better do something to clean up your reputation." So that's not even genuine. It's because they have some other mental health issues. Narcissistic people can have depression, they can have anxiety, they can have bipolar disorder, they can have substance use disorder, Are there more commonalities like are people with certain disorders more likely to be narcissistic as well? Substance use disorders, there's a lot of overlap between ADHD and narcissism. I think that's more of a misdiagnosis issue than a genuine overlap. But substance use disorders are a great example where we'll see a fair amount of overlap. It's not unusual to see a person, some people with depression who also have a narcissistic personality. The mistake we make is a lot of therapists don't assess personality. So we only focus on the depression, but when you have narcissism underneath it, view it as the bedrock. It's hard. to make change in the depression they kind of get stuck right you kind of get stuck in their victimhood and as a therapist you're like it's been 10 weeks and usually with a depressed client we have made progress maybe i'm a crappy therapist yeah right when i've supervised people i'm like slow your roll let's see what else is happening here so there is so those things can bring so let's say for example a narcissistic person is going into is living with addiction they go to get help for that the addiction is what brought them in the door not the narcissism right it takes a very smart treatment center therapist to figure that part out because somebody with narcissism is most likely to deny that they have it yeah they're not going to come in and say that la is funny i've had clients come in and say i think i'm very narcissistic i'm like okay well tell me why you think that and let's you know so and i've done some phenomenally amazing work and they and they've made some progress they also would also slip back you know it's a lot of back and forth is there medication that can help with narcissism you know there's no narcissism pill um if there was that would be very rich person right now but um what there is though is sometimes um in some cases i i am not a psychiatrist and i'm not i don't have a license to prescribe but what i have seen in some cases is that the prescribing health care professional will give a certain kind of a it's usually it's usually a medication used as an antidepressant to sometimes help some narcissistic people have really dysregulated moods they get really angry really quickly so they might use medication that's a little bit more effective to kind of bring that in a little bit so they don't get so quickly angry which is so scary for their kids and scary for their partners scary for the people who work with them and that can sometimes bring in the edges but for a lot of narcissistic people they're like i'm not a scary angry person don't even say that so they may not even be willing to participate in that it takes a very skilled mental health and medical health practitioner to kind of put the cell on that so i've seen that sometimes happen but there is no pill for this and the fact is we live in a world that rewards these traits so when you have a personality that's actually being rewarded really who's going to sign up to change the odds it's going to change slim and you ain't going to you ain't there shrink so you're not going to be the one to change them and is there is they're likely not going to be motivated to go to therapy what's happened when you've even suggested that right they probably said well i don't think i need you but you sure as do because you're whatever you know so there's that part of it too and if you're staying because you think it's going to change uh-uh but there are reasons people stay i never judge a person who stays in a narcissistic relationship now i'm going to put in its separate shelf when there's violence happening that's a whole different conversation okay it's safety you got to get out but let's let's assume there's no physical violence or maybe psychological violence happening but not physical violence i never judge a person for not leaving there's a million reasons people don't but the understanding that this is not helping healthy like this what's happening to you how you feel that you can't show up as yourself that you're being devalued that you're being gaslighted all these things to be able to say this is not okay and no i can't show up as myself and i'm aware that there's a me in here that's not showing up in this relationship and i'm clear on why i'm staying and if any of those reasons for staying have to do with because i think they're going to change that's that's no but if some of your reasons do lend back to practical reasons you're going to have kids together um i can't afford to leave right now i'm afraid of what will happen if i leave i'm afraid they're going to pass rumors about me or post terrible stuff about me on social media i understand that i understand that and this is why therapy becomes so important that i don't think this is necessarily something can always riddle out themselves and having a validating safe space to talk this out in can have and a place where you can actually show up as your real you can help you kind of come to a place where you can get mobilized into understanding that you're not just having to play a passive role here but with your eyes wide open to think about the various paths no pain-free path again but to figure out which one works that's what you do yeah wow that was so insightful you've given such incredible advice there's no wonder that you know you get as many views and you've been as successful as you are but i think everybody listening to this episode could take away you know so many golden nuggets from this it's been super helpful and i'm sure it's been super helpful thank you so what is next for you you've accomplished so much in your career so we have a great healing program for survivors we're building out a network for therapists to um have a weekly meet with weekly and get questions answered on practice and meet with experts it's almost like think of a podcast but that's oriented to therapists like and it's a question answer so we do a lot of interactive podcast stuff so our guests our listeners can actually get their questions answered in real time so we're working on that i'm working on a textbook right now for for therapists who work with survivors of narcissistic relationships i have a non-profit where we're developing a with my with a colleague of mine heather harris where we're developing a measurement instrument to study what happens to people in narcissistic relationships we have the dr romany network which we're really proud of which is like our sort of interactive podcast yes we're developing all of that out we have an app out now that has all of this in one place so slowly but surely sort of building this this place for people to be able to be able to be a part of this space where people like my favorite thing is when people come to us and then there's day they don't need me anymore and they don't listen to me anymore so that's my hope is that people only my hope is nobody needed to listen to me but then that i hope that i give them such good content that they don't have to listen to me forever so i'm doing great if i if they move on i know you know i'm getting a tattoo removed right now they're like your tattoos almost gone i'm like then you'll never see me again does that make you sad at all that's interesting but yeah it's it's incredible all the work that you've done and i'm really excited to be able to and i just have a particular passion for anyone that's trying to create positivity trying to help people that's why i got into content um you know in the first place so if there's anything ever that i could ever do to just help you reach more people i would absolutely absolutely love to appreciate that i appreciate all you do in the world and um just you know getting the word out there especially to younger people because i think if i really want more young people to understand what a healthy relationship looks like and also be aware of what an unhealthy relationship looks like because when you when this becomes long-term in marriage and a place you have kids you can lose a lot of life to this right lose a lot of potential and i want to ensure that as you know we get we get to see the bright lights of everyone in the world and not get it shut down by people invalidating and shutting down the voices of others which is what these relationships are i love that and i'll make sure once my daughters start listening to podcasts or reading books uh i'll tune them on to your work so keep them little for as long as you can that's all i have to say uh well thank you so much thank you so much for having me incredible on any journey using uber it helps to know you're getting into the right car pin verification adds an extra step to make sure your ride is your ride before the trip begins your app gives you a unique pin just tell it to your driver and they'll enter it in their app before the ride can start hey what's your pin two five three eight that way you know you're in the right car taking the right trip and your driver knows you're the right passenger make sure your ride is your ride with pin verification from uber one more way uber is putting safety at every turn learn more on the uber app i want to date with rules carty says rules rocker ass this is the love story of real hinge couple carty and rocker written and read by me nicola dynan listen to the free audiobook now relax and let kroger delivery handle your grocery shopping this week we start with only the freshest items then carefully pack your order in our refrigerated trucks and our cool trucks keep your food fresh right to your door fresh groceries your way with kroger delivery and right now enjoy free delivery on orders over fifty dollars kroger fresh for everyone get business done with the new american express graphite business cash unlimited card with unlimited two percent cash back on all eligible purchases unlimited five percent cash back on flights and prepaid hotels booked through american express travel online and a flexible spending capacity that can grow with your business you'll have the confidence to keep building apply today and earn a welcome offer of one thousand five hundred dollars cash back after you spend fifty thousand dollars in qualifying purchases on your new card within the first six months of card membership terms apply learn more at go.mx graphite