Don’t You Know Who I Am? A Deep Dive Into The Mind of A Narcissist Featuring Dr. Ramani Durvasula with Joe Polish - Genius Network Episode #157

Grief takes time. Trauma takes time to process. Hurt needs to be processed in individual's time and saying be happy because I'm telling you to be happy is completely unempathic. But yet here we are.

Dr. Ramani Durvassila knows narcissism from how to identify it in yourself or others to setting boundaries, practicing radical acceptance, and keeping realistic expectations. She knows what it takes to keep yourself protected and actively recover from the damage narcissism can cause. In this episode, Dr. Ramany shares why she considers narcissism the secondhand smoke of mental illness and teaches how to stay sane and grounded when you communicate with a narcissist, whether they be your colleague, partner, family member or friend. If you'd like to join world renowned entrepreneurs at the next Genius Network event or want to learn more about Genius Network, go to get geniusnetwork.com I am.

Super excited to be interviewing the next guest here. Her name is Dr. Ramani Duvasala. So let me give you a little bit of background on who she is. Dr. Rahmani Duvasala is a licensed clinical psychologist in Los Angeles, California and Professor of Psychology at California State University, Los Angeles. She's also a visiting professor at the University of Johannesburg. She takes on the modern scourges of entitlement and incivility in don't yout Know who I Am? How to Stay Sane in the Era of Narcissism, Entitlement and Incivility. She's the author of the Modern Relationship Survival Manual, Should I Stay or Should I Go? Surviving a Relationship with a Narcissist and of you are why you change your food attitude, change your life. The focus of Dr. Durvasala's clinical, academic and consultative work is the ideology and impact of narcissism and high conflict entitled and antagonistic personality styles on human relationships, mental health and societal expectations. Her work has been featured at south by South, Southwest, TedX, and on a wide range of media platforms including Red Table Talk, the Today Show, Oxygen Investigation, Discovery, Bravo, and she's a featured expert on the digital media mental health platform Medcircle and on the mel Robbins show. Dr. Devassela's research on personality disorders has been funded by the National Institute of Health and she is a consulting editor of the scientific journal Behavioral Medicine. Dr. Rahmani is an honest, authentic and brutally honest voice on the struggles raised by narcissism in the and globally, and I first came across her when I started watching videos on narcissists and narcissism and trying to understand the difference between psychopaths sociopaths, narcissism. And I just started watching her videos and just absolutely brilliant. And then I tracked her down, had an amazing phone conversation with her, and just wanted to bring her to Genius Network because I believe this woman is brilliant. And I believe what she's about to share can absolutely change your life and give you protection from some people that could do some serious harm. And so please give it up for Dr. Ramani. Thank you. And if this is okay right here.

That was a very narcissistic introduction. I feel like I've got a degrandiosis space.

Well, good. Let's start with that. So how would you describe yourself if you didn't get the whole bio sort of thing? And who are you?

That sort of thing Today on this day? I think authentic, neurotic, self effacing and formidable. Yeah. But not narcissistic. Yeah.

Thank you. Thank you. Well, I mean, I've got a whole list of questions here. I'm gonna maybe jump off some of these. The others, I would like to get into some conversation and do some Q and A with those of you here in the room, because I'm only here to help elicit some great wisdom out of you and your life experience. And then let's make this really useful for everyone here. So first off, I'll ask you to define narcissism in a bit. I want to ask you, why did you start focusing all your research and study on this particular area of narciss?

You know, it came down to, can I curse?

Yeah, yeah.

Okay.

Yeah. You say whatever you want.

It's great. You know, how many assholes can you encounter before you feel like a responsibility to do something? And what was interesting for me was I was working more in sort of healthcare delivery, and I was an HIV AIDS researcher, still am for a long, long time. And what was happening was we had a research site that I operated in South Los Angeles in a neighborhood that had really been destroyed by hiv. And then we ran another program, my university. What was happening was the research assistants would come in tears at how badly they were treated. The reception staff. And then I started paying attention at the clinics, and I saw how horrifically frontline medical staff were being treated by difficult patients across the socioeconomic spectrum. I was like, what's going on here? And that led to the research that was funded by the National Institutes of Health. I said, this personality thing nobody's talking about. We talk about depression, we talk about substance abuse, we talk about anxiety, but nobody talks about the elephant in the room, which is personality. I couldn't unsee it. It was happening on airplanes and at hotel check in desks and at Starbucks. And I thought, oh, we have a problem. At the same time, in my private practice, and I had a very small practice at the time, people kept coming in and saying, my spouse doesn't listen. He or she doubts my reality. I feel like I'm not there. They're so deeply entitled. And I kept sending them these really sweet emails, like from today's session. Here's what we talked about. Then I realized I was writing the same damn email over and over again. That's what led to that book, Should I Stay or Should I Go? But then I realized, wow, this is a. And that led. I was doing that work 10, 15 years ago. It led into a deep dive into narcissism. And I realized the mental health profession isn't touching this. It was the third rail of psychology and psychiatry. And I really put myself on an academic gulag at this point. Like, they're saying, nobody does this work. My own mentor said, honey, if you try to do this, no university's gonna hire you. Mercifully, I had tenure so I could do what I wanted at that point. But it's really the issue that nobody in mental health wants to talk about. But I tell my students, if you understand narcissism, you understand mental health.

Wow, interesting. I mean, are you considered now the top expert in the world in this category? Is there, like, you know me, I'm.

So loath to say that. I think that what I've done is.

I'm trying to get you to say narcissistic.

He's going to try to get me to say one grandiose thing before the day is done. This is why I suck at marketing, by the way. I'm like, yeah, I'm kind of sort of an expert, maybe fifth or seventh. I think what I've done that in a way no one else has done, has brought this to the awareness of the masses. And I think my frustration is if any of you know about science, scientific publishing, the bulk of psychological research sits in psychological journals that are so esoteric, nobody understands what the hell's going on. It's numbers and figures and nothing makes sense. And nobody takes the time to elevate that work to something that anyone in any profession or any walk of life could understand. I think it's tremendously arrogant that billions of dollars are put into research and none of that research was usable by the populace. Everything written about narcissism is like dense and nobody gets it. And it's all psychoanalytic. La. Sit on the couch 20 years. I said, these people are suffering now. We need to bring something to them. And when you're an old lady who wants to bring an idea to the forefront, what do you do? You work with a millennial. And they said, doc, this is how people are learning. And I had to have as much faith in them as they did in me. And I have two gals who were once my students. And I said, okay, with no budget whatsoever, let's sit in this tiny room and figure this out. And that's how we started with YouTube. We had zero subscribers. As of this time last year, we're at almost 150,000. Which isn't for absolutely, like, clueless. Like, my kids are like, you're too old to be a YouTuber, Mom. And I'm like, I'm sort of not really a YouTuber. But that's really what it was. It was trying to take psychology and put it in the public interest.

Yeah. Well, on top of the fact that the way that you. I mean, how many of you have watched any of her videos, seen of her videos online? I mean, they're quite brilliant and they're very useful and they're very helpful and they're free. And I mean, you're just making so much of this available to people, so. Which of course, me being the guy that I am, when I see someone putting such good work out into the world and it's valuable to me and helpful to others, I just want to. To put any sort of momentum behind it in the way that I can. So we have some of the greatest minds on the planet here that has collectively ingenious network, reaches hundreds of millions of people. And so if any of this resonates with you, please share the message, because this is just the seed that'll be planted. I mean, how long did it take you to write?

This is sort of actually sitting down and writing. I write very quickly and I love to write. So for me, once I'd start writing, I could go on 12 hour vendors and just keep going. I could write 10,000 words a day. It kept going. So the actual writing, I got a.

I would like you to write for me.

Okay. I love it. I love it. I mean, I guess maybe that's just being a grad student, all that, but 14 months of writing. But frankly, it was five years of research. So there was a lot of grinding going through. The academic work, the theoretical work, and then trying. What happened was the election happened. In 2016. And politics aren't relevant here, but the word came into the public purview like it had never before. And I had to make a decided decision once the election happened. I had to decide whether I was going to political or try to cross both sides. I decided, you're gonna sell more books if you could sell them to both sides of the divide. So I said, because there's a whole world of psychologists and psychiatrists that take on, is Trump a narcissist? I mean, my cat knows that Trump's a narcissist. So it's not even that interesting a conversation. But the difference was if you do, if you're the mental health person that does the Trump is a narcissist piece, you lose a lot of people who are his supporters. And I'll be frank with you, Joe, his supporters are often some of the most brutal in some of the most brutal narcissistic relationship. They needed my content. These are people who are often more low wage workers who can't get therapy but will watch a video about why their husband's being mean to them. And I thought, so let's depoliticize this. Now. I do mention Trump in here and the only negative Amazon reviews I got. Cause my assistants are scrupulous at checking the reviews. The only negative Amazon reviews I got were from Trump supporters and from people who didn't like the fact that I did use some obscenities.

Is there any politician as a president who's not a narcissist?

I can't think of one ever in history, of all time. And I'm sure, listen, and we liked it. I mean, Obama got to where he got to because he was still very Machiavellian. He was willing to do what he needed to do. Nobody becomes a president without being a narcissist. I just don't see it. I think he probably had a much higher empathy quotient Obama did than your average bear. But the fact is, it's just the nature of the beast.

Yeah, yeah. The thing that your book has in your videos has made me so aware of is how much of the personal development industry, religious leaders, the people that are dispensing how to live your life advice. Follow me. The ones that have the biggest social media followings, the ones that in many cases talk about being honest and transparent, are the biggest gaslighting, bullshit, narcissistic people on the planet. And these are the ones that the world follows and takes advice from. It's a very interesting thing.

It's interesting and it's dangerous. I have a fair number of clients in my practice who are deprogramming from cults. But the reason they chose to work with me was being in a cult is like being in a relationship with a narcissist. It's exactly the same top notes. So as we undo it, that I will take their cult and I'll. How did you know that, Doctor? I'm like, well, because this is exactly what a narcissist does. And sometimes it is. It's yoga gurus. The minute you call yourself a guru and I say this as an Indian woman, you're already in murky waters. Like, no, don't call yourself a guru. So it's just even the terming. I also think that one of the biggest issues we've seen is the forced positivity of the world. You've got to be optimistic. You need to think positive. I will never forget when a friend of mine who was surrounded by other narcissists got diagnosed with stage three cancer. And the prognosis was grim. Indian woman as well. And she pulls me aside, she just had. Had her radical mastectomy. So she's got no breasts, no hair. I mean, she's terrified. And she said, if one more of these bitches comes up to me and tells me to be fucking positive about my cancer, I'm going to hit him. I said, I'll help you. You're weak. Together we will hit them, you know, and it's that be positive. It's a form of mental control. Right? So as though the guru can dictate that for others rather than being empathic and literally meeting a person where they're at. Grief takes time. Trauma takes time to process. Hurt needs to be processed in individual's time and saying, be happy because I'm telling you to be happy. It's completely unempathic, but yet here we are.

You have some great framing on. Like, I mean, we're gonna come to this. I'm gonna make a note. Forgiveness. Cause you, the way you talk about forgiveness, I've never heard anyone describe how to think about it and do forgiveness. And it's almost like we fetishize like we're wonderful humans if we forgive but still have the resentment there, what's really happening. So we'll come to that. So let me ask you to define narcissism and let's make some distinctions between sociopaths, psychopaths, and narcissism, because I think that'll help with the foundation here.

So I think the key here Number one, what is narcissism? It's a lack of empathy, entitlement, grandiosity, arrogance, inability to manage any kind of disappointment. And that tends to be manifested as rage, chronic validation seeking. All of this envy of other people. But all of this, the core of it, and this is what gets forgotten, is that it's all based on a deep, deep insecurity. Everyone looks at the narcissist. They say they're charming, they're confident, they're successful, they're smart. That doesn't mean if you're those things, you're narcissistic. But if it's built on that core insecurity, that's why the person needs to be grandiose and entitled. Because if I was that fragile inside, my temptation would be to protect it. It's like, if you broke your arm, what do we do? We put a cast on it. Why? So the arm doesn't get broken again or the bone doesn't get agitated. When you have a broken inside, you're that insecure, you're going to protect it. How do you protect it? I'm the shit. I'm the best. No one's better than me. Why should I have to wait in this line? I'm the best after all. Everybody move out of my way so I can be the first in line. Why am I not the vip? All of that's protective. All of that is them putting this carapace around this fragile interior. So anything from the outside that cracks, marital breakup, somebody else beating them at what they do, getting more sales, having more money, having a bigger yacht, having a better whatever, that is going to piss them off. And that's where you see the rage and the acting out. That's narcissism, okay? There's different kinds of narcissism. There's grandiose narcissism, which is sort of textbook. Come to my, you know, come to my palace and be palacey with me. And I'm so great and you're so lucky to be my friend, and I'm so beautiful. That's the. What we classically think of narcissism. But then there's the malignant narcissist, and that is somebody who's downright dangerous. They're malevolent, they're exploitative, they're manipulative, they smell like a psychopath. But you're going to learn in a minute why a malignant narcissist isn't a psychopath. They're slightly different creatures. There are the more vexing, covert narcissists These are people who don't look like narcissists. They look like victims. The world was never fair to me. I never got a fair shake. You know what? Maybe he succeeded because he got more money to start with than me. I would have been better than him if my dad gave me, you know what? I'm too good to show up to a job. Why should I do that? Like, I got all these ideas, I'm the next Steve Jobs. Let the world find me. That's covert narcissism. They look so hang dog and so sad all the time that people often think they're depressed and they come to a therapist's office who thinks they're depressed and treats them for depression for three months and then wonder why they're not getting anywhere. And this person, well, the world is against me. The world is against me. The world is against me. Their grandiosity is, why doesn't the world see how great I am, am versus the grandiose person who says, look how great I am. And then there's even what we call noble narcissists. These are the people who do lots of charitable work and have these big rescue the elephants, rescue the world, rescue everyone kinds of profiles, but they're doing it solely for validation.

That's the same as a communal narcissist.

No, same as a communal. Same as a communal or noble narcissist. These are the people who you think like, wow, they're saving the world. They're so charitable, they're so wonderful. But then catch them behind closed doors and they treat their partners, their families, anyone, one to one, their staffs. Absolutely. Horribly. So they only have empathy when they're on stage or they're saving an elephant.

I mean, I see so much of that, especially in the stuff that I've done in the nonprofit world. Yeah, it's cosmetic.

It's very cosmetic. Yes. But the work is being done in the name of seeking validation versus for the meaning and the purpose or just the higher purpose as you will, of doing the actual work. That's narcissism. I'm sure you're wondering what's the difference between that and narcissistic personality disorder. There was a wonderful book by Alan Francis called Twilight of American Sanity. I don't know if you've read it, but it's a fantastic book. The diagnosis of narcissistic personality disorder only entered the world of psychiatry in the 1970s. This is a late entry. Freud wrote about it. Otto Rank was the first person who wrote about it. These were early, early analysts and obviously theoreticians, but we didn't make it into a diagnosis till the 70s. Francis was the people who wrote about it. When Trump got elected, he wrote this book about narcissism, and he's like, trump doesn't have narcissistic personality disorder. Why not? Because in order for something in the dsm, the Diagnostic and Statistical Manuals of Mental Illness, in order for it to be diagnosed, it either has to be causing the person subjective distress. Think about a depressed person. They're uncomfortable, they can't get out of bed, they feel sad all the time, they're angry. Or. Or it has to be causing them social and occupational impairment. You look at somebody who's got a. Seems to the world a fine marriage, or at least the person thinks it's a fine marriage or relationship. They seem to have perfectly fine kids, at least to the world it looks like that. And the person thinks that and they're not having any distress. We don't get to diagnose it. Which is why the majority of people with narcissistic traits don't get diagnosed, because nobody ever lays eyes on them. The prevalence of narcissistic personality disorder is about 1 to 5%. I'm spitballing here because we don't have the numbers. The prevalence of narcissism in the American culture is probably closer to 30%, that gap.

So 30% of.

I would guess so, yeah.

Wow.

Yeah, it's one in three.

Interesting.

You know, which is why Starbucks can get real dicey. When people have to wait for their coffee. Someone's always yelling. So it's, you know. But now when we go to psychopathy, we jump the rails. Narcissist, insecure. Okay. When the mask gets pulled off the narcissist. And he and I were talking about his program about, you know, getting people ready to go to prison. One of the things he's gonna run into, Mo. And this has come up when I've taught at jails and prisons about this to the clinicians there, is that they're so insecure now. The mask is off. Shame. You're a bad guy. Like they're. I was once supposed to do, I think, an interview with Steve Madden. I was telling him for this thing on narcissism, and he was actually willing to subject himself to talking to me. And then at the 11th hour, I think he had something more interesting to do. Surprise, surprise. But he acknowledged it. He said the thing he was most frightened of was going to jail or going to prison. And and he did.

Yeah.

And so it shatters them. A psychopath is not insecure. They have no fear, they have no anxiety, and they're completely stress resistant, which is why they make, for example, great surgeons. They make great CEOs, they make great anyone who needs to stay completely calm at a time of tremendous danger. Right. So nothing bothers them. That's just why they make great hired assassins. I mean, anything that requires you to be calm, cool and collected under conditions that are difficult for people to do, they're dangerous.

I was watching a show on drug lords and gangsters and mob leaders and stuff, and they were talking about the brain scans and some of these people in fearful situations. For most people, it doesn't even register. It doesn't bother them at all. So is this a genetic thing?

Yeah. So the belief of psychopathy is. It's definitely biological. And the imaging studies have shown that very clearly. There's likely. The genetic piece is still being argued because think about it, far, far more men have been diagnosed with psychopathy than women. So we don't see. There's almost no research on female psychopaths, though we see them. An interesting speculation would be someone like Elizabeth Holmes. Is she a malignant narcissist or is she a psychopath? Like, I've watched everything on her I can. Because you don't see women in these situations much. She's somewhere. I haven't talked to her, so I don't know. Right. But it's that. But the key with a psychopath is they feel no remorse. That's the issue. They feel truly no remorse. The narcissist actually does feel some remorse for anything from even smaller time stuff like infidelity to big ticket stuff. I embezzled $20 million. So a madoff type reaction, psychopathy, okay, that's a great. Absolutely didn't register. It's like, this is really inconvenient that you're doing this to me, but no circumspect sense of how this impacted other people.

Do they fake it? As if they.

They fake it. They can fake it. They absolutely can fake it. But it really. It's like an aftermarket thing. Like about. This was about 10 hours too late. Like, this should have been what you led with. Another one. Was that guy Larry. God, what the hell was this? Larry? Nelson Nassar. He was one of the physicians in the whole gymnastics issue. Of all the gymnasts who were sexually abused. I dug deep into that case because he felt so psychopathic. He never ever expressed remorse to the girls and young women he harmed. All he said is, basically, this is a pain in the neck. Why are you wasting so much time? You're hearing similar discourse from a gynecologist who's sexually abused countless scores of girls and women over 20 years at USC. Just know you're inconveniencing me with all these proceedings. I'm like, oh, my God, you've destroyed hundreds of lives. There's no. That doesn't register. A narcissist would show more guilt and shame under those conditions.

So a sociopath.

Sociopath. This is a less articulated condition. A lot of people incorrectly interchangeably use the term psychopath and sociopath. The psychopath is considered to be, again, that calm, cool, callous, calculated, smart person who's just able to barrel through in a remorseless way. And we have much more evidence that that is a central nervous system phenomenon. The sociopath is likely someone who was. And again, criminologists and everyone argue about this, that may be more of something that was created by the environment, somebody who was beaten up a lot by a father or a caregiver, somebody who grew up on the streets or under conditions of tremendous, tremendous deprivation or danger. And that under different conditions, the story could have probably gone a little bit differently. They also tend to be more combative. You'll probably see a lot more sociopaths in prison than you will psychopaths. Sociopath gets into a bar fight. A psychopath would never diminish themselves in that way. They'll find a way to slowly destroy that person's life or kill them, and no one will ever know the difference kind of thing. So whereas a sociopath, they'll fight, they'll get into a street fight, they'll get into a bar fight. They're less regulated. They tend to be less successful. The big difference that's been brought up in the literature, a psychopath at some level doesn't understand the function of rules. They're like, why is this a rule? Like, why can't she did me wrong in a drug deal? Like, why can't I kill her? Like, please help me understand this. A sociopath knows he shouldn't kill her and still will.

Interesting.

Yeah. So there's a not knowing. But that said, even though there's a not knowing in psychopathy, psychopathy cannot be used as part of the insanity defense in the United States. That has been taken off the table.

Is there any idea how many people in the United States, as example, are North America or sociopaths?

Psychopaths, I would guess, with psychopathy, merciful. It's probably under 2%. It's a pretty low frequency phenomenon. It's rare, it's terrifying. And interestingly, some of the professions, like I was reading some research on the top 10 professions that have psychopaths in them, and amongst those were surgeon, CEO and clergy. Those are the professions that attract psychopaths. Wow. Wow.

So statistically speaking, if there's anything there, then there's 30% of this audience are narcissists.

Maybe. Yeah. I mean, I mean again, I don't.

Want to be the ones that you.

Just because I love this group has been amazing. But what you might have find in a group like this because everyone is so successful is sort of what I consider just sub threshold narcissism. Like just enough cockiness to get you into trouble. And I would love to sit with each and every one of you and find out what your close personal relationships are like. Because it may very well be that that's what where it's not working as well as it could be. And again, you may have also gotten lucky Joe. Cause you're you and you might have gotten 100% entrepreneurs where there's not a single narcissist in the room. Listen, is a little of it gonna make you successful in business? Sure. Because if her and I are vying for the same job and I'm like, oh, she's so sweet, I'm gonna give her all the intel, we're in this together. I may not get the job, but if girlfriend's girlfriend's like, yeah, she's going. She's like, I'm not telling her everything. Is that narcissism? I think it's probably a heavy handed use of the word. But that lack of empathy, I mean that to me is what the whole thing sort of hinges on. And then when we talk about the origins of narcissism, I think people can self reflect. But I gotta tell you, so far my alarms maybe have gone off one and a half times today at the most.

Well, you know, I actually think this is. And I do my best to try to curate a pretty darn good group of givers.

I've enjoyed everyone I've met.

Well, here's one of the things that came through my thinking as I really started learning from you is how do I develop one of the most amazing entrepreneurial group of givers without narcissists in it? Like, how awesome would that be? Because I'm part of many other groups and speak at a lot of different things and some of them are just filled with narcissists Part of it is.

How much of your discourse is an us them discourse. We're the chosen and everyone else is a loser. I haven't heard that once today. Whereas other groups will say, you're the chosen being here, those other schmucks don't know what they're doing. So if someone else was doing what you're doing and kept saying, Joe Polish is a hack, he's an ass, he's an idiot, that's probably gonna generate sort of a more kind of a narcissistic kind of groove. I have not once here heard another entrepreneurship development program to be spoken about in such a bad way today. So maybe they're out there, but as a newbie who's here with fresh ears, it's not like this group exists to denigrate and devalue others. I would say that kind of energy would probably cultiv that sort of sense. We are the chosen, it's us, and nothing's better than us. So that kind of you're not. Even though this feels incredibly exclusive and everyone I'm meeting, I'm like, every neurotic, where is he? Tucker is like, don't let it bother you. I'm like, oh my God, everyone here so successful, smart, and yet everyone's humble, you know, so. But I think that might do with the curation.

Well, it's funny too, like I don't ever want this group to be known for me. I want it to be known for the people in the group, you know, that sort of thing. And what I've noticed about a lot of people that lead groups is they have to be the star. They have to be the. I really just try to curate, right? Because there's people that are way smarter, way better speakers than me. I just am a curator, right? And a lot of groups, if they're not the main star there and everyone's beneath them, it just doesn't work for them. They can't function that way. And it's quite fascinating. Now, having said that, I've said this jokingly that anyone that writes a book, anyone that's a speaker, anyone that puts themselves out there publicly has some level of low self worth, low self esteem, wants the world to applaud them, they want validation 100%. How do you know if you're a narcissist? How do I identify certain traits that I could as an aware, if I'm aware, can do something to better myself.

So let me ask you this. Do you have contempt for human emotion? Meaning contempt like, you know, she's, let's say she all of a sudden starts, you know, like, huh, don't be such a whiner. Yeah, don't be such a whiner. Or like, she starts telling us something personal and so like, oh, come on, get over it.

I rarely say stuff like that because with the work that I do with Genius Recovery and with one of my main goals is to reduce suffering. Even with this group, it's not a great. I haven't figured out how to market it. It's a lot easier to tell someone how to come into here and build and grow a business than it is to reduce entrepreneurial suffering. But I'd rather reduce entrepreneurial suffering because if I can lower that, then they're going to succeed in far greater levels.

But is that a long way of saying you don't have contempt for people's emotions? Like, you know, in other words.

That's right. It's rare. I would say don't feel that feeling or try to shut it down or.

Even it just be grossed out by feelings. Like, you know, people are like, oh, my God, like, there's too many people talking about their feelings. I don't want to be bothered with this.

I'd say in the past, maybe I may have had a tinge of that. But I don't think, I don't think.

To me, when I say people, I get probably at least 10 emails a day from people all over the world who email me and say, shit, I've watched your videos. I think I'm a narcissist. And then they'll give me examples of it. And yeah, they're pretty spot on. Like, they probably are. And at this point, likely things have gone wrong. Likely a partner left them. They're alienated from kids, they might have lost their jobs, They've had a wake up and now they're reflecting on that. And so I think that, again, it is that awareness that you really don't have empathy, that you do have contempt for other people's feelings and that people really do believe they deserve special treatment for no other reason than because they're them. You know, they're too good to wait in a line and that they have been that screamy person at the flight attendant or the clerk or whomever, and they're like, ew, I'm that person. I can't handle disappointment. I tell clients, but it takes me probably about three to six months before we get you're a narcissist session. Wow, it takes a while. I really have to get them to trust me.

How do they respond when you say that?

And they're like, yeah, you're right, or you've got my number. Only once somebody got mad, but by and large they're like, yeah, I'm down with that. And then we start doing the work, which never really works, but that's okay.

Let me ask you about that, because there seems to be the notion that there's not a lot, lot of hope for these people.

Depends on what you call hope, right? And I think I was sharing with you a particular story of somebody I was working on, a real titan in his field. Like probably, if not the most, one of the most successful and in the entertainment industry at that. So kind of household naming. And what was fascinating about this guy was when we got down to it and he's like, he was copped to being a narcissist. Then he got mad at me. He said, you know where you fucked me up? You made me a self aware narcissist. Now I know I'm an asshole. Like, I was pretty blissfully, like, not owning my. No, I know I'm an asshole. But then he became very aware of his contempt for people's neediness, for people's emotion, for people's feeling. Like that really, really bothered him. And the long story short, towards the end of our course of therapy, he became a little bit more mindfully aware. But in all that awareness, he said, I'm not made for human relationships. He said, I will. He's heterosexual. I will never be able to give a woman fully what she needs. It is wrong for me to be doing this. And I said, thank you. I was waiting for you to get there on your own. And so he has lots of friends, he has a very robust social network. He has kids. I mean, it's not like this guy's sitting in an apartment somewhere. I mean, he's got a very rich life. But that idea of intimacy, that one on oneness, he does not have the bandwidth, he does not have the interest, he does not have the capacity. And he finally had that sense to say, I don't have it. And I said, how about you don't ruin any more? Like, how's about you pull out of that game for a while, maybe forever. He's older and so he's like, yeah, I'm done. And we figured out how he was gonna have sex. Cause he still likes sex. And you can pay for it and pay for it with the same person so it didn't feel unseemly. And she'd show up at a regularly scheduled time every other week. But she'd be out at 2am he got what he needed in terms of touch and closeness. He'd get massages and, you know, things. I mean, we really thought this through. But then he's like, yeah. I said, really? You should stay away from close relationships. This ain't your. And so. Yeah. Is that a win? I think so, yeah.

Better than the alternative.

He was fine with it because like he said, I have been swimming upstream my whole life on this one. Three marriages, you know, I mean, like he just couldn't do it. He couldn't do it. Some people kind of can. Sometimes we can get people to be okay at work, but they can't do the relationship thing. Because I think the intimacy bandwidth you need for a job is obviously far less than you need for a close relationship.

It's interesting that and I built this wonderful connection network of people when I grew up feeling so disconnected and feeling abandonment and abuse and sexual and physical and everything in between. There's a guy years ago that he's a 70 year old gay man. I never met him in person, but I talked with him on the phone and he gave me a definition of intimacy. And he spends his time sponsoring people with sexual addictions. And he said intimacy is a mutual exploration of a shared safe place. Abuse is anything that takes away the safe place. And addictions are what we do to make ourselves feel good when we don't have a safe place. And I thought about that a lot saying okay, because I never felt safe when I was growing up. Especially if you had any sort of abuse, if you don't hear the words I love you, if you don't have anyone to go to for help, if you're getting abused, it's very scary. And with narcissists or even psychopaths who you're saying that definition I just gave. Addictions are what we do to make ourselves feel good when we don't have a safe place. Is narcissism a coping mechanism or is it. How would you describe it in terms of. Because I don't know if they feel safe or unsafe or how did it. Because I'd like to almost ask you about connection and intimacy from the experience of the narcissist.

In some ways it's. And again. And Tucker made also I had ate lunch with him. That's why he's featuring this conversation. But a lot of it does go back to early experience. Narcissism is made and it's made by circumstances. People are not Born this way.

Okay.

It's made by circumstances, it's made by circumstance. Now, may a child be born with a temperament that makes them more likely to become narcissists? Yes, they tend to be a little bit intense. You know, probably like the colicky baby can become a colicky adult kind of thing. Like there is sort of an intensity. They're not an easygoing sort of a kid by any stretch. And some people are, they're just more easygoing even if terrible things happen to them. I would say 85%, 80% of my clinical population has experienced sexual trauma before the age of 16. It's pretty normative, men and women. And so obviously that does something to boundaries and trust. However, the bulk of them go through the world. I mean they're wonderful parents. I mean it's not like this is a guarantee that you've all. But this person's all but doomed to a terrible future. They've found their way through it. What they tend to do is be much more self denigrating. But for many narcissistic individuals, there are early histories characterized by neglect, frank trauma, inconsistency, chaos. But there are also early histories characterized by being spiritual. Like too much material indulgence without feeding the emotional needs of the child. Listen, a person of means may want to be able to give their kids a really nice bike and a trip to Disney World and all that. But if at the same time that child is also not being given a rich emotional vocabulary, an opportunity to share feelings in an appropriate way, and parents that are present psychologically more often than not. When you have that indulgence, the overindulgence of the material with the under indulgence of the emotional, that's actually the classical way we create narcissism. And then again and then the people who experience some trauma, neglect. Neglect is a parent who may actually put them in a beautiful home with lots of things in the best schools, but the parents are nowhere to be found. This is a huge problem in Los Angeles. I see it on my kids peers. I'm like these, listen, I worked from the day my oldest Maya was six weeks old forward. Just it was required. I did the best I could, but I'm shocked at people were like, we're going off for three weeks and we're leaving you with top flight nannies. Well, Fast forward that 35 years and they're in my office and they're dealing with that trauma of abandonment. They were left with the best caregivers possible. They just weren't their parents. And so this is not something that is just a child that's abused and neglected because they're impoverished. This happens across the spectrum. And so I think that that narrative often fuels narcissism. Why the world isn't safe. So that lack of safety fuels into insecurity, that insecurity, that unempathic lashing out. And in this way, my goal, and it's a tough one to create, is to say, please be compassionate to narcissistic people because they've often had a rough start. And then get the hell out of dodge and don't engage them because you can't win at that game. So I'm saying you do not need to be cruel. You do not need to call them out in a cruel way. You don't have to do a smear campaign, but you're not gonna make this work. So you're almost telling two stories at the same because the narcissist is saying, why does anyone want anything to do with me? I'm like, because you're not a nice person to them. And I understand why you're not a nice person. But that's the balancing act here.

Interesting. I even have a genius network member who it's a man, and he literally just realized he married a narcissist. And then there's people that are in the room that their exes are narcissists, and they have children together, so they have to still deal with them. And then there's the whole, how do you raise a narcissist? Which you've touched. So I'd love to speak to that. So people that are here or will be watching this, that are in a relationship with a narcissist currently or are tethered to one because of exes or relatives or things like that. What suggestion? I mean, you cover this in the book, but I'd love to have you touch on some of this, because I think you just really understand it.

Well, I say things like, I hate to say it, and it's going to sound very dismissive. Don't engage a lot of people. One spot, you start engaging, you find yourself defending yourself. You find yourself over explaining things. There's a classical behavior in narcissistic personality styles called gaslighting. And when a person gaslights you, they deny your reality. The most classical manifestation of gaslighting is when somebody says, you're being too sensitive or that never happened. You know you're being gaslighted when you start recording conversations with your phone surreptitiously in your pocket for no Other reason than that you can play it back later and say, I'm not crazy. They really did say that. The number of times people in these relationships will put the text up and say, you see, you said it. To which the narcissist will say, you're a vengeful bitch. You know that? So they'll still turn your evidentiary base into a scathing analysis of your character.

Okay, you know what's interesting? I have an individual that I've dealing with, currently dealing with in my life that I've recorded conversations for that exact reason. Because I know that if it wasn't, this person would say a reality that's not at all reality. And I needed evidence of that.

So the gaslighting sets this tone in a relationship where you feel chronically invalidated, chronically devalued, and frankly, sometimes downright crazy again, to the point where you're recording conversations and your house looks like the Pentagon for all the cameras. And they don't care about the reality. Because I will tell you, I've worked with couples. One narcissist, one not in my office. And they will show video. You say you didn't do that, and they'll play the video. Clearly they said it. And then the narcissist gets up and walks out of the office.

Right?

You see? So they're not going to engage in it. So the engagement is where people get hurt. So I tell people, don't engage. You're saying, how the heck are you supposed to talk to someone if I don't engage with them? So let's say he and I are sharing custody of a child and he's not narcissistic. I'm not gonna get into, how's work going? How you doing? Like five o'. Clock. I'll be there to get the kids. We're done. We're good. He's got all the information he needs. Okay, what's wrong with you? Why aren't you talking to me more? Come on, say, I know. You know, we're good. We have our pickup time now. Your heart's racing as this is happening. This is taking a physiological toll on you if you're dealing with a narcissist. Sorry, but you know, but it's. But you know, it's the.

He's a lawyer. He kind of.

Yeah, right, exactly. So I'm not engaging him. Then the other mistake people do is they start explaining themselves. No, no, what really happened was this. But you misheard. And then I'm like, oh, man, you're screwed now. Like, you're not coming out of this one, right? Maybe there's a reason why sometimes narcissists are drawn to professions where arguing works, like being a lawyer, because they argue better than anyone, because they're able to lift a lot of the emotion out of situations, because they don't to want bring it in. So where we're often arguing from heart, they're arguing from logic, which anyone who's ever been in a relationship knows that doesn't work. Okay. So it's though I would say don't engage, don't defend, don't explain, and don't personalize. This is them. This is their madness. Leave it housed in them. So while they're like this, you just stay. I always say you. In fact, somebody. One of my clients put it beautifully. He said, I have a cone of protection I now have. So he literally is like, I imagine a cone on me, and it keeps me perfectly still. So while they're going off, I'm completely serene. And I really say, find that inner serenity. Meditate. Find some sort of mantra you can use while you're dealing with them. You're not even listening to them now. They're ah. And you're like, you know what? It's time to go. It was so good to see you. And you use calm voice. I call it a hostage negotiator voice. You know, it's very easy to inflame them, so you really have to keep evenly toned. And especially. So there's that piece of it, too. And also, don't make excuses for them. The reason so many narcissistic individuals get so deep into our hearts and get so deep into our careers is we give them a second chance, a fifth chance, a 55th chance. We make excuses. He had a tough start in life. I say those are two separate conversations. He had a tough start in life, and he's treating you like shit.

Right?

Okay. You don't need to be mean to him. He did have a tough start in life. He is treating you like shit. You need to get out of this relationship.

Yes, it's about exactly.

It's about self.

I want to ask you about the distinction, because one narcissist that I'm dealing with is not only missing the empathy chip, but as I've gotten deeper in, it's the ethical chip. I mean, there's some that are just. They just can't feel empathy. But then when it becomes like they're just flat out unethical. They're like the criminal mind.

Do you think he Feels remorse some.

Or he's faking it really well. The beauty of this though, is, man, I've become so more aware of noticing this behavior in subtle ways that I never did before. It's almost like when you get really stung by one, then you start to see.

You do start to see it. And you also start to become, especially if you've really been hurt, anyone who's been through a relationship or a really bad business dealing. And I've had it happen in three interesting spaces. In a family space, in a professional space. And it turned my career around permanently. It was literally where my career should have gone. Left and ended up going right, much to my toll. And then it ended up exactly where I wanted it. And then once in a personal. And I think that what does happen though, is what you have to be able to endure, and I don't know if you've run into this, Jo, is that once you become the person who identifies that narcissistic individual, whether as colleague, whether as potential partner, friend, whatever, the first play is to distance and to distance quickly. You know, I hate to say it, and I've been criticized for this, but I'm just gonna put it out there. I called narcissism the secondhand smoke of mental illness. Because you're just being near them is probably gonna make you sick. And there was a recent situation I'd been in professionally. I'm part of an advisory board that convenes regularly in Washington, D.C. around mental health issues. There was one guy, I mean, like, if narcissism had a smell, it was common off this guy. Very arrogant, lots of swagger. People who are charming and charismatic terrify me. Like, when I meet a charismatic person, I'm like, I gotta go. You know, all my friends felt like when I was trying to date, they were kind of like, he's charismatic. I'm like, oh, no, absolutely not. I was looking, let's find someone awkward who's sitting in the corner, doesn't have friends, that's my guy. And so. But you know what got interesting is.

That you should be a spokesperson for every non charismatic person that wants to date.

Oh, absolutely. Because the non charismatic people are where the magic happens. I mean, they're so sweet and kind and loving and you're totally right.

Well, you got to use the mic, Tucker, if you're gonna belt something out.

No, no, you don't understand. We actually have. When we interview, we interview a lot of people. A lot of people want to work for a company. So every person rolls hundreds of interviews we have a. Are they too charismatic? As a checkbox, right? Because those are the people like the interviews of performance, the lights on them. If someone's too charismatic, it's a red, red flag. I agree, a major red flag. And the same is true. Like we have 1000 books in process with whatever 970 authors or something. Right now we actually have gaslighters as a category of author. And so no, if someone does that, we train our people, identify gaslighting, we fire those people. But we have narcissists as a separate category. We call them hungry ghosts internally. I was going to ask. Can we ask a question? Because I.

You might as well. At this point, you're sort of running the shoulder.

No, I wanted to ask. So in my business we help people write books, whatever. So obviously we get a lot of people on the whole spectrum of narcissists from just a little bit to the worst toxic gaslighters.

Right.

And so we've gotten pretty good at identifying them and I've gotten pretty good at training my people on the people how to deal with them. But you say you just get out of the relationship. We fire the really bad ones so that we do. But then there's a lot of them that are like we're not in a true relationship with them. It's a customer service type thing. What would you recommend? Just let's say high level or tell me what to read. I want to get really good at training my people on how to keep boundaries. One of the things we found that's worked well is I've trained my people in nonviolent communication methods. Mark Rosenberg. Those have really been effective for us. What else would you suggest?

Well, again, all the nonviolent communication techniques are great. You know, a lot of taking ownership using. It's funny, someone before was. Maybe it was you saying talk more in terms of. Oh no, it was a woman over here talking more in terms of you instead of I from this one I'm flipping it and you take ownership. But I think a key and even going back to what you were saying, what if this is my relationship I'm in work, personal, family, whatever. It's realistic expectations as well. Because I think what can throw yourself staff off is being disappointed the same way 100 times. Like this is what it's going to look like. So then you have your nonviolent communication skills in place, but you also have to ratchet your staff's expectations like this is what it's going to be. And it really all translates into radical acceptance. Like this is it. And maybe there's a reason you're keeping this author around, but what you've got to do as the head of this entire entity that oversees all these authors is never gaslighting your staff. If they're complaining about this author, what a lot of institutions do and people working institutions say, oh come on, he's not that bad. It's the worst thing you can do to someone because now they feel destabilized, they feel crazy. You've just now number two gaslighter in this and you have some authority over them. That's where you mess with people's heads, is like you have to support them. The boundary setting, the realistic expectations, everything else writing, everything in writing. Because many times this stuff does veer into the lane of litigation. At least you're prepared in that way and you're able to say, listen, you know, you're able to be. Matter of fact, the email dated on June 12 is very clear. And you know, they'll say, well, come on, that's BS and say, maybe it's okay, it's BS to you, but that's what we were working under. Hostage negotiator, voice, non violent communication. But always the realistic expectations. That's the key to this, you know, that's absolutely key.

That's what we do is we have our people. Like, we actually tell them it's their obligation to raise the flag if someone's being abusive to them. Because like, like we call them publishing managers. Like it's kind of your main point of contact. We tell them if someone's being abusive to you, then they're shitting on freelancers or other people too. And so it's your job to protect them. That's changed everything for us.

It really does, because it then. And in fact, there's, there's interesting research that shows that people who work in workplaces where there's a horrifically toxic narcissistic Bosses. Boss or bosses. One of the good things that sometimes can come of it is that the survivors who are trying to work in this mess actually go on to sometimes create really neat ventures of their own because they almost bond over the trauma that they're going through and they do find strength in each other. But the point I was trying to make also, you know, that you had responded to was I was in this group, this advisory committee, and it was clear, like this guy opened his mouth. I was like, oh no. And I was chairing this thing too, so I had to be diplomatic. But then when it was so clear, who he was and what he was. I really spent the next three days avoiding him because I'm like, I don't know, I got enough stuff to deal with. Again, it's secondhand smoke. Just like, I'm not going to sit next to a smoker kind of thing. I really did get branded by a lot of the rest of the group as rude. Why aren't you engaging with them? So see, this is not. It's easier said than done to say, just distance them because other people in the organization are going to call you out. And I mercifully had enough comfort with this group to say, there's something here that's making me uncomfortable. Please help me feel safe and not force me to have this interaction. And they honored that. But I was lucky in that group. That's not always a power that's given to everybody in every organization, especially when you're dealing with rank and file folks who may be lower down the chain in to order organizations you work in and may feel not only disempowered, but they may feel like if I do this, I'm going to lose my job and so I can't say anything. So that's how this gets perpetuated.

Super, super helpful.

I think I understood what you said. That psychopath and sociopath, there may be a CNS or a genetic component with psychopath and then an environmentally created with sociopath. Do I understand that you're saying there may be. With narcissism, there could be a neuroplastic rewiring. Is it something that we can reverse? You mean in terms of treatment? Yep. And have you seen any connection with sensory integration disorder and narcissistic tendencies? That's a great question. So to your first point, if you look at the research by Elsa Roningstam, and she's at Harvard Medical School, she has written some really neat, really great theoretical and empirically based stuff on narcissism. The biggest problem with narcissism research is it's based on very small sample sizes. So the generalizability of the findings is not so great because there's not a lot of good treatment work done because they don't come into treatment. They're, you know, 80% more likely to drop out of treatment. So it's hard to do that work. She does believe though, that there's a potential with a narcissistic individual of what we call a corrective emotional experience, that they, they have an experience that engages in exactly the kind of rewiring you're talking about. Now here's where my role in this whole world gets interesting because I work more with survivors of narcissistic abuse than I work with the actual narcissists. A lot of people out there with stars in their eyes, with Mr. Charisma that they met at the cocktail party want to believe that they're going to be the corrective emotional experience. The odds of you being the corrective emotional experience is the odds of you winning your sort of your March Madness ticket. Like, you're not. It's not going to happen. You're not going to win in Vegas. You're not going to be the corrective emotional experience. The corrective emotional experience is actually something we as therapists can watch unfold. But even during my lunch period Today, I spent 15 minutes talking a narcissist off the ledge because he's 48, the girlfriend's 22, and he can't get his head around why she doesn't like spending time with him. And I was like, I can give you a couple reasons, but I'm sorry you're hurt, you know, and so it's that entire, you know, I don't think. And this is the fourth time I've watched him through this rodeo with four different inappropriately young women. And so he's not getting it now. I hate to say it, but sadly, sometimes the corrective emotional experience can be a tragedy. It can be losing someone significant to you. We don't want to program that for. Well, once your kid dies, I'm sure everything's going to turn around for you. Like, we don't want that as an intervention. So it's the question of, does that happen every so often? The stars line up. Going to prison can sometimes be that corrective emotional experience. I'd say for about 2 out of 10 narcissists that go to jail, jail or prison, it ends up being a wake up call. Like, I don't want to do that again. And I've let everyone down. So I think that in a very small subset, because of the lack of self reflective capacity in narcissists, they don't have the ability. Empathy is equal parts out and in. The out part is me caring. Joe, are you okay? Did you eat enough lunch? Is he, you know, is he bored right now? Like, I'm worried about Joe. I'm worried about all of you. But the in part is, am I reflecting, reflecting on my contribution to this? Like, am I aware of how I'm reacting? Am I aware of my stuff? They can't do either. They can't do the out, they can't do the in. But so there is some possibility for that. In terms of sensory integration stuff. We could even argue this and extend it to people on the spectrum. Right. There is a lot of argument, like people say to me, what's the difference between autism spectrum and narcissism? There's a big difference. Okay. People on the spectrum spectrum have a processing issue. They cannot uptake and process social interaction and other environmental stimuli the same way because of a central nervous system issue that we're still trying to fully unravel. That said, in a child or an adult with autism spectrum, when the empathic miss is pointed out to them, they do not become defensive, they do not become angry. They very quickly say I didn't know and sometimes will express very authentic emotion at the thought that they may have hurt someone. We see this all through the age span and immediately that's when we know. Because I have a lot of folks who come in, women who will say, I don't know if my husband's on the spectrum, I don't know if he's narcissistic. So we'll try some stuff, I'll give him questions to try with him the next week and we're pretty much able to unplug it. So that processing issue means that they can integrate new information and say, I'm so sorry I hurt you, I just didn't know. And I think that would also go to other sensory integration experiences. Yeah, that would be my guess. That's what I'm wondering about because I've seen that the retraining of sensory integration disorder, but it's a minimum, kind of a two year, you're really on the spectrum. And that survival mentality is number one. It's a two year rewiring process before you kind of go, okay, we can hang out together a little. And it's the same in narcissism. Any published research shows people have been in therapy for 18 months to 24 months. Good luck finding an insurer that's going to pay for that and that. So you've got almost two years of multi time a week therapy and still only a subset of those clients improve. No one's got that kind of access. So on a population level, I'm not clear on how we're going to improve this. When you're raised by a narcissistic parent or parents, you've got three paths you get to go down and sometimes you combine the paths. As an adult, you're either going to become incredibly anxious and that's the majority of people who are raised by one or two narcissistic parents. They're very anxious adults. They don't understand. They're not in full awareness of how good they are and all the things they can do. And they don't know their value. And they have to learn that. They should have learned that when they were five now, not when they're 35. So that's one path. Path two are what I call disorders of dysregulation. And in there we have things like substance abuse, sexual acting out, eating disorders, so that incapacity to regulate, so they'll be there. And path three is to become narcissistic themselves. And that can also. You can have all three of these happening. Narcissists can actually be quite anxious, especially when things aren't going well for them. We go back to the point I was making before of realistic expectations, okay, she is going to be the way she is. From the day you divorce to now, there's been no improvement. No, none. That's my point. It doesn't change. It's actually like a really mean business I'm in because I just keep taking their money and nothing's happening. And it's like selling umbrellas. Like, I mean, you're always gonna have. Someone's gonna buy them on someday, so it never gets better. So I would say that you have to keep your expectations deeply realistic, engage in radical acceptance. And when you do that, her behavior isn't going to throw you off, but it puts you in a really difficult position as a parent. Because in essence, right now, you're trying to walk around the room with an elephant on your back in the sense that you're trying to groom your children around empathy. You're trying to teach them the value of humanity, relationship. You're trying to teach them how to regulate their emotions. And then as soon as they go back to her, she undoes it all. You get them, you put up all the pieces again, and that's the back and forth. All you can do is create a very loving, empathic space for them where they can be safe. But they're going to have a rough road ahead of them. They really are. And having a strong parent, though, and I can't tell you the number of clients I've worked with by having one strong, healthy parent. That's what it took for them for that child to say, you know what? What ended up saving me was mom was dad. And so they're anxious as adults, but they know they're loved and Safe in the world. What's terrible is if the person in your position also goes underground, like, you're just like, I can't bear with this. Or you cut bait, that's when the kid gets really screwed up.

Michael Speaking of narcissists. No, I'm kidding, totally kidding, just kidding.

Staying with the parenting theme for a second, let's fast forward. For those children, they're now late teens or maybe early 20s. They have an awareness that they have a parent who, let's say, is a narcissist. And they're at an age where they may be able to. They're at an age approaching independence and can possibly make a powerful choice to disengage that relationship or to find a way to stay in relationship with that parent through the rest of adulthood. What would be the guidance there or the way to navigate it, the way to manage it and what to do?

I mean, again, I shouldn't be cursing so much, but this makes the point better. Thank you. The mind fuck for most people who are raised by narcissists was finding out too late that their parent was a narcissist and continuing to blame them themselves for feeling like they weren't a good enough kid, that they let their parent down. I've actually been very heartened to see the number of adolescents and like 19, 20, 21 year olds who are coming into my practice with narcissistic parents and us very quickly breaking like, this isn't you, this is them. Because they were so like, if only, if I were only this, if I did what dad asked or if I was what mom wanted and I would go, hell no, this is. And so the earlier they get the knowledge, the better they're able to come up with a map or a scheme or something that makes sense for them in terms of boundaries, expectations and acceptance. So they may actually keep the parent in their life on a sort of limited basis, but not let that parent come in and co opt their life path and those kinds of things. Because remember, there's this concept called narcissistic supply. The toughest part about narcissism is that the narcissist, a narcissist in some ways doesn't view other people as people, but as sources of validation and supply, making other human beings very instrumental. As much as this coffee mug is only useful to me when I want my tea, otherwise I'm paying no attention to it, right? That's how a narcissistic individual views people. So that's deadly for relationships because as long as I Need something, I'm going to go to that person, Then I'm nowhere to be found. And where it's most lethal, obviously is in a parent child relationship. Because the child then becomes a source of supply for the parent. Look at my kid's success, look how well my child's doing. And God forbid the kid's not doing well now the child is a source of shame. And the narcissistic parent will have no problem telling the child that that's an issue. So I think that giving them the knowledge that these patterns that they're. You don't have to use the N word, just say that these patterns are not healthy. Invalidation, lack of empathy, La da da da da. And here's ways you can set boundaries. And this is not going to, to change. So keep your expectations real. And armed with that little bit, it's amazing how many people are like, now I got this. And when my father or mother is behaving badly or saying insensitive things, it's really coming off me like Teflon, because now I know it's them, it's not me, and I'm able to handle this. You know, they set timers, they do all kinds of things to get themselves out. Their parent doesn't understand the timer going off is not the same as their phone ringing. Like, oh, it's important work, I gotta go. And so, you know, we come up with ways, but that's really what it is, knowledge turning into boundaries.

Well, when people are not a family member and we realize there's a dysfunction or just something that's not serving us, we don't connect with that person.

That's right.

Like you protected your energy and your space in Washington with that individual with a family relationship. Is it ever the right choice to actually sever that relationship?

Absolutely. All the time. All the time. I cannot tell you for how many clients I have that severing a tie saved their lives. Literally saved their lives. They were in the depths of addiction, suicidal behavior, I mean, you name it. And when they finally got permission from someone or someones who said, oh, that's okay, you can divorce your mom, bet you didn't know that. And they do. Their health comes back, they're vital in the world again. They are no longer using drugs, alcohol or anything else to sort of self medicate, they're good, they needed that permission. It's different for everyone. One of the best stories I was ever told, I interviewed her story's in this book, actually. A woman, she lives somewhere in the Southeast and she had told me how brutally narcissistic father, the most invalidating, verbally abusive, awful man she had ever met. Mom had long since divorced him. She was one of four sisters. She lived two hours away from dad nobody wanted. Narcissism gets worse with age, by the way. This is a pattern that gets worse as a person gets older. Okay, so now dad was like in his late 70s, early 80s kind of thing. Nobody wants anything to do with this guy. He's not living under the best circumstances. Kind of a crappy apartment. Every two weeks, this woman would get in her car, drive to his house with a couple of bags of groceries, prepare some food, stick it in the fridge, watch TV with him for an hour and leave. And I said, why did you do this? Because none of her sisters did this. And you know what she said? Because the woman I does this not for him. She's like, I don't give a damn about him. I don't care about whether he lives or dies. But there is a man out there that the universe assigned to be my father, and he completely fucked it up. But the woman I am does see through some level of responsibility. When he dies, I need to be okay with me. She expected nothing from him. Not a thank you, nothing. And by the time she'd leave it, she set a timer. One hour TV show show. They'd watch, she'd get out. She said it wasn't gratifying or anything, but she said that's something I had to do for myself. But by identifying it as such, he was in her life, but in a way that in some ways almost suited her need. And she's like, I'll let you know when he passes, and I'll let you know how it feels. But everyone finds their way. But severing those ties happens all the time. It's harder in certain cultures. I'm Indian and I do teaching about this in India. And let me tell you, this is a very, very common pattern in India, like endemic. We filled a room, there are people out in the street trying to listen to the. When I'd done a seminar there, it actually broke my heart at how common it was. But in India, it's so communal and the families, everything that to break those ties was actually much more difficult there, leaving people even more confused. So it depends on the culture. In different cultures, it's easier to do in others. I work with a lot of Latinx students at Cal State la. Same thing they say in Mexican families, you don't tell your mother you're not going to talk to her anymore. I'm like, so we figure it out. We figure out a way to set boundaries that work for their culture.

Thank you so much.

Can I ask you, what's the link between narcissism and addiction?

Oh, so strong. Think about it. This is a person at the core of it. Narcissism is about emptiness. I always say it's like a bucket with holes in the bottom. No matter how much water, no matter how much validation you put in it, it's always coming. And there's not enough times I can tell you you're wonderful and you're beautiful and you're smart and you're successful. There's not enough anything to keep it full, right? So when someone feels empty, what do they do? They fill the hole. And there ain't nothing that fills that hole like drugs. And so it is so common. And here's what I find when I work with.

Or behaviors.

Right. Or behaviors. And I find this when I work with rehab centers, addiction centers. And in fact, you know, Tim, you'll be able to speak to this, too, is I work with families who now are having a family member go into rehab, right? And their hope is, well, now they're clean, they're sober, they're home. This is gonna be great. Everything's gonna be great. And they come home, and they're still an asshole. I'm like, oh, yeah, they couldn't get rid of the narcissism. Sweet. Now he's just not using coke anymore. Now he's a grumpy narcissist because he's not using coke anymore. So it's a. You know, I think that the two go together. And what happens is we do know that narcissistic traits make maintaining sobriety a thousand times more difficult. I would imagine. Again, I will defer to you that. That people who are narcissistic are much more likely to relapse. Cause the first time they come up against a disappointment, it feels like the bottom has fallen out, Right? So the easiest way to get back to get that soothing is to turn to drugs and alcohol. So I really do think that they're highly, highly, highly correlated. I mean, I would say well over 50% of the narcissistic personalities I've worked with in therapy had comorbid or past addictions.

Wow. Interesting. Fascinating. Okay, thank you, Akira.

Thanks, Dr. Ramani. This is really, really good. So I'm glad we're talking about broader social issues, because I really think a lack of empathy is the root cause of most of the World's crises. Environmental, social issues, economic issues. I was just thinking. You brought up Elizabeth Holmes, right? The CEO of Theranos and Travis Kalanick. And you look at leaders, business leaders, people, whether they are narcissists or psychopaths, it might not be mine to say, but these are people who are becoming billionaires. These are people who are releasing products and shaping the world in ways that we all rely on and use. And in public, they're being disgraced. They're creating toxic work cultures. They're damaging, destroying the environment. So my question is, how are we consciously or unconsciously creating a culture or a society that supports this and is maybe even moving towards further narcissism? Because I feel like it's very dangerous.

Because the book is literally a discourse on this. Okay. That's what led me to write the book. In fact, the reason I wrote the book was I'm in therapy, and I was like, after the election and what was happening in the world, particularly around the environment, I'm like, I'm not sleeping. I was gaining a lot of weight. And she's like, you got to do something. And I said, the only thing I know how to do is write. She said, write a book. Because she's like, you can't live like this. And so I called my publisher. I'm like, please, please, please. Like, sweetie, you can write anything you want. Go write the book. Do what you need to do. And then this is what came out of that. This was just me trying to cleanse. And it was almost like a love letter to the world. Like, it's going to be okay if we band together. But to your point, what's making this happen? We have made objective metrics of success, everything. Somebody was even talking about measurable outcomes earlier today. For companies, it's got to be hard, right? Because at the end of the day, you're measured by, you know, really progressive Companies might look at the health and wellness of their employees and try to get that in place, too. But at the end of the day, bottom line is, what were your net profits for this given year? So it's about consumerism, it's about materialism. It's about the idea of education as a brand rather than as a process. It's about being so contemptuous of emotion and vulnerability that, especially for men, we've made that really hard. We make fun of men who are emotionally vulnerable. He's like that grumpy guy in the corner that I want to date. I'm like, if you're emotional and disorganized in the corner like, I'm in, you know, because that idea that, you know, that men can be emotional and that's okay. We make fun of men who cry, which is ridiculous. You know, we give women a little bit more space, but we still label them as overly emotional. And then I think that what ended up happening too was this then became conversation. It created a universal metric around the planet. Measurable financial outcomes, achievement and success oriented metrics. And if anything, immigrant groups of the United States brought that with a vengeance. My kid has to go to Harvard. I have to drive whatever kind of car we have to live in this neighborhood. And people are measured by that. Then we forget the gas on the fire. And that's social media. Now, social media is an easy, easy thing to do, Demonize. But what ended up happening was it created a way to mainline validation by people who didn't have to leave the house. Now, because when social media came out and I was studying narcissism, I was like, oh my God. I think I was actually still married at the time. Him and I are divorced. But I remember going into him and saying, oh my God. He's like, you're being hysterical. It's not. It's like I felt like someone in the 1940s saying, these cigarettes are a bad thing. He's like, calm down. And I said, no, this is bad. And it was. Because what was happening was human beings became influencers and people, human beings became brands. We commodified the human essence. I think when we look at all that together, why the hell would we treat the environment with empathy? Empathy. If we view the environment, the planet, as a person, no one's empathic to it. Well, you're always around, no matter how much I cheat on you. So I'm just going to keep doing it, bitch. And that's how we're treating Mother Earth at this point. So, you know, it's really a. All of that, all of that colluded. And when that happened, the genie's out of the bottle. I mean, unless we really do start working on things like community building, you know, putting the value back in emotion, getting the stigma out of mental illness. I think a lot of this too is about people not wanting to talk about issues like trauma and vulnerability and mental health. Like, I'm in therapy, I'm telling all of you, I've been going to the same therapist for 20, 25 years, God help me. And the day she goes, I mean, that's gonna be a tough day. She's older than me, but that's the only way I can do what I do. And I went in because I was an anxious graduate student. And now, years later, it's to do all the rest of it. But everyone should be able to. Why is it that people are willing to talk about going to an oncologist at Thanksgiving dinner, but nobody's willing to talk about going to therapy? So I think it's all of that has colluded. And here we are. And what we've done, though, you've got to remember, wherever the information comes from, that's what creates the reality. And right now, incivility is the new black. So horrible tweets and uncivil communication and insulting and in essence, sort of doing the dozens to people all the time, no matter where you are, is okay. And we're almost telling kids this is okay to insult people. In fact, you're going to get a billion dollars and we're giving them platforms. And at the end of it, kalanick or the WeWork guy or I of these people, they're walking off a billion dollars and sitting on wherever it is people like that sit at the end of that story. I don't think they're sitting, hey, I should have had a little more empathy. And for a lot of people, that's the win. And that's where I don't know where to start this. I'm thinking we might want to give up the multiplication tables and focus a lot more on empathy and human relationships. Not just in elementary school, where it's easy, but in middle and high school, where the stakes start to change. Wow.

Thank you, Shalev. Have you heard of the Hexaco personality test?

I have. I've heard the Hexaco personality test relates to also a model called the five factor model. The five factor model. Some of you may have heard it termed the Ocean model. It's a five personality trait model made up of openness, conscientiousness, extroversion, agreeableness, and neuroticism. The hexaco sort of builds out on that. I think the difference is that they have the honesty piece. Yeah, I'm a bigger five factor person than a Hexaco model person. But what I do know is if you've never taken that test, I should come one time to Genius Network. Have everyone come take the test. I'll just sit in the corner.

I would love to do.

It would be a game changer for you guys to see your results. It would really be. We should talk about that.

Yeah.

So I just happen to be more of a five Factor person. But I think the hexaco tomorrow. No, I have all the supplies have to come from la. Like it's a whole thing. We'll do it the next time.

No, let's. Well, we can absolutely do that. I would love to do that for sure.

So I just happen to be more of a five factor person. But in hexaco and Hexaco is what? Honesty. Humility.

Honesty and humility.

Agreeableness and all the other conscientiousness and openness. The nicest people are highest in agreeableness. They are the sweethearts. They are gregarious and they have lots of equanimity and they're willing to compromise and they of have lots, lots of empathy. Give this test. You should find me give this test to someone before you marry them. Because then I could say no. Yes. Like I'll just give you a gentle, you know, because I'll tell you, agreeable people make wonderful spouses. Now here's the rub. Agreeable people don't make as much money. Agreeable people, as a rule, statistically speaking, narcissistic individuals make statistically significantly more money than agreeable individuals as especially men. So gender is a moderator. We also know that when we think about narcissism from a hexaco or from a five factor model approach, we see that narcissists are lower in agreeableness. In fact, one guy, this guy from the University of British Columbia, called them disagreeable extroverts. People who are narcissistic are high in extroversion, low in agreement, lowish in conscientiousness and high in the elements of neuroticism, like angry hostility. So there's a certain signature kind of look. And low in honesty and humility. So I think that while it can't be used sort of to give a good metric of narcissism, it wasn't designed for that. It can definitely tell us if someone's going to make a good dinner companion. I have to tell you, the man I'm with, date three, I'm like, could you just answer 267 questions and I'll get back to, to you tomorrow? But he got a fourth date, so, you know, I, I did give him the test, which is so unethical. What's that? Did you get a third date? No, we did, yeah. He's still around. Yeah. He has high agreeableness. He's very high agreeableness. He doesn't make enough money. You know, he's like halfway. So, yeah.

One other quick question. Do you see Interrelation between narcissism and bpd.

Like when a narcissist doesn't get his or her way.

So when he says bpd, he means borderline personality disorder. Okay? Now, some of you may have heard of this term, but borderline personality disorder is a personality disorder characterized by a lot of emotional dysregulation. Very quick shifts from happy to angry to sad, but like in a matter of sometimes minutes. Lots of other dysregulated behavior, a horrific fear of abandonment, and lots of behaviors the person engages in to avoid abandonment, including things that are exactly the reason they get abandoned. For example, stalking, having really poor boundaries, threatening suicide. All of those things you may see. And then a higher likelihood of suicidal acting out or suicidal behavior. Here's where things get tricky. And if you look at Marsha Linehan's work, as well as some, even Otto Kernberg's work on this, this is where I find it fascinating because I work with a lot of borderline clients. A pure borderline client is extremely fragile. They tend to have really robust histories of trauma. They are very fragile. They're in tremendous despair. And we really want to just contain them and make them feel safe. And sometimes I almost feel like I'm trying to re womb them, like I want to put them. And you're gonna be okay. Now where this gets tricky is when the border. Borderline meets the narcissism and that subtype. When you see both, all bets are off because now you've got someone who's rageful and emotional and acting out and manipulative. And that manipulativeness is what throws them off in both personal and professional relationships. Pure borderline is an eminently manageable disorder with dialectical behavioral therapy. Borderline plus narcissistic really can't be managed. And that's the difference. And really good treatment. Treatment centers that enroll clients often won't take the borderline narcissist patient because there's nothing they can do with them. And that keeps our success statistics up. If they only take the borderline clients. Wow.

You were referring to somebody who gets clean and sober and then they become an asshole. What we call that is a dry. It's a person. When it's a person. When a person is a dry drunk. Right, Same thing. And it's like they've got to do the work. They get clean and sober and then they just lift up life. They become a fucking asshole. And I think that's what you're referring to.

Right, but not in everyone. I do think there's a subset that does do the work. The narcissistic individuals are less likely to do the work. That's the challenge.

Yeah, the people that do the work become, you know, it's kind of like self centered, selfish. It's all about me. To learning, to becoming a giver and humble. And it's like doing, you know, as they say, doing the work.

Yeah, doing the work.

Well, I'll tell you, like, when I got sober from drugs, I had not yet dealt with the underlying trauma that why I was doing the drugs in the first place, which I didn't even realize why I was doing. I thought I was just getting high and it was entertaining and all that sort of stuff. And living in a state of being buzzed was more enjoyable, not all the time, but many of the times than the reality of my pained existence. Because I hadn't dealt with the underlying trauma. And until I dealt with the underlying trauma, I was sexually acting out, behaviorally, just a total workaholic. I wasn't lashing out at people, but internally, oh my God. Level of self talk. It's one thing about outwardly abusing others when you're inwardly abusing yourself, which is another interesting thing. So, yeah, there's. I believe it's like Gabor Mate says, the question is not why the addiction, but why the pain. And if you take away the soothing mechanism, drugs, alcohol behaviors, then what's left is a hurt, angry person that sometimes is a total asshole. And so yeah, it goes back to.

To doing the work. But you can't get everyone there.

Right. And that's why I learned about you. There's some work done matter. So your best thing is to insulate yourself from these individuals.

And as you were saying earlier than a narcissistic person is more likely to make more money.

Oh yeah.

And the population we serve, so our price point is a little bit higher. So we serve a population that has more money. And so we have. And it's interesting to watch some of these people come out of treatment and then come and live in one of our homes. And you can tell, like we had a guy that came to us and he was, he rallied another three guys around essentially leaving and going and getting an Airbnb because there were all these problems with our home. And it's like, God, you know, it's like, okay, good luck.

Yep, yep. But I get. I had one client very deeply narcissistic. He was allowed to have his phone in the rehab center. And then. And he's like, I gotta go find. We were doing they permitted me to do sort of phone sessions with him. But then he still managed to get the use the phone to get the dealer to throw the packet of cocaine over the fence of the rehab center. You know, because it was the arrogance, it was the entitlement, you know, it was the thumbing the nose at it all. You know, instead of, you know, I'm really saying to him, do you understand how hard these people, people are working to get you healthy? You know, sometimes I also call, I call it the Siddhartha effect. And by that I mean those of you who know the story of Siddhartha, you know he was the prince and the most lavish of luxury and that he finally became the enlightened one by being in a condition of absolute asceticism and austerity. And I sometimes would love to do that sort of Siddhartha esque work with people. And sometimes that's what rehab is meant to be, right? A more trimmed out version of life. And compare your client population, certainly it feels like a barracks or like a tent compared to what they're accustomed to. That's part of the process. But you know, even Siddhartha had to wait to become enlightened. So I suppose it's a pretty tall order for these folks too. So for them, staying at a Sheraton is too much for them?

Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly.

You got a room full of influential people in here. We have children, we have friends, we have family. If we had the ability to influence people and catch them maybe at 8, 10, 12, before the trade gets. What are like two or three things that in a perfect world we could, if we have access to people, we have YouTube channels, we have Internet, this room. What are two or three things we could do? If we could maybe even have a 1% ability to affect people, what are two or three things we could do for our kids, for our family? Or any little ideas that you think that. Because we can bitch all day about it. But, but if we could impact 2 or 3% of the kids, we can change the population 100 years from now.

Great.

So what are two or three things that you'd say that we could put the thoughts in kids heads. What is something that we could do that even if I can't affect my own kid, but I could speak to my client's children, I could speak to other people. So you understand my question.

Yeah, I know completely.

Do give me two or three things, I want to write them down. I'm going to start doing them immediately.

Number one, shift the conversation away from what these kids do and, and shift it to how these kids feel. Stop asking about the soccer game and whether they got into the ballet troupe and where they want to go to college. So less about accomplishments and more and more about feeling. You know, number one, you know, number two is cultivate gratitude. Gratitude is intentional, okay? It's something that we have to do in a purposeful way. This should happen in every intimate relationship. Any of you in a relationship once a day should be finding something to be grateful for in that relationship and communicating it. Children can be doing exactly the same thing, whether it's about a friend. This can be a dinner table activity, but it's got to be built in to homes and into curricula. And then I would say number three, and I think this is probably even more with boys, but I think boys and girls are both in this conversation is to foster vulnerability, to not, you know, to not generate shame around the discourse related to vulnerability. You know, mom, I feel dumb, you know, that kind of thing. I've got a 16 year old now. My 19 year old, 19 year old's already at college. But with my 16 year old, she wants to talk about college. I said, sweetie, I want us to. Can we talk about it as a process first, why do you even want to go to college? I mean, they go to a fancy schmancy ass private school in LA for the reasons they do. But it's, why do you want to go? And it's all like news like, you know, you want to list names and this and strategy. But like this. My daughter, my older daughter went to college at the time of this whole cheating scandal. Like, and you know, some of her peers, parents were involved in that. And I watched my kid have such a mental health crisis going through this whole college thing. And I said, I've got to pay attention to this. Like, what the hell's going on? I can't fight what's going on in school. But once with my younger one, Shanti, we talked about it in terms of how are you feeling about this? What are you hoping to get out of it? It's changed the tone. I don't even care what she, her grades. I just don't give a damn anymore. Like, what'd you learn? I'm like, tell me the history of the world, honey. I'm curious. And for six mornings we have an hour drive to school. I got the whole history of Western Europe from over a 200 year period. And it was joyous because I didn't even care how she. I still don't know how she did on the test, but I learned things about history I didn't know. We can change the dance. And I think that's what it's really about. My question would be, and I think that. I think about who's navigating this with, like, kids who. Their other parent is a narcissist, and maybe that parent is trying to influence the kids against you. So I guess my question is, is how do you, especially now my dad's passed away. Like, how do you re. Navigate that and get back into their lives and help bridge that. Thank you. Without trying to make it feel like you're speaking poorly of the other person. Brilliant question. And first of all, I'm so sorry and thank you so much for sharing that the whole phenomenon you're talking about actually has a name called flying monkeys. In fact, you have a flying monkey sign in one of your bathrooms. And I was going to actually have to talk to you about that.

If you want it, you're welcome to take.

No, no, but, like, we have to put like a post it with an explanation under it.

Oh, good.

So flying monkeys are like, does she want it? No, no, no. In narcissism speak. Flying monkeys is when the narcissist harnesses the other people around you and infuses them with negative words about you. So now you have this entire group of people turning against you, whether professionally or personally. Number one. Sadly, hon, you need to view this as cleaning house. You don't need to do. You don't have to speak badly of anyone. And that's the key to all of this. You do not need to throw anyone under the bus. You need to just be your good you and you just be you with them and talk to them. Because anyone wise will say, whatever I heard about her is so not true because she's lovely. Okay? The ones you can't convert, they weren't your people in the first place. And this really does a lot of what happens is over a lot lifetime. When you've had a lot of these kinds of personalities in your life, you start collecting them. It's like before you know it, you're looking around your garage and like, why are there so many narcissists here? Because you do. You almost have to. Once you realize I'm not doing this anymore and you're able to give up on the people you again. You don't need to convince them of anything. You shouldn't ever have to convince someone of you. You're good, so just be you. But I would reach back in and say, I would love to reconnect with you. People who literally, adamantly against it. There's a lack of mental flexibility there that doesn't speak to a healthy relational future of any kind with them. But those will say, sure, I'd like to see you. And there might even be some diffidence in the beginning. Just be you. I mean, you were able to be vulnerable in front of this group, which is, to me, literally the most beautiful thing a human being can do. If you take that beauty into your human interactions, those who are good will welcome you back in. And you don't have to say a bad word about anyone. I understand where you're coming from. Thank you very much.

Thank you.

I was gonna ask you about the forgiveness.

Yeah, that's a good note to end on. Forgiveness is such a tough space because, you know, a lot of the psychological literature describes forgiveness as sort of a major mental illness antidote, mental health antidote. Right. You can get. You will feel better if you forgive and you'll feel lighter. And all kinds of peace and reconciliation work and all of that is written around forgiveness. Here's the rub. In the west, we like to put people on a schedule, like, hurry up, forgive, forgive. Everything's gonna be so much easier if you just forgive your dad. And can we just get over this? No, we cannot put these human processes on a schedule. To me, forgiveness is sort of a two part kind of a process. There's a letting go piece and there's forgiving. Forgiving is a much higher order concept because it involves no longer feeling resentful about what that person did to you. And you know what? Some people are never going to get there. I work with many, like I said, survivors of child sexual abuse. And they say to me, I don't want to forgive the person who did this to me. And they've gone from therapist to therapist that say, you need to forgive. And I said, fuck them. You do not need to forgive the person who did this to you. I want you to let this go because you're carrying this weight. You're making that more of your heavy soul weight. Can we help you put it down and no longer take responsibility for what happened to you and let you move forward, but you don't have to forgive. Forgiveness is very much something we try to sell in the West. It's very much built into religion. But here's the problem with forgiveness. For a narcissist, forgiveness is permission. They're like, this is cool, I cheated on you and you're that's permission to do that again. Rarely sad does a narcissist integrate forgiveness as someone doing the divine for them. If I did something bad and someone forgave me, I'd be like, oh, my God, thank you. And I mean, you would forever monitor, never to make that misstep again, but for all the couples, especially couples. But I've also seen this happen in professional consultations I've done when the narcissist got forgiven, nine times out of ten, they went out and committed the same transgression again, thinking, well, she forgave me before he forgave me before he or she is going to forgive me again. And then what it does is it screws up your ability to forgive, even in the healthy parts of your life. Because now that very. That incredibly, what I consider honestly divine space has been abused. So I think forgiveness is personal. It doesn't always happen. And for me, the real goal is letting go. And if you can get to the letting go, which is really a sense of, I am no longer going to carry this burden around. But you know what? I do feel resentful because you changed my life in a permanent way. And I'm not okay with this change. I feel different, and I don't want to feel this. And you made my fucking life a little more unsafe. So, no, I don't forgive you. And my practice is very focused on giving people enough giving. Let some people come around. And sometimes the best I hope for is letting it go with indifference. They see the cheater on the street ten years later, or. Or they even see the abuser on the street 10 years later. And like, you know what? I didn't feel a thing. And that's when they feel empowered. And then it doesn't even matter. Forgiveness becomes almost irrelevant for them.

No, I love that. And you are absolutely right with forgiveness is permission to a narcissist, especially if they're still alive. You know, there's the person that. The father that abused me that died and that sort of thing. But, I mean, I have real evidence there's a person I'm dealing with that I forgave this individual for some stuff. And what did he do? He kept repeating it. And I mean, it was like, oh, free reign. Now it feels a lot worse after.

You forgive the person.

Exactly. Because you're trying to operate out of empathy and kindness. And then someone says, oh, let me fuck him some more.

Right.

First off, fascinating.

Thank you.

Very helpful, very useful. How can we ingenious network help you? So your goal of writing this book, what would you like to see happen that we can in some way help facilitate? I mean, clearly, I would love for all of you to that haven't read the book to read it, share it with other people. I'd like to take this interview and make it public and spread it. Share it with anyone that you think needs to hear it. And what would be an outcome that you would love to have, you know.

Listen, Speaking from a place of ego, everyone has the fantasy. Once you read, it's going to become a New York Times bestseller. I mean, it's been an Amazon bestseller here and there. But I mean, I would love to see it get a little bit more purchase in the world, because then if it can, more people are going to get the message. But I realized there's more than one way to skin a cat. And somebody said to me, they're like, sweetie, just cut it into 200 videos. You'll get the message out. And I'm beginning to see that that's the case. So I am trying to. So right now what I'm trying to do is scale up so I see individual clients in my office. Right. Well, that's not a sustainable business model because there's one of me, and I spend an hour with them and they pay me, but I can only do that a certain number of hours a week. And B, it's exhausting. Like, I'm burning out a bit in that space. We're scaling up into retreats and seminars and that kind of thing. I'm thinking of creating online courses for therapists. You know, how do I get this information out? In a way, because a big part thing for me, philosophically, Joe, is that a lot of people who struggle with narcissistic abuse don't have a lot of money. They themselves are sometimes victims of domestic violence. They're in parts of the world like India or South Africa, where the devaluation of currency and all that means that they can't get on a plane, they can't even get a visa to come to this country anyhow. So I can certainly go there. But it's still, if you're doing it in real time, like in me human being being in the room, there's only so many people can access it. So there's a big part of me that needs to give a lot of this away for my own ethical reasons, because I just think people are suffering, and especially women are suffering, but a lot of men too. And so I want to get that to them. But I still also don't want to be broke anymore. So I want to find a way to get this word out. Create seminars, retreats, online courses. And this is going to sound ridiculous, and I'm again embarrassed to say this. I wish I had a little more confidence in the business space because give me an academic journal and a bunch of data and lock me in a room. I'm like, I'm a hotshot, you know, like. But then put me in front of a room like this. And I'm, I'm embarrassed, you know, because you guys know business and I don't. And I don't know, I feel like, you know, you guys have really big lemonade stands and I don't. And so that's, that's sort of why I don't know business and I don't know business and I don't get it.

Well, first off, I'm glad that you shared all that. Here's what I would say too. And you, you got to take all this with a grain of salt because you got a lot of smart people in here. And there's many different ways to skin a cat. And everyone has their own. When you're a hammer, everything's a nail. So I always view things from. Not always, but the lens of the marketing. Oh, let's throw marketing at it. And I also, if I controlled your life, which I don't, I would say you got to drop the private practice because the impact you're going to make on the world is far greater. Now, you don't want to do that in a scary way to cut off your.

I would have to be graduate. Yes.

And that's a whole nother conversation that many people here, including me, would be willing to have to look at the opportunity cost. And also you want to help people. Like, I spend about half my time now helping people that struggle with addictions, not like I'm doing counseling with them. I mean, I do all volunteer stuff. I don't charge anyone for anything related to, you know, recovery stuff. And I've met with very high profile famous people. One of the things, I've spent several hundred thousand dollars in the last four years just building these educational platforms. And I don't want to charge money for something unless I have such a good feeling that it really has efficacy and is going to help people. And I want to reduce human suffering. So in some ways, because I have a successful company, I'm able to do that. But I also know many addicts have no resources, they have no money. And in a lot of ways, you're wanting to do that and so now we finally set up our foundation and looking at different models. But as you hear the ideas from like, let me just show you an example. How many of you based on even what she said, you know, some solutions on her to monetize her stuff right now, if you heard everyone's idea here and tried to do all of them, I mean how would you do it right? So you have to take it all in and say what am I aligned with? What feels really right? And I would love to as we continue with you being part of Genius Network. For me this is just a seed. I would love this to be a group that you tap into and we help build the ultimate ELF model for you while simultaneously putting such valuable, such needed, such important, such life changing protective work out to people, the ones that can pay for it and the ones that can't and be able to help you do that. Because at the end of the day, I mean, you know, whatever we can do to reduce human suffering, anything that I can do in that. And plus it's instrumental in the work that I'm doing. And so more than anything, this is a group of people collaborating to help each other just do what it is they want to do. And how many of you found total applicability in your own businesses and lives based on listening to what Dr. Ramany had to say? Yeah, there you go. So it's super valuable and we could go for another week.

I wrote probably 10 things about business.

Yes, very much so.

And I think you're targeting the relationships and family a lot where you're saying that they may not have the money, they may not have, businesses would pay whatever you want.

And that's why you keep saying that, because that's the piece that has been the hardest. I cannot figure out how to crack that space. But I actually think not only from a risk management perspective, like when you have sort of the abusive toxic person and they're sort of hurtling towards a lawsuit. It's also how to help not have this happen in a workplace, how to help people. But for, against this, I've done this on a more ad hoc basis. We're trying to build it out into something. I just don't know how to enter.

The companies, teach companies how to fire narcissistic customers.

Oh, that would be good.

Yeah.

And they will pay for that.

It's hard.

I can collaborate with you on that.

No, seriously, because I think people are, it's hard if you're going to try to train people on how to break up with a partner who's narcissistic. That's a difficult one to get a big swath. But you could. Everybody in this room is trying to say no to the wrong customer. And you could give the right tools, the conversations, the communication, the way of thinking, identify you, like fire the narcissists. There's your tagline.

Right, Right. That's a great idea.

And they have the money to pay you, so I think that could fund the rest of the year.

I think that's the key. That's why I've always wanted to.

Awesome. So if we have time, we can do more.

Thank you. Thank you.

That's great.

Thank you.

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