Dr. Ramani Interview: Clues to SPOT the Narcissist EARLY!

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. Why did you start focusing all your research and study on this particular area of narcissism?

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 at 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. 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. From there in on, 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 problem. 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 is going to 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. I think what I've done, 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 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 were 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, la 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. 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 bad for an absolutely clueless. 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. How long did it take you to write?

This is so much 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. Like, it just. It kept going. So the actual writing. I got a book 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. 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 gonna become 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, cause 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, 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 relationships out there. 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, because 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, 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, I will take their cult and I'll say it did this, this and this. How did you know that, doctor? I'm like, well, because this is exactly what a narcissist does. And sometimes it is. It's y 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. You know, so it's a. So it's just even the terming and it's the. 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 empower, empathic and literally meeting a person where they're at. Grief takes time. Trauma takes time to process. Hurt needs to be processed on an individual's time. And saying be happy because I'm telling you to be happy, is completely unempathic. But yet here we are.

So let me ask you to define narcissism and let's make some distinctions between sociopaths, psychopaths and narcissists, 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. But 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. 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 or moved. 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 it. 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 are. 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 money up front. You know what? I'm too good to show up to a job. Why should I do that? Like, I got all these ide ideas. I'm the next Steve Jobs. Like, 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 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 non profit 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 theoret but we didn't make it into diagnosis until the 70s. Francis was one of 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 Health, mental illness, you have to. In order for it to be diagnosis, 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 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. So that's why 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. 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 going to run into most, 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 there I was once supposed to do, I think an interview with Steve Madden 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 he did. 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 save 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 them, 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. Like it doesn't bother them at all. So is this a genetic.

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, but it's that. But the key with the 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 circumspective 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 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. All he's. He never, ever express 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 sexually abused countless scores of girls and women over 20 years at USC. Just, no, 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 see 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 him 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, the 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, why can't I kill her? 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.

What I mean, is there any idea how many people in the United States, as example, are North America, are 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, then 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 where it's not working as well as it could be. And again, you may have also gotten lucky, Joe, because 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 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 girlfriends like, girlfriend's like, yeah, she's going. And she's like, I'm not telling her everything that you know. Is that narcissism? I think it's probably a heavy handed use of the word. But that, that lack of empathy, I mean that, 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 got to tell you, so far my alarms maybe have gone off one and a half times today at the most.

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 going to 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 cultivate that, you know, 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 it's. But everyone's humble, you know, so. But I think that might do with the curation.

What's funny too, like, I don't ever want this group to be known for me. I wanted 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 this. 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? Meaning like what, what are. 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 start, 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 it's like, oh, come on, get over it.

I rarely say stuff like that because with the work that I do in 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.

Yeah, 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 like, oh, my God, like, there's too many people talking about their feelings. I don't want to be bothered with this.

You know, 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 call 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. 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 to the you're a narcissist session. 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, or 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 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 name. 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 being an asshole. Now 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 then where we really ended, 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, 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 is 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 lives? 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 because 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 Game Boy. Fascinating. Is that a win? I think so, yeah.

Better than the alternative.

He was fine with it. 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.

Hey, I hope you're enjoying this video. And I want to let you know that I have a new book that's come out and if you'd like to get it absolutely free, there's a link below in the description. Or you can wait till the end of this video or you can Simply go to joe'sfreebook.com and you can get a copy there. Let me ask you because it brings something up. So all the work that I. Interesting that I built one of the, you know, 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. And 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, you know, 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 like even psychopaths who. You're saying. So 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. 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 he, you know, 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 narcissistic? 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 easy going 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 spoiled. 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 and 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. It was required. I did the best I could. But I'm shocked at people who are 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 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 saying, why does anyone want anything to do with me? I'm like, you're not a nice person to them, you know, and I understand why you're not a nice person, but that's the balancing act here.

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, you know, but I'd love to have you touch on some of this, because I think it's. 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 with them. 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 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'm 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. You know, 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. You see? So they're not going to engage in it. So the engagement is where people get hurt. 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 narcissistic. I'm not going to 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 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. Yeah, okay, so it's though I would say don't engage, don't defend, don't, 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. 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. Them now, 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 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 self preservation. Exactly. It's about self preservation.

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 know, you do start to see it. And you also start to become, especially if you've really been hurt, you know, 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. Like, it was. Like, it was literally when my career should have gone left and ended up going right, much to my toll, and then end up. Ended up exactly where I wanted it and then once in a personal space. 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 going to put it out there. I called narcissism the secondhand smoke of mental illness. Because you're just being near them is probably going to make you sick over time. 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 coming off this guy. Very arrogant, lots of swaggers. 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, like when I was trying to date, they were kind of like, he's charismatic. I'm like, oh no, absolutely not. And so I was looking, let's find someone awkward who's sitting in the corner, doesn't have friends. That's my guy. 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 is happens. I mean, they're so sweet and kind and loving.

And I think I understood what you said, that psychopath and sociopath, there may be a CNS or a genetic component with psychopath and then a 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 of not so great. Because there's not a lot of good treatment work done because they don't come into treatment, they're 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 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 then I work with the actual narcissist. 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 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 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 bored right now? Like, I'm worried about Joe, I'm worried about all of you. But the in part is, am I 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 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. 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 so that's. 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. And it's a two year rewiring process. Before you kind of go, okay, we can hang out together a little more.

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.

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. There's not enough times I can tell you you're wonderful and you're beautiful and you're smart and you're successful, and 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.

Or behaviors, right?

Or behaviors. I find this when I work with rehab centers, addiction centers. And in fact, 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 going to be great. Everything's going to 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 people who are narcissistic are much more likely to relapse because 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, you know, 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. I was going to 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 going to 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 resentment 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 did, I cheated on you and you're great. That's permission to do that again. Rarely, sadly, 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 10, they went out and committed the same transgression again, thinking that 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 abuse. 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 not forgiven. 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 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. Okay.

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