NARCISSIST, PSYCHOPATH, OR SOCIOPATH: What's The Difference Feat. Dr. Ramani & Gabor Mate

So let me ask you to define narcissism, and let's make some distinctions between sociopaths, psychopaths, 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. And 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. Cause 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. 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 fear 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 ideas, I'm the next Steve Jobs, like, let the world find me. That's covert narcissism. They look so hang dog and so silly, 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, they're 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. And 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 diagnosis till the 70s. Francis was one 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.

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.

Yeah.

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 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. I was telling him for. 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 too. 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.

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 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 just say 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. Right. 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 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 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 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 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 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 so sociopaths in prison. And 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 is a psychopath at some level doesn't understand the function of rules. They're like, why is this a rule? She did me wrong in a drug deal. Why can't I kill her? Please help. 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.

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 of narcissists, then maybe.

Yeah. I mean, and this, I mean, again.

I don't want to be the ones that you.

Just because I love this group has been amazing.

Yeah.

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'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 girlfriends like, girlfriend's like, yeah, she's going, 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 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.

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's free book and you can get a copy there.

Narcissism is a personality style. Let's break out of the idea that it's a disorder, it's a personality style. And this personality style is characterized by lack of empathy, or I would even say variable empathy, entitlement, grandiosity, arrogance, an excessive need for admiration or validation, pathological selfishness. It is a. And again, I would say really entitlement and lack of empathy or are sort of the core pillars of narcissism. And then that narcissistic personality style shows up in a whole host of behaviors like manipulation, gaslighting, dismissiveness, blame shifting, not taking responsibility, a lack of self awareness, rage, withholding, withdrawing, betrayal. So you can imagine these are incredibly unhealthy relationships. When we go deep, when we really go deep, deep, deep into the core of narcissism, we're talking about someone who is deeply insecure and riddled with shame. The challenge is, is that you are not going to get there. Even the most skilled therapist has trouble getting there. And when a regular person's in a relationship with a narcissist, that shame is constantly getting activated in the narcissistic person. And heaven knows what is setting it up. And that shame, as soon as that shame gets hit in the narcissist, narcissistic person, boom, it's an explosion of rage. So a person who's in a narcissistic relationship feels like they're living in this unpredictable landscape of not knowing what's going to set this person off, what's going to lead them to give them the silent treatment or withhold, and then what's going to look like a normal day. And because there are normal days sprinkled in there, and many times the narcissistic person is grandiose and socially skilled, people will say, we have these days, and I really like them and I really love them.

And.

And then this other day comes. So people are incredibly confused and it's this intermittent kind of good day, bad day, bad day, worst day that keeps people stuck and confused. That, though, is narcissism.

Gotcha. Okay, great. So. And you've pointed out in, in your books, in your latest book, which is it's not you, which is awesome, by the way, if you've not read it, that it's like the buzzword of the decade or the last, maybe this century, right? Narcissism. So there's how are people misusing it? Or. Cause I'll often see a lot of comments like, now everyone's called a narcissist or now or someone's like, my narcissistic partner is calling me a narcissist. What the heck? You know? And they start hating the word narcissism. And so, like, love to get your perspective on that.

This is a huge problem, Joe, everyone using the term. And I think once upon a time, even before we really started talking about this on a public stage, a lot of people took narcissism to be someone who liked looking in the mirror a lot and was very vain. That was sort of the old school.

Because that's the origin of narcissist, right?

The myth of Narcissus, and even the myth of Narcissus has gotten twisted over time, because when we really go back to the original myth and what Ovid wrote about in the. In the original mythology of it was Narcissus was the beautiful boy who sort of spurned the advances of one of the nymphs and then got punished for his arrogance of pushing her away and was doomed, Joe. Doomed to only be able to love his reflection. And so sad did he become that his reflection would not return his love, that he killed himself. So Narcissus is actually a tragic story. Narcissistic people, in their fashion, are tragic people. And so the overuse of this term is there are. People have always been frustrated in relationships, right? This is the nature of relationships. But the tricky piece is that a person who is very vain or who is on Instagram all the time, it's not. They're not necessarily a narcissistic person. A person who cheats on someone in a relationship may not necessarily be a narcissistic person. A person who lies to you may not necessarily be a narcissistic person. A person who is not a very nice boss or a demanding boss may not be a narcissistic person. You got to have all the pieces. If you give me a bag of flour, I'm not saying you gave me a cake.

Right?

You know what I'm saying? So it's a. It's a. People will. Will pick out the one component of it that might be hurting them, like selfishness. Selfishness by itself does not a narcissist make. And I think people are focusing on singular strands or they're using it as an insult. So actually, when I trained therapists, I really pivot to the use of the term antagonism, because in the world of psychology and psychiatry, that term takes in. It's like a broader construct that takes in manipulativeness and arrogance and hostility, and it applies to a variety of Things not just narcissism, but also near neighbors like sociopathy and psychopathy.

Right, right. Okay. So in your latest book, you know, one of the. One of the emphasis and focuses on helping the person heal. Not so much emphasis on the narcissist itself, although the first beginning part lays the foundation and the groundwork. So for people that are out there, let's play a game. How do you spot a narcissist in a crowd?

You know, you know, it's funny, that's. This is the question everyone grapples with. How quickly can I find them? What are the red flags? How can I pick them out in a crowd? I mean, listen, it's a probability game, right? It's like picking a horse in a race. You're going to. If you pick the odds on favorite, it's probably a good bet, but they still may not win the race in a crowd. If somebody said, all right, I'll give you 10 bucks, tell me who's most likely the most narcissistic person here. I'm probably going to gravitate to either the most charming, charismatic, attention seeking person in the room or the most aggrieved, angry person in the room. Those are my two bets.

Right?

They're different people. Sometimes that aggrieved angry person isn't as socially skilled. They might be sort of victimized and sullen and petulant and whereas that grandiose, charismatic, charming person is smooth as can be and is pulling old, you know, pulling chairs out for ladies to sit at the table. Like all the manners and all of that. So it's that you'll see these two different kinds of portrayals. But those are the two people I'd be looking for in a room. Unfortunately, we're drawn to that charming, charismatic person.

Yeah, no, totally, totally. So do narcissists usually develop relationships with non narcissists or do they often find each other together?

So you find you're asking such an interesting question. And I've really been doing a deeper dive into this issue, so I'm so glad you asked it. One of the things that people struggle with is they say, am I a narcissist magnet? And one thing I tell everyone who's ever gotten into a narcissistic relationship, I say to them, you know why the narcissist chose you? Not because you're the broken gazelle, not because you're damaged, not because you look like an easy mark. They chose you because you were attractive. They chose you because you're good supply and whatever for Every narcissist supply is a little different, right? Narcissistic folks are heat seeking status missiles. They want status. Right? Now, status means different things to different people. For some people, it's looks and appearance. For another person it might be money. For another person, it might be position. For another person, it might be contacts. It depends on everyone, right? And for some people, it might be that they're absolutely beautiful, but like very malleable, right? But that supply is going to be different. So they chose you because you're a fantastic supply. And a narcissistic person isn't going to choose someone who makes them look bad. So I always say, folks, if they chose you, you got it going on. So let's not get into this place of you're somehow broken. And so for that reason, a narcissistic person could end up with any number of people in a relationship, including another narcissistic person. Because another narcissistic person could be quite charming and charismatic and grandiose and attractive themselves. And you can imagine that's an extraordinarily volatile relationship. And we're talking a lot about intimate relationships in a way and sort of how we're framing it. This can happen in families, this can happen in business relationships. You and I have talked about that a lot. You can imagine if you're in business and you're looking for someone to be like this great business partner, someone who's really visionary and charming and energetic and charismatic, that might be who you're drawn to. And then before you know it, the whole business goes poof because you've got this narcissistic business partner, okay?

So that's really great. I want to have you go elaborate a little more on narcissistic supply, because in your book you just define because that's what they want. They want. Like what is that actually mean? And let me frame it from this standpoint. So we all go into relationships because we want something, right? I always say this all the time. You know, it's like, what do people want? We're going to want to eat lunch later, right? Everybody wants something. People are coming to this event today because they want to do trauma healing. So everyone wants something. People go into relationships because they want companionship, they want intimacy, they want sex, they want whatever. So the narcissist, what are they actually seeking? Because I think it's. You really help people understand what they're looking for. And if they don't get it, they can get really ugly, they can get very violent, they can destroy their Your life.

Right.

And I'm gonna, I'm gonna push back on you a little. Joe here is that it's that everyone's wanting something in a relationship. Because I also think that even more pressure primal to us is an attachment seeking element. And that's less of a want, but a drive and a need. Right. Human beings are wired for attachment. And when a human being is not attachment oriented, it's actually a bit pathologic. Right. We're a tribal species. We live in small social groups. We need each other. We have babies that take a long time to get to maturity. So that means you need multiple people on the job.

Right.

So evolutionarily, we are attachment system seeking creatures. Right? So it means that most people are seeking attachment. Connection, reciprocity, mutuality, compassion. They want to, you know, there's caring and being cared for. Right, Right. The narcissistic person though, isn't coming at that from a different angle. Not saying the narcissistic people don't want attachment though. They tend to be more anxiously and avoidantly attached. So they're either not. There's a lack of capacity for intimacy or there's like a lot of a push, pull in, out, in, out kind of thing. But that supply seeking is almost a higher order motivation for them. Right. Because that feeds that insecurity. There's an empty beast in them that's always needing more, more and more and more. And so that supply is something that not only makes the transaction of the relationship make sense to them. Right. Because a relationship isn't for that, just that attachment need for them. It's. They're getting something from this. Right. Whatever getting something means. And it's usually some form of social status. Right? But supply gets stale, right. At some point that very attractive partner gets older and is not as attractive, or they're not a novelty anymore. And narcissistic folks are very reward sensitive. That's why we see a high overlap with narcissism and addiction. That same kind of dopaminergic orientation of reward, reward, reward, whatever that looks like. Gambling, drugs, alcohol, sex, pick your, pick your poison, shopping. You know, there is also that kind of compulsion we see. So that supply is really kind of an offset to the insecurity and the shame. And it bolsters those external defenses like entitlement that allows the narcissistic person to sort of feel anodyne, in control and able to dominate, so that it's a constant sort of feeding the energy to do that.

Gotcha.

Does that make sense?

Totally. No. In the other flip side, which I didn't find finish on like we all want something. I, I tend to look at it from the standpoint of if you want something from somebody, make sure that your give is equal to a greater want. So you're, you're not a taker. And narcissists seem to be the ultimate takers. Yeah, they just take like every. It's not, it's not a given. If it is a give. It's, it's like fake.

Well, it's a performative give. At that point, the give is still also a source of supply. That's where we talk about communal narcissism. Those narcissistic fear folks who it's, it's there, they sort of trick people because unlike the grandiose narcissist who's very extroverted and sort of look at me and sort of shiny and handsome and all this other stuff, or the vulnerable narcissist who plays victim and everyone gives them supply by trying to like save them or give them supply in some other way. The communal narcissist gets their supply by playing at humanitarian and rescuer. And I'm the great savior. And so that's why at the most extreme end of the communal continuum, we would see a cult leader, but at the more mild ends, we'd see the person who seems to be organizing things to save every vulnerable group in the world. But behind closed doors, they're screaming at their spouse, they're screaming at their staff. So they're a terrible person. But to the world they seem like a humanitarian. You know what I'm talking about?

I absolutely. You're the. When I first, you first shared that term with me about, I don't know, four years ago, we were talking and. Well, won't they names very famous person men and women that give to charity let the whole world know they're doing it. Oh yeah, social media, posts, television, you name it. And they're donating to everything. They're contributing to everything. But absolutely, it's all a status seeking. Look at me, I'm so wonderful, I'm so great.

And Joe, the wellness world is also fraught with this too. I mean, I have worked with many people in yoga communities, things like that. They'll say, I went in with my heart open, wanting to learn from, from this teacher, from this healer. And by the time they were done in this space, I went into vulnerable. A very narcissistic person was at the top of that food chain and advantaging people and sort of is Quite extortionate. It was humiliating. And that, to me, is heartbreaking because it's hard enough for a person to get to vulnerability, but then to get pulled into a community where once again, they're caught in a toxic transaction. That's communal narcissism. Totally.

What is the. I've got a few questions I've written down I wanted to ask you. So what's the single most surprising thing narcissists do that people never expect until it's too late?

I think the thing that throws people off about narcissistic folks is they're looking for almost a psychopathic lack of empathy. Does that make sense? So we keep hearing lack of empathy, lack of empathy. So they're expecting to meet someone cold and remote and distant who doesn't cry at movies and who doesn't like babies and doesn't like puppies and all of that stuff. Right. So when they meet a narcissistic person who actually can seem quite gregarious and warm and cry at the movie and be emotional at times, that's what throws people off. And I think this is why we've got to get away from this idea of the narcissistic person having, like, a forked tongue and, you know, like, horns on their. On their head. It's not that people fall in love with. With these folks, because there's a moment in time, in many moments in time, when they can show up with what feels like empathy. But it's often what we call cognitive empathy. Narcissistic people understand this idea of empathy. They understand emotion. They could say, I understand why you feel that way. It feels very analytic. But that's not emotional empathy, which is somebody's entire demeanor changing. Somebody not screaming at you on a bad day because it's inconvenient. Right. But that cognitive empathy, I have to say, is the thing that throws a lot of people off because they'll see someone who looks. And it, like, looks empathic. And so they're saying, well, maybe they're not narcissistic because they were really nice to my aunt when she came to visit, or they really cried at that person's funeral. Like, they seem to show this emotion. And I think that the key is to sort of understand this idea of cognitive empathy, but also consistency and how they show up on your bad days.

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. Gotcha. No, Great, Great. So why do so many people stay emotionally trauma bonded even when they know the narcissist is toxic?

So there's, there's a couple ways I.

Want to go with this is. One is the con. The, the. The idea of trauma bonding is really based on a. On a what feels like almost like a physiologically unbreakable connection you have with someone that's created by that alternation between good and bad or not so bad and better or whatever it may be. But it's an alternation, right? If we think of it in its most primal way for how a trauma bonded relationship is created for a child, the child needs the caregiver. There's no alternative here. So the child has to go through all of these mental accommodations to maintain that relationship. Narratives they create blaming themselves, anything to make it so they can maintain that relationship. And there's a lot of justifications, there's a lot of experience excuses. There's a lot of almost metaphysical thinking about the relationship to keep it in place. Because the idea of losing that relationship for a child is a complete attachment fracture that the child simply couldn't tolerate and survive. Now fast forward to adulthood where we don't have those same survival needs, but still that alternation with someone we feel attached to, connected to, that we love, because there are some good days. Again, that pattern of rationalization and justification and having the same arguments and never quite resolving them and making excuses for the relationship. And one of the things that also happens is people become isolated in these relationships so they don't get that sort of alternate point of view. Right? And that's all. There's something almost deliberate about that. People won't be able to articulate in an adult manner what they like about this person. Again, I always call it my trauma bond hack when I'm working with a client is they'll say, I love them, I love them. It's clearly a dysfunctional relationship. I'll say, what do you love about them? And the client will always pause and they'll say, okay, Dr. Ramani, I. Well, okay, so I love. I, I can't put it into words. That's when I know I'm like, this is trauma bonding. Because when you really love someone and it's healthy, you'll say, this is my friend, my companion. I love being with them. I look forward to Seeing, seeing them, I, we share so much like they're, they're articulating a coherent model of the relationship versus a trauma bonded relationship. There's no coherent schema because it's all based on this sort of physiological panic model. Does that make sense? And so the idea, and the person will say the idea of ending this relationship fills them with panic. Even as they intellectually at a, at almost like a, a cerebral cortex level, they know this is not a healthy relationship. Like I know they cheat on me, I know they lie. I know, I know. But what's happening is much more, it's much more primal, right? It's much more an attachment oriented where there is a sense of panic, of what if I'm always alone? What if they find someone better? What if it's me? That's not enough. And that panicky system is what sort of kicks in for someone. And undoing that is no small task therapeutically. A lot of folks really benefit from trauma oriented work. And where did this, where did the schema, where did this model come from?

Schema.

So a schema is a mental model, right? And we can think of this in terms of again what I was using the term, a coherent narrative. A coherent narrative is being able to look at something holistically. Great example would be a childhood, right? A childhood where a person could say I was abused by one parent or I was abandoned by the parent. And since then I keep looking for people who reject me, but when a kind person comes along, I reject them. The person is able to see everything in a very coherent, consistent, stable way. So the more stable the schema usually the healthier it is because it almost becomes like a little mental gps. I know how to navigate the situation. And schemas are driven by experience, they're driven by temperament, they're driven by culture, and they're driven by personality, right? So, and having that model, when it's coherent and healthy, then a person's also even able to say, oh, I see what I'm doing here in this relationship. But I often see in the more trauma bonded relationships, there's no coherence in that schema, in that narrative.

No. Super helpful. So how, how do we set ourselves up for being able to develop healthy, connected relationships? Because you've heard this thousand times where someone's like, why do I keep picking this bad person? What's wrong with me? Like there's something their pickers messed up. And maybe it is, maybe the. And when I say it, I mean they've been in damaging relationships and they're scared, they're gunshot, they don't know what to do. They're, you know, they've, they've been burned. They don't want to get hurt again. So therefore they don't play to win. They play not to lose. And if you play not to lose, you lose.

So I want, I want to connect this back to our trauma bond, Our trauma bond question too. When we think of this, that narcissistic relationships, we often make the knee jerk assumption that this is a trauma bonded relationship. Not necessarily. So too. There are plenty of people in narcissistic relationships who aren't trauma bonded but can't get out. So it's very, and I work with a lot of folks who are in narcissistic relationships and not trauma bonded. Like if this fool walked out the door tomorrow, as long as I could keep my kids or keep the house, I would be fine. So there, there's external structures, practical issues, minor children, finances, family court, a whole host of other things, family traditions, whatever it may be. So those folks are like, I see this 100% clearly, but there's no clear path out for me right now. To your point about how do we, how do we talk with people and create these healthier models of relationships? First of all, we need to create healthier models of relationships. We don't talk to people about this. Right. For all the things we talk about, we don't really have those straight up informed by psychological science conversations of what makes a healthy relationship. And I keep using these terms, mutuality, reciprocity, respect, compassion, and above all else, Jo, psychological safety. That a person feels like they can come into a relationship and show up as they are, farts and all, and not feel that they are going to be rejected on that. And, and I say that jokingly, but I always say like there's the fart test in the relationship. That first time you pass gas in front of someone, you're like, oh my God. I'm like, what did you, did you really think you were going to be married to someone in 50 years and not pass gas in front of them? And I'm like, and look, they're still here. Maybe they'll, they'll laugh a little. And I'm like, if they get up and leave because you had beans for.

Dinner, I don't know that this was the keeper.

But I think that that kind of model of I have to be perfect, I have to show up as this idealized version of myself, I can't be authentic. And I do think it takes us to that conversation about authenticity. Another really overused word these days. But that has so much power in creating healthy relationships because it's. That requires us, even before the relationship to do a deep dive in who am I? What do I stand for? How do I show up? And people are afraid of that because they were told, maybe in childhood I show up as my true self. I'm going to be raged at, I'm going to be told I'm selfish, I'm going to be told I'm ungrateful. They go into a relationship, the first time they show up as their true selves, they're rejected. And so that can really squelch that authentic self. Right. But that's what a healthy relationship is, that capacity to feel like you're in something that's not only psychologically safe, but balance. We are very much so still. And I think social media made this worse in the era of the check. The check mark relationship. You know, if for. I think we still have very gendered anticipations around that, whether it's around money or appearance or youth or, or whatever it may be, intelligence, anything. And instead of these very, very sorts of healthy parameters. And I don't know about you, Joe, but I have a handful of friends who are in fantastic long term relationships and marriages. And when I look at all of their relationships and these are people you can of every age, ethnicity, these are straight couples, these are queer couples, These are couples with money, without money. And you feel that you're in the presence of two people who get each other, who, who have each other's backs. It doesn't feel lovey dovey. I don't feel like I'm in some sort of, you know, sort of fairy tale. I feel like I'm with two people where it's just like a big cozy blanket and I just want to stay in their house forever. And that, and that kind of alchemy. There was often two healthy people that entered that relationship.

That's really great. Yeah. And that, that feels really good. And there are. And I'll tell you, I think it's important to have models.

Yeah.

Of relationships because if everyone you hang around with is completely dysfunctional and talking about each other, you know, it's just. Yeah. It doesn't help you at all. We need and look, I think in a lot of ways you are providing models. Like I take like we have one interview that we did that has over a million views and I have at least 100 times when someone has sent me a message because I have genius recovery so I'm talking to people that are struggling with addiction all the time. It's just kind of weird how I've. My own recovery has led to all these other things I do. And I will utilize your interviews. I will say you need to watch this. And so it's not just an interview. It's literally a toolkit. It's helping people work through their. Their lives. So what is if you could wave a magic wand. There's so much you've learned. You've had so many of these conversations. You ever get sick of talking about this stuff?

I don't, because Joe, one with the beauties of being sort of a former academic is you never stop the work. Like, it's all. Your head's in the journal articles. You're always reading the new science. You're again, even. Here we are today at this beautiful seminar on trauma. I get to learn from Gabor all day. I get to learn, learn from Kimberly all day. I get to learn from folks like you about addiction. So it's. It's not just getting your head in the clouds with all the minutiae of the science, but talking to people who have walked the walk. And so every day as a teacher, and it's like this gigantic sculpture. You're always adding more clay to it. You're always flexible and willing to sort of see things in a new way. So I never get tired of it because I have the real privilege of always getting to learn, pushing myself to learn, always reading books and always talking to survivors.

Yeah. Yeah. And so, so you've learned so much that, like, what have you discovered over the last year or so that you're like, ah, this is really valuable, that I think people need to be aware of this. And I'd love to have you share some of those things because you're. You're always on the cutting edge of all of this. I mean, you, you, you in. I mean, I really admire just how much work and what you deal with is pretty heavy. I mean, you deal with some very difficult situations that I don't know very many people that could unravel. Some of the stuff that you work.

With, well, I really appreciate that, but again, it feels like a real privilege. You know, I've lived experience in all of this, so I get it, I feel it, and I know how important it is for people to feel seen and not shamed. I think that the piece that. In this year that has really been illuminating for me and it's such. It's such a. I was reading in all These sort of complex models. But the simple part of it is anyone who's in a narcissist, narcissistic relationship, I don't care how mild or severe it is, it is a relational trauma and it is a betrayal trauma. And the only way to treat relational trauma is in relationship that we, that you are now, basically you are fixing that broken schema of a relationship. And even whether it's in the therapeutic room where you're teaching someone, people show up, people care, that this can be a healthy space, that the therapist can show up authentically. And then it's about helping that person heal in community. And we have a monthly membership. And what I've seen now, we've had it for over two years. And you need that much time to sort of see changes in trend. What's been remarkable watching that healing community is watching people who all came in, not everyone didn't come at the same time, like some people come, drop out, whatever. But is watching people evolve from feeling that they couldn't even get out of bed to becoming the healers themselves. They healed relationally. You see this in the addiction community all the time. We heal relationally, right? That idea that somebody can go off with a book or a podcast and do this themselves is never going to happen. Or even. I still don't even think therapy is sufficient. There has to be community. We heal in community. And I think that helping people understand that they're not alone. And I have, you know, listen, I have worked with folks who've been in 30, 45, 50 year marriages with narcissistic folks, right? So that raise kids in it, the whole nine yards. And they said, you know what, Dr. Ramany? If I had five years, eight years into this marriage, even before we had kids one or two years in, had I read this, I would have gotten out. There was just simply no framework, we had no language, right? And so, and that applies in the world of addiction. Think of how long there was no language. We didn't understand this as a disease. We didn't understand how people heal. We didn't understand the intersection of true trauma and addiction, right? When those, each of those layers of the onion got peeled away, we have had more compassionate conversations. People are getting better treatment. While narcissism is about 20 years behind that right now in terms of understanding how that shows up in relationships. And now that people are getting these schemas, they're willing to clock these patterns earlier. And that plus the relational understanding, I think we're actually going to start seeing people being More discerning in their relationships, maybe sort of capture these things as patterns and start disengaging earlier, giving themselves even permission. Not just in intimate relationships, but even in workplace relationships, family relationships, saying, no, this isn't okay. This is one sided. This is asymmetric. This doesn't make sense. So I think the needle is moving, but as all arcs are, they move quite slowly. And so those are the things I've really learned in the last year. So I really am focusing on. On the community piece of this.

Yeah, no, so, so critical. And I always go back to the saying, you're sick of your secrets. And so having people to talk to, silent battles, the hardest battles to fight, to try to do this on your own is so difficult. So I absolutely agree. I mean, I would have never had recovery with addiction without.

I don't think anyone would.

Yeah, yeah. I always say to people, you know, like, even when they talk about 12 steps, it's not an attendance program. No, it's a step program. You go, you go meet other people, people, you do the steps, that sort of thing. I've read comments where, and I'm so curious because I've never asked you this, where someone would probably a narcissist on the other side, where, you know, you are really describing someone, they'll say like, she's a narcissist. They call you a narcissist. Yeah. So how do, like what, what is, what is, what is that about? How do you interpret it?

I mean, listen, if somebody sees themselves in the content, first of all, I applaud them for willing to do that. I think that's an incredibly vulnerable thing to do. However, that vulnerability activated the shame, activated the rage. And they're gonna. Joe, I'm gonna be very. I'm. I am willing to be completely self effacing in that they see a person who makes her living putting herself in a public forum to teach people about this. And in some level it's paying the bills. Right. You know, I'll give them that. Right. And, and many. I get that and it hurts my feelings. I'll be very. I do not ruin my comments.

I would be in a psychiatric hospital.

If I read my comments. I'm still a very, very sort of. I have my, like, I understand my own neurotic personality structure and my fearfulness and all the things.

Right.

And so I really would dig in and my own therapy say, do I have empathy? And she's like, why, why are we having this conversation? You have deep empathy, you know, and so it's Like, I'm thinking I will even stand in a line when I don't need to stand in line because I don't want anyone to see think like she's ever taking advantage. So I know I'm not those. I'm very. Because entitlement is the sort of the trunk of the tree.

And so I don't, I never.

And so I'm pretty confident that I'm not. In fact, I think if I was narcissistic, my business would have been so much better and so much bigger. But I, I, but you, you do come against that. And I do think that more than anything is that people are being made uncomfortable about this conversation, and so it's activating shame in them. I also think that it's the nature of, of online spaces, and so people are on the attack. I'm sure you get all this stuff all the time. And so any of us in this space too.

Yeah.

No, you just, like, what? Just hearing you say that makes me realize, why the heck are we so sensitive? Where I could read like a book review where, you know, there's like, one, there was one that I read recently that was negative review, and right before and right after is like, this is the best book I've ever read. And I'm like, how is it, you know, but why do I get so bothered by that? Why do we get so, but why are we so sensitive to it and how do we not be bothered by it? Or maybe that's part of just being a really cool human. Like, yeah, you're sensitive. You, you, you know, you want, you don't want people to call you something that you don't, that you're not, or you don't feel that you're not. I mean, I, you know, how, I guess, how do we become less bothered by it?

I don't know that we do become less bothered by it. In fact, I don't know that we do. I think that part of the burden of empathy is that that also would, would sensitize us to that kind of discourse. And it will. And I'm going to be frank with you. I think that anyone who's had a history of trauma and anyone who's had, or a history of these kinds of narcissistic betraying relationships, there is such, again, a core schema of what's wrong with me? What did I do wrong? Do I deserve this? Am I the bad one? Right. Since that's such a central schema, that kind of commentary is going to bounce off of that. And instead of like, I'm absolutely not. That is that there's a. There's a plausibility to it. And then it causes this sort of grappling. And I don't think grappling is ever a bad thing. That. That creates the core of accountability, which is another core element of a healthy relationship. But I don't need to be sitting there all day. And I'm very much. I. Again, one of the things, the way I opened up this book was a story of me as a child and, you know, with a purple dress and not willing to, you know, sort of put myself out there more than anything because I didn't want to be made fun of. That was the driver that day is I did not want people to see me and make fun of me. And even to this day, I still think, what the hell are you doing? But I. Because there was no way to do this anonymously. Right. I could have tried. And then people like, what the heck is this? So I, I do. In academia, in some ways you can be very anonymous. So for decades of my career, you really are. You sort of. In fact, the way our work is reviewed in academia is it's done. It is done anonymously. They remove our names from the manuscript. So there's no bias in the peer review process. So there's almost a built in anonymity in the scholarly process. And so if people say it, they say it. And I'm thinking if they. Again, I'm not reading the comments, so.

I'm not seeing it.

But if it did lead the person to grapple with, well, maybe I am the narcissistic one, maybe then the content was worth it.

So you talk about stuff like medicine journeys and you talk about some that to a lot of people seem incredibly extreme. And I'm very careful to go tell people to go do ayahuasca or MDMA or psilocybin or what. Because it's not the medicine itself or what some people say is a drug. It's as Timothy Leary said, I think in the 50s, the set and setting. Right. And could you speak to that? Just because it's become a trendy thing now and there's people that are doing it well and there's others that are putting people in dangerous situations.

Yeah. So I do have one chapter out of 33 on psychedelics which kind of puts it into perspective. Like it's not the major thing of what I do. And recently I refused to write a blurb for a book. And I said, even this is the best book ever written. In the history of the universe. I will not blurb this book because of the title. The title was How Psychedelics will save the World. I don't think anything is going to save the world. No one particular modality is going to save the world or even the medical system. I think for that we need transformations on a much larger level in our thinking, in our thinking and in our activity, in our institutions and how we relate to each other. Nevertheless, psychedelics can make a contribution. And as you heard me speaking today, and Joe and I are conversing, so much of what drives our behaviors, our unconscious patterns that we adopted in response to traumatic events in childhood, so that so much of what pushes us and drives us, we're not that aware of it. And so many of the mental health challenges, for example, or physical health challenges for that matter, that are plaguing us have to do with childhood dynamics. So, for example, depression. So depression is this inherited biological illness? No, it ain't. You know how much evidence there is that depression is a biologically caused illness? Zero. That's how much evidence there is. And the fact that now I've taken antidepressants and they've helped me, but the fact that an antidepressant helped me doesn't prove like the serotonin, which is the medication, the brain chemical that the antidepressants elevate, like Prozac or Zoloft and so on. Okay, so that made me feel better. But that doesn't prove that my depression was caused by a lack of serotonin any more than if, you know, you go to a party and you're feeling very shy and you have one shot of bourbon, and now you feel more sociable and you talk to people and you're more confident, does that prove that your social shyness was caused by lack of bourbon in your brain? You know, so we make these false connections. Now, if you look at what depression actually is, what does it mean to depress something? It means to push it down. That's what it means. And what do people push down when they're depressed? Their emotions, do they feel flat. Now, why would somebody push down their emotions? Because in childhood it was too dangerous for them to experience them because their mind rejected them somehow, if they experienced their emotions, so they pushed their emotions down in order to belong and to be accepted. And then 30 years later, they're diagnosed with this condition called depression. Now you ask about psychedelics, whether we're talking about depression or addiction or the self induced stress that drives many of the autoimmune conditions out there. What the psychedelics do is they temporarily remove the membrane between the conscious and the unconscious. And now you get to see all the rage and all the pain, all the fear that you've been carrying inside, but you get to see it in a safe environment, ideally. And by the way, not all environments are safe. And there's a lot of negative stuff that happens in the psychedelic world. We have to acknowledge that. But in a safe environment, with the right guidance now, you get to see what's been driving you no longer as the helpless, isolated child, but as an adult, but the capacities of an adult. And you get to witness yourself guided and supported and kept safe. What a powerful experience that can be. And also, of course, under the impact of the psychedelics, people can have the experience of getting to know their true selves, the part that they got disconnected from long, long time ago. So ideally, and in a very romanticized nutshell, that's what psychedelics can do. It's more complex than that. And it's never just. Here it is. I know, I've got it. I mean, believe me, I've done psychedelics and I. If you don't do the integrative work, if you don't, they just open the door for you. It's still up to you to go through that door, walk through that door and walk that path in your actual life. You can't rely on that psychedelic experience. But a lot of people have found it transformative. They've made realizations about themselves that would have taken them a long time, if at all, to get to through ordinary psychotherapy. So they still have a role to play. And they've been shown to play significant potential positive roles in the treatment of ptsd. For example, various medicines can do that in the right conditions. People can overcome addictions. People can just be closer to themselves. So that's the ideal but realizable benefit of psychedelics.

Very good, very good. And there's a great chapter in the Myth of Normal on this, so thank you. My friend, Shawn Stevenson, who died in 2019. He never walked a day in his life. He had a brittle bone condition, had over 200 broken bones in his body before the age of 18, endured incredible suffering. Most people here knew Shawn. Shawn was just larger than life, and he just transcended this shell of a body that I could not even imagine living with. And his parents, Gloria and Greg, were amazing humans. And he fell out of his wheelchair almost five years to the day of when he nearly died five years prior, when he had gotten a new dog and the dog got spooked and pulled the wheelchair, and he fell over and he cracked his skull and broke a femur and broke a collarbone. And same damn thing happened again, except he had a new wheelchair. He was testing out and it flipped going down a ramp, and he hit his head and he FaceTimed me. He was in with his wife Mindy in the car, and he said, can you meet me in the hospital? I'm going to the hospital right now. And I was like, oh, shit. We thought it was just like a minor thing. He wasn't anywhere severe as what it was before. So I get to the hospital and he's on a. He's. Now, they'd given him drugs and he's like in this sort of haze, doped out sort of state. And his wife Mindy's on one side of the gurney and I'm on the other. And they're getting ready to transport him via, you know, an air vac to another hospital because they're going to have to do potential surgery. And he just comes out of this sort of, you know, drugged state he was in and really clear just for. Just for a few seconds. This line I'd heard a million times before. Not a million, but a lot. And he said it in just the fact of where we were at in the situation. He said it took on a whole other meaning. And he said. He, like, comes out, he goes, this is. He says something like, this is happening to me now. And I'm like, what? He goes, this is happening. This is not happening to me. This is happening for me, you know? And then he goes right back in. And I was like, okay. And that brought on a whole nother meaning. Even if you believe that or not, that this is not happening to you, it's happening for you. Do you process the things that you've gone through like that? Or you're just like, man, I just like, whatever. I mean, because.

No, well, I. Yeah, I mean, I've tried.

Yeah.

I don't think I. Look, I've had a fucked up life. I told you all that a minute ago. But, you know, from, you know, young mom, we were just fighting our whole lives. You can't. And we've talked about. Touched on ptsd. PTSD is not exclusive to our soldiers. Right. And it's not exclusive to first responders.

Right?

We can all go through ptsd. Right? But you cannot have lived the life that I've lived, especially the last 10 or 11 years, and not have PTSD. Or you cannot go. And I mean, from hero to zero in 24 hours. You can't, you can't. You can't go through that and not have ptsd. So, you know, how do you address that, right? And how do you go unpack that, right? And what is the T in PTSD is trauma. And you know, for a while, for probably five years, I was like, ah, you know, fuck this. I'm gonna. I'm gonna muscle my way through this. And you can't. And you just can't. And you can't muscle your way through relationships in your life as you try to muscle your way through that. And so I. It's been probably five years. So I went to a place in. Outside Nashville called On Site, which I love. We can all go. I don't know if anybody's heard of On Site. You probably heard of Hoffman. Hoffman's another one that's.

I've done Hoffman, which is pretty cool.

Hoffman's. Hoffman is a group setting. I don't do well giving up. I don't do well surrendering in front of groups other than today. And so I needed. I wanted something. I just knew I'd give it all. And by the way, you can't do either of them or any of them if you're not going to give it up. If you're not going to go and give it up, then don't go. Do not spend the money. Do not waste the money. Do not go. And so I end up at on sites five days, you know, 10 hours a day, full intensive, where you just walk it back and you unpack your entire fucking life. And so I've been to On Site four times since. I mean, it's. And I love it. I love. You know, my favorite thing about On Site is when you show up, they say, give me all your devices. Like, and if they say, see you with an Apple watch, give me that too. And I'm like, whoa. And you're like, it feels so weird. And man, you get a day in, you're like, this is kind of cool. You get two days in, you're like, this is really cool. And then when you're done after five days and they go, give you those devices, whatever it is, phone, computer, iPad, watch, whatever. You're like, I don't want it. I don't want this back. But yeah, I mean, that changed my life, right? And that's been really the last five years. And so I. And I love. I kind of crave it in a weird way. I make it part of my annual.

That's pretty cool.

Yeah.

No, that's actually really cool.

Yeah, I mean, you know, you just, you know, you gotta unpack it all, dude. Not just the sort of the famous stuff for the stuff that was a headline. You got to go all the way back. I mean, I wasn't even born Lance Armstrong.

Armstrong.

Right. I was born Lance Gunderson to a guy who walked out on the first date to a 17 year old mom. Like I grew up with this 5, 300 pounds by the way. She's turned 70 this weekend being Dallas Shithole for my mom's 70th birthday. My mom was 34 years old when I graduated high school. And so, you know, even as a one month old, right. Trauma starts in the womb. Nobody. I never knew that, like, what? My mom must have been freaking out. You're in Dallas, Texas and the whole everybody around you is like, don't have this baby. You're crazy. You cannot have this baby.

Right?

And she's like, nope, I'm having this baby.

Right.

So but that just starts there. Then I come out, dad, move, you know, Hall's ass. And then she remarries a guy named Terry Armstrong when I'm three. And I became Lance Armstrong, she became Linda Armstrong and I was adopted. I became Lance Armstrong and he was a complete loser.

Right.

So that the trauma continues. Right, Right. So no, you know, we. And it's been fun to be like, I didn't have a dad. Right. It's been fun to be a parent. Like people are like, well, how do you, you know, you don't have to be raised by a great dad to be a great dad. I like to think, and maybe it helps sometimes to be not raised by great men to know that what you just don't do.

Yeah. Well, I always think, you know, everyone has a purpose in life, even if it's a serve as a bad example. Yeah, you can see that.

You're like, that's what not to do.

Yeah. No, you can learn. You can learn a lot from. We have one of our genius network members named Dr. Don Wood, and he is a former hockey player and he's now a trauma therapist in his 60s. And he has this great line that I talk about all the time because it makes sense to me to get a better understanding of why people do what they do, how they show up, the way they show up. And he said if you understood the atmospheric conditions of somebody's life, it would make sense why they do what it is they do. And so if someone went and looked at the atmospheric conditions of your life, it Makes sense why you ended up as Lance Armstrong. Or me. Anyone here, Right. For that matter. And I believe you can change as an adult. You can change the atmospheric conditions of your life if you make certain decisions and what you expose yourself to, what you don't expose yourself to. So I always often look at like, okay, what do I need to do or not do in order to improve the atmospheric conditions of my life? And I do believe you can change the atmospheric conditions of others. For instance, you know, you had an incredible domino effect on. On society. I mean, most people know who Lance Armstrong is. There's very few people that don't know. I mean, of course, younger people.

It'd be different if the name was like, Mike Johnson.

I mean, it's exactly.

It would be easier to fade away, but the name sort of stands out.

Exactly.

It's funny, I tell you, like, if I check in for a flight and they don't write, you hand them your ID and they're like, whoa. Like, they know the name. It's really weird, that part I don't like. Yes, me. What I like, what I don't like. I don't like that. That's weird. But, yes, but to your point, like, I had. Look, 10, 11 years ago, I had a choice, right. By the way, six of my main rivals are dead, right? They all did. I told you, we all did the same thing. They all got exposed the way I got exposed, but they couldn't handle it.

Right?

Their lives completely fell apart and they're either dead by drugs or suicide.

So.

You have two choices, right?

Right.

You go that route or you say, no, no, this is going to suck for a long time, but I'm going to stay as healthy as I can. I'm going to just try and figure this thing out. And I could have gone the other route, too.

You know, when I first had dinner with Gabor Mate in 2015, he said this really interesting comment. So Gabor knew about me being my childhood and about, you know, the. Some of the stuff that happened to me. And we're just in this restaurant in Vancouver and we're just sitting there talking. And this first time I met him in person, we had spoken over the phone, but this is in 2015. And he's a, you know, small sort of, you know, he's not a big guy and he's a, you know, Hungarian doctor in his 70s. And he. We're just talking in this busy restaurant table for two of us, surrounded by people, and he says, you know, I know the cause of cancer and Then he continues to talk. I'm like, hold on, back up. You just said, you know the cause of cancer? He's like, yeah. I go, all cancer. Children with cancer, animals with bone cancer. He's like, yeah, all cancer. I'm like, okay, what's the cause of cancer? And he's like, suppression, repression. I'm like, what do you mean? He said, well, if I started pouring water on your head right now and yelling at you, I could change the physiology of your whole body. And he goes, so everything would change. He goes, so if I started pouring water on your head and yelling at you right now, what would happen? I go, what do you mean? He goes, well, your face would get flush, your adrenaline would surge, your heart rate would go up, all the cells in your body would change. And he goes, so if I did start pouring water on your head and yelling at you right now, what are some of the things that you could do? I go, he's like, how would you react if I started pouring water on your head and yelling at you? So I'm sitting there thinking about this, and I go, well, I could walk away. He goes, yeah, you could run away. And he goes, what else could you do? I said, tell you to fuck off. He said, yeah, you could fight back. And he goes, what else could you do? And I'm sitting there thinking, what are my options? I already went through those two. I go, I guess sit here while you pour water on my head and yell at me. And he goes, well, no, you could ask for help. And I. Right at that moment, I was like, wow, I think I just heard something pretty profound. And he said, so what happens when you're in a situation, usually as a child, where you can't run away, you can't fight back, you can't ask for help? There's two ways that humans deal with it. They either develop an addiction as a coping mechanism, or they develop an autoimmune condition or something like cancer. And he goes, I learned that a lot before I wrote the book, when the body says no. And so I shared that with you, and I believe there's something. Now, I believe cancer and many diseases dis ease. I don't think the body's built to have diseases. There's genetic things. There's a lot of things. Of course, there are certain things, though, that people say you can't do anything about. This would be one of them. You know, you got a 2% chance. Well, what does that mean? And what is the cause? And so I think it's either mental or physical toxins. And sometimes it's trauma. And when you're a kid and you can't run away, you can't fight back, you can't ask for help. When you were 13 years old, and probably way before then, you already had this built in trauma, so you had atmospheric conditions. But as we become an adult, we actually can ask for help. But the thing for me is I never even realized. It was so conditioned to me that, oh, that was even an option. I'm in a busy restaurant, surrounded by people, and it never even entered my consciousness that I could ask someone, hey, there's someone right here yelling at me, please, someone help me. I just, you know, and I realized when I was an addict and when I had so much, so much physical pain in my body and all kinds of stuff, my mother, you know, women that are abused and molested, there's been some studies that they have six times increase of getting cancer. My mother became a nun. She left the convent because she had gotten ill. I don't know what happened to her. But my father, he lost the love of his life. You know, you look at Louise Hayes published, you know, Hay House, you know, grief. Lungs have a lot to do with grief. Why'd my father get lung cancer while he smoked? But why did he smoke? You know, there's a lot of stuff. So I believe that, you know, not only can you be completely cured from this, I believe you can help a lot of people too. Which is why I wanted you to come here and tell this story. Because you have been taking on, I mean, going through this journey with you, you reached out to people and you were very hesitant to going to your group gathering of titans, which you created, and all this and the outpouring of love. And no matter what happens, you have opened yourself up in ways that you've never done before in your life. You've transformed your health, you have connections that never would have happened. So in a lot of ways, I look at this as a gift for you. You're 100% right. And that is his name, Gabor, that changed my life. I spent about three or four weeks praying and forgiving my mom for what she did. And just getting that release, I think.

Was the start of the healing.

You know, what's great about that is so not only do you have a real perspective and understanding about the art of productivity and organization, but you also think as a marketer, because you're helping, it's not just making decisions on stuff. It's literally how do you actually monetize and maximize. Because I always think two of my favorite words are productivity and leverage. Productivity, maximum results, least amount of time. Leverage, maximum results, least amount of effort. And when you combine those two, you simply, you're better. I mean, you become better.

Let me give you another example. I think kind of ties in with that. One of the things that we teach our clients, both at a personal level and at a business level, and even with big corporations, is what we call the seven information management questions which every individual and every business needs to answer, regardless of whether it's a for profit, a not for profit size. So it's what information do we need to keep? In what form? Is it paper or is it electronic? And if it's electronic, what program is it going to be? Electronic? How long does it need to be kept? That's records retention, which in companies has to do with risk management, because you can't. Now, it's very dangerous to keep all kinds of information because if you're sued, all of that is going to be subpoenaed and you're going to pay for that and it's going to cost a lot of money. Who's responsible for filing it? That's teamwork. That's job descriptions. In a family, it's in a husband and wife. Who's responsible for filing it? Who needs access to it? That's permissions. If it's a locked file drawer or if you're in a software program, who has access? Who has the passwords and all that. And then how do we find it? That's version control and naming mechanisms we were talking about. There's so much information out there that nobody can find anymore in companies. I mean, I can tell you some stories that are just. Oh, they're just pathetic. And then the last one is, how do you back it up?

Gotcha.

So here's the interesting thing. When I go into corporations to do training programs for people, employees are not really very interested. You know, their employer has said, I just went to do some internal bank auditors. You know, it's like the editors are like, got real work to do today. And besides this. So I say, how many of you left home this morning with more pieces of paper lying around than you prefer? Well, 50% will raise their hands. And statistically it's true for 80%. So I say, everything you're going to learn today applies at home as well. Well, now they're listening because they are wanting to tell not what they're going to go home and do, but what they're going to go home and tell their spouse to do.

Right?

So all of that, all of the things that we teach around the seven information management, we apply in a personal level. At a personal level. And then people. People are engaged. So give an example. We were talking about what I call the art of waste basketry. I mentioned that 80% of what we keep, we never use and how difficult it is to throw away. And I asked the audience, how many of you have difficulty throwing things away? And a lot of people raised their hands, and I said, how many of you know someone whose life is really hampered by the stuff they keep? You know, like, they can't have people come into their house because they don't want them to see the mess or they can't go places. You know, it's like, I can't go to the movies tonight because I really got to pay the bills. You know, I put it off long enough that I can't do it anymore. Well, most of the people raised. Everybody raised their hand. Everybody knows somebody like that. I mean, a lot of them, it's them, but they didn't know.

Well, and then they're not going to want.

They're not going to admit it. But I mean, every. Every single hand was raised. How many of you know somebody whose life who isn't able to accomplish their work or enjoy their lives because of their stuff? And everybody raised their hand, which has happened. I mean, I've done this thousands of times, and it always happens. So we're talking about, okay, how is it. So why is it so difficult to let go? Well, I wrote a book a number of years ago called Love it or Lose, Living Clutter Free Forever. And in the research for that book, I discovered a very interesting fact, and that is if there is someone who has a great deal of difficulty letting go of things to their own detriment by their own choice, it's not like they choose to keep it because they like it. It's like they're not really comfortable, but they just can't let go of it. If I ask enough questions, I will find out that that person at some point in their life had a severe emotional loss. I was doing a book signing at Barnes and Noble, and a young man in probably his 20s walked up and he said, my mother died when I was six. He said, my apartment is so full of stuff, I haven't had anybody in it for months. He said, I come home from work at night and I say, okay, tonight's the night. I'm going to clean it. And he said, the only flat surface I have is a studio, New York apartment, is a bed. And he said, I start kind of sorting on the bed. And he said, I become physically paralyzed. He said, are you telling me that I have to deal with the grief of losing my mother before I can deal with this? I said, I can't answer that question. I'm not a mental health professional. But I can tell you what I've seen, that if you will find someone that you trust to come in and work with you to help you put what you have into some kind of order. Because what is true is the more organized you get, you have an ability to then to measure whether you're using something and whether it's valuable. And then you can begin to let go. Told that story at a convention one day, and a woman came up and she said, you just saved my marriage. I said, wow, that's pretty dramatic. Tell me what you meant. And she said, I came to this convention with the intention of going home and telling my husband, to whom I'd been married 13 years, that I was leaving because he keeps all this stuff. I have allergies. I can't dust the house. He won't let go of it. And then she stopped, and literally the tears started running down her face. And she said, his mother died when he was 7. So she said, I don't know what I'm going to do, but I now realize that it wasn't that he wouldn't get rid of it, but that he couldn't. And I'm willing to go back and give it another try. I'm not sure what I'm going to do, but I'm willing to try again now that I see this side of it.

That's interesting. That's cool.

So I said, may I make a suggestion? She said, sure. I said, go back and say to him, you know, I never understood before how important all this is to you. Let's figure out how we can keep it so that I can live with it and you can live with it, too. It changed everything because he felt heard always before. And I see this all the time. It's like, you don't need this. Yes, I do. You don't need this. And there's this constant angst. And as soon as he was given permission now it's. It still took time, but I stayed in touch with him for months afterwards. And she said it was vastly improved. And there were times when he would even say, oh, I really can get rid of this. Well, I told this story at the bank auditors and at the Break. One of the women came up and said, My husband died 10 years ago, and I have all of the stuff in the house that I just have not been able to get rid of. So we were talking about these sorts of things, and at the end of the seminar, she came up and she said, I just figured out how I can get rid of this stuff. And I said, tell me. She said, I decided that every time I give away something of his, I will give away something of mine as well. I get goosebumps just telling that story. I said, one of the reasons that I'm so passionate about what I do after all these years, that's something new. In 35 years. I never heard anybody suggest that. But isn't that an awesome idea?

Yeah, no, totally.

And look at all the people that are being blessed, the people that are on the receiving end of what is being given away. There are now two people being blessed, and the person who's had 10 years of stuff in her house that, you know, she feels guilty about every single morning and every single night is being freed.

Yeah. So, Dr. Barbara Hemphill, this is the therapy. That's great. That really is great because that takes things to a whole nother level of the impact. And I love the way you articulated it because we're talking about a subject that really undermines people's ability to function and relate with each other. And even just that level of understanding. I sat and think about my own behavior when I was interviewing. Interviewing your dear friend Tracy Parks. I talked about. I have a. And she talked about digital organization. And I sort of have a hoarder sort of behavior about me. And the way that I think about it is I hold onto stuff because I see the marketing and business potential of it. So, like I'd mentioned with her, it's not like I collect lint or old stuff, socks, or I can't throw out clothes. You know, I mean, it's not that sort of stuff. It's, you know, I look at, you know, a lot of emails or. And I see, oh, this could be used as a template. This could be used as a model. But deep down inside, there's this psychological thing. And I have a person that works for me named Nate who actually happens to be sitting in the room right now. But, you know, he's been helping me with, you know, project management stuff. And one of the conversations we were having a week ago was just the ability to get rid of stuff that it's so hard. And he said, you know, in order for me to help you I want to. And he had thought about this and he, you know, showed me some questions that he had. And the top one was, what are you afraid of? Like what, what is the fear? Is it opportunity loss? Is it. You're not, you know, I mean, what is it? Why you're holding some of this stuff, which is really important to get.

I mentioned the art of waste basketry, which is a series of questions. Would it be difficult to get again? Does it exist in another place? Is it recent enough to be useful? But the last one is, what's the worst possible thing that would happen if I didn't have this? So when I'm working with someone, that's the question. There are two questions that I'm always asking. One is, what's. What's the worst possible thing would happen if you got rid of this? Whether it's deleting something from your digital storage or whether it's throwing away something and it turns out you were wrong, what would happen? And is that a price you're willing to pay? And that goes back to what I said earlier, which you can keep everything you want if you're willing to pay the price. I think about a client I had who had a PR firm in Atlanta many years years ago, and I set up a filing system for her. We use a numerical filing system where we tie. This was paper filing back in those days, and it was a paper filing system, but we tied it into an electronic search engine so you could find it. She had 35,000 files, but we could still find anything in five seconds because she could do a search, but the price she paid was a whole room, two full time file clerks. And it was a choice she was willing to make. And that's not a moral issue. It is not a moral issue. It's like this is the lifestyle. It's like some people love to be around books. I mean, it makes. It's like some people love to be about waterfalls or, you know, something else. It's your environment. That's the reason that I call my company Productive Environment. So it's. When you keep all of this, is it making you more productive? So the question is, what's the worst possible thing that would happen? And then the second one is, does this help you accomplish your work or enjoy your life?

Yeah.

So one of the things, one of the services that we offer for companies, Tracy mentioned it when we were interviewing was a productive environment day. And this is an event. If you take any 100 employees and say if, if you had the time, are there things you could comfortably throw away. 99 out of 100 would say, yes. But nobody goes to work and says, oh, I don't have anything better to do today. I'm going to clean out the files or I'm going to, you know, the place I love is in the, in the kitchen, under the sink. That's where the cartridges go for the printers that we don't even have anymore. You know, that kind of stuff, right? Nobody says that. And if somebody does do it, because there's always somebody in the company that really likes it to do that. You know, they like doing that. But if they do it, people look at them and say, are you mad? We have this project we're working on. And besides that, in order for me to clean out, I have to ask you, is this the most recent version or do we need to get. And it's like, get out of here. I have real work to do. So we go to management and say, I mean, if you look at the price that companies pay for clutter in terms of storage of things. Let me give you a scenario of this. When I first started in this, we.

Could just walk around my building.

When I first started in this business, the way decisions were made about paper was every executive had a private secretary in the early 80s, every manager and every executive had a private secretary. And every private secretary had a file clerk. And every company had a file room, and every file room had Mable. And when you as an executive were done with a project, which in those days was all files, you would hand your file to your private secretary, who purged it, who filed it, who gave it to her file clerk, who organized it and filed it within the office for like say a year or two. And then at the end of that year or two, she walked it down the hall to Mabel. And Mabel had the records retention program for the whole company. And so Mabel filed it as long as it was supposed to be filed for the company. And then it was either purged or it was shipped off site to Iron Mountain or wherever. That's the way that was the decision making structure about information. Bill Gates put computers on everybody's desk and we say, oh, we don't need all this before now. Granted, there was too much infrastructure. There were in New York when I was there. I saw file clerks reading books because they didn't have enough work. So I mean, that was. It was. But it's a classic case of the pendulum swinging too far. We went from having way too much support to suddenly having none. And now an executive who's never done any kind of admin stuff like that at all. Is supposed to figure it out. And they don't have time to.

Right.

So what happened is they started just stuffing things in file drawers, and then the file drawers get full, and nobody wants to clean them out. Nobody wants to make a decision. So we move them out in the hallway, and then nobody wants to clean out the files in the hallway. So we move those down into a storage room, and then nobody wants to clean out the storage room. So we move them to off site storage. All right. I have a client right now that has six buildings and they are downsizing to two because the economy has hit them hard and they cannot afford private offices, file clerks, I mean, file rooms, file cabinets, all of this. They estimate that they have 50 million paper documents that they have to decide what to do about before they relocate.

Wow.

Because there was nobody making decisions. Now, here's the scary part. I think as a country, we are headed toward the biggest information management disaster in history. If we do not teach employees, give them permission, and empower them to make decisions about digital information. Because if you have 1,000 pieces of paper and you have to find it for some reason, you can hire temporaries who know nothing about anything and say, I'm looking for pieces of paper with these words, words on it. And they can flip through the papers and they'll find them. If you have 1000 digital documents and they are filed, who knows where? You and Tracy talked about all the places they can be filed. First of all, you may not know where they're filed or you may find them, but they're now created by a program that you don't even have access to anymore. So although the screen says that document is there or that video is there, but the. The program that was used to create it doesn't exist. And so we're just piling up stuff and piling it up and piling it up. So go back to the productive environment days. The way productive environment days are done, we turn them into games. We get management on board. Management has to participate. This is not something that management says to employees you're going to do. So either management does their office first so that their office has already been done, or they participate on that day. We start the day with bagels and coffee or whatever, because when employees are eating, they're always happier.

Right?

Right.

And while they're eating, I do a seminar.

I start with steamed spinach and stuff.

I don't.

Okay, well, whatever.

Me too.

That's good. We start with A seminar called Sometimes It Takes an Expert to Take out the Trash, in which we talk about the art of waste basketry and clutters, postponed decisions. And there's only three decisions you can make. File, act, toss, and all, all of those things. And we set up shredding bins. We bring in shredding companies, recycling bins. We set up a trash to treasure table. So, like, you know, here's this mug that I got, and I don't like it anymore, and I'll put it on the table. And the rule is that any employee can come in all day long and take anything they want, as long as they take it home. And we give our prizes, you know, prizes for the funniest thing and the oldest thing and the most unlikely thing, the most unusual thing and stuff like that. So then we. And we send them back and everybody starts cleaning. As my mother used to say, many hands make light work. When we're all doing it together, then we can communicate about things. And the camaraderie, you can see it happen at the beginning, people are like, you know, and then it begins to pick up, you know, and then people get really excited. You know, it's like, great. Well, then we come and eat lunch together because we want them to tell stories about what they're finding and what they're doing. Then in the afternoon, while they're doing their lunch, I do a seminar on digital cleanup, or Tracy does a seminar on digital cleanup. And then we go back and have them clean up their computer and do the same thing. Well, let me give you one example. A company, 400 employees, they were getting ready to move. A classic client for us is either someone who's trying to move to what I call almost paperless, because I don't think paperless is viable, but I think almost paperless is designed, desirable. So when somebody's moving to less paper.

That even rhymed. I just liked how that.

Yeah, or they're relocating. Because when you're relocating is the one time you have to consider all those things. And are you going to pay to move it? So they were getting ready to move, and I was fairly new at doing these. And this was a. I had worked with this gentleman that owned the company as a. At a bank before. And so he said, I'm getting ready to move. You know, I thought maybe you could help me. What do we want to do? And I. I said, give me your most cluttered department. I said, give me one day. And so he said, okay. Client services. So we went into client services, like 25 people we did that day. At the end of the day, he said, okay, 11 more days. So we did 12 days in the 12 different departments. At the end of the 12 days, we had shredded alone 33,000 pounds of paper.

Wow.

And we deleted almost one half of the files off their server.

Wow.

So you're empowering people to do it now. The question you asked me before we started interviewing was, how do you maintain it? That is, you do an annual day like that that becomes part of the company culture. And people, when they know it's going to happen, then it doesn't get so bad. I have one client that does it on St. Patrick's Day and on Halloween every year. That's their company culture that they do half a day on physical and a half a day on digital. Wow.

I love it. That's such a great idea.

And then what happens is employees are saying, I'm going home. I mean, every time we do this, I'm going home, clean out the attic. I'm going home and cleaning out the garage. So we have some companies that will actually contract with Goodwill or somebody like that to bring a tractor trailer on site and so that employees can. Can bring the stuff when they come. Because a lot of times employees have the stuff at home that they want to get rid of, but they just don't have time or they don't whatever. So they know then that's a way they can do it. So it creates a win, win.

Okay. I hope you found that video awesome and useful. So if you want to get a free copy of my book, I want you to click here. And if you want to watch some more videos that will be useful and awesome, click here. Go ahead. They're over here.

Do it now.

Come on.

Thank you.

Watch them.