Life After Narcs: Dr. Ramani Durvasula on Navigating Narcissism

[00:00:00] This winter, take your icon pass north. North to abundant access, to powder-skiing legacy, to independent spirit. North where easy to get to, meets worlds away. Go north to snow basin. Now on the icon pass. The views and opinions expressed by a little bit cultier, those are the hosts.

[00:00:31] And don't reflect the official policy or position of the podcast, right Sarah? Correct. Any of the quote, fire content, I prefer lava content, provided by our guest blogger, sponsors, or authors

[00:00:42] of the opinion and are not intended to malign a religion, a group, a club, an organization, business individual, anyone or anything. Unless Sarah? You're a douchebag. Yeah, I mean pretty much. Also, we're not doctors, psychologists or wizards.

[00:00:57] We're just two non-experts trying to make you a friendly and formative podcast based on our experience that we've turned into wisdom. Okay? Good talk. Okay. Hey everybody, Sarah Edmondson here. And I'm Anthony Ames, aka Nippy, Sarah's husband, and you're listening to A Little Bit Culty,

[00:01:23] aka ALBC, a podcast about what happens when devotion goes to the dark side. We've been there and back again. A little about us, true story, we met and fell in love in a cult. And then we woke up and got the hell out of dodge.

[00:01:37] The whole thing was captured in HBO docu-series The Vow, now in its second season. I also wrote about our experience in my memoir, Scarred, the true story of how I escaped Nexium, the cult that bound my life.

[00:01:49] We did us, a couple of married podcasters who just happened to have a weekly date night where we interview experts and advocates and things like cult awareness and mind control. Wait, wait, wait, this does not count toward date night, babe. We got to schedule that, that's separate.

[00:02:02] So it was two days we got to hang out? We do this podcast thing because we learned a lot on our exit ramp out of Nexium, still on that journey. And we want to pay the lessons forward with the help of other cult survivors and whistleblowers.

[00:02:13] We know all too well that culty things happen. It happens to people every day across every walk of life. So join us each week to tackle these culty dynamics everywhere from online dating to mega churches and multi-level marketing. This stuff really is everywhere.

[00:02:26] The Cultiverse just keeps on expanding and so are we. Welcome to season five of A Little Bit Cultie, serving cult content and word salads weekly on your favorite podcast platforms. Learn more at alittlebitculti.com Welcome back everybody. Sarah, this episode might be my favorite. Why is that, Nibby?

[00:03:01] Glad you asked. We get questions and comments pretty much all the time about narcissism, right? And across the questions and comments there are some common cores, wouldn't you say? Yeah, you want to know our malignant narcissist born or made.

[00:03:14] When does healthy or typical self-interest cross over to hardcore, narc territory? And once you've been burned or maybe repeatedly roasted by a narcissist, how do you go about healing? Good questions, which we get into. We wanted some expert help tackling these big ticket questions.

[00:03:30] So we reached out to our guest today, Dr. Ramani Dervisala. Dr. Ramani is a licensed clinical psychologist and the critically acclaimed author of several books, including Should I Stay or Should I Go? Surviving a relationship with a narcissist. And don't you know who I am?

[00:03:44] How to stay sane in an era of narcissism, entitlement and incivility. I think our next book's going to be How Dare You. The focus of our clinical academic and consultive work is the causes of narcissism and high conflict entitled antagonistic personality styles

[00:04:01] and the effect narcissism has on the human relationships, mental health and societal expectations. Her work has been featured at South by Southwest, TEDx, The Red Table Talk, The Today Show and Investigation Discovery.

[00:04:14] You can also find her on her wildly popular YouTube channel where she has accumulated millions of views on social media. Just go to at Dr. Ramani on the socials. And now she's a podcaster. Her pod, Navigating Narcissism explores how narcissists are everywhere

[00:04:29] and these days it seems like everyone has at least one in their lives. Dr. Ramani will help you spot the red flags and heal from the narcissist in your life. Every week you will hear firsthand accounts from people who know this territory the best, the survivors.

[00:04:42] And breaking news, we're going to be on her show. Wables. Keep an eye out for that because we do know that territory very well. Thank you, Vanguard. And we chatted with her about all these things and it was a lot.

[00:04:53] We hope you get some good nuggets out of it. And if you want to hear us do a deep dive on packing about Dr. Ramani, please be sure to head over to Patreon for our post episode, mini-soad. Enjoy! Dr. Ramani, welcome to A Little Bit Calty.

[00:05:20] Thank you so much for having me. I'm really looking forward to this conversation. Us also. In fact, since we spoke last time in our prelim call, I found out that you are actually working with my former business partner and very close friend, Mark Vicente. Yes, I am.

[00:05:36] Yeah, yeah, yeah. We met, gosh, I think it's been almost a year ago. We met and he's working on, I think, you know, he's working on narcissism-facing content as you could imagine. So yes, yeah, it's wonderful to be able to work with both of them.

[00:05:49] Yeah, he's got a project coming out about it. Top secret. Big project. I did get permission to mention it on this podcast, but we can't go into more detail. We saw a top secret trailer too. Yes.

[00:05:59] What I think is funny is that we're always kind of, you know, our projects overlap in certain spaces obviously. And I'm always saying, oh, I just interviewed someone who'd be perfect. You know, survivor from XYZ. I was like, have you heard of this amazing doctor, Dr. Romany?

[00:06:10] And he's like, oh yeah, she's like the, she's like the through line interview of our movie. I'm like, oh wow, because you're head of the game. That's really sweet. Yeah, no, I really enjoyed meeting him and he happened to be in LA for some period of time.

[00:06:21] And so we were actually able to meet in person. Oh great. So it was just nice. Amazing. So rare these days. It is rare. You really, and he made a point of, he's like, I really want to meet you in person.

[00:06:29] So we waited till the stars lined up and we're able to do it. Cool. So we realized that you've done so many interviews and you have a huge body of incredibly helpful work out there, which we're going to be giving to our listeners as homework.

[00:06:43] They do like the homework, but since our podcast is a little bit culty, we're going to try to take your expertise and apply it more to this field that the podcast covers before we do that. We wondered if we could just start with like a baseline

[00:06:55] so that our listeners understand this word narcissism in context to the cult space and how maybe sort of breaking down like how that word is a bit overused, misunderstood, giving us a little bit of like foundation.

[00:07:06] It's been thrown out a lot in the last five to six years for reasons I think we all can speculate. Right. It really is. It is a very overused, very misunderstood, but also a really important word. I think that in the anger that people have about being

[00:07:21] overused and misunderstood, people are forgetting the potency of the word. And it is a word that gives us a lot of information if you're getting the right information. So narcissism is a personality style. It's not a disorder. It's a personality style and it is characterized by

[00:07:36] certain consistent patterns in a person such as having really inconsistent empathy. And I'm going to talk about this idea of it being inconsistent empathy. Usually we just say it's a lack of empathy. It's a little bit more nuanced than that. So inconsistent empathy, entitlement,

[00:07:49] grandiosity, validation and admiration seeking, arrogance, a need for control, a real hypersensitivity to any kind of feedback or criticism, envy of others, or they assume that other people envy them, a real incapacity for deep relationships or true intimacy and a very externalized model of going through the world.

[00:08:11] So in essence, they set their goals on the basis of what they think the world wants them to do. Their identity is very much shaped by how the world views them instead of having a strong internal sense of self. But at the bottom line,

[00:08:23] people with narcissistic personalities are actually deeply insecure and have deep seated feelings of inadequacy. So all of those things I'm talking about, the grandiosity, the arrogance, the entitlement. It's almost like a suit of armor that protects this really vulnerable internal piece of them that they

[00:08:40] are not even in touch with, but if anyone criticizes them, it's almost like that wound comes up and they lash out. And the reason I say inconsistent empathy is that some people will say, you know, I met someone, but times they seem really empathic.

[00:08:53] Empathy for a narcissistic person is very transactional and it can be very performative. They use it to get what they need. So if you and the narcissist have really aligned needs, wants or desires at the same time, you might actually feel like this is the most

[00:09:08] empathic person I've ever met. What will happen is that once that need has been served or they no longer are aligned with you, they will seem like the most cold, aloof, rejecting or even contemptuous person. That confusion is often what keeps people in the game.

[00:09:22] So what happens is they're saying, oh, I want to go back to empathic day. And so they bring it upon themselves. How can I please them? How can I win them over? How can I get them over back to that beautiful empathy they seem to have?

[00:09:34] What they don't understand is that narcissistic people know that empathy is a thing. They also know how to use it, but it's not genuine empathy. Again, it's very performative. So all those things insecure, arrogance, all those things, and I'll speak for me,

[00:09:48] but I imagine a lot of people have felt like that in their lives. What would you say? It doesn't mean just because you're arrogant, you're entitled. It's a thing and you can outgrow those things. When does it become a narcissistic thing

[00:10:01] and not just a growing pain, so to speak? Right. So that takes us almost to how does personality develop? Personality is part of how the central nervous system develops and the central nervous system is sort of not really done. And I almost view it as a Jell-O mold.

[00:10:16] I'm like, you know, if you open the Jell-O mold too quick, it's just going to splash on the table. You really have to wait until a person is around somewhere between 25 and 30 to say this brain is cooked and almost a little older for men than women,

[00:10:29] but then you can pop the Jell-O mold and you've got the shape. So that's how personality works and that's why adolescence is so tricky. Some people will say every adolescent is narcissistic and I'm like, yeah, kind of because that's the nature of that stage of development.

[00:10:43] Adolescents are trying to separate they're trying to become their own people. In many ways, they're almost trying to say all you folks who are trying to control me, namely parents, get away from me, I'm going to do my own thing.

[00:10:54] And so it's, I always liken to them to having clothes that are just too big for them and they're trying to fit into them. So there are lots of emotion, lots of raging, lots of figuring it out. That's adolescence. So I've told many parents, I'll say, listen,

[00:11:05] narcissism is a story that can only be told backwards but not forward. So if you have a 17 year old, 18, 19 year old kid who was acting like an entitled, arrogant, oppositional, unempathic jerk to you, I'm sorry. And I really am.

[00:11:21] And then call me in seven years and let's see where it's from. Because in many cases that kid is going to grow up to the demands of the world. They're going to have to learn how to behave in a workplace. Empathy is going to kick in.

[00:11:31] And now that they feel more sort of in their own skin, the parents will start seeing that empathy come back all of that. Now the problem is for the parents who say, okay, my 30 year old is still the same entitled

[00:11:43] unempathic, arrogant jerk that they were in their teens. And that's when I say you might have a problem because now it seems that they didn't. So in other words, you can tell the story backwards. They were like that then they're like that now,

[00:11:54] but so many people at 17 will grow out of it. So there is that, there's definitely that piece of it. Then some people say like, what about the showboater? Like the person who's got the big ideas and they come in and they hold the stage, but then offstage,

[00:12:07] I'll ask them what's their behavior like. This is a person who might really be able to hold the room. But then when you talk to them on their own and they're very sweet, they're very kind, they're very solicitous and self aware and self reflective like they're not narcissistic.

[00:12:19] They're able to put a grandiose show on a stage, but they're also very aware of other people, not a narcissist, but that person who's up there on that stage prancing about as an arrogant grandiose performer and is a jerk offstage narcissist. It's the consistency, it's the stability,

[00:12:36] it's the pervasiveness that it cuts across multiple relationships. We're looking for like a pattern, not for somebody who behaves badly on one afternoon that they got fired. This is not a one off. This is a life off. It's happening all the time.

[00:12:50] Well just looking at the patterns of narcissism within the cult world and what we're seeing right now with series like the Tinder Swindler or inventing Anna, where does it cross over from narcissism to narcissistic sociopath and what are the tendencies to look out for?

[00:13:04] How do you distinguish those things? So when we start using terms like, so for example, you're bringing up two examples, Tinder Swindler, inventing Anna of people who were, you know, nessence grifters, they were probably more in the sociopathic, maybe even marginally psychopathic, but more sociopathic realm.

[00:13:21] When we start bringing in other terminology like sociopathy and psychopathy, we have to view narcissism as being on a continuum, on a spectrum, right? So at the low end of narcissism, where it's light, narcissism light as it were, you're talking about people who are sort of superficial,

[00:13:36] adolescent, emotionally stunted. At the age of 50, they still seem to concern themselves with the things like, we're going to a cake party. I'm like, oh my God, you're 55. Like what is happening? Right? But they're annoying. They're ridiculous. There's no depth to the relationship, but they're not psychologically harmful

[00:13:54] at the far end of the spectrum though. Now you're leaning into malignant narcissism and malignant narcissism is really where we see not only all the top notes of narcissism, but some of the stuff we see in psychopathy, the hostility, the callousness, the exploitativeness,

[00:14:10] the willingness to take advantage of people. And we also see some sadism mixed into there. We see some paranoia and we see Machiavellianism. So now it starts getting scary. Then the train goes into the more scary stations like sociopathy and psychopathy. Psychopathy is the most terrifying of all

[00:14:29] because now we're no longer talking about insecurity. These are people whose nervous systems are very, very different. They do not get that sympathetic nervous system activation that we all get when we do something wrong. Like we feel uncomfortable. If we do a bad thing,

[00:14:45] this does not feel good, we'll feel sick, we can't sleep. Psychopath can do, I don't know, King Robo Bank at breakfast and be having lunch with their mom and not even think about that sequence. Like they're not bothered by doing bad things.

[00:14:58] Narcissists are bothered by doing bad things. They don't want to get caught. They don't want to get publicly found out. They actually do value how the world sees them. The psychopath, it's a little less important to them. Sociopaths are a different animal. Sociopathic people are people who are,

[00:15:14] they're much more dysregulated than the psychopaths. So they're like the narcissist. They get angry very easily. They're your bar brawlers. They get really upset. They can be very manipulative. They'll take advantage of people, but they're not the cool operators like the psychopathic folks.

[00:15:29] Sociopathies actually not a term we use in the mental health world. It's more of almost like sociological, criminological kind of a term. And so it's sort of, it's not as well defined in our world, but that malignant narcissism. And if you look at Frome's work,

[00:15:43] Frome has actually written about cult leaders and he specifically said cult leaders are malignant narcissists. And I agree with that. I think 100% of cult leaders are malignant narcissists without exception. I've never seen one story of one. By definition, a cult is a controlling space that is exploitative.

[00:16:00] That's the malignant narcissist space. So you have these terms for these people and you know, with empathy, I'm curious where the empathy and conscience comes in because a lot of them are very high performers in certain domains. And I think in some of your talks,

[00:16:15] you mentioned how they get a hall pass because of that. I'll use examples like Steve Jobs. I know he could be very temperamental to a Michael Jordan who has win at all costs and they seem to have a capacity to,

[00:16:27] and I certainly wouldn't necessarily throw them in those categories, but they seem to have a capacity. Even when I was playing sports, I could put my empathy on the back burner to perform, right? When the game is over, there's a way you compete

[00:16:37] and there's a civility to society that we all re-enter and maybe some of them do, some don't. I'm curious as to when, you know, how do you make those distinctions and what kind of freedom do they have without their empathy that seems to serve humanity sometimes?

[00:16:51] Like, you know, if these people are contributing to humanity, like, how do you reconcile those differences? Does that make sense when I'm asking? It absolutely makes sense. Empathy makes us very inefficient. That's a bottom line. It is like the drag coefficient on our souls.

[00:17:08] It's a paralysis sometimes because you have to work it out. I wouldn't even say it's a paralysis as much as if I'm going about my day and I see someone, a colleague of mine is sad or upset and I'm like, hey, let's go get a cup of coffee.

[00:17:19] Let's talk it out. And they're starting to tell me about, you know, having marital problems and I'm there for them and I'm helping them. I might have just lost an hour of my work day and now I got to stay an hour later. I'm inefficient.

[00:17:29] Or if I say, oh, maybe I should let that person get the promotion. They've been here longer. They're just as good at me as the position. Now I haven't thrown them under the bus because I had the inside track and could have gotten it.

[00:17:41] But I recognize they're older, they're more experienced. In fact, their family could use the money. I just lost efficiency. The more empathy you have, the less efficient you are in the most beautiful way, by the way, you know what I'm saying? But in a winner take all, capitalistic,

[00:17:56] whoever has the most toys wins society, that the people who don't have empathy and are willing to climb over whoever they need to climb to are going to be your billionaires, your innovators. They're not stopping to change your baby's diaper, right? They are all in on their success

[00:18:12] and you're absolutely right. Then we look at them. They're the visionaries. They've changed the world. I get all of that. And I'll even tip my hat and say what you did, did change the world. What I say to the world is don't marry these people.

[00:18:25] Don't get close to these people. They're not father of the year. They're not father of the year. They're not person of the year. So our problem is we're conflating too much. Like separated out just because a person is a great basketball player doesn't mean they're a great person.

[00:18:41] Just because somebody who has taken it, made a technological advance, has changed the world doesn't mean they're a good person. I can't tell you how many people I have worked with who have said they endure terrible narcissistic relationships.

[00:18:56] And when I asked like what drew you to this person and sort of what keeps you in the game? Well, they're so smart. I'm like, when did smart become a virtue? Smart is smart. You know, I mean, that's great. You're smart, wonderful.

[00:19:08] That doesn't mean you're capable of deep emotion or empathy or intimacy. And that's our problem. We're putting very successful people up on pedestals and we're viewing them as holistically good people. No, they're good at one thing. We can acknowledge that, but we've got to stop viewing success

[00:19:25] as being necessarily good because what that means is people then want to get close to successful people saying, well, this is going to be a great relationship. And more often than I said, no, it's not. That's such a great piece of advice. I really also appreciated the advice

[00:19:38] I heard you share with somebody about parenting and how teaching empathy is sort of the anecdote to this and raising our kids with that trait. Can you give us our audience a couple tangible nuggets on what that actually looks like with young children?

[00:19:51] Because I've got mirroring is one of the things. Is there, maybe you could elaborate on that. So the younger the child, we do it in different ways. There's no higher task than teaching a child empathy. There's really not. And alongside empathy is self soothing.

[00:20:04] The child learning to regulate themselves like recognizing you got to wait and learn, wait in line, you got to wait your turn. Sometimes you lose, you know, and then you're going to have to manage the emotion around that. So, and I think those two things are very related,

[00:20:18] but in a very in an infant empathy is achieved by staring at their face. And that's if you look at the angle at which a child is fed or put on the breath, it's a perfect angle for them to make eye contact with the mother.

[00:20:29] So the mom may not want to be checking her phone while she's feeding her child like face to face. That's how it's been done since time in Memorial, even physical touch skin to skin, all of that solely starts building up empathy, doing mirrored games.

[00:20:42] You play with their expressions. They make an expression. You copy their expression. That's baby. But as they come up, it's you as soon as they start having language, you start working with them on feeling. How do you feel? You teach them that feelings have names.

[00:20:55] You never shame their feelings. It can be built into play. You can read any children's book and someone a bear or a cat or a bird has a feeling. How do you think the bear felt like you think, how do you think the bear felt

[00:21:09] when Goldilocks was sleeping in his bed? Hold on, I'm gay with that. That kind of felt like breaking and entering, but they might say, I was happy Goldilocks was sleeping in my bed. You can take any children's story and at the end of the book,

[00:21:22] that's actually where the magic happens. How do you think she felt? How do you think he felt? How do you think they felt? And you're now teaching your child to name emotions not just in themselves, but in others. You can do this in TV shows.

[00:21:34] Like I think that media can really be used as a jumping off place. You want to have your child spend time with other children so they can learn about taking turns like, oh, we've baked, we would bake their cupcake. How should we split this up?

[00:21:45] So they learn like, oh, let's cut it in half. Oh, sure. Let's get a knife and cut it in half. So you're doing that now as your child comes into and I have to say all of what I'm suggesting is easy to do through primary school.

[00:21:57] Like, got to love the little ones, but once they hit middle school, their brains are developing in a different direction. They're more focused on their peers than their parents. They think adults are full of crap. And so empathy starts taking on a different tenor.

[00:22:12] What's interesting is puberty age, adolescent kids have a lot of empathy for their peers. They have none for their parents. And so the parents get confused and say, my kid has no empathy. And I'll say, can you tell me what your kids like with their peers?

[00:22:25] They're great with their peers. Oh my good. The empathy is sound. They're trying to get rid of you. They're trying to make you so awful that when they have to leave, they're not panic-stricken. It's actually a phenomenon called shitting the nest.

[00:22:35] And so they make a mess and then they're like, oh, this place sucks. I'm out of here. And that's how they let go. And I think for a lot of parents, we struggle. I have adolescent kids. We struggle with hurt feelings.

[00:22:46] And I have to remember that what they're doing is they're making it easier to leave. And my job as a parent is to make it easier for them. So they're not looking backwards and saying, mom. And I'm saying, I'm always here. You know, it's just differences now.

[00:23:00] You're carrying me inside your heart. I'm not going to cry. I'm not going to cry. No? Yeah, that's coming soon. But that's the part I think we're going to do because when my child's moving out, I've got a child graduating high school soon,

[00:23:11] my child's moving out and I'm telling you, I see like a six month old infant and I'm thinking, well, no, she's not. And that's the piece I carry. And so, but all of that is part of the empathy that we have for our children.

[00:23:24] And we teach it over and over again. What we cannot do is tell our children, hey, you're more special than all the other kids. Tell them, go ahead and take three pieces of pizza. And sadly some parents do that. And so I know it seems so logical,

[00:23:38] but actually a lot of parents don't practice it and narcissistic parents least of all, because they have absolutely no blueprint or template for what empathy should look like in themselves or even in the children. This is the golden age of cult recovery.

[00:23:51] The more we speak up and share our stories, the more we realize we are not alone. The voice and your story can empower others. This is Sarah and I'm proud to be a founding collaborator of the hashtag I Got Out movement. Learn more at IGotOut.org.

[00:24:33] This episode is sponsored by BetterHelp. What are your self-care non-negotiables? Maybe you never skip leg day or never miss yoga. Maybe it's getting eight hours of sleep. That's my personal and everyone's dream, isn't it? Well, I definitely have some non-negotiables. Like I'm in Vancouver right now

[00:24:51] and I'm spending literally three hours of my life in the city of Vancouver. And I'm not alone. I'm not alone. I'm not alone. I'm in Vancouver right now and I'm spending literally as much time as I can outside of nature. Hashtag cold pools, hashtag crushing it.

[00:25:08] Nature is a non-negotiable. Not enough time in the fresh air and the trees around me and I start to feel not great, not myself, not grounded. Therapy Day is a bit like my nature walks. I try to not miss it.

[00:25:19] And I know I'm just going to feel so much better all around if I make it a priority. I get so much out of it. It helps me put my worries and anxieties in their rightful place

[00:25:27] and helps me clear my mind so I can focus on what I really need like I don't need to be overbooking myself just because I hate to say no to people. You know what I mean? Thanks Therapy! Thanks for helping me see that.

[00:25:38] And if you're thinking of starting therapy, give Better Help a try. It's entirely online designed to be convenient, flexible and suited to your schedule. Just fill out a brief questionnaire and get matched with a licensed therapist and switch therapists anytime for no additional charge.

[00:25:52] Look, even when we know what makes us happy it's hard to make time for it. But when you feel like you have no time for yourself you can always go to the clinic. Never. Never skip therapy day with Better Help. Visit betterhelp.com slash culty today

[00:26:04] to get 10% off your first month. That's Better Help H-E-L-P dot com slash culty. Can we contact you in like seven years when Troy is 15 for a consult? I feel like we're going to need a test. And adolescent boys often just really kind of go off

[00:26:19] into their peer spaces. Adolescent girls are a whole different kind of creature. I know I was a piece of work with my, I apologize to my mother, mom I'm really sorry I apologize to my mother, mom I'm really sorry. I apologize to my mother, mom I'm really sorry.

[00:26:31] That's the empathy right? The empathy is like shouldn't have done that. But it's hard. I mean your heart is always getting torn. Like I did everything for you. But I recognize what they're doing. They've made such a mess of things that that goodbye just became easier for me

[00:26:45] and it became easier for them. In some ways their mess was the most compassionate thing they could have done. Maybe you'll want to help them pack. Maybe. Maybe. You'll definitely want to help them pack. I know four days early. Well, talking about these childhood,

[00:26:59] you know the template in a healthy way is super. It's just wonderful because we really like to give our audience like these nuggets of what they, how they can heal and make their lives better and change the patterns that they've grown up with.

[00:27:10] And one of the things I found really interesting in our Colt recovery self-education is that a lot of the leaders that we were analyzing, Keith included or people like David Koresh is there was a consistency in what little we know of their childhood about their childhood.

[00:27:24] There's a consistency in the way that they were raised specifically in the lack of healthy attachment with their parents and then how they ended up kind of becoming special through some gift and then, you know, winning the ladies and that was like the end for them.

[00:27:37] Have you noticed that or have you seen any studies that would verify what seems to be a pattern? So the lack of secure attachment early in life would seem to track for, because it's a huge player in the development of the narcissistic personality, right? Secure attachment is everything.

[00:27:51] A child having a secure base, a place that they know is always there for them. It helps them at points of separation. It helps them learn to self-soothe. All of that stuff we're talking about empathy, it needs that attachment, that secure base of attachment

[00:28:04] as the sort of, as the root of it. People who are narcissistic didn't have that. Even the most overindulged spoiled child, you'd say, well how did they not have it? Because the parents were really good at buying things or taking them on extravagant experiences

[00:28:17] or showing up to every soccer game so they could get attention for their kid being a great soccer player. But at those early years, when it was really about the consistency and the availability, they weren't available. And so that's where how attachment happens.

[00:28:31] Attachment doesn't happen because you show up to your kid's soccer game. Attachment happens because in those earliest years the caregiver is consistently available. So that part doesn't surprise me at all because that's often a forerunner of narcissism. Now it's not the case for everyone.

[00:28:45] Some people don't have a secure attachment. They just end up not becoming narcissistic or very anxious adults. So it's not a slam dunk. And that's the challenge, the story can be told backwards, not forwards. So we'll always have that insecure attachment in their back story.

[00:28:59] But that next piece you brought up, Sarah, is so interesting that having a gift, right? Because what the child then learns, like let's say they're really good at school or they're really good at a sport or whatever it is they are,

[00:29:11] they now learn that something external to them, something they do rather than who they are, is going to actually at least get them some validation. It's not the same as attachment, but at least it's something. So now they cultivate that and that's what I'm talking about,

[00:29:25] how the narcissism really runs a very externalized game. Everything is what's happening outside of them. How are people viewing me? Am I doing what the world wants? Because again, the kid who wins the spelling bee or is the best soccer player, whatever it is, that child is learning.

[00:29:39] That's where my gift lies, right? So then they take that into adulthood and that's why narcissistic people are so charming and charismatic because it's a very external game. Like they just put on their bright face, it's almost like they're putting on a mask.

[00:29:53] Hi, Sarah! It's so nice to meet you. I love your sweater. It's coming a little bit about you. And we think that's good. We think that kind of really slick presentation versus the person is like, oh, hey Sarah, it's kind of nice and they're kind of awkward.

[00:30:11] We view that as unskilled whereas that kind of slick smooth thing is often a mask that kind of gets put on and they learn to put that mask on early because it's getting them the thing they need which is attention. And then, as you said,

[00:30:26] oftentimes it turns into sort of sexual admiration or being able to have sexual partners or conquests or people they attracted themselves in that way that creates that overvaluation of power control and dominance in a very specific way which is all a narcissist is motivated by.

[00:30:42] They want power control dominance. They want things. They're done. They're good. And then that goes into adulthood. So a question follow-up there. I'm wondering if, predominantly maybe in the western culture you see a lot of this stuff in men because of the pressure to perform

[00:30:57] and I can remember thinking even in my teenage years my self-worth is predicated on how good I am at my sport. At least for me personally. I felt like if I wasn't good at this I didn't have value more to myself and then maybe to the world

[00:31:12] I didn't have the validation as much as I wanted to be good at this because it felt good. And I'm wondering how that relates to maybe do you see it more in men or differently in men than women? Would you say that the scale is more men

[00:31:26] and women do it differently? What's the distinctions there? So grandiose narcissism and malignant narcissism are more prevalent in men. They are. And I think for some of the reasons you say I think how we raise boys in a world space for men to safely express emotion

[00:31:42] or boys to express emotion we often shame emotion and boys and men. And so it's not healthy for the child. Now there can be outlets like sport and the challenges that the child may build a sense of confidence in sport

[00:31:56] but then the sort of the flip side to that is then the child may recognize I'm not making goals or scores or the MVP I'm not going to be loved so then that's going to create this sort of performative

[00:32:07] the only way I'm going to get through the world is if I the best salesperson or the best athlete or the best whatever and again because we view men through a more financialized lens like they're going to need to be providers and all that

[00:32:21] we still even though obviously women are very much in the workplace well it's reinforced by our culture reinforced and it's valued it's also valued, it's beyond reinforced it's incentivized. And in girls there's more space held for emotion there's more focus placed on affiliation

[00:32:35] that human relationships for girls and women serve a more sort of emotionally supportive space it's not the case for men, it's not how they're socialized doesn't mean they're not capable of it obviously they're capable of it but if it's consistently

[00:32:47] shamed and it's devalued they're not going to do it now here's where it gets interesting with gender you might see more narcissistic more men are in the grandiose narcissism world, malignant narcissism world but not so in the vulnerable narcissism world talk about vulnerable narcissism the gender distributions equal

[00:33:03] now vulnerable narcissism is all the same bells and whistles the lack of empathy, the entitlement, grandiosity that list stays the same but the differences in the vulnerable narcissists it's expressed more through a victimized passive aggressive resentful petulant sullen like the world hasn't been safe to me

[00:33:23] I wasn't born with a trust fund how does anyone expect me to get ahead everything's unfair and why should I go to college the professors are morons I'm smarter than them it's a lot of that grudging kinds of stuff and people who are higher in vulnerable narcissism

[00:33:37] you see higher levels of sort of sad mood even sometimes full blown depression, social anxiety so they're not a socially skilled they're not the charming charismatic narcissist but they still they don't have empathy it's all about their victimhood

[00:33:51] and if they're going through something they don't care what someone else is going through their entitlement is things like why should I go to college I'm smarter than all of the teachers and so in the vulnerable narcissists you might even see more of sort of a

[00:34:01] failure to launch and there's more of a rejection sensitivity in the vulnerable narcissists when you really see their anger come out is where they feel like they're being rejected or even abandoned but in that presentation of narcissism we see that to be similar across genders

[00:34:17] so the story is a bit more nuanced than is it more men and women it really comes down to the subtypes and all of that okay so it's more types than it is quantity it is and that socialization is so let's say you have a girl

[00:34:29] who again has that insecure attachment or the anxious attachment in childhood and doesn't feel valued and isn't seen and doesn't feel like she's enough it's more likely that for her her narcissism is going to be almost more of a life not fair why should I try

[00:34:45] nobody likes me so it looks different and that's why many times narcissism in women is missed that's interesting to say that it's predominant in western culture and the catalyst for that question for me comes from I read this book a while ago

[00:35:03] the subtle art of not giving a fuck and there's a part of it where he talks about how he went on a date with someone in Russia and how he was doing kind of a persona of getting to know the person and the person just wasn't buying it

[00:35:15] and they were like do you want a date do you want to go out and they were like really direct and he's like talking about the Russian women and he went to a professor to discuss it and the professor was like that's because people there

[00:35:25] need to know who they need to trust right away and the niceties of culture don't fly in a Russian culture in the way that they're nurtured in the western culture and I'm wondering if that may have a little bit more of a breeding ground

[00:35:37] or less calling it out in the western culture than say eastern cultures so I think it gets tricky here so being abrupt doesn't mean someone's narcissistic oh that's exactly what I mean it's a protection but it may very well be

[00:35:49] that once you get on the other side of the abrupt wall there's a society who has intact empathy and is well regulated and all that it's just getting to the other side of the wall I think this is a global phenomenon

[00:35:59] because if to the degree this goes back to attachment issues that attachment issues present in all cultures and I think that when we throw the cultural piece on top of this and the argument I and other theoreticians would make is the more authoritarian the more capitalistic

[00:36:16] the more stratified and the more patriarchal society the more narcissistic it's going to be get because what it's doing is it's basically you've now sort of codified the idea that some people are better than others and that sort of societal dismissal of entire groups of people

[00:36:32] creates a societal narcissism which then in the more privileged people in those societies they're going to be very dismissive and that will happen in a family system as well so I think and at this point I'm going to be honest with you

[00:36:44] that seems to describe most cultures in this in the world that you have it may not even be authoritarian but it may have a culture where they're like no we're also warm and fuzzy but it just so happens that a very small

[00:36:56] handful of people hold all the money that's going to be get narcissism and this is obviously become a real passion for you and the big part of your life it appears if you could wave a magic wand and manifest your ultimate goal in terms of education and recovery

[00:37:10] from narcissistic abuse what would that be or what would that look like it's a complicated answer because at one level the only thing that we have to see is more accessible informed services for people who have gone through narcissistic abuse because I

[00:37:24] the mental health field has not caught up it says we are not recognizing because usually when a person comes in with an issue we're like ah they're anxious ah they're depressed we talk only about the person in the room which is ridiculous

[00:37:36] because we exist in all these interpersonal spaces but the unwillingness of many therapists acknowledge like ooh their spouse is narcissistic let me teach them they're with somebody whose personality is not going to change and they need to make their decisions accordingly the field is uncomfortable

[00:37:50] saying that the narcissists aren't going to change that's a bet if they're not going to change every so often a unicorn gallops through the valley who is a change narcissist but it right why why well they would because at some point though their lives get blown up

[00:38:06] their lives get blown up enough some of them will say okay I can't live like this but then they find the change is almost too difficult to make that said to your magic one I'd like to see a world where there were informed services accessible

[00:38:18] services available to people healing from it number one number two I'd like to see us starting to talk about this with younger and younger kids when I've heard a pitch talking about narcissism to high schools they're like that kind of feels negative like we don't

[00:38:32] and I'm like oh my gosh negative let me tell you what's negative is a high school kid getting into a really emotionally abusive relationship that's negative we could teach them this so there's a real resistance to teaching because by the time this

[00:38:44] has happened to you it kind of does a number on you but if we could teach younger people that this is a thing that would also be really great I would also like to see that people who are able to securely attach

[00:38:56] with their kids or the ones having kids and the parents who can't are getting supported to do so I mean I think that this is an early childhood issue too and that we support parents and we teach parents but we need a whole in essence we would

[00:39:08] have to address insecurity on a global level and finally if I really wanted the magic wand I'd want all people to have agreeable personalities that's the world I want to live in I mean it does mean like we're sort of all going to be

[00:39:20] living communally and there would be no wars and everyone's going to get along I want to live in that world we too kumbaya so that's it but you know what it's beyond kumbaya though because I think agreeable people are very collaborative

[00:39:32] they'll say okay we can work this problem however what I'm not going to do is I run Amazon I don't need to make a hundred billion trillion dollars how about I pay the warehouse workers $60 an hour that's what would happen in an agreeable world

[00:39:48] that sounds great but we don't live in that world and it's only getting worse and in fact the narcissistic people prey on the agreeable people so you know agreeable people and agreeable men makes lower salaries so there's not a lot of incentivization to be agreeable except

[00:40:04] kind of who we are some of us are just sort of we're we come into the world more agreeable and our agreeableness gets cultivated everyone out there should marry an agreeable person you may have some trouble paying the bills but everyone should marry an agreeable person

[00:40:16] I don't know how much you know or followed our the story with nexium or how much you read about Keith our former leader you did okay a lot I thought I'd share a little tidbit with you that I think you'd get a kick out of

[00:40:30] and it relates to this he had us all fill out the these person they called personality questionnaires before and after and it was I want to say what do you think they'd be like 20 pages it was too long I just went CCC

[00:40:42] CCC yeah it was way way way too long we were there for like over a decade and we still even as leaders anytime we took a training like a high level training we still had to do a before and after of the same questionnaire

[00:40:54] a new person going through it would take at least an hour especially if they if english was not their first language now we're in a half very specific questions true and false statements ab questions a number of different formats and first of all

[00:41:08] after the first one I just hated filling it out because it was very redundant but it's very tedious and what we were told is that these tests were being sent to an outside source to analyze so that they could actually be looked at

[00:41:20] from a scientific point of view great peer review amazing now not only do you find out that they never left the building when we left but it always bothered me that we were the success program and the papers were clearly photocopied from different things

[00:41:34] and cut and paste and then put together again like that wasn't even one format do you know what I mean like it was one page look like it was Xerox from something and anyway it was just messy we found out later like if you type in personality

[00:41:46] questionnaire narcissism the questions but that I found on the internet were word for word what was in this at least one section of this questionnaire Wow cut and paste and we think that he our theory was that he was trying to figure out

[00:42:00] who are the narcissists so that he could have them be you know in his inner circle and be his flying monkeys like give them you know the golden key to the whatever it was that they were like he basically was looking

[00:42:12] to see who he could control and use for what depending on their level of narcissism do you any theories on that it's interesting it's interesting because I would say it depends on the narcissism questions one of the biggest problems in the field of narcissism is

[00:42:24] measurement right traditionally a lot of the questionnaires that are used and probably some of the items that were being used in what the two of you filled out they lean more to grandiose narcissism and how grandiose narcissism is measured is sometimes even a little bit more like

[00:42:38] people who want to be leaders and assertiveness it's not this stuff I'm talking about this sort of soul crushing unempathic entitled like it's not as dark as some of the clinical stuff that stuff is often done in interview format but you know it's interesting because someone like him

[00:42:54] who is so manipulative and if he knew anything at all about narcissism which you may not have I wonder how much he also might have been afraid of the people who are higher in narcissism and actually tried to ice them out you know isolate them keep them

[00:43:06] away from others not let them be as influential because in theory the more narcissistic people might actually try to take some of his influence and try to be the leader and try to overtake so they might be the people instead of bringing him into the

[00:43:20] front unless he wants to keep his you know friends close and enemies closer kind of thing unless he was trying to keep them close to sort of neutralize them there might be some wisdom in a position he was in to take the narcissistic people and sort

[00:43:32] of actually put them out on an ice flow and keep them away from others so they couldn't usurp his. The front line so to speak. Yeah yeah well just keep them keep make it so that they can't that they're not a threat because at some level

[00:43:46] a person is a much much higher narcissism score on these kinds of questionnaires is somebody who wants to be a leader somebody who is more assertive the person who might be less involved with the emotional worlds of others but that leadership and assertiveness

[00:44:00] piece could have been a threat. That makes sense we kind of had our you know we're obviously not therapists but our just our analysis of the people who got close to him and before we understood attachment we called it like daddy issues to your

[00:44:12] point they're more agreeable they had a lot of the family systems that we've learned about through you know getting ready for this interview with you like oh that was consistent they you know their dads weren't around or you know whatever it was

[00:44:24] or like that I don't know I think we both had very healthy relationships with our parents generally and I think ultimately that's you know obviously we were very indoctrinated and we were bought in but we weren't bought in as much

[00:44:36] as other people were bought in so we were able to kind of snap out of it when it was clear what the abuse was and what was happening and whereas other people just kept doubling down correct so they would if they were

[00:44:46] if they really wanted to be sinister they would have done better giving out questionnaires that assessed attachment style and trauma yeah so if they understood that about the you know post-traumatic stress sort of symptomatology and address something called adverse childhood experiences if they

[00:45:00] had sort of gotten those numbers then they know exactly who the most malleable people could have potentially been in that kind of a group and I bet you that those questions were there we just we just recognize that one page as cut and paste from the

[00:45:12] internet about narcissism I'm sure there were other things that we haven't even analyzed because we don't have access to those tests anymore but also you know he would elicit information from them on his long walks and everything I'm wondering what was your assessment if

[00:45:24] you I don't know what the extent of what it was but what did you think of what you've seen when you heard about this debacle you know immediately the reason I was drawn to it is like wow here we have malignant narcissists possibly a psychopath predator

[00:45:36] I want to you know I want to listen to the story that's what drew me in it was wanting to know that anytime there's a story like that I just want to see how it played out and the whole thing tracked in some ways his story is

[00:45:46] interesting for how uninteresting you know what I totally agree you know what if you put a bunch of ingredients in a cocktail shaker that's what you get you know like his history his intelligence you know again that that sort of smarmy salesman thing he's got going on

[00:46:02] that that sold and then he took it into the sort of the personal growth market and then you know and there's this piece that this and you see this in yoga cults and a whole bunch of different cults where that sexualized peace

[00:46:16] is the piece where he started recognizing like because I mean he's kind of a short dumpy kind of kind of he is yeah okay so I'm trying to be kind sure dumpy looking guy I mean like nobody would look at this guy twice right and

[00:46:28] so and yet here he's getting the attention and I was looking at this movie and I'm like God these people are absolutely gorgeous so these absolutely gorgeous intelligent women are gravitating to him he hit the mother low and at that point we won't think we do know about

[00:46:44] narcissistic people is there what we call very reward sensitive meaning that dopamine for them like kind of get some worked up that's why you see a lot of problem gambling in narcissistic people it's why they like stimulant drugs like cocaine they like rewards

[00:46:58] they like prizes they like putting plaques on their wall and they like sex and sexual attention so for him when he realized that this new racket was getting him the holy grail which was the sexual attention of women that was it

[00:47:12] he was off to the races and so and and that's where a narcissistic person then obviously gets completely drunk on their own power because it's going to what I say power dominance control and one would also argue pleasure are the main motivators for a narcissistic

[00:47:28] person everything that motivated him was there so that's it was so clear and then the way he would get intel on people those long walks I found that really interesting I was like ah this is how he's doing the download narcissistic people are notorious

[00:47:42] for being able to they seem so curious about people and so many people out there have never had somebody deeply interested in them from childhood their parents most people's parents were relatively disinterested in them and so now there's a person who's in a position of authority who's

[00:47:58] leaning in and saying tell me everything about you a special person is valuing you that's what every child has ever wanted that the parent actually wanted to hear about their day at school instead of hurry up wash your hands do this I don't have time for that

[00:48:10] I'm too busy which is what most kids here he was the parental figure as it were who was leaning in and listening there's nothing more seductive than that for somebody who is felt not heard and not seen for most of their life

[00:48:22] that was the play and he played it well and now here's a brief message from our sponsors I'm in Vancouver right now and I'm spending literally as much time as I can outside of nature hashtag cold pools hashtag crushing it

[00:49:13] nature is a non-negotiable not enough time in the fresh air and the trees around me and I start to feel not great not myself not grounded therapy day is a bit like my nature walks I try to not miss it

[00:49:23] and I know I'm just going to feel so much better all around if I make it a priority I get so much out of it it helps me put my worries and anxieties in their rightful place

[00:49:31] and helps me clear my mind so I can focus on what I really need and sometimes what I don't need like I don't need to be overbooking myself just because I hate to say no to people you know what I mean

[00:49:39] thanks therapy thanks for helping me see that and if you're thinking of starting therapy give better help a try it's entirely online designed to be convenient flexible and suited to your schedule just fill out a brief questionnaire and get matched with a licensed therapist

[00:49:52] and switch therapists anytime for no additional charge look even when we know what makes us happy it's hard to make time for it but when you feel like you have no time for yourself non-negotiables like therapy are more important than ever

[00:50:04] never skip therapy day with better help visit better help dot com slash culty today to get 10% off your first month that's better help HELP dot com slash culty the frankies were a picture perfect influencer family but everything wasn't as it seemed

[00:50:21] I just had a 12 year old boy so up here asking for help he's emaciated he's got tape around his legs Ruby Frankie is his mom's name Infamous is covering Ruby Frankie the world of Mormonism and a secret therapy group that ruined lives

[00:50:40] listen to Infamous wherever you get your podcasts that explains so much he definitely did that and even just to attend next year meet to fill out an intake form which was the questions were you know what are your goals like why are you coming

[00:50:58] whatever but it was also like what's the worst moment of your life what's your worst decision of your life who's your best ally and who's your worst opponent and that intake sheet if someone filled it out honestly was also could be used as blackmail

[00:51:10] because someone's worst decision is like you know hookers and blow or something that they don't want people to know about that's that can be used against also he did it in plain sight yeah so you wouldn't suspect it because

[00:51:21] he knows that people wouldn't suspect it and most people don't know what they're looking at I mean people forget he was able to convince the Dalai Lama he was able to convince some pretty influential people

[00:51:31] and that just goes to show you okay let's go back to the Dalai Lama this that piece I actually stopped and went back and watch here goes back though to the point you were making earlier this idea of how we revere powerful people

[00:51:46] okay and I have to say maybe this is on I mean I really respect his holiness but I do think that even the Dalai Lama probably could use a session with me on narcissism because I see him getting played all the time I really do and I'm sorry

[00:52:01] there's no Buddhist God raised Hindu and I was raised Hindu like mom was in it you know and I am sorry there's no Bhagavad Gita there's no Buddhist scripture out there that is going to say you gotta have your game on I would say that there's some wisdom

[00:52:15] here and sort of knowing your enemy and I do struggle a little bit with what happens is that it does feel like I'm using the Dalai Lama as an example because it was in the documentary but anyone who has that kind of sort of spiritual

[00:52:27] authority or seems like a paragon of goodness or something and that the idea that these are often sort of purchased almost like papal indulgences and transactional relationships that if you know the right person who has enough money which is how he got there with those heiress ladies

[00:52:43] you have enough money you can get an audience and I have a problem with that if you're a holy person you should be sitting with the most vulnerable and indigent in a society not the person who could fly in a damn private jet to India

[00:52:55] I struggle with that so that what happens is then there is this messaging to the world of like oh if somebody has spiritually evolved as a Dalai Lama seeing this person the danger to that and I have to tell you

[00:53:07] the Dalai Lama has sat with some really evil people and I'd like to think he'd see it I'm not kidding you, it's all I can do to say I'd love to get to Dharm Sala and say can we sit down and talk about this because

[00:53:19] you could be doing far greater work you weren't giving so much platform to people who are going out there and doing so much harm agreed and it seems like his organization separate from him or part of him or whatever can be bought essentially

[00:53:34] all organizations can be bought that's the problem and you know what everyone getting bought I don't have like listen that's the world and it is what it is but the problem is that the virtue that is given to some organizations

[00:53:45] and that then leads people to no longer trust their instincts Sarah so people say like he can't be a bad guy if this guy is signing off on him but he sure feels like a bad guy in his gut so what do survivors do

[00:53:58] they say it's gotta be me, I've gotta be the one that's wrong and how do I tell people no actually they paid for that audience and nobody is acting as the narcissism patrol at the sort of the gateways of all of these seemingly evolved that was certainly us

[00:54:15] that was us in 2009 or 2010 when he came I mean we had many problems there it was a stamp of approval, all my doubts all my doubts at the time were like ok this guy well dilemma and same with allegedly there was a training on

[00:54:28] Necker Island with Richard Branson same thing these people are validating us or even when there was a study that apparently we cured Tourette's which I don't think we did but all of those things when I was still in it was like ok we're growing the right direction

[00:54:43] we're part of something good couldn't be part of something bad because then of course we're stupid and then the shame there was so much shame around everything that Keith did to make us feel less than not enough same as what I would imagine in a one on one

[00:54:57] relationship with a narcissist so this is where I go to like my hopeful question or something like that I looked to leaders in the past and I think some of them got it right some of them are you know

[00:55:09] parts of it right, you're never going to have the perfect leader or whatever but for me when I look at the template in history and I was a history major and I'm interested just in leaders and why they're leaders and how they do it

[00:55:21] I look at like the 60's that gave us like the Kennedy brothers Robert and John and Martin Luther King and it seems that I played a speech for Sarah last week and it had us both crying and it seemed like it was going to come from

[00:55:33] an empathetic place and I look at John Kennedy in particular as a person who while he probably bought the presidency through clandestine means seemed to empathize good balance of understanding the power that he had and spoke from a place of empathy and principles now

[00:55:47] I don't know how narcissistic John Kennedy was because it seemed like he had a sexual appetite that he couldn't control but that was also maybe because a lot of the drugs that he was on because of his Addison's disease and so it's

[00:55:57] complicated and then but you hear Martin Luther King you hear things about that so what's the balance and like how do you I don't think people should put all their trust into a leader but there seems to be people that do

[00:56:07] embody these things or at least try to embody these things the balance of empathy and power and are you hopeful that that person can emerge or is it one person or is it a movement it seemed that the 60's were that movement

[00:56:19] and look what happens when that movement gets such an inertia it feels like it has to be stopped if that's indeed you know what happened we'll never know the nuances of it but it seems that there was a movement that the principles of the American idea were starting

[00:56:33] to gain some inertia and they literally got shot the challenge there though becomes like here's what's interesting there is actually some really interesting literature saying that not only is empathic leadership possible it works it's profitable it's better outcomes for the populace everything it's possible now the problem is

[00:56:53] is that the United States and politics in the United States is a shell game right it's not in paid for and so this idea that leaders are being elected for the good of the populace them days are over you know I mean even as

[00:57:05] I filled out my ballot that I live in California and I'm just sort of like oh my gosh this is like I'm obviously like a continuum of psychopathology and I'm trying to choose the least pathologic person I have very little regard or belief in the majority

[00:57:19] of politicians part of that is how you know again it's a game system it's a transactional system there are lots of levers being pulled in back rooms by people I mean I don't want to sound like you know sort of conspiratorial like cabals of people but they're kind

[00:57:33] of cabali I gotta tell you you know these are organizations of people have a lot of money and want to maintain a certain status quo that said I think in the political realm especially in the United States politics I don't see how we're going to create

[00:57:47] that shift that easily because it is such a power game I do think we do in some small local politics we do sometimes see people trying to step up and do the right thing you might see this at the level of school boards

[00:57:59] small town politics there are people out there who are really go into this well intention I think you can even see this in business leadership of people who are really trying to say okay we're trying to live by these ideals we're trying to through leadership

[00:58:11] ensure that all boats rise with the rising tide kind of thing that's empathy that's empathic leadership it's not always easy and what's interesting is where you have a let's face it the way John Kennedy ran his private life I have to believe his wife

[00:58:23] was hurt by how he conducted himself maybe rich people have affairs and that's just how they live their lives but by all reports she was hurt and so there was some empathy chip missing there one would say it was the time it was

[00:58:37] privilege of entitlement I don't know you see a young woman who was thrust into a real public role 31 and handled it with grace and there's hurt on her face and he chose not to recognize it there was some empathy missing there's no

[00:58:49] two ways about it she's so sure she's suffering but the favorite thing I heard you say and I have to say it before we get it in Sarah you can take over after that but pushing back on narcissism as a human rights issue

[00:58:59] that was a goosebump line for me when you said that it absolutely look at the world we're in right now you show me a single problem in the world right now and I'm talking big problems wars and lack of health care and

[00:59:13] the state of girls and women and parts of the world you show me one of those problems and you can't track it back to narcissistic leadership every single case of that it is an absolute lack of empathy for the most vulnerable people in a society

[00:59:27] and a person using a position of power and inborn privilege to maintain their sense of power dominance and control and viewing human beings as disposable that is the root of all of it and we're not pushing back on in fact a lot of people are saying like

[00:59:43] well you know all different kinds of personalities I'm judging the way we treat an individual is how we treat the world that's where our podcast overlap I think that's our shared mission slightly different content but I know that you if you feel comfortable sharing

[01:00:01] we can cut it out if you don't but you have a podcast also a burgeoning podcast tell us a burgeoning podcast I wish I had a release date for you yes it's new podcast coming out called navigating narcissism it's an opportunity to hear from people

[01:00:13] in all kinds of different stories of people who've been through narcissistic relationships what the stories look like where the red flags are and how they navigated and where they ended up and more importantly what can we learn from it that's what the podcast does and I think

[01:00:27] that narcissism is lurking in so many public stories next year was a great example you know I remember sitting with my team and I said okay this is this is the narcissism story of the week and I covered I watched it very carefully

[01:00:39] because as soon as I heard some of the elements of it I'm like okay wait for it and here it was and so I don't think most people watched the story of nexium as a narcissism story and it was that

[01:00:49] front to back you know and so and then using that as the frame and teaching people this story that seems so big and involving all these people actually relates to the person who's verbally abusing you in your kitchen right now they're one in the same and so the

[01:01:03] podcast is meant to help people connect those dots and teach people that enduring this isn't okay I am I've said this before I said this on red table talk recently the four most dangerous words in the English language when strung together are benefit of the doubt

[01:01:17] right that's gotta stop like why am I not giving you the benefit of my doubt your behavior is a problem it doesn't mean I'm gonna cut and run but you better believe my boundary just got really thick and high and I'm distancing myself

[01:01:29] a little bit we don't give ourselves permission we and people judge us the enabler step and say what are you doing give them a chance or who do you think you are that you get to stand and be so upbeat I'm like how come we

[01:01:41] just don't allow people say this doesn't feel comfortable I don't like this and let them step away in fact we often encourage people to walk towards their perpetrators I have a problem with that no I do too and that's great advice for our

[01:01:55] listeners and for anybody is you know setting those boundaries is there anything else you'd share especially because so many of our listeners are survivors of different not only just cults but narcissistic abuse abusive relationships anything else to recover from being gaslit

[01:02:07] or you know being in a toxic relationship of any kind absolutely well please come over to my YouTube channel it's a wealth of knowledge everybody it's so good there's a big library of content there and just you know join that because honestly it's a really robust community and

[01:02:21] people in the comment section share a lot of their stories you see that you're not the only one going through this I also have a subscription healing program for people want to do more of an intensive deep dive into sort of like

[01:02:31] there's it's a lot it requires a lot of journaling and there's a Q&A and there's a workshop every month and all of that and if you just go to my website which is drromany.com you can sign up

[01:02:41] and it's you know for some people it's an adjunct to therapy for some people say listen it's for this amount per month it's it's an affordable price point for me to just be able to like stay on top of this there's a community platform that's closed

[01:02:53] only the people in the program can get in it so it's just it's a safe space which we cure you know we monitor multiple times so I have that I have and then if you go to my website you'll find my books and you'll find

[01:03:03] my various kinds of other recommendations I have for content out there you can find me lots of places talking about narcissism all the time huge library it's so good we're gonna put your like your website I have a resource page because people are always reaching out

[01:03:17] asking for help so I'll put it on our resource page and I know your books are unaudible and is there anything else that you want our audience to know or one oh yeah okay sorry we go on social

[01:03:27] media you I think you see a lot of this stuff Twitter whatever and it seems to me a lot of people don't know what they're looking at and it seems like a lot of these so-called movements that are going on right now what I call the maligned fringe

[01:03:39] movements are really people who are traumatized and a lot of the solution seem to be these kind of linear solutions to spiritual trauma problems and they don't know what they're looking at and then people feel like they're not heard and then they start

[01:03:53] canceling you for not hearing them and all that stuff and it seems just like a whole shit show of if people just understood they're looking at trauma and had the empathy that you're talking about to looking at it and not necessarily trying

[01:04:03] to get them louder voices or whatever these things could be solved in a week no it wouldn't even be a week as much as they could be solved in the sense that the cycles I'm trying to see people end are the cycles of self-blame

[01:04:17] but it's hard to end the cycles of self-blame when social media and the media at large are always raising up the narcissistic people as sort of examples of how to live or even in a world listen we live in a world where inflation is terrible

[01:04:31] people are still struggling economically lots of people can't afford housing and so when you see the most narcissistic person lives in the biggest nicest house you're like wait a minute what am I doing wrong here right maybe this whole nice person thing isn't working out

[01:04:45] for me and sadly in some ways that agreeableness research does show agreeable people do tend to make lower salaries because they tend to go into human service jobs therapists teachers helpers helpers don't make money you know people who hurt people

[01:04:57] make more money and so when your economy is organized that way that's the struggle and so I think unfortunately there's a lot of people out there who are sort of exploiting the vulnerability of people who've been through these relationships I completely agree with you a lot of this

[01:05:11] is very much holding a trauma informed space a space of not only safety but also a space where the ultimate goal like we said before for the parent why do we raise children we raise children so they get strong enough to walk away fly away

[01:05:25] and live their life that's parenting not to make them like live next to you for the rest of their lives some people do that great good for you you look that's how it worked out but they should feel that they have the permission

[01:05:35] to also go in and fulfill their destiny it's you know it's very similar for in therapy that for the goal for me in working with a client is for them to now feel that they have they can they feel they feel committed in their choices they feel confident

[01:05:51] I'm trying to build up an independent autonomous person my job is great when people leave because they feel ready to go out into the world right I'm not trying to keep them on the chain and so that's what we want people to be independent and autonomous and be

[01:06:05] able to feel safe in the world and that's the problem right now a lot of people don't feel safe and the more we have personality styles like narcissism holding important and leadership positions the less safe the world is and that's the world we live in right now it's

[01:06:19] I don't mean literally unsafe I mean it's a psychologically unsafe world right right and what you described is like the opposite of a cult which of course breeds dependency they want to keep people loyal keep people in keep people broken enough and not enough enough

[01:06:35] so that they stay and keep buying more and more classes or whatever it is that they're peddling and isolate them from the world and say we're better the ultimate goal is to feed the cult leaders ego and not only is that happening through validation the belief that the

[01:06:51] cult leader holds all the truth that everybody outside of the cult doesn't have the truth and then and it gets monetized then that's just merely a source of power money's power so it gives them more power it allows them to sort of secret themselves from the world

[01:07:05] and do what it is they need to do I was really I mean I will tell you when I saw the outcome of nexium and the trial how it went how it went my immediate reaction was absolute relief and it wasn't just relief that

[01:07:19] this guy is going to jail it was the relief that all survivors feel when we see those rare moments of justice I was convinced that Keith Reuniery would not receive a penalty that was you know commensurate with what he did I really was convinced

[01:07:35] I was even glad to see his enablers took some hits too because he needed those enablers to be able to be propped up they were complicit that trial was the kind of outcome that actually gives survivors that wholeness that only justice can deliver and most of us

[01:07:53] don't get to have justice in our lives and to your point I think the catalyst for his downfall was empathy and love not from him from a prosecutor who saw it and Moira Penza and really what I think you know the love that happened started with

[01:08:11] Mark's wife Bonnie well Bonnie yes oh yeah absolutely you know that kind of mark she put it to Mark this is that and then Mark went to Sarah he risked it all to tell me and I came in and did my part

[01:08:27] and that was the ripple effect of love and empathy I think that was a ripple effect but also Bonnie to me was such an important person in the story because in many cases I wish everyone had like a Bonnie friend in their lives

[01:08:39] if they have a narcissistic relationship that one friend that comes up to you and says this isn't right what I'm seeing here not okay and many people don't have that one person who takes the risk to step up and then she told her partner

[01:08:53] and he instead of rejecting her like you said the empathy he was willing to hear her most people when they speak truth about these relationships other people invalidate it because it's such a challenge to their world view and then he took it to you

[01:09:07] and you were so you're right it's an empathy chain but for most people that chain gets clipped right at the very beginning and you don't even have someone like Bonnie who is really willing to roll up and say the emperor is not

[01:09:19] wearing any clothes and this is beyond the emperor is not wearing clothes quite literally yeah emperors literally not wearing clothes and it harming other people this isn't right and I have to tell you even in my world when I have an organization of groups I've worked with

[01:09:33] certainly not at this absolutely perilous level you were at with Nexium but in smaller scale issues when you are the messenger you are really viewed as a problem oh gosh there's Romany why it's so difficult why can't you give people a chance oh your narcissism thing

[01:09:49] la la la la la la and it's what I do and I'm at an age where I just really no longer care what people think of me in that way but earlier in my career it mattered to me more and I keep my mouth shut

[01:10:01] and there's a point at which and this is hard when I often do leadership training for folks and people coming up in their careers I say everyone's like well how can we make it work how can we make it work sometimes you can't make it work sometimes you

[01:10:13] gotta walk away when it's that toxic you've got to do that and I think so much of the rhetoric out there is like how can we meet them halfway I can't meet someone halfway who's holding all the toys like they took everything so

[01:10:27] I think it's a real shift and this is a like I said if you haven't been through it you don't get it and that's a real challenge too it's very difficult to anoint those who don't want to be anointed and I struggle with that and then when it

[01:10:39] finally happens to someone years later they'll call me back and say I wish I listened to you and I'm like okay fine sure okay I've been that guy yeah a lot of people have been that person yeah I wish I'd listen to you

[01:10:51] and a lot I've been labeled a cynic I've been labeled a bitch I mean called every name in the book because basically I'm saying there's no Santa Claus you know nobody wants to be that person I was gonna ask you about your colleagues and

[01:11:05] what it's like in the position that you're in if you get pushed back thank you for answering all the time and I have to say you need only spend one hour in a room with a survivor who's been broken by someone narcissistic to say I'm not

[01:11:21] you need to sit with that human pain long enough you're not going to care what if there's pushback saying you know just because you make the rules doesn't mean you're right that this is not like this is not okay and we've got to we've got to find

[01:11:33] a way to work with survivors and bolster them again whether it's in a whole life and every narcissistic relationship is a cult the cult of two but it's a cult you know and so you can see it and that's the level of manipulation being used

[01:11:45] and I understand all those techniques when it's happening to someone in real time I really want people to say aha I got it and maybe one day long after I'm gone there'll be a narcissism detector the language will come in and a little device

[01:11:57] will beep and they'll be like sequence of language and I see that's not beyond the pale at some point AI will be able to detect the language patterns that people these personalities use and then they'll beep away we had this in the last couple

[01:12:11] of episodes this I don't know if you can see this bullshit button but Nipi and I when we were like for example read the response that Teal Swan had she posted on her blog her response to the media about her right now now we do this

[01:12:30] so we have to like find our ways to laugh and stuff I don't think it'll become an ongoing sound effect in our podcast but I think that would be great if that existed in the world more 100% I really do I mean I think that

[01:12:44] listen people just be even more savvy consumers capitalism is actually is incumbent on people being played by narcissistic people because if we didn't feel insecure and we didn't fall for the gaslighting then we wouldn't buy stuff like no that pair of shoes

[01:13:00] is not going to make you happier or you know it's that idea that a thing or something you pay for is going to be the sort of soul healing experience people get to that point don't get again gaslighted by a sales pitch or something like that

[01:13:14] but the economy is actually going to take a hit so I always say if we dismantle narcissism dismantling capitalism I don't know that anybody's ready for that that sounds like another episode maybe on your podcast yeah that's a big one but then

[01:13:26] you start getting all the you know then you get canceled by the capitalism crowd and then it's all there so let me get started before I start before baby steps before I start taking institutional structures well the world needs more people like you and we were so

[01:13:42] you know honored that it was actually one of our one of our listeners connected with us oh that's awesome I've never heard that I think it was Amy I have to go back and look at the email chain

[01:13:52] but we're very grateful for that we're grateful for your time thank you so much yeah it's just like such a treat I can't wait to meet in person when we're in LA please come to LA please find me and also thank you for what you do your experience

[01:14:06] and you had such a raw experience in the vow and I remember thinking wow that is really great just to put your story and your vulnerability out there that I'm going to put my vulnerability out there no matter how the world judges me

[01:14:18] this is how I'm going to heal and you did that and I think a lot of people you know some people learn some people don't and like I said you can't anoint those who don't want to be anointed but many

[01:14:28] people learned and I thought it was it was really quite I mean I was I watched it twice the gift is wisdom and if we can articulate it and stay in our lane I think you know we're doing our jobs and then it's been worth it

[01:14:38] you said something in an interview that really stuck with me I thought I knew all the Khalil Jabran quotes but you said out of suffering have emerged strongest souls and the most massive characters are seared with scars and just want to

[01:14:50] let you know that I've had my brand removed oh that's wonderful Sarah that is wonderful and yet you know what it is is that I'm so glad you had that and yet the other scars we all carry I always tell people I'm an introvert

[01:15:02] so I don't go to parties but when I do I always scan the room for the most scarred person and I'm like yeah that's who I'm talking to tonight because they're always the most interesting and eloquent it definitely has been an interesting talking point at dinner parties

[01:15:14] and I needed to keep it for a number of years partly for evidence yeah but to have it gone I do have to like I literally had it cut out with plastic surgeries have like a you know a two inch line scar and I'm okay with that it

[01:15:26] reminds me of what I've overcome so but I think that scar also reminds you that you took your power back yes that's a different kind of scar absolutely yeah so thank you again I'm so glad I got to talk with you thank you

[01:15:40] so that was the doctor dropping some serious knowledge on how to deal with narcissists Sarah my head is full oh my god how many of those do you know too many too many or at least you know the interesting thing about it is that

[01:16:05] it's a it's a personality style disorder which I thought was interesting evaluating it backwards mm-hmm and also give me hope for the future more on that no there's hope for you there's hope there's hope no for our children like I just feel

[01:16:21] like we're you know by teaching empathy and I feel like we're on the right track but let us know what you think about this episode tell us the craziest thing a narcissist has ever done or said to you and hit us up over Instagram

[01:16:33] or leave us a voicemail on our website at a little bit culty.com I'm anticipating some voicemails after this episode and just remember anything you do or say on our voicemail might get played on this podcast that sounded like your Miranda rights right there and just remember anything

[01:16:47] you say can be used against you and we'll be back here soon with a new episode and in the meantime you can join us on Patreon for some exclusive mini soaps and other stylish informative bribes including the ability to listen to our episodes ad free

[01:17:01] less ads more of us that's not narcissistic at all no no thanks everybody have a great day hope you like this episode let's keep the conversation going and come hang out with us on Patreon where we keep the tape rolling each week special episodes just for Patreon subscribers

[01:17:30] and where we get deep into the weeds of unpacking every episode of The Val and if you're looking for our show notes or some sweet sweet swag or official ALBC podcast merch or a list of our most recommended cult recovery resources visit our website at www.albc.com

[01:17:48] and for more background on what brought us here check out Sarah's page turning memoir it's called Scarred the true story of how I escaped nexium the cult that bound my life it's available on Amazon, Audible narrated by my wife and at most bookstores

[01:18:04] a little bit culty is a talkhouse podcast and a trace 120 production we're executive produced by Sarah Edmondson and Anthony Nippy Ames with writing, research and additional production support by senior producer Jess Tardy we're edited, mixed and mastered by our rocking producer Will Rutherford of Citizens of Sound

[01:18:22] and our amazing theme song, Cultivated is by John Bryant and co-written by Nigel Asselin thank you for listening