REPLAY: Dr. Ramani Durvasula on Post-Narc Healing

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[00:01:32] We always recommend Shopify. It took us from an idea to a real business. We got set up, I think, in less than a day with very little effort. We could just focus on the supply chains of the product development. Shopify gives us the ability to customize without the complexity. We can change something without introducing fragility or having to pay a developer. We're Thirsty Turtle and we leveled up our business with Shopify. Start your free trial at Shopify.com slash au.

[00:02:03] This podcast is for informational purposes only and should not be considered legal, medical, or mental health advice. The views and opinions expressed do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the podcast and are not intended to malign any religion, group, club, organization, business, individual, anyone, or anything. I'm Sarah Edmondson.

[00:02:31] And I'm Anthony Nippy Ames. And this is A Little Bit Culty. We woke up from a cult. And that journey was captured in The Vow on HBO and in my memoir, Scarred. Now in this podcast, we break down the shame and secrets that make these experiences so destructive with honest conversations on how seemingly benign groups can cross into the cultiverse and how to spot and recover from trouble if it happens to you. Each week, we bring in experts, survivors, and whistleblowers to explore red flags, resilience, and even share a few laughs because sometimes you gotta laugh.

[00:02:59] Subscribe to our Patreon for early and ad-free listening, some live Q&A, and exclusive content at patreon.com slash a littlebitculty. Welcome to Season 8 of A Little Bit Culty.

[00:03:25] Hi, everybody. Happy Thursday. We hope that you enjoyed our last episode, the replay with Dr. Romany Durvasala. This is another one. This is from Season 6 because if the previous episode helped you understand narcissism, this one helps you understand what comes after. And after this narcissism extravaganza, after this week, you'll be prepped for next week's back-to-back episodes with Mark Vicente, who chatted with us about his new film, The Narcissist Playbook.

[00:03:54] A very important film, and we'll be getting into that next week. And for now, enjoy this replay with Dr. Romany. Welcome back, everybody, to A Little Bit Culty. Our guest today is a friend of the show and someone we admire so very much. We got a chance to have her on a little bit, Colty, last year to talk about her fascinating work, and we jumped at the chance to have her come back, right? This time, she's here with a new book that we've just read and adored, and we can't wait to talk to her about it. She's a PhD. She's really a big deal.

[00:04:24] No, seriously. Dr. Romany Durvasala is a licensed clinical psychologist in Los Angeles, California, professor emerita of psychology at California State University, Los Angeles, and the founder and CEO of Luna Education, training and consulting. She's an 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? How to Stay Sane in an Era of Narcissism, Entitlement, and Incivility.

[00:04:49] Her clinical, academic, and consulting work is all about the impact that narcissism and high-conflict, entitled, antagonistic personality styles have on human relationships, mental health, and society. She's been featured at South by Southwest, TEDx, Red Table Talk, The Today Show, Investigation Discovery, and more. You can also find her on YouTube, where she has accumulated millions of views on her videos discussing narcissism on her successful channel and social media at Dr. Romany.

[00:05:17] She's a proud pod mama hosting the excellent Navigating Narcissism with Dr. Romany. And if you haven't heard that show already, it's a must-listen. Trust us. Get that in your ears. Stat. Her new book, released in February, is called It's Not You, Identifying and Healing from Narcissistic People. She wants you to know that healing and thriving after or even during a narcissistic relationship can be challenging, but it is possible.

[00:05:41] Her newest book, again, it's called It's Not You, shows that the first step is to stop trying to change the narcissistic person, stop blaming yourself, and start giving yourself permission to foster your autonomy and sense of self outside of the relationship. Hot diggity damn. This will be such a helpful episode for all of us. Let's get into it. Here's our chat with the amazing, insightful, and ever so eloquent Dr. Romany.

[00:06:28] Welcome back to A Little Bit Culty. We've been so excited to have you on ever since we heard about your third book. And this is the third book and the topic. You've written two amazing books already. Why this third? Where did this come from? Tell us about the origins. The new book, It's Not You, is a book on healing. So many, if not almost, I'd say 80, 90% of the books on narcissism are about narcissism, right? About the narcissist. Let's understand the narcissist. The anatomy of a narcissist. All of that.

[00:06:54] What we don't talk enough about is not only what it does to the people in the relationships, but what you can do about it. It's often we sort of give this kind of pat advice. Well, they're never going to change, so you have to leave. And leaving isn't an option for everybody. And so, It's Not You is, there's an old proverb that reads basically, the tale of the hunt is always told by the hunter and never the lion. And we always think of like a lion as fierce, but actually the lion is the hunter's prey.

[00:07:21] And the hunter is at a market advantage and tells the story the way they want. This is really meant to be the story of the hunt told by the lion or anyone who is actually being stalked and bothered and harassed and harmed. And so, you know me, Sarah Nippy, you both know me. Sarah in particular, you know that I'm not hopeful when it comes to this topic. I don't believe narcissistic people can change. This book is actually filled with hope because whereas I don't have much hope for narcissistic folks, I have tons of hope for survivors.

[00:07:50] And every single day, I'm hearing about a person who's been through really terrible narcissistic relationships. Once they get it, once they heal, once they go through the process of radical acceptance and grief, I see that something in them, really, they're allowed to actually slide into their individuated self. And so, there's a lot of hope. But I think so much of the guidance out there, I'll see these TikTok videos and everything. He's a narcissist, get out.

[00:08:13] And what happens is if you can't leave or you have minor children, you may not be able to leave for cultural reasons, financial reasons, whatever it may be. Folks who can't leave feel shamed or I guess I'm going to suffer forever. And I don't believe that. I believe that even if you stay, there's a very, very hope-filled, healing-filled future. It's going to look different than for someone who left, but it doesn't have to look any less healthier. In addition to an amazing book, you gave Sarah and I a lot of fodder for joking around.

[00:08:42] Because we were reading it and we were calling each other and she called me up and I was like, she said, what do you think? And I was like, Sarah, I have so much compassion for your struggle right now. She's like, what are you talking about? What are you talking about? Nippy, you're the one. I was like, and then I was like, hey, Sarah, she called me and I was like, have you gotten to the part where she mentions you? We have a good time here. And separate, no, do you take private clients? Anymore? Not anymore for exactly this reason. You can thank folks like Nippy for that.

[00:09:14] All joking aside, though, I was reading it and I was going to Sarah. I was like, oh my God, I do some of these. Some of it was kind of horrifying, to be quite honest with you. And Sarah reassured me. She's like, you're a good person. I was like, thank you. And she's petting me and all that stuff. You bring up an important point though, right? Because I think that when people, first of all, I think the problem is, is that we hear the word narcissist and we view it as a black or white. You either are or you are. It's not that simple, right? Or we view it diagnostically, which we're even throwing that out completely.

[00:09:44] But it's a continuum, but it's also not just one thing. So just because maybe, I don't know, someone interrupts you or talks over you or maybe even monopolizes the conversation, that doesn't make them a narcissistic person. Or they talk about their day first and may not wait to hear about your day. That doesn't make them a narcissistic person. Now, if that happened every single day, every conversation with just about everyone they encountered, maybe we're smelling it, but you got to have all the other stuff.

[00:10:12] The entitlement and the variable empathy and the grandiosity and the control and the power obsession and all the stuff. Like, again, a carrot is not soup. Flour is not cake. You need all the other stuff. And I think that healthy people who hear the content on narcissism immediately go to, well, I do that sometimes. We all do these things sometimes. We are human beings, right? By definition, we're going to do these things.

[00:10:38] The fact is, though, healthy human beings make amends. They have self-reflection. You might turn to a spouse or partner and say, yikes, I talked about my day for 20 minutes and I didn't even ask you, I am so sorry. Can you imagine a narcissistic person ever doing that in history? Never. And that's the difference is that when we do have some slippage, when we're not sort of being as interpersonally balanced as we can be, that we check ourselves.

[00:11:06] And we check in with the people we care about and say, I didn't get that right. And I am sorry. We actually take real responsibility, not things like, I'm sorry you feel that way. So there's a big difference. Absolutely. Just setting the stage for our listeners that when we're talking about recovering from narcissistic abuse, they can interplay that or interchange that with cult recovery. Absolutely. I mean, listen, it's funny.

[00:11:29] I just did an interview with Yanya, Dr. Yanya Lalic, a few weeks ago, and we were talking about this and that the parallels are eerie. The difference is it's probably a cultic structure is much more codified. A narcissistic relational structure is often two people, but you can have cults of two people. Look at Sarah Lawrence. It's a cult of seven people. Cults can be quite small. But the fact is, is that all of the apparatus is the same.

[00:11:56] If anything to me, what a cult is, is that you take all the narcissistic dynamics and it's really colorful. Like I watched the movie Barbie recently and everything was like color. And then I watched Oppenheimer and everything was not color. That's to me what a cultic narcissistic system is like. It's everything bright color. So every dynamic is just amped up. The volume, the color, all of it.

[00:12:18] So it's like things like collateralizing someone, which happens in a narcissistic relationship, is much more concrete in a cultic relationship. Does that make sense? So it's like you take it all and it becomes more, it's almost like they give you a manual for the narcissistic relationship in a family or in a couple where it's not, again, an organized cult. It feels different, but it's exactly the same. It has exactly the same effect.

[00:12:45] And one could argue that the deprogramming, in essence, we would have to do for somebody who's leaving a cultic system, not to mention things like moral injury and all of that. Those are very, very similar dynamics to what I've always observed in people who are leaving narcissistic relationships or have become aware of narcissistic relationships. Such a good point. And we'll be referring people to episode one, which we just re-listened to to prep for this. And it's so good. It's like definitely one of our favorite flagship episodes, especially when people are like, tell me about your podcast. And they have no cult connection.

[00:13:15] And I'm like, this is one that everybody can relate to. It's so helpful. And truthfully, when I started your book, I was like, oh my God, I've read so many books about this. And since leaving, I'm not going to learn anything new about narcissism. But I did. I did. And two things I really would like to point out specifically in regards to our podcast is the concepts of breadcrumbing and future faking and euphoric recall.

[00:13:36] And those three things, before we get into healing, I think is so important in regards to like, in terms of the recovery, understanding the harm that narcissists did, either in a cult or one-on-one. Can you explain some of those terms? So breadcrumbing is this process. And any narcissistic system, cultic system, it happens where the simplest way to put it is in the relationship, you get indoctrinated into or teach yourself to get by on less and less and less and be willing to turn it into more and more and more.

[00:14:05] So it would literally be, in the simplest example, it would be somebody in a relationship with a narcissistic person who doesn't communicate, is very shady, is very dismissive. And that person comes home on time for dinner one day out of 10. And the person in the relationship is like, oh my gosh, they came home for dinner and they loved the dinner. I cooked for them. Like, we're doing okay. And so it is very much, or the person will remember an event and give them a gift and say, oh my gosh, they remember the gift.

[00:14:34] They're such a good friend. And so not only is most of the relationship characterized by neglect, what it means is that even one tiny showing up gets over-interpreted, overvalued. And the problem is over-justified as a piece of evidence that this relationship is good or healthy or beneficent or this other person's okay. And over time, breadcrumming is a really insidious dynamic because for a lot of people, it can start early in life.

[00:15:02] Like they get, because for kids, kids have to make a relationship with a parent work, including a narcissistic parent. So the narcissistic parent can literally every so often look up from a newspaper and the kid will say, my parent loves me. And all the rest of the time be absent. The child learns at a very early age that love and close relationships are transactional. What do I need to do to make this person look over their newspaper? And then that expectation gets taken into adult relationships.

[00:15:31] But it doesn't just happen that way. Some people have perfectly fine family systems growing up, but then they meet someone. They craft a narrative about this is my person. This person's great. I'm really into this person. And if that person's narcissistic and they've done sort of this four to six to eight weeks of love bombing, and that's all the investment they were ever going to put in. And then the devaluing happens. The person has those couple of months of the love bombing to sort of draw from, if you will.

[00:15:58] And then as the process of pulling out for the narcissistic person happens, then the person is still holding on to that. In fact, it cuts to the other topic you were asking about, which is euphoric recall. We can selectively, it's an interesting kind of a twist in these narcissistic relationships. It's cognitive dissonance. It's cognitive dissonance, but it actually goes against what we know about human nature in a way.

[00:16:21] Because our brains, our nervous systems are actually trained or actually developed to choose threats in our environment. In fact, we selectively remember bad things. And there's an evolutionary adaptation to that. If we can remember which bush had the poison berries, we're going to be less likely to eat the poison berries. If we remember which pathway took us down the dangerous creek, we won't go down that pathway again. We, our sympathetic nervous systems, our nervous systems in general, monitor for threat.

[00:16:49] And in fact, when you look at some of the interesting work on mindfulness, Rick Hansen's work is a great example. He is somebody who said, like, listen, part of what we need to do as mindfulness practices is train our brains to look for good stuff. You know, because we're so trained to, in many, if you will, healthy relationships, people will focus on the one fight they had three weeks ago, but the other three weeks were great.

[00:17:11] There's this weird, interesting flip because of the trauma bond that happens in any narcissistic relationship, which is that a person feels attached to someone where the relationship goes back and forth. It's good and it's bad. It's up and it's down. And because there was a period of really good, and oftentimes there's enablers who are signing off on that relationship. Oh, gosh, what a great relationship you have, that the person is then trying to make sense of the confusion. They blame themselves.

[00:17:40] They get by on the breadcrumbs and they justify the behavior in the relationship. And they keep falling back on just when they say, this is really unhealthy. But, but gosh, we had such a good time in Miami three years ago. And they'll selectively pull out those good memories, euphoric recall. So it's part of that whole trauma bonding mechanism. But the breadcrumbing is, again, it's getting by on so little and really crafting a narrative about how good it is as a result.

[00:18:06] It's present in almost every narcissistic relationship I've ever seen. After people get educated and they start to learn that this isn't healthy, it's almost like a person who, again, I think any of us who are in a scarcity mindset, and I think breadcrumbing is part of a scarcity mindset, and you don't think you deserve more because that's what the narcissistic relationship tells you. You don't deserve more. You're not enough. How dare you ask for more? How dare you have a need? How dare you have a want? All of that gets taken away.

[00:18:34] The person's sense of self gets taken away, and the breadcrumbing really kicks in. So we heard the term breadcrumb. It was basically specifically directed at women by Keith in some of the Janess trainings. Ah, that's very, that makes sense, though. It totally does. He said women dangle the breadcrumb for the man, and the man is always the one that's just kind of waiting for the crumbs that they grant us. And they control it through sex.

[00:18:59] Okay, so let me break down when Keith, I want to just give you, like, I want to make a finer sort of observational point on that. When Keith made this whole thing, women breadcrumb by dangling the little crumb, which, like you said, implied sort of sex and his lack of capacity or lack of whatever you want to call it to access the sexuality offered by women. Right, in an exchange, not coercive way. Correct. That is the most vulnerable narcissistic thing I've ever heard in my life, right?

[00:19:27] That is that whole, I mean, and he was an interesting hybrid, right, of a mix between malignant narcissism, communal narcissism, and vulnerable narcissism. He was a victim, forever viewing himself as a victim, sort of, and again, getting caught in this kind of, this sort of eddy in the stream of women are, you know, messing with me with their sexuality. They won't give me what I want. It's incel talk, right? And all incels tend to be vulnerable and malignant narcissists.

[00:19:56] He had the communal narcissistic piece because he got off on this idea of him being some sort of weird savior or healer, a malignant narcissist, because he's willing to exploit. Unfortunately, he also was a psychopath because he has no remorse for what he did. So it's like a dark, where it becomes an interesting subtype, and I've studied the keys of it all very, very closely, is that he's a dark tetrad with the vulnerable narcissism, which is an interesting kind of a twist. They're usually not as victim-y and insipid as he is.

[00:20:23] And his insipidness and that idea of women breadcrumb by doing that, that's a unique twist in him. And I think it's what actually gave him a lot of power. This is a very physically unattractive, emasculated, kind of icky man. I'm going to tell you, I'm going to sort of share a little Nippy and Sarah. When I watched the bow, I remember watching Sarah's relationship with you, and then I see these intercut with these images of Keith. I'm like, thank God Sarah got like a hot guy because, ew, this leader of this group.

[00:20:51] I mean, you know, it's like, I mean, really, like, Nippy's really is a handsome guy. You're a beautiful woman. But, like, your wedding pictures are like out of a wedding magazine kind of thing. But when you could imagine Nippy, the kind of visual stimulus you were for someone like Keith because you were much more masculine. You're much more physically strong. You would get the girl. And so for him, insipid is the word that keeps coming to play. And so he would create this, you know, he created this environment basically like many cult leaders do to be able to get sex.

[00:21:21] But the entire construct they create, you'll see this in a variety of cultic systems where this vulnerable, narcissistic, emasculated, unattractive, like, man will view women as weaponizing sexuality when all they're doing is just sort of walking around the world and living their lives. So he had that odd twist of the vulnerable narcissism thrown into the dark.

[00:21:44] Well, he could use societal standards and norms that have little grains of truth and blow that up into some big conspiratorial conscious thing that women do. Which, incidentally, didn't really make sense to me. Like, but I went along with some of it because there were some grains of truth in it. But I didn't see any of that, particularly what he was saying, as a personal problem. Yeah. And I think we have to train ourselves to view these things as personal problems, if that makes sense.

[00:22:12] Like, it doesn't, you know, it's just sort of that such an oppressive mindset for him to have had about women. But when you, and it's, and again, you're not mean people. But anyone watching the show, we're at home. We're not hanging out with this guy. We're like, ew. Yeah, yeah. And then it all had a greater context to it. But that, again, that's that mindset that really drives that whole incel thing. And in fact, not wanting to go on too far of a tangent, is this idea of that. A lot of people ask the big question is, is narcissism on the rise, right? Are we seeing more of it?

[00:22:41] And I was talking to Keith Campbell, who I think maybe you've talked to, Sarah. Have you talked to Keith Campbell? He's actually in Georgia. He's a professor in personality and social psychology. He's not a clinician, but he's one of, to me, the best expert on narcissism scientifically that there is out there. He's at University of Georgia. And we had this interesting conversation. He's written several books on the topic of narcissism. And one of them back in 2012 was called The Narcissism Epidemic with a woman named Jean Twenge, who's also a personality researcher.

[00:23:10] And we were talking about this idea, is it on the rise? And him and I both agreed, grandiose narcissism, the sort of arrogant celebrity, look at me, pretentious, do you like my sports car narcissism? Him and I both agreed that's probably been pretty stable. The difference is, is that the internet has given them a different platform. But anybody from back before internet days will say, no, I knew people like this, right? They just sort of threw it off in a different way.

[00:23:37] The vulnerable narcissism, though, is what I think, and he, both of us agree, is really on the rise. And the vulnerable narcissistic people are incredibly jealous, grudgingly entitled people. So when they go on social media and they see beautiful women they quote unquote can't have that they believe are breadcrumbing them, when they see people who have the job that they want or somebody whose hard work resulted in success or somebody who's merely more attractive than them or has a better life than them,

[00:24:07] it pushes their buttons like nothing ever before. So these vulnerable narcissists were probably just doing something else and we didn't see them. And now I think that even people who have a seed of this, it has blown up. And that form of narcissism not only has gotten more dangerous, it's the vast majority of internet trolls and cruel commenters and anonymous sort of weird people on the internet. But there's more danger there because they're like time bombs.

[00:24:35] Because they really feel that the world has done them wrong. Would you say Jeff from Twin Flames is in that category? Less so. And I'll tell you why less so. Because I think he comes off much more clean, communal, and grandiose with a touch of malaise. It's a little recipe. Right? Because he's in an interesting sort of intimate relationship with the wife person or whatever that person is supposed to be. Yes, right. Yes. So many names. Isemo feels a little less vulnerable. I have to be honest with you.

[00:25:03] With Keith, it was dripping off him, the vulnerable narcissist. But for him, it's more of a cocktail of the malignant, the communal, and the grandiose. I mean, there's no cult leader in the world that doesn't have a touch of the communal narcissism. That's built into it. And that's where, when we think of the continuum, a mild communal narcissist, a narcissist that gets their admiration and validation by doing stuff. For, you know, like doing what they think are humanitarian, teaching the world, new age stuff, you name it.

[00:25:31] At the mild level, these are people who do beach cleanups in a bikini and have to take pictures and look at me killing the bay kind of nonsense. And then at the far end of the continuum are the cult leaders. Okay. When we talk about severe communal narcissism. That's such a great description. Before we hear from our sponsors, just a quick reminder. Our book, A Little Bit Culty, Navigating Cults, Control, and Coercion is officially out and available on Amazon.

[00:25:59] Signed pre-orders have closed, but you can still get your copy today. This book is the culmination of five years of conversations, interviews, and research. Everything we've learned about how people get pulled into high control groups and how to avoid, escape, or heal from them. If you've been listening to the podcast and want a deeper go-to resource, this is it. Available now on Amazon in print and as an e-book for Kindle. And yes, the audio book is coming soon, narrated by us. Just search A Little Bit Culty and grab your copy. Do it.

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[00:30:56] Go to quince.com slash culty for free shipping on your order and 365-day returns. Now available in Canada too. That's Q-U-I-N-C-E dot com slash culty for free shipping and 365-day returns. Quince.com slash culty. Escape's over. Let's return to our regularly scheduled cult talk. Looking at specific therapeutic approaches or techniques that you've recommended survivors,

[00:31:26] can you tell us about the tenet of radical acceptance and how that relates? The radical acceptance piece is in its simplest form. And I think, unfortunately, some people get so caught up in the simple, they don't recognize it's got a lot more branches to the tree. In the simplest form, radical acceptance is that real and final acceptance that the patterns, the dynamics, and the behaviors in your narcissistic relationship are not going to change.

[00:31:50] You'll notice I didn't say it as simply as the narcissist isn't going to change because I think it almost feels defeatist to people. And they feel like they're bad people for saying that. But when we frame it as, because really all that matters with the narcissistic person is their behavior, right? That otherwise they're not affecting us. What's going on in their head, unless it turns into behavior, is not our problem. But so by making it the behavior, I think I found a lot of clients benefit from that slight distancing. Okay, yeah, everything they're doing is not going to change. Thank you.

[00:32:18] But really, the core of it, they're not going to change, right? So the radical acceptance is they're not, you're not going to be the exception. And whatever teeny tiny bit of change they may undergo is not going to be enough to turn this relationship around. It's still going to be a very tense, invalidating, uncomfortable, emotionally abusive relationship. That's piece one of radical acceptance.

[00:32:39] The second piece of radical acceptance, though, is that especially for people who can't fully leave these relationships, right? So people who, for whatever reason, it's a family member, it's a marriage they can't get out of, it's a job they can't get out of. Radical acceptance isn't a magic pill.

[00:32:58] Just because you radically accept that narcissism and its patterns and its behaviors and all that will not change, not on your watch for sure, and not on anyone else's, frankly, that it's not going to make it so that it doesn't hurt you anymore, right? So there's plenty of people in my world that are narcissistic that I still have a lot of contact with. Because I've radically accepted. But when they deliver a zinger, it still hurts my heart. I'm still me, right? I haven't become some sort of, you know, sort of stony, closed-off ice person.

[00:33:27] Like, I still get hurt. And I think a lot of people are surprised. Like, wait a minute, I radically accepted. This shouldn't bother me anymore. I said, I never said this wasn't going to bother you. I said, now I'm telling you, it rains in Seattle. That doesn't mean if you go outside, you're not going to get wet just because you know it's going to rain. Like, it's still going to affect you, but it usually affects people differently. People might take the stance of, okay, this isn't bothering me as much. I was more prepared for this. I wasn't as surprised by this.

[00:33:57] Like, it can kind of take away some of the sting. But for some people, it's often a chronic grief-ridden reminder that it doesn't change. But radical acceptance is essential. If you can't get there, you ain't healing. Because as long as hope is on the table and the hope is about the narcissistic person changing, or people will say, I'm not going to tell anyone, but I really think they're going to change, you will not heal. You really will not. Because you're forever having your heart broken. And while the heart's resilient, it ain't that resilient. Right.

[00:34:24] And I guess in the cult context or in that framework, it's like the hope of whatever the leader is promising you, it's going to be like this. That you're always waiting. Future faking. Future faking. We have another NXIVM nerd tidbit for you. I'm not going to mention names, but there was... Isn't it in the Vow? Oh, maybe it is in the Vow. You're right. Yeah, it doesn't mean it is. It doesn't mean it is. Well, I mean, suffice to say, we heard many stories like this, but there was an incident, I think it was actually in the second season, where Keith would figure out your wants and needs and then just future fake them. He's like, well, you want a baby in there?

[00:34:54] And pointed to her womb. Yep. You know, stuff like that, which is really cruel. He future faked a lot with babies. Well, I mean, I got called back to work on a feature film. That's interesting. You know, so my career was future faked. This is where you're bringing up something so important, because I think that we miss this, the narcissistic people. Narcissistic people are incredibly socially perceptive and socially aware, which goes against the grain of what we think. We think they don't have empathy and they're socially unskilled and all that.

[00:35:21] No, they're very socially perceptive, almost like this kind of creepy sort of emotional intelligence in that they'll spend time with you. In fact, it was Mark Vicente who on my podcast called it data mining. He would say they're really good at data mining in that. And this will happen outside of a cultic setting. They're on a first date and their questions, which seems so interesting and curious and they want to know about you. They're actually learning. They're getting intel on you. I call it casing the joint.

[00:35:49] It's like watching the rhythms around a bank or a business to figure out when the doors are locked, what windows are left open, so you know how to burglarize it, how to steal from it. It's what the narcissistic person is doing. They're figuring out what doors don't you close? What windows are left open? Do you always turn on the alarm? And then they figure out how they can get in there and do their harm. And we don't think that. Most people who are healthy are thinking, oh, this person's curious about me. I'm curious about them.

[00:36:14] Once they get this intel, in fact, my sort of favorite narcissist move is that they'll look at you like with their hand and their chin like this and say, tell me your greatest fear. Oh my God. And you're like, ooh, this is intimacy. This is intimacy. They'll lie to you and tell you some fear too, that you feel like they're in the dance with you. And they have now put that in their little vault. And whatever it is, and it's not just the things you're afraid of, but it's the things you dream for, hope for.

[00:36:43] Like you said, I want a baby. I want to make a film. I want to do this. I want to do that. And they've listened to you. And remember, the people who are often very vulnerable to these relationships are people who may not have always felt seen and heard. So now if you grew up with a parent who never saw or heard your dreams, and there's an adult person who's doing this within the context of something that feels loving or oriented towards growth, it feels like a miraculous experience. So then when they make a promise around that thing, the way the kid would have wanted the

[00:37:11] parent to say, hey, this weekend, we're going to go to the park and throw the ball. It's the same. It's equivalent. Now it's just the adult equivalent of that. It's the most seductive thing in the world. And what the future fake does is it keeps someone on the hook because a lot of future fake stuff can't be produced in a day. In an intimate relationship, it would be like, listen, listen, I know we're not spending a lot of time together. I promise you in about six months as promotion is going to get sorted out, we'll spend more time together. But you can't fast forward six months. Now you're in it for the six months, a six month path, six months path.

[00:37:41] That's what they're not spending time with you. The other big future fake for people is I'm going to go to therapy. I'm going to go to therapy. No, no. I know. I haven't been great. I'm going to go to therapy. Well, they're not going to go to therapy instantly and it's not going to work instantly. Three, six months you hang out, they go to their so-called therapy. You have to take that on good faith. Nothing changes. You've lost another six months. This happens around kids. This happens around moving. This happens around marriage that have promotions and jobs with narcissistic bosses. Pick it.

[00:38:10] The financing for a project, whatever it may be, the loan you're going to get from a family, the list goes on and it's a way to keep you on the chain. And it's a very classical tool in cultic systems. What's a better future fake than a goals program? Yeah, it was always perfect. That's exactly right. I just had a memory of something. I don't even share this with you, but not this relationship, but previous relationship. I was, I'm a big romantic. I'm like a super cheese ball. And I remember at our five year, five month anniversary, I like. Me too. No, you're not. No, you're not. I'm future faking.

[00:38:39] I'm just trying to get it. Yeah. No, he doesn't even fake it. But I can be. No, no, stop. This is a previous relationship. And I know he's not listening to the podcast because he's never listened to one, but we're still friends. Anyway, five months, I took him out to celebrate. But he's going to listen to it. Shush. And he got upset. He was like uncomfortable with my gesture of romance. And he was like, five months? Like, I'm not celebrating five months. We get to five years, then we're going to celebrate. And trust me, I went all the way to five years and I waited and we were going to get married

[00:39:09] and he didn't produce the ring. He like got scared. And anyway, we broke up and here we are. I kind of stepped in. You stepped in. Yeah. With more promises. With more promises. Except I delivered. Yeah, I delivered. You guys got two beautiful babies and lots of good stuff. Here we are. But anyway, I hadn't thought about it that way until you said it. That I was waiting because... I don't think he was doing that. He's not a bad person at all. But I'm saying, I wasn't talking about me.

[00:39:36] Like, I was waiting for the five years and then we'll have romance, you know? Right. Then we'll have romance. And then the issue becomes is that the future fake is a tactic. Now, listen, every time somebody tells you something is going to happen in the future, for example, like, hey, you know, in about a year's time when I'm done with my graduate program, we will move. Well, the graduate program is happening. They will move. And they're not doing other future fake things. Right, right, right, right, right, right. Like, I'm in school. School needs to end. I need to live near school.

[00:40:04] But in a year, absolutely, let's look into the options. And in fact, I'm applying for jobs there. You're seeing evidence of that. That's not future fake. Anytime somebody talks about the future, that's not future fake. Of course. It's usually a pattern. And sometimes it starts much lower stakes, right? It's a promise that this weekend we're going to run that errand. Weekend comes, errand doesn't get run. Or we're going to do this on Thursday night or whatever. It tends to be low stakes stuff. And people just view that as a stuff of relationship.

[00:40:32] But what happens is you blink your eyes, you look up, you're like, oh, six months has passed. And about 10% of the stuff that was supposed to happen that would have been important for this relationship was never delivered on. We don't tend to be that actuarial about our relationships. We don't tend. Listen, we're about our businesses. We look at profit and loss. We look at quarterly reports. But what we don't do is say, how am I feeling? What has this last three months been like in this relationship? Am I feeling seen and heard and good? And for most people, the answer is like, yeah, no, it's all good and everything's balanced

[00:41:01] and fine. But for people in these unhealthy relationships, that would be a pretty harsh wake-up call. But it's why future faking works is that most of us don't keep the data like that. And how does that relate to the healing process in terms of understanding one's backstory? Like, just with what I just shared with you, like my backstory of like looking for connection and romance and like my childhood and like covering up the fear of abandonment backstory. Can you elaborate on that? I think that, you know, again, there's a whole chapter in the book that's really devoted to

[00:41:30] this idea of understanding your backstory. Because balancing this idea of backstories and narcissistic relationships is a little bit, it's tricky. It's important. Yes. And I'll tell you why. Number one, and there's an absolute truth here. I don't like this idea that there are certain people out there that are more vulnerable to narcissistic people. We're all vulnerable. Both of you were. I've been, right? And we're three very different people. And the reason we're all vulnerable is that their tactics and their strategies are so societally valued and they work. They're charming. They're charismatic. They're confident.

[00:42:00] They're bespoke to you, right? Yes, that's right. Exactly. That's exactly what they are. They're bespoke to you. That's so well put, Nippy. They listen to you. They're tuned into you. They're so sort of temporarily attuned. And that is the attachment dream, right? That there is that moment we feel so seen and heard. That's the infant dream. You guys are parents, right? You remember how important it was that the child, you're everything to the child. Their attachments are being made on all of those attuned moments.

[00:42:28] And so that we're all vulnerable. Where the roads veer is who gets stuck. That's where the vulnerabilities matter, right? So everyone's going to be drawn to the shiny thing. People might wonder, well, why are people drawn to vulnerable narcissists with all their victimhood and all that? Some people actually love the idea of a project. They love to rescue people. For them, love is this sort of sullen, sad sack person. Like, nothing ever goes my way. And like, I'm going to help you. So it's a bit of a rescue project.

[00:42:57] But for some people, that is very exciting and very seductive. And so, you know, it's bespoke. It's different for everyone. But we're all vulnerable. Not all of us are as vulnerable to getting stuck, right? So the more secure the attachment the person has from earlier in life, they'll feel a little bit more stable on two legs to be able to say, hmm, this is not cool. Like, this doesn't feel healthy. Or they'll have supports in their world that will say, we're watching what's happening in this relationship.

[00:43:27] This doesn't seem good to you. And there's a soft place for them to land. That's obviously very different than somebody who might have grown up in an abusive environment or in an invalidating environment where their inner narrative, their backstory, as it were, is much more of, I don't deserve better. This is as good as it gets. I'm lucky this person even shows up. At least they are showing up. I don't want to be abandoned. And these backstories can be everything from whether or not we had narcissistic parents, whether or not we experienced trauma or adversity in childhood.

[00:43:57] It could have to do with some of the things inherent to ourselves. Are we optimistic? Optimistic people, interestingly, are a little bit more prone to getting stuck in narcissistic relationships because they're like, everybody can change. I refuse to believe that somebody can't change their behavior and they'll get caught on that optimistic thought loop for years, thinking that something could get better. People from happy families can sometimes get stuck in a way that's interesting because they believe in love.

[00:44:25] Their family might even say like, oh, they're a sweetie. You had such a good time at the beginning of your relationship. Just love them more. You know what? I'll loan him money and it'll be, you know, maybe just having some financial pressure. So the family might believe in the idea of healthy love. They may not even have a paradigm for what a toxic relationship is. I remember working with a happy family once. I worked with the older parents of an adult daughter. Several times I've actually done this work.

[00:44:51] And I was struck every time where the parents had a ridiculously happy marriage, 40, 50 years. They didn't know anything else. They thought marriage was great. They thought family was great. They thought love was great. And then their kid meets a narcissistic, big, shiny, grandiose narcissist. And when the thing headed towards divorce and there was grandchildren, these people literally thought their daughter would be able to go into family court and said, he's really not a nice guy. So I should have full custody.

[00:45:18] And they were shocked when that didn't happen. So there was a naivete. I was like, oh, that's not how this works. And they could. And then obviously that was a whole weaponizing of the kids in a divorce. Multiple times I've seen this happen. And these parents who are often in their 60s or 70s, it's an absolute loss of innocence for them. They said, we didn't know there are people like this. I'm like, damn, I would have loved to got to 70 thinking there was no such thing as a narcissist. But it's actually really painful when it's your child who's encountering this for the first time.

[00:45:47] So these backstories, whether they're good things about us, whether they're difficult parts of our histories, whether we're prone to be a rescuer or an excuser or a justifier or a forgiver, people who are naturally to tend towards forgiveness. There's good research showing because everyone's like, forgiveness is great. Forgiveness is the answer to everything. Hell no. This is, I am like anti-forgiveness when it comes to narcissism, because we know that

[00:46:15] when you forgive a repeat offender, so you forgive someone for doing something bad and they do the bad thing again, it actually causes significant psychological harm to the forgiver. We leave that peace out. Everything's like forgiveness. It's so healing. Oh, not so quick. And because narcissistic people are repeat offenders, forgiveness doesn't have a place here. Some people will say 20 years out of the relationship, yeah, I finally forgave them. But I tell a lot of survivors, many of you won't.

[00:46:45] I say this as a survivor of multiple narcissistic relationships. I've forgiven some. There are some I will never, ever forgive as long as I'm walking on this planet. I will never forgive them for what they did. It don't keep me up at night though. Yeah. You touched on a really good point. One of the secret weapons that these narcissists have is that good people can't project the depth of their narcissism into the person because they don't have it, right?

[00:47:09] People, to your point, if you don't even behave like that, it's very hard for us to think that that's what was going on with Keith the entire time. That was a very hard thing, especially as we started finding out all the other stuff. But at the time, we were like, what? This is what's going on in the psychology of this guy? Correct. But I would argue then, Nippy, though, that because we don't teach people about this, they don't know it. Now we can.

[00:47:37] Because we shouldn't have to be able to project the depth of it. In other words, it doesn't need to be in our repertoire to recognize it. Right? We teach people this. Nobody's teaching people. There's no important point in high school health classes where this is taught. I actually approached some high schools. They said this is too negative. It's like, my God, drop calculus. Teach narcissism. You would actually be saving more of the kids in this school who are never going to use calculus. They don't teach it in most undergraduate courses in psychology. They don't teach it.

[00:48:06] I was a rare bird that I taught it in my classes. My poor students, they were like, everyone else has learned about schizophrenia, but Dr. DeVasla only teaches about narcissism. I'm like, it's going to help you in the future. And then graduate, more importantly, graduate training programs in psychology that train counselors and therapists, zero. When I went to UCLA, brilliant. UCLA was the best educational experience a human being could have wanted. Clinical experience was great. The word narcissism was not mentioned for the entire period of time I was in training.

[00:48:36] From the day I walked into that graduate program to the day I finished my clinical training in hospital. Was a narcissist running it? Crazy. No, it wasn't that. It's that we don't talk about it. And yet, it is like this weird, dark specter that actually impacts our ability to treat a whole range of mental health conditions. We don't talk about it. More importantly, we don't talk about how it affects other people. So how the hell would you know what narcissism is? That Keith was a narcissist? All of those things. Like, why would anyone know that?

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[00:51:05] Well, that's one of the things I loved about your book is that you kind of recapped the most important points and then went into the healing process in a very tangible way because we talk a lot about, okay, you have to heal from that. You've been abused. You've got to heal. What does that actually look like? Right, right. So where do you recommend for people who've been through these kind of things find a therapist and what to look for in a therapist to understand this part of the journey? So I'm going to actually turn this one around on you because the two of you have been through it and then I'm going to answer your question.

[00:51:35] When you were to, if you were to look through your process of healing after what all that you've experienced in an occultic narcissistic system, if you were to zone in on the things that most facilitated your healing, what would those be? Well, this was actually very self-reflected in reading your book because some of the things you suggested we did, but just not with the helpful template of a book, just from different things here and there. I think speaking to other survivors and being able to speak freely after we left, after being oppressed and suppressed for so long to be able to be like, you know what, that

[00:52:04] thing that Nancy did, that was actually like really, that was a really bitchy thing to say when she'd blah, blah, blah, blah. Like we never would have said that before. That would have been sacrilegious, right? Okay. That would have been demoted and whatever, like who knows what, but speaking freely, I mean, just, I mean, a lot of things that I found for myself to like regulate my nervous system, whether it was Epsom salt baths or hiking, microdosing, like things for me to chill the F out.

[00:52:30] And then also like the, the fresh start, like moving, moving here was one final piece, you know, getting out of the space where a lot of it happened in Vancouver, where I can't even walk down the street without seeing somebody that either I tried to recruit or I did recruit or family member of like, it's just a lot of memories and good and bad, you know, good and bad there. What else was most helpful? Talking to Dan Shaw right from the beginning, who was an expert in narcissism and understanding the systems. He put good language to it. Yeah. He put a lot of good language to it. Things that I didn't understand.

[00:52:59] For me, it was that YouTube video. Oh, Nippy saw a YouTube video. That was literally a cartoon. And it was basically how, you know, you're in a cult. And when I saw like the things. Oh, interesting. I'll send it to you later. It's pretty great. It was, it was, it was tongue in cheek, but I immediately had a full holistic view of how I'd come off to other people. Yeah. About being righteous about what I was doing. And like, that was the huge like shift where I felt it in my gut. And then I read the first 60 to 90 pages of Yanni Lelouch's book.

[00:53:28] And I saw a moral injury and that one sunk me. It's like education. That one sunk me like a rock. I just went, oh my God, that's exactly what happened to me. And then I went on just a journey of understanding it, how I got understanding my blind spot. And then it slowly evolved into like, okay, I have wisdom now. I understand this. I know what it looks like in the world and I can identify it. And then I wanted to put language to what had happened to me. And so that when I see it somewhere else, I can identify it. And the podcast became out of it.

[00:53:57] And I just try and stay in that lane. So in many ways, like you said, Sarah, now it's all in a book, right? But the things that you're sharing are very parallel to what's in the book. Talking to other people. Having support who can listen to you in a validating way. Having a therapist who gets it. Dan Shaw's the best in the business. I mean, his books are, to me, they are like scripture. I almost reread them every year because they're just so beautifully thought out.

[00:54:26] Dr. Jan Yolalic's books. Brilliant. I read those. And I think they have relevance also for tremendous relevance for narcissistic relationships. So you're talking about education. And that might be watching videos. That might be reading books. And that education matters. You've got to get it in order to heal from it, right? You talked very interestingly, Sarah, about calming your nervous system, right? The sympathetic nervous system is no joke. I always say it's like this great ADT system we have on our body that often malfunctions.

[00:54:54] Like I have had centers malfunction. I'm like, oh, come on now. There's nobody trying to get in. Calm the hell down, ADT. So it's that. It's the alarm system that's only trying to do its job for you. That we can receive with compassion. Like, oh, we can be curious about it. Like, I see what I'm reacting to. That we learn how our fight shows up. You know, it's interesting. Dr. Janina Fisher, who's a phenomenal trauma theoretician and clinician, she did this beautiful

[00:55:24] work called parts work, which actually Dan Shaw uses as clinical work. And what I really love about her theoretical frame is like, for example, the fight response, right? We think of the fight, flight, all of that. In Dr. Fisher's model, that fight response is actually things like recognizing the injustice. That's a part of a fight response, right? Because we're like, our willingness to say like, there were early, even before you had Keith's number, there were days you're like, this isn't cool. Like something here doesn't feel cool.

[00:55:54] That was a fight response. It was hard to figure out what it was too. Right? Because you could feel it. Trying to figure out what it was. You could feel it. Where you could feel it. And you felt it here before you got it here. And so that somatic awareness, being curious, and instead of judging ourselves, what's wrong with me? What a loser I am because I didn't say something. This is this nervous system of ours sort of being an ally in the best way it can. And we can sort of embrace it, really sort of infuse it with the self-compassion.

[00:56:23] Because a lot of folks who freeze, a lot of folks who are in cultic systems, again, back to the moral injury, how could I have not said something for so long? What is wrong with me when we can put it in that context of freezing and submitting? The survival response. That it is just that. The nervous system was doing what it was supposed to do, but it needs to be attended to. Breathing, like you said, walking, but touching into our body, even if it's just that grounding, touching your chest, feeling your pulse. Like, it's here. It's all working.

[00:56:52] We're so disconnected from it. Being in nature. I always say, rip the roof off. I don't care if all you do is walk in the street for a minute. Some air. Go out under the night sky. Change the temperature. Anything you can, like, to get to feel outside. Ideally, take a walk outside. All of those things really, really do matter that we can sort of get back sort of in sync with ourselves and pay attention to all of that. But it's a process. And it's a process of very real grief that people forget.

[00:57:21] This is not, it's not a loss necessarily of a person, though it may be. But it's often a loss of ideals, of hope, of innocence, of what you thought the world could be, of you are different afterwards. You've also lost a former version of you. And like I said, it's a loss of innocence. And that's why I was saying I envy those people. I was talking to someone who had this really sort of warm, lovey view of the world, had very happily married parents and had a happy marriage. It was just recently I had this conversation. She had read my book.

[00:57:51] She said, you know, none of this was relevant to me. But she said, I saw the healing stuff actually. It allowed me to dig deeper and understand there were actually people in my life that were like this. But by and large, this woman's life wasn't sort of riddled with this. But when people really go through it, there is something, there's something that gets lost, you know, and we just have to adjust to that. Well, you just touched on something really interesting when you said about justice. There's an injustice going on that you could feel. And the mindfuckery of what we went through is we were in an organization that, you know,

[00:58:19] that perpetuated the mindfuckery was we were an organization that flexed and boasted justice, ethics, and stuff like that. So what we were feeling couldn't have been right. We couldn't be aligned with something that was just a viscera. Like we were also trained. Well, that's just a viscera. Override the feeling. Really, really good awareness. Override the feeling. And that idea of override the feeling, that to me is always a cult 101. Right. I don't like, I mean, like you are feeling right.

[00:58:49] This is a process and it will come and go, but it is yours and nobody can make this be anything but what it is. Labeling something like a viscera and all of that. And then them sort of co-opting. That's that process of subjugation that Dan Shaw writes about. That in order to stay in a cultic or narcissistic system, you have to fully subjugate your entire sense of self and reality. I almost view it as like giving all your money to a really shady investment advisor. Like you give them everything and they take it all.

[00:59:18] That's exactly what happens in a narcissistic relationship. It's the basis of identity politics as well. Loyalty to the party, that sort of thing. Yeah. And then the perception that they're just, right? Because by definition, all narcissistic relationships are unjust because they're asymmetric. There's always a power difference in these relationships. And, you know, it was, I forgot who it was. I don't remember if it was Yanya or if it was Jennifer Fried. Jennifer Fried.

[00:59:44] Dr. Jennifer Fried is actually, she's a fascinating woman who writes about this idea of betrayal blindness, which has relevance to cultic system. But what she talks about is like the legs getting knocked out from under the table. I believe it's her who talks about it. Like you have four legs. Table can kind of still stand with three. These relationships keep knocking the legs out from under the table. When you're down to two, the whole thing falls. And that, you know, and that asymmetry is that in the nature of these relationships.

[01:00:10] And that the only reason they work is that one person holds a lot more of the power. And they do that through things like triangulation and creating factions and creating gossip and sort of, but they hold all the keys. They've got all the passwords. And the flying monkeys. And the flying monkeys. Exactly. But they have all the passwords. Yes. Well, I, again, I love the just very tangible steps for healing. And, you know, I'm not going to give them all the way here because people need to read this book. It's so important and so helpful.

[01:00:36] Is there anything that you can get into a little bit about becoming more narcissistic, resilient or firewalling or some like strategies moving forward? Yeah. Thank you for bringing that up because that's really what it is. Like you go through a narcissistic relationship, you heal from it, but then you're still living in the world. And the probability is very high unless you're going to lock yourself in a room that you're going to run into more narcissistic people. And some of the elements of being narcissist resistant, this also is not easy. I'm going to say what I say sounds easy, but I'll tell you why it's not.

[01:01:06] A simple example would be discernment, right? Discernment would be paying attention to the somatic sensations you have when you're with someone, knowing everything you know about all the manipulation and gaslighting and all the other stuff and paying attention to that, future faking, breadcrumbing, all the stuff we talked about, but paying attention to how you feel. You know, I'm always struck in this wellness-infused age where and how people are so careful about what they eat and what they drink and how they exercise and what their bed is made up.

[01:01:35] And I'm like, you know what, folks? You could throw away all that if you could just get good at discerning toxic people. I'm like, you can drink a Red Bull for breakfast for all I care, but you, if you could learn how to discern on the toxic people, that's more important. And yet, people invest so much time like, was this peach harvested from a tree that has like virgin goat manure? I'm like, oh my God, whatever. No, no, no. It's about the discernment. Here's where it gets tricky, okay?

[01:02:05] Just had this happen recently with a few clients. They learned it. They got it. They're practicing it. They're doing great. But the pushback they're getting when they're being discerning, it's like when they say, they're not even being mean. They're not even, they're saying, I don't know, this doesn't feel comfortable or that entire interaction we observed felt toxic. The people around them who don't get narcissism are saying, well, golly, you sound very cynical or aren't we a skeptic or who like, you know, you're a little bit of a dark cloud. So you, if you become discerning,

[01:02:33] almost have to tolerate this characterization of you as this sort of like not sunny person. This is my absolute reality. Like sometimes people are like, here comes the angel of darkness again. You can call me whatever the hell you want. You can call me the devil for all I care, but I'm discernment is everything that allows people to say, I'm trusting this feeling. And the analogy I always give is I always tell folks when you come out of a narcissistic relationship, I don't care if it's a cult. I don't care if it's a family. I don't care if it's an intimate relationship.

[01:03:02] If the relationship lasted a year or longer, you need to have a year, a year of, if you will, when I say solitude, I'm not saying you go off into an ashram somewhere. I'm saying that you don't get into a new relationship. You don't start a new relationship. You really sort of focus on like, who am I outside of these relationships? Building up your subjective, individuated sense of self. You do not join new organizations or anything like that. And you get through that year and you really sort of get to know yourself.

[01:03:31] Just that experience grounds people. But that idea of people telling you there's something not quite right about you. And then when these folks after that year, they go out and start dating again, right? And the discernment kicks in and they'll say, I don't like this. This feels red flaggy to me. And they'll say, I don't know. I don't think I want to spend more time with this person. I have no doubt that some of these folks are throwing back fish that were big enough to keep. It's okay. That's okay. I'd rather they did that than the other way.

[01:03:59] And over time, they'll get more discerning. So discernment is a big one. And part of that discernment, it's about how you share of yourselves. Like, I think that we are in a very sherry time, right? And sharing always has its place. But it's watch yourself. Check yourself. Like, if you got some weird spamming send me your bank details email, you don't send your bank details. This is the equivalent of not sending your bank details to some weird scam email.

[01:04:29] And so when you first meet someone new, you take your time. Now I've had clients be told they were closed off. I'm like, that is not closed off. That is not giving your money to somebody who says that some random person died in Russia and has a million dollars for you. Like, it's a whole new level of discernment. And it gets to the point where we do sort of feel like we are suspicious in a way we've never. I mean, again, people call us closed off. They call us suspicious.

[01:04:57] They use adjectives that don't feel good. But that level, and you end up not having to be the popular person. I've had this happen where there was a committee I was once on. It was many years ago. And there was one guy who came in the room. Energy of the room changed. Such a toxic guy. He was coming closer to where I was sitting. I got up and I moved to a different part of the room. It was like a three-day meeting. They were deciding on taxis to go to dinner. So I'm going into a taxi. I moved to another. I wouldn't sit near him at dinner. And a colleague took me aside. And like, you know, it's becoming clear.

[01:05:26] Like, you don't want to sit near that person. I said, no, I don't. I don't trust that person. It's just something in my bones. I don't like it. And they're like, oh, come on. Like, you know, we have to give everyone a chance. I said, I don't. That's awesome. So time went on. Man, people just kind of cut me slack because it was like sort of a voluntary thing. And it was like three, four years later. I mean, sometimes you've got to hold in for a long time before these chickens. And this person, because he'd gotten emboldened. He was such a narcissistic person. And everyone in the group emboldened him, honestly, except for me.

[01:05:56] And in fact, when I took someone aside and said, these are my problems with this person. They're like, they were treating me as though I was a gossip, right? That day, he really went a bridge too far. Again, very emboldened, did something very inappropriate, and got called out very, very publicly. Let me tell you, I was a smuggish bitch at that table because I was like, I thought it. Rightfully so. You know, you're right. You're right because if this doesn't feel safe to you, it is not safe.

[01:06:24] I don't care if everyone's telling you this person's cool. They might feel perfectly safe. That's their problem. But that willingness to give ourselves permission to say that the emperor is naked as hell is what will save people in terms of this narcissism resistance. And once you've been through it, you feel it in your bones. You really, really do. I think that should be the name for this episode. The emperor is naked as hell. Part two with Dr. Romani. And it's not that attractive to look.

[01:06:54] I mean, if it was a hot emperor, I'd be like, I'm looking at you. You're naked, but keep watching. Hey there, little guy. Anyway, you're a big guy. Depending. One of the things that was a real aha for me, and like I said, admittedly, I was like, okay, I've read so many books on narcissism. Like, okay. Not that I was very looking forward to talking to you, but I wasn't sure how much more I would learn. Given that there's so much out there on narcissism. Fair, right?

[01:07:16] One of the things I was like, oh my god, this is so helpful is looking at cognitive dissonance and how we can dismantle that with understanding all the multiple truths. Can you explain that a little bit? Cognitive dissonance and multiple truths. So, you know, Sarah, you bring up this idea of multiple truths, which to me is one of the jewels in this book, right? It was one of those little things, you know, it's like so much magic happens in the therapy room, you know, and it's a, this is one of those things that, it was one of those magic. That happened over and over again.

[01:07:44] And I think we live in a world where the way news is delivered and internet works and social media works is we want simple, quick, five ways to know you're in love, three ways to that, four ways to that, right? And it's nothing and nothing in the world of mental health or the psychology of human beings is ever that simple. And the thing that makes narcissistic relationships and cognitive dissonance in any form so difficult is that so many things are true at the same time.

[01:08:13] Human beings don't do well with cognitive inconsistency. We don't. We don't like it. And it makes us feel tense. And that tension makes us uncomfortable. So when we're uncomfortable, what do we want to do? We want to make ourselves comfortable, which means getting rid of the tension, getting rid of the inconsistency. So that's what cognitive dissonance is. It's an internal inconsistency. I have to stay home with the kids tonight so I can't go to the dinner.

[01:08:37] I've heard that's not a very good restaurant because it would be terrible to think that they're about to have the best meal of the year and you can't go because of your kids. And you can't really walk around saying, I hate my kids. And so if you land on, I've heard the food's not very good. It's a good justification. It's a justification to remove that tension. Well, one of the challenges is it's not quite as simple as restaurants and babysitting, right? It's a far more complex issue. And where people struggle, it even goes back to moral injury.

[01:09:05] People feel like they're bad people. If they're thinking or saying bad things about their family or their friends or their spouse or their things that matter to them, they feel like bad people. They feel disloyal when they're doing that, even when it's warranted. So one thing I've done with clients initially, we just did with a piece of paper. Sometimes we did it on sort of Zoom chat when it all went virtual.

[01:09:27] And sometimes they do it on their own now, which is we kind of literally kind of, what do you call, brainstorm a list and say, let's write out everything that's true about this relationship. And you'll get lists like, I have a mother. I'm supposed to love my mother. I think I love my mother. My mother is a bitch. My mother is manipulative. My mother turns me and my sister against each other. My mother was never present when I was young. Sometimes I think my life would be easier if my mother is dead. I wish I loved my...

[01:09:56] And so you see how it all stacks up. And the client's like, no wonder I'm such a mess because I love her. I hate her. She ruined me. Sometimes I wish she didn't exist. Oh my God, what kind of person says that? And when the client sees the multiple truths all stacked up, it actually, believe it or not, instead of confusing them more, gives them tremendous grace and says, of course, this is awful and terrible. And then in therapy, what we do is we take that apart and we talk about...

[01:10:26] Number one, it's okay to say those forbidden things like, oh, I wish this person didn't exist or wasn't in my life. It's not like the client is not harmful. They're just saying, I just wish I never had to deal with them again. But this long list shows them, I love them. I hate them. They hurt me. I can't stand them. I'm supposed to like them. And when the client digs into that, they are then able to see because a lot of people will say, why is this radical acceptance thing taking me so long? Why am I not healing faster?

[01:10:54] And it's also painful because there's people out there that say in six weeks, I'll help you heal from your narcissistic relationship. Like, damn, if you could do that, I would be thrilled. Sign me up. Doesn't work that way. So that's one way to break through the dissonance is to actually be with the dissonance and see what it is. And just like that person to say, like, how are you feeling knowing that they're having a great meal in your home with the kids? And the person might say, I resent my kids right now. That's an awful feeling. And we could run with that feeling because that's okay.

[01:11:23] And once you can say it's okay to have any feeling, then the person can start then clearing the decks and seeing the clarity of this relationship with their mother has been unhealthy. Their mother was not present when they were young. And although they have a million reasons for why they know that's why their mother was the way they were, ultimately they were hurt by their mother. And that's the truth of the matter. Backstories don't excuse abuse.

[01:11:46] So when a narcissistic person says, I had a terrible start in life, I was bullied, I was this, I was that, I'm sad for them. I really am. That's terrible. It's not a license to go harm other people. And the field of mental health and the world at large has rationalized narcissistic behavior by saying, but this, but that. You know what? If they are a sentient, ambulatory human being, they can go get help because everyone else is getting help because of the narcissistic folks. They can get their ass into a therapist's office too. That's a great point.

[01:12:16] What does that person's journey look like? If they have the self-awareness that they do some of these patterns and they want to, I'm not talking about a Keith, obviously, but like somebody who sees themselves on the spectrum and wants to dig in. Is that a different book? Maybe? It's a different book and it's not a book I'm going to write. There's, you know, listen, I would, you know what, it's interesting. In the last year I've been doing a lot more lecturing on addiction and narcissism. Addiction and narcissism overlap something like 50, 60% of the time. A lot of overlap.

[01:12:43] In fact, the construct of the dry drunk, you've heard of the idea of the dry drunk. The dry drunk is just a narcissist, right? A person is not fully sober and fully recovered until they've addressed their narcissism. If you read the big book, you go to 12 step, you read the big books, a book on narcissism. It's not even about addiction.

[01:12:58] So it's very fascinating to me how in some ways, some people argue 12 step may actually be the, because 12 step done right requires humility, accountability, addressing character defects, making genuine amends, not expecting people to, you know, come around, losing the defensiveness, losing the ego. That's all treatment of narcissism, right? And we see how well that works for folks. I mean, when you, you know, the people around town who tout being sober, I'm like, no, no, no, you're not. You are still as defended as an addict. So don't give me this.

[01:13:28] You're sober. You're not drinking. I'll give you that. Are you sober? No. And that's definitely more of sort of the 12 stepping language. But I think that all of these different models would, would argue that, listen, I don't even want to talk in terms of unicorns because anyone listening says, maybe my person's a unicorn. There are self-aware narcissistic folks out there. And it gets interesting because the self-aware narcissist is an interesting conundrum because just because they are self-aware doesn't mean that they're going to make the changes they need. They need to make.

[01:13:58] And in fact, their self-awareness can make them self-righteous. Like, I'm aware of my narcissism because I'm oh, so mentally healthy, but I've got it under command. Of course they do. No, you don't. Because what healing from, because a lot of narcissistic folks, especially in LA, are therapy junkies. They've got the therapist. They've got the life coach. They've got the psychedelic practitioner. They've got the men's group, the this group, the that group. And like, they're whole, they meditate.

[01:14:28] Oh, they're on a juice cleanse. They're on a juice cleanse. Then they meditate. The meditations always can hear their beach out. I know that's like, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. But the real work of it, right? Because narcissism does its harms to others by the reactivity they have in the moment. Not to obviously the things like the manipulation and all of that.

[01:14:46] It's the true, the genuine willingness in a compassionate, authentically empathic way to be aware of the other without dismissiveness, without contempt, and not viewing the other as an ego threat. I ain't seen that happen in my career. I have not. Where I have seen it kind of sort of happen is when you have a person who has a lot of narcissism, but they have pretty severe PTSD because those two things can look similar.

[01:15:14] They get really good trauma-informed treatment. They do their trauma. They address the PTSD, but they also do address the narcissistic stuff. But with that trauma as part of the narcissistic origin, there's a lot more hope for a better outcome for them because there's a more better treatment target. But for other folks where it's not as clear as some of those early trauma targets, I think those other narcissistic clients, I'm not seeing the outcomes. Listen, I've worked for a long time.

[01:15:42] 20% of my clinical practice was narcissistic clients. Those hours made me feel like I was a shitty therapist. Like the needle would move, but the little bit the needle would move, I notice it because I'm looking at it. It's like I'm looking at it under a microscope. But the people in their lives absolutely were not noticing it. And sometimes, because I've largely shut down most of my practice, the narcissistic clients want to come back, and that I won't do. I give them referrals. But they'll sometimes tell me their stories all these years later.

[01:16:11] It's really not changed. They're doing exactly the same things. They may dress it up a little differently. But listen, I'm going to put it to you the way I put it in the book. Sarah, you have a personality. Nippy, you have a personality. Dr. Romney has a personality, right? I know what mine is. I'm an agreeable introvert. That's it. That's all of me put together. I'm friendly, and I'm nice to the person at Starbucks, and I don't honk at people in traffic, and I always want to be alone. And I'm so happy alone. And I'm soothed, and I love it, and it makes me happy.

[01:16:40] And I'm exhausted when I go to social events. What that tells me, if tomorrow someone said to me, Romney, you would be a lot more successful. If you're a bit more disagreeable, a bit more assertive, maybe even aggressive, you made your needs known. You put your needs ahead of other people. You sort of bossed your staff around a little bit differently. Like, you could do this, and you could level up. You could get to the next level. You got the content. You got it all. I couldn't do it. I've tried it every so often, a little bit of swagger, and then I feel like I'm going to throw up. I try to socialize.

[01:17:08] There's some nights I have to go out to dinner for three nights that week. I'm similar. You would think I'll have the flu by that weekend. I'm a wreck. And so what I was telling me is that no more could you turn me into a disagreeable extrovert. Why would you be able to turn the narcissistic person into an empathetic, cuddly bunny? I can't change. And in fact, it would do me a world of good if I made some of these changes. It would be better for me to be out and network more. I know that this would be better for me. I'm not able to do it. I don't want to do it, and I have a very flexible personality.

[01:17:38] Narcissistic person's personality is rigid like cement. I can't change. They can't change. So why the hell am I holding them to that standard? You said people with PTSD can involve their narcissism. I'm just wondering, is it because the PTSD is coupled with humility because it's normally a humiliating event? Trauma's coupled with a little bit of humility. Well, what you see, though, Nippy, is that in some folks with PTSD, and we saw this quite a bit with veterans returning from wars,

[01:18:02] is there would be a clipping off of their emotional range, and that would be experienced by others as a truncated empathy. Does that make sense? And so how much of that kind of narrowing, that apathetic, almost distant coldness was the trauma, and how much of that was the narcissism? A lot of what we'd want to know is who went to war. What was this person like before they enlisted or called into war? Because sometimes they say, this is not the person who came back. Got it. Then we're talking more PTSD.

[01:18:31] But if the person who went to battle was a dick, then what we're seeing is we might be seeing both patterns play out. But for those folks where people say, gosh, they're so cold, they're so cut off, but they have the context of, for example, of war, some other significant trauma. Like I said, that's where I'm seeing the narcissistic folks who have that trauma history, and they commit to good, legitimate trauma-informed therapy with a legitimate licensed clinician who knows trauma. I think that's the one group I see hope with, and that's been my experience, too. Segway Sarah here.

[01:19:01] Segway Sarah. Speaking of all of that, where do you recommend, since you're not taking private clients, read your book, obviously. What specific support groups, communities, other resources for people seeking connection, understanding, healing? We have a healing program for survivors of narcissistic abuse. It's not a substitute for therapy. I mean, people of more severe experiences that should be complemented with therapy. I have to say we have a very carefully curated and moderated community platform. A lot of people offer referrals there.

[01:19:28] I'm about to launch next week through a big continuing ed company, a 36-hour training on narcissistic therapists who want to work with clients experiencing narcissistic abuse. 36 hours. You can get a certification at the end. As that runs through, so by the end of 2024, we're going to have the list of people who've done that program. And that will then be able to go into a database for those therapists who want to participate.

[01:19:51] So at least we'll know people at least got 36 hours of exposure to some of these issues and care deeply about meeting these clients and not shaming them, but validating them and upholding their experience. Please share that information so we can share it with our network, too. So anything else that we missed or anything you want to share? Any misconceptions or burning things? Questions you asked were great. I think above all else, because I am, like I said, a lot of people say I'm the most hopeless woman in that room. In this particular case, the hope I have for survivors of narcissistic relationships is unsurpassed.

[01:20:21] I am seeing survivors do amazing things every day. People who, once they are let out of these mental prisons, are creating. They're making music and film and visual art. Who are going back to school. Who are starting careers they never dreamed they would have. Who are traveling alone for the very first time. Who are finding their voice in a million different ways. Even things as simple as, I don't know, going out to dinner by themselves. Meeting up with friends. You can see the difference. I get these emails all the time.

[01:20:50] And it is, I know what's possible. People fall in love. People develop healthy friendships and relationships again. It happens. And I think that so much of the narrative here is doom and gloom. It's not doom and gloom if we can get people out of these situations. But this narcissism stuff's all around us. The discernment and being able to give yourself permission to live in your individuated self. To honor yourself.

[01:21:15] To recognize there's an authentic you buried under all that programming of a narcissistic relationship. The freedom is there. And I've seen it unleashed in people all over the world. I love the Nelson Mandela quote that you had in your book. There's nothing like returning to a place that remains unchanged to find the ways you yourself have changed. And that lines up with how the book ends, which is the hero's journey. Which is when you've gone through what the two of you have gone through. What many survivors have gone through. That you really did go through a hero's journey.

[01:21:44] And when you finally did return quote unquote home. You returned changed. And that place might have remained the same. But you were incredibly different. And I think that's the thing that all survivors need to remember. It's one of the reasons I like going back to returning to Vancouver. Because we go back like once or twice a year. And I'm like, oh my god, I'm different. And dare I say that this book is really the self or the antidote to all the future faking that we endured. Because this is like future real hope. This is the real hope and the template to that.

[01:22:13] Thank you for that gift. Thank you. That was awesome. Thank you. Thank you. So wonderful to see you too. We hope you're enjoying A Little Bit Culty. If so, please do show us some love.

[01:22:42] Drop a rating or leave a review. Hit subscribe on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you listen. And subscribe to our Patreon at patreon.com slash a little bit culty. Even better, send this episode to someone who needs it. Maybe they're in a cult. Maybe they're just a little bit susceptible. Or maybe they just love a good story. Spread the word. Spread the love. Thanks for listening. And see you next time. A Little Bit Culty is a Trace 120 production. Executive produced by Sarah Edmondson and Anthony Nippy Ames. In collaboration with producer Will Rutherford at Citizens of Sound.

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