How To SPOT A Narcissist When DATING! (Watch Out For This)| Ramani Durvasula & Lewis Howes

the bigger question i often get is can a narcissist love is that possible besides loving themselves a lot of people love narcissists they do they're like i love this person oh wow many people are gaslighted we'll start wondering maybe i'm the narcissist maybe i have a mental illness and at that point the guest i think you gotta have a dream the school of greatness really yeah please welcome us why is narcissism such a a big topic especially right now in our society it's interesting it wasn't for a very long time i mean this is it's fascinating to have been studying something when nobody cared about it like i was like a nerd i was that nerd in the lab with the butterfly that nobody cared about everyone was literally back room of a lab and everyone forgot about me i was content because i'm a nerd that's i'm geeked out i was like this is fascinating and then a lot of things happened you know if anyone ever asked me this is my theory on it is i think it's interesting if you if you there's a book um from the 1970s by a guy named christopher lash called the culture of narcissism and in that book he really gets into the 70s okay and he really gets into issues like materialism and also the falling apart of american community structures and family structures and so he pins this sort of pathological narcissism and selfishness to the sort of the erosion of those structures but i think that misses something then it was kind of quiet like this has always been a quiet area interestingly in in mental health and then reality tv happened social media yeah and we had to witness it all kids are growing up with it now political dramas and fights and lots of and and materialism is on the rise so when we look at materialism social media and reality tv that kind of triple threat where everything was about shameless self-promotion everything was about validation seeking look at me no look at me no look at me my life's better than yours and it was that it was i'll never forget the day actually i was uh when i someone told me about social media it was in that space between myspace and facebook and i had small small children at the time and i think i was up late and somebody said you gotta look at this thing called facebook right and i'm like i don't know what this is and so i at the time i was even married so really no social life and i look at it and and i'm and it's that moment that penny dropped moment where i could feel that dread in my stomach as though like a ghost appeared in the door and i thought to myself oh my god this narcissism thing is about to blow up wow because before that think about it if you were a narcissist and you needed to get validation you actually had to get up and get out of the house right like no one was gonna you had to get up kind of get ready go to work a lot of narcissists got their validation at work especially men in that era and then other people like would get it by like going to social events going to parties maybe succeeding at something but it was a different game going to the gym maybe maybe going to the gym but now all of it would be excel excelling at something visible like sports or performing or like singing or something like that but then i was like oh hell no you're telling me that people are going to be able to get validation just sitting at home and i thought this narcissism thing's going to blow up that was 2008 when i had that revelation i started telling people you know people said like oh honey you're just you're you're running off in your head get some sleep like you're acting crazy and i said no no no this is gonna blow up and then it blew up and at around that time we're starting to see the beginnings of reality tv shows like you know survivor and things like that i'm like this is interesting and then we'd start seeing more and more more of the attention seeking reality tv housewife type shows a bachelor and i i thought oh no no no and then and then the political winds changed and the word came into the into popular use so imagine going from something that you studied only you studied like nobody cared about it and then also the mainstream change and it became mainstream exactly and but this another thing that was happening too is this um i was studying it in my research i had been funded by the national institutes of health to look at personality issues because i had i was working with folks who were working in community clinics and they would come back from the community clinics back to the main lab at the university and say and they would look frazzled and i'll say hey what's up and they'll say some of these patients they're so terrible and they're ruining everyone's lives and what we came to find out was that there were some patients who come in entitled and grumpy and take it out on the staff and i thought that's interesting these people are not only burning out the staff so they can't give good health care to other people they themselves everyone's dreading seeing them so they're not getting good health care and then a few years later i was noticing a pattern in my patients over and over again they kept it's like they were all talking about the same relationship i thought this is interesting nobody ever taught these people about narcissism because this is clearly what was happening in their relationships and i'm not kidding you once they got educated on these patterns they were making changes like this some were getting divorced some were splitting up some were saying i'm going to set boundaries i mean it was it was insta change and they said we were in couples therapy for five years and always about marriage is hard you gotta communicate like communicating with the narcissist is i don't know it's like screaming into an abyss like there's no point is there hope for uh people in marriages if you're in a relationship with a narcissist to actually heal the relationship and improve it or is it just going to be hard the rest of your life going on a probability basis the answer is no i think it's going to be hard always are there unicorns out there sure but the amount of commitment you'd need on the part of the person who's narcissistic i mean we're talking about daily commitment on the person who is a narcissist the person who's narcissistic has to get into therapy multiple times a week they have to they have to be willing to have humility they have to be willing to be mindful they have to be willing to regulate themselves that's a long list of things they need to be willing to do they can't be impulsive they can't say whatever is on their mind i it's fascinating because i have worked with me i'd say 25 of the clients i've worked with in my clinical practice for a long time now you know have been narcissistic why would they even come to uh work with you if they're narcissistic because something's going wrong in their lives their marriage is blowing up um there's they're having some sort of public shaming their career isn't going well they have lost they feel the world is against them and in this victimized stance they roll up to therapy oh and somebody's wanting to complain right every so often they're given an ultimatum maybe by a workplace or by a spouse or someone maybe they get caught in an affair and then they're told that white or husband or partner or spouse will say we're not staying together unless you get therapy which is a fool's errand because if they're if someone else is telling them to do it even if someone even if they do it on their own there usually isn't much personnel personality doesn't really change personality doesn't change unless you're like doing therapy every week and holding yourself accountable listen i'm i listen i have a certain personality i got it tested when i was in my 20s 30s 40s 50s it hasn't changed i'm a little bit more i'm a little bit more confident now that's not my personality that's just time served right you know it's like i put in more reps yes yeah i put in more reps so i'm like now i know i can do this thing right but it's not that i'm i was born agreeable i grew up agreeable i was an agreeable adult i'm an agreeable person that's just who i am when is our personality shaped well there's two pieces of personality we're born the the sort of the genetic part of personality if you will is called our temperament our temperament temperament are you born and you're either crying or not a crier or you're i can't make it ultra simple like you know there's some kids out there who have really difficult temperaments are born into the world difficult talk to a parent they're hit they're kids who are difficult to soothe their to to make them stop crying to help them sleep as time goes on they're just difficult kids they don't play as nice they have low frustration tolerance they're difficult with their siblings they're punchy fighty they get to school they can't sit still they're always getting into trouble and none of the adults like them so these kids with these difficult temperaments actually have this relationship with the world that's pretty unpleasant everyone's like sit down stop that don't do that and there's even this vibe these kids get like nobody really wants to spend time with them right real handful is it their fault i mean they can't you can't really change that when you're fine no you can't but the difficult temperament's a risk factor for the adult narcissistic personality now not everybody with a difficult temperament goes on to become narcissistic so it's not a slam dunk but it's definitely when we tell that story backwards every narcissistic client i've ever worked with without exception had a difficult temperament as a child so that either they every so often i'd get lucky they'd we'd phone the parent during therapy and say can we talk about this sometimes they don't ask the parent and the parent would come clean on that and say yeah you were real you had because you had siblings right so they'd compare them to siblings some siblings have this great easy temperament it's not quite so temperament is that biological part of our personality it's how you might see your personality in either one of your parents or in a grandparent or an aunt or an uncle you'll say wow i have such a similar personality to them that's the genetics okay and the other all the rest of it is is shaped by the world parents society how you were treated and yeah what you're exposed to so if you had a let's say a challenging temperament growing up is there hope for you to you know i guess shift your personality into a different style with environment i think so i think so i think a couple of things have to happen that kid needs to be met where they're at so let's say you have a boy with a difficult temperament who's just energy and you get them into athletics yes or you get them into something where they're using their hands whatever that might be building things or something like that and you really are with them instead of saying you're being so bad you're so difficult like whoa look at that rocky you built or like oh my gosh you ran 10 miles today or you threw the ball or like this is great like let's do it together and they have a parent who wants to maybe do those things with them i've i've heard of some this is where it's interesting i hear a lot of these stories if not in athletics but people who do things like climb mountains that kind of thing and sometimes the parents got them into these things because the kid was just a bolus of energy and then they would and then the parents would really encourage them might even go with them like with them or whatever so i do think if that child feels loved safe protected attached they feel like they have a safe base to return to which is usually their primary caregiver they can relax and and they have success experiences right so maybe they're not the best kid in school but they're really like they feel loved no matter what whether they can read or not whether they can do math or not they're loved and that they have these other outlets that's cool and that the school is supporting them and meeting them how many kids you know have that things line up like that i can count on one hand the number of kids i know who got that lineup right i mean who had like all the support we love you no matter what yeah it's very challenging uh it's interesting because i i interviewed kobe bryant before he passed obviously and he he said his father one summer when he was playing basketball i think he was 13. he said he didn't score one point the whole summer in like this summer competition league and he said my father told me no matter what i'm gonna love you whether you score zero points or you're the highest scorer i'm gonna love you no matter what you do no matter how good or how bad you are i love you no matter what and he said that conversation with his dad gave him the confidence to say i'm gonna go out and and go for it um no matter what happens i'm loved is the way he explained it and i thought that was interesting but uh not a lot of people have had like the school support and parent support and slipping support and like the encouragement but it sounds like you can't change a personality but you can channel a personality into other activities to support their growth is that right so every human being has the same sort of essential ingredients that they need in terms of wanting you know a like again a safe base yes a safe place of attachment um a sense of being loved no matter what yeah their behavior could be called out like no you cannot tear up the living room that behavior is not okay i love you yeah i love you whether you get the 13 points or the no points just still grounded but i love you you're so grounded you know i love you you know and so that sort of consistency and safety but it was interesting i was just reading a research paper from 2014 and in this paper they were talking about how do you basically how do you make a narcissistic adult out of a kid one thing we're seeing a little bit right now is this problem of children being overvalued for nothing celebrated for just being celebrated for like you're just so great and it's that we you're saying well what should we tell kids if they're not great well great means something right great is excelling so you love a child you cultivate their strengths but the idea being that narcissistic parents are very vulnerable to thinking their kids are great because they have to be they're my kids so they better be great kids so these kids are being told they're all that over and over and you're all that you're all that you shouldn't you're special you shouldn't have to struggle with the slings and arrows of the world well then they get to adulthood and the slings and arrows happen and they are not having it and that's where you see that's that's that on top of everything else can also be what fosters the building of the narcissistic child just over indulge and what happens is they're almost oh they're overindulged for their outsides and you're you're so special but their their emotional world isn't nourished so nobody is sitting with their emotions and letting them be sad it's many times like come on let's all be happy you know it's a lot of that and that's a dangerous game to play would you would you say with your research if um kids grew up in a healthy family let's say it's they got all the tools and resources and their parents were healed from their traumas and gave them you know discipline but love and all these things in the way that the best way you could is it possible for someone to still be raised as a narcissist even if they have this environment of love and safety and or how does a narcissist become one is it only through family environment and the way they were treated or how does that actually happen so the problem if you if they someone had all the fundamentals yes right the safety the love the consistency the freedom from trauma great values the great values all you know all of those things supportive educational environment all that you still will have a handful but you will have dropped a probability from here down to here okay right it's it's like horse race right you you've really dropped the likelihood significantly narcissism is it creating adult narcissism is a complex interblend of that biological temperament meeting up all these environmental conditions and there's a range of conditions that can result in results in adulthood narcissism at the most extreme and probably most difficult is trauma in childhood so a child who is raised and experiences trauma you know significant caregiver loss chaos abuse observing abuse and because that results in inconsistent caregivers right and so that can put a person at risk for developing an adult narcissistic personality but here's where it gets tricky the majority of people exposed to trauma and childhood don't become narcissistic factors you could but you don't always so that's one pathway this overindulgence is over like you're so great you're so special you're so extraordinary my kids are the most extraordinary thing that's another model towards narcissistic personality development conditional love kobe bryant's father i'm only going to love you if you come back having scored 20 points if you didn't don't even show up now imagine that happening a thousand times 10 000 times i love you when i love you when you clean the dishes i love you if you get straight a's i love you if you make the soccer goal i love you if you whatever the child learns that they're all love is conditional which is really that's transactional basically all narcissistic relationships and adulthood are transactional you set the tone there with conditionality a lot of this though comes down to something called attachment an attachment is something that's created in the first year or two of life it requires an available consistent responsive caregiver one singular you need that that person who is there who looks at the baby who responds when it cries who loves it who holds it feeds it you need that safe it's called a secure attachment a lot of the research really points to the important of the importance of that secure attachment that as being something that predicts a lower likelihood of adult narcissism so if you have a secure you're less likely you're less likely if you don't have an anxious attachment and an anxiously attached baby is the child who absolutely flips out when their caregiver leaves like you know if the mommy drops them up and they lose it then person who receives the child has a hard time soothing the child and then when the child sees the parent again they start crying again like almost like how could you leave me abandoned me for five hours and that anxious attachment style is very much associated with the narcissistic style interesting in adulthood yeah can you break down the differences between narcissists um psychopaths sociopaths and then also how you spot them so there's a big difference if if i was at a chalkboard here i'd be drawing a venn diagram with overlapping circles okay lots of overlap between narcissism and psychopathy lots okay the boldness the meanness the impulsivity the disinhibition the um always working the angles the exploitativeness the manipulativeness the entitlement well absolutely overlapping so you might be wondering then what's the difference here's the difference narcissistic people are insecure and they are very insecure very insecure and lots of feelings of inadequacy okay so but that's all happening at an unconscious level but i want you to think of a narcissist as somebody who constantly has a stomachache right because they're going through their lives but they're like they're there's almost this tension they're not aware why they have it but the tension that the top's going to get blown off and we're going to be able to see their inadequacies that's why they're so sensitive to criticism feedback hey like um yeah it's interesting you got some dust on your shirt and you're like oh really and you start coming at me oh no you got this on yourself yeah right you got that like yeah yeah criticizing you yes you see what i'm saying that's a hedge against a shame that's the narcissist game psychopath doesn't go there psychopath is not anxious psychopath is not insecure their nervous systems are different so there's a part of our nervous system called the autonomic nervous system this is the this is the involuntary part of our nervous system and it's it's from which the sympathetic nervous system comes off which you know is fight or flight or freeze and that fight flight freeze and there's even a fourth part to it called fawn which you could talk about but that that autonomic reaction that like boom adrenaline got you know eyes wide open kind of reaction that's not there for the psychopath so whereas i i don't know if i saw something out there and i saw someone had a 100 bill hanging out their wallet never could i ever like i would have a heart attack from the anxiety of thinking about like no you know because i have a very probably overly functioning autonomic nervous system but for somebody who's a psychopath they'd clip that and their heart rate wouldn't they're in that way they're just nothing take it steal it so they have no anxiety no excitement around it no excitement no anxiety and they're very stress resistant in that way that's why there's so many psychopathic ceos if you're gonna be a ceo and nothing bothers you you you're able to say cut those hundred thousand jobs and then you still go off and play golf for the afternoon because nothing gets you they sometimes make great surgeons because when all hell is breaking loose they're just sort of calmly doing their surgery thing it's it really is but there is a coldness and a callousness because there is almost like no capacity for empathy no capacity for intimacy interesting and psychopaths are almost singularly motivated by power pleasure and profit and mostly by power they solely want to dominate because that's what they do narcissists like to dominate but they actually kind of seem like dumb dogs next to the psychopath really yeah the closest we get to overlap is what we call malignant narcissism so that's when we have all the goodies we see in narcissism but we see as more of a sadism and a paranoia in the malignant narcissist they're the most dangerous narcissist they're still not fully psychopaths because they still have the insecurity and the inadequacy it the psychopaths don't they're not secure they're not insecure no i mean if you if you see a psychopath get mad it's simply because you might have gotten in the way of something they needed to get down to get done you know what they'll instead do they'll very quietly figure out a way to destroy you get rid of it exactly although calmly have someone say like um i'll literally look at you if i was the psychopathic boss and you were working for me i'd be like and i'd be calm and i'd go and then i i don't know whether that means you'd kill them or whatever but no problem with that right and very good on the emotion they don't have empathy yeah no empathy does narcissists have empathy narcissists have we we tend to say oh they don't have empathy they have what we call i like to call it you instrumental empathy they weaponize empathy so narcissists get what empathy is they know they use it against you they use it to get what they need they don't necessarily use it against you but like if they want to get you to do something oh man i heard your mom's sick oh man oh my gosh how's she doing i'm so sorry like it's rough you know my mom was sick she she was really sick for a while too i get all that and then before you know it's a report and then they're getting some from you right so it feels like empathy you know and especially when you first meet them that's why so many people think narcissistic people are charming and charismatic they know what the feel they know what's right they or i should say they know what empathy is they know how to read the room so they got it but they can't be bothered with it they actually cognitively get it they can think about empathy i need something for him from him somebody said his mom's sick so let me let me work the mom angle here because that's going to help him feel better what they don't have is any regard for so they have no regard for the feelings of others they don't care so when they're done with you and they've gotten what they need from you and someone's the next week when they're fully done with you and say hey his mom got sick and be like so yeah so what do you want me to do about it so it's very cold when they're done so that it's and that's why people say well don't tell me they don't have empathy because it seemed like they cried at that movie or they were really understanding my feelings odds or they needed something at that point so what was the most uh the scariest narcissist what was it called or the most most dangerous malignant narcissist okay so can you explain again what that what that is so let's talk about let's let's view narcissism as almost like this inner core okay the inner core of narcissism is this variable empathy usually a lack of empathy okay entitlement grandiosity validation seeking a sense of envy for other people or the assumption that other people envy them um the inability to regulate their anger when they're frustrated disappointed or stressed a sense of shame so if anyone points out a flaw in them they tend to react with rage a reactive sensitivity to criticism so if anyone points out anything they ah they come at them blame shifting and responsibility shifting so they blame other people for what you know what is actually their responsibility they're very controlling very egocentric everything is about them everything is self-serving insecure um very deeply insecure deep lots of feelings of inadequacy but those are all sort of pushed down all of these things i'm talking about the entitlement and all the rest of it it's like a suit of armor that protects that inner core of inadequacy so nobody ever sees it if i'm walking around telling you i'm all that well then i can't be inadequate right and if i got a big fancy car and a big fancy house and a big fancy person on my arm then i'm all that right so with the narcissism we have to talk about sort of the top of the line behaviors and those are our presentations charm charisma confidence curiosity um and they also can you have those things and not be narcissistic you can because i'm a very curious person i can't you know i'm like so here here's where it gets interesting right is you can be curious when you can find an empathic charismatic person behold them they are the unicorns of the human beings when i meet the confident charismatic empathic kind respectful humble person i literally i'm like okay everyone and i can't tell you it doesn't happen often and i'm usually like i look goo-goo eyes because i'm thinking and then of course i'm poking at it i'm like no no no i'm gonna find what's wrong with it every so often i find it and i'm like it hasn't happened often it hasn't happened often but here's the thing the charm the charisma the confidence the curiosity um there's also comfort that they also offer it's like they'll often feel like they're rescuers and i can take care of it all they'll be very generous up front right you know all it's all a front game right yeah so what happens then the curtain comes down across all your common sense and you miss like this is amazing yeah and people and if you either you miss the lack of empathy and the anger and the rage and all the other stuff or you justify it you just well yeah yeah you know what he's got a big job or she's really stressed or she doesn't mean that or that's just their culture i was listening i was reading an article by a linguist recently and the linguist was talking about how people talk over each other in certain cultures right and they were using that as a way to rationalize interrupting and there's interrupting and there's interrupting narcissistic interrupting is not only it's it's contemptuous interrupting what does that mean like dismissive interruptions dismissively um okay all right you know you're talking and then i i not only cut in but it's basically like your point of view doesn't matter or yeah you're you're an idiot i know it's really yeah yeah okay so you you shared some of these signs of um malignant no that's okay so let's go back to the point we got the core of lack of empathy all that stuff yes now the problem with narcissism is they're subtypes oh my gosh not all narcissists are created we really do need a whiteboard now that's great i'd be writing notes up there because what we have then is the classical narcissist the sort of 57 chevy of narcissism is the grandiose narcissist it is the the big charming confident i'm the one i'm the best no insight very little empathy kind of but very like big sales personnel that's the grandiose narcissist but then when we talk about the malignant narcissist again we have all that stuff lack of empathy and all that other stuff but they are more menacing they are more controlling they're a little bit more scary they're sadistic they're paranoid um what if they have both of those things usually they can they can and what would that's a horrific combination because then that person's real charming on the front end and then once you cross the threshold and walk all the way in with them now you're dealing with their malignant manipulative scary and and when we see controlling when we see manipulative narcissism manipulative i'm sorry malignant narcissism we're seeing people who are often they're more they're more likely to be aggressive to be violent to be abusive to isolate people from ever being able to get help from being abusive in the workplace we hear these big awful workplace abuse stories a lot especially a lot in the metoo era a lot of those folks are malignant narcissists right so what happens if you're with a narcissist you you maybe it's been a year you've been dating someone or your your boss didn't seem like it at the beginning but then you're figuring out oh check check check they've got a lot of these things but you know the first six months was seemed great or it seemed like it was amazing but now we're seeing the curtain you know pull back and some of these things are coming out and we're not feeling good about the relationship program whether it's a working relationship a friendship an intimate relationship we've spotted it yep what i'm hearing you say is there's really no way to change a narcissist no so trying to change them is not going to happen that's a fool there doesn't mean we just pretty much have to rip the cord and and rip the band-aid and get out or how does it so it's not that simple yeah right we can't walk away from all relationships people can't just quit their jobs um let's say let's say a person starts figuring this out five years in a relationship and they're married what if it's their family of origin now like i've done my homework and this is actually my parents or my sibling people say well i don't know that i'm willing to cut off for my entire family so i'm not gonna sit here and tell people that oh you just got to always go in fact my my first book on the topic of narcissism is called should i stay or should i go surviving a relationship with a narcissist and i wrote it from that point of view because it's too simplistic to say well get up and go like you said rip off the band-aid so if you're and neither path is easy but right in an ideal world i will be frank with you and there's actually an interesting group in israel that's gathering has gathered some data on this on narcissistic abuse and they've found that the thing that works best in dealing with a narcissistic relationship that resulted in the best outcomes was going no contact like having no contact with them cut it off and because it's almost like a toxin right if you if there's a toxic gas the best way to feel better is to eliminate no more drugs you have a little bit you're just going to be feeling a little bit inconsistently it's going to be holding on to it correct but a lot of people don't have that so the biggest that if you're going to have to stay in this relationship you have to engage in something that i and others have called radical acceptance this is never going to change this is who they are this is who they are this is it so and i then i tell people i have something called the deep technique that i i talk about the deep technique is when i tell people if you're dealing with a narcissist don't defend don't engage don't explain don't personalize so deep don't defend don't engage don't explain don't personalize and so when they're coming at you and if you can remember you really are keeping it tight it's a lot of you it's like you're in a deposition yes no okay sounds good sure now man narcissists don't like that because they're gonna keep coming and they're gonna bait you they're gonna bait you and they when i tell you when they bait you they they don't play they go forever everything that's gonna make something else kids they start making stuff up they go after your friends they draw your friends in it threatening to shame you publicly whatever it is right and so then at some people people take that bait and then the narcissists like game on you know and they're all got you i got you because when you're fighting they're fighters that's what they do in fact there was a great research that came out from ohio state university ohio boy and um phenomenal study that came out this year and over over over 450 studies they examined and found really strong effects that narcissism is consistently associated with aggression it's a very this is not there's nothing soft about this this is about aggression they want the fight they are always a better fighter and they want the fight so they bait you you got to be made of steel don't defend don't engage crazy to not get into the fight every relationship with a narcissist is a threesome you just don't know it because they always need that third person in the relationship whether it's someone gave me the number or someone's noticing the person dm me or this person is exactly they're always trying to and they're always trying to create that sense of intrigue or the idea that somebody is more into them or they're or again it's often them creating the jealousy or they be incredibly jealous of their partners jealousy and pathological jealousy there's two different things okay so jealousy is normal we are a actually we're a pair bonded species we human beings we are we we we like we pretty much are about generally normatively have sex with one person people like no that person cheated on me said yeah they were only having sex with them they weren't having sex with you they were still sexually monogamous they were back at someone else you were on paper in a relationship with them you came you went to the same home but their sex was someone else okay but we tend to be pair bonded we tend to be monogamous all right so jealousy is a threat to that think of it darwinianly right if if i'm in a if i'm in a relationship any a threat comes in right normal jealousy is that sort of evolutionary jealousy right i'm with a person if somebody is comes in as a threat to that relationship i've lost the resources and support for our offspring right that's all that darwinian darwin and stuff jealousy though that starts getting into the realm of things like paranoia and um oh my gosh and negative mood states and all that like jealousy doesn't feel good but it i always when i've worked with couples they're like i'm jealous i'm like that's good that means you still got a skin in the game like because when people i've been with people worked with couples and or worked with individuals and they'll say i'm not even jealous when people notice my husband and i kind of feel sad because i'm like yeah this thing this thing's kind of oh god find it done i feel like yeah i don't feel jealous i feel like i trust the person i'm with it's yeah but that's that's we're talking about pathological jealousy right so i think of my partner ironically on my drive here he was talking about something and about this woman who i knew we were going to see who had hit on him and this dude is so loyal it levels it to a whole new level and i remember thinking in the driver i'm like i got that little funny thing in my tummy okay i i don't like huh he doesn't even live in this country and so i'm thinking that's and i was like that's good that's good that i'm still feeling right there guys still got a dog in the fight but it doesn't mean you're like but i believe he's homemade and letting it stress you out and like talking about because we're talking about yeah of course yeah and so the path what are you saying what's the parent paranoid the pathological jealousy pathological jealousy yeah that's a narcissistic that's more of an it's more paranoid it's more antagonistic it's more about you must be doing something you're doing so it's accusatory it's almost delusional oh my gosh okay what would you say again are the main causes uh what are the main things that happen to cause someone to become a narcissist is it all trauma based it's no it's it's partly trauma it's also that that temperament it is um chaos in the early environment it's lack of secure attachment it's over valuation of the child basically the child can do no wrong and uh they're so wonderful i mean it's interesting we're about to see something fascinating happen and i don't know how it's going to go down we're about to see because what facebook's coming up on 20 years soon right we're about to see the first generation of kids who are born into the facebook world where every moment being documented and shared since they were born this is the first time we're going to be seeing this so i bless the people out there who are going to start collecting this data because we now have you know you're going to see what happens if you were because i i had kids way before this so i did not the only people saw their pictures were the people actually put them in an envelope picture kind of thing that came over to the house the actual baby but um this is a this is a whole new game for kids who's who's basically were accessories to their parents lives like look at my child this look at my child this look at my childhood every day there's a new place so is it do you think it's okay to share some of your family life on social media and some of your children's you know special moments or do you think we should be protecting our kids at all costs and never show their face never show anything until they're whatever super interesting area there's some actually really interesting thinking and writing about this which is these children aren't consenting to this is it are these children consenting to you showing them um have a meltdown or you know we see all these silly child videos and sometimes i kind of feel a little sadness because these things stay evergreen they didn't agree to that and as much as they say oh no it's so cute is it still they didn't consent it's it's a vulnerability right so there's some i know some folks in the developmental sphere of psychology saying oh this may not be entirely cool yeah i'm not agreeing what happens when the kid's 23 and they start going back and seeing all these like things that their mom or dad posted and they're like huh that's not really cool i wish you wouldn't have done that to me but it goes beyond that because even when the child is young there's this sense of things are constantly being done to them without them agreeing to it posing and put these clothes on and do this and let's post you yeah in a public way and that and then the child also gets this sense of their utility their importance to their parents is their social media persona you look so pretty in your dress you look so cute in your costume like you're wondering are you costuming your child for halloween for you or for them or for the validation yeah except for the valentine's day parenting yes exactly and that's tough because i have i have friends who never show their kids stuff and then i have friends who do show their kids and man it's just like yeah how do we how do we navigate that conversation how do we i i think we're building this airplane in the sky oh man and so the challenge becomes then that i would say it's a it's a balancing act between parents talking to each other both parents but also i think there's a larger issue of how much is the child feeling that they're valued validated for being the kid who poses in social media right because what does every child want they want their they want their parents love and attention all they want is their parents love and attention so if they start to recognize that if i'm looking good on social media and mommy's getting validated then they'll put on the weird thing they want her to wear or do the thing that she wants them to do but what's not happening is that their interest what they value may not be cultivated or everything's a photo op it's as though the child feels that they're constantly on display versus just having a moment where they're being present and mindful and it doesn't all have to be documented that i'm i've been working with a psychologist i'm concerned about when these chickens come home to roost and they're going to let's say there are parents that are posting about their kids online you know maybe they have a small following maybe it's to a private group of their friends and family the kind of a different game and and and or that's the ones that have a bigger following if they were going to be posting and they have a bigger fall i'm going to say not to their friends and family [Music] what would be appropriate that you think psychologically in a healthy manner to be able to talk about your family and your kids is there a healthy way psychologically that's going to you know i think not mess them up or you know being present with your children emotionally being aware of their needs of not turning them into a performing pony in your circus do you know i mean again i say this as the mom of two kids right and there are moments when you think well this is the day we're gonna take such and such picture somebody's sick someone's crying someone is torn their dress someone is this and if you get angry at them because they've ruined your finely laid plans that child then starts getting that conditional sense of i'm only about this person's finally laid plans listen we all do it we all screw up we all do that conditionality to our kids it's almost impossible to not it's it's how quickly we catch ourselves and say that's not what they want this is not this is we're going to disneyland because they want to go disney we're going to the parks they want to go to the park not because what a great day for a photo op like i i've been on vacation and i've watched families like practically i mean literally screaming wayne that's where i thought grass mass cars pay attention look here just splash and be sandy and muddy they're at the beach and it's that kind of obsessive zeal because all of that social comparison of people wanting to put out the false self and what is narcissism false self um narcissism is the adult self yeah it's a mask it's always a mask because it's the mask of what they think the world wants how they want the world wants them to look which is why more and more people are looking the same they're getting the same cosmetic procedures they have the same bodies they're driving the same cars they're really sort of shills for this sort of artificial mask that's a narcissist's game that narcissism is the opposite of authenticity it's so interesting because um four years ago i wrote a book called the mask of masculinity which is about and i interviewed a lot of psychologists and and you know experts on uh on these kind of personality traits and these these masks that men wear and i did i wrote about it because i realized i was wearing a mask a couple of different masks for many different years of my life to protect myself to try to fit in to try to be liked and loved by society one of them being like the the athlete mask it's like i always had to win at all costs i needed to be number one and if i ever lost or got second then no one would ever love me so at all costs i was like training and developing myself to be the best athlete i could be and i was a horrible loser i was a sore loser i couldn't handle it i would get angry i would be like moody i would be like frustrated and i'm not good enough i'd beat myself up and train obsessively until i got better and so i could make sure that um you know i could put myself in a better position athletically and there's these different masks that men wear um and i realized that it's all about trying to fit in it was all about men trying to fit in and trying to belong but it's it's not the authentic self correct and that i mean that's a maybe we'll have a different day i'll come here and talk to you about the authentic self because it's such a big conversation when we look at the work of carl rogers right the humanistic psychologists and even other humanists like um abraham maslow so these are the the big players in that humanistic universe this idea of authenticity and self-actualization so if you were to view human growth as a mountain self-actualization is the summit it's the top i i can in my lifetime i've met five self-actualized people and it was unforgettable and they were always older i don't think it's hard to self-actualize when you're younger and they were deeply authentic i mean like you you did feel like you were in this in the in the face of greatness with them but some form ordinary like one was a man who was a he was an auto mechanic in johannesburg and i was like i am in the presence of absolute greatness right now what did that feel like absolute serenity um i felt that i felt at one with him at one with the situation i felt more calmed down i felt like i could keep listening to him this was a man with almost no education who again he fixed cars in johannesburg and actually in a pretty you know not in the nicest of surroundings and he was joy like he was just human joyness not because he was laughing but he was so proud of what and anyone looking at it like there's not a lot happening here but it was this genuine authentic like please come into my look at my beautiful space this is my life and the other person i met who was same thing joy and that man that johannesburg man i'm still not in touch with this other man i am and he is somebody who had a moment in his life and he decided to devote his life to children and families living in poverty in india and i worked with a school he was working with in india and i remember sitting with him we were kind of actually kind of sitting next to an open sewer and it smelled like an open sore he's just chilling he's just chilling and i'm like i lit i was i could have sat there all day and it was hot and there were flies it was uncomfortable and and he was magnificent and the the and it wasn't just because the mechanic guy wasn't out there saving the world he was fixing cars this guy happened to be doing something for a very small community in in this village in india right he was in service the other one was not but there was such a congruence between who they were as human beings and how they conducted themselves and how they were in the world there was no sense if someone has more i want what they have someone's got it better why is that happening how come they got their turn first and i remember when i i think about them i have the photograph of the gentleman from johannesburg this other man i'm still in touch with and i i need that to sort of try to get myself recalibrated to my center but again the opposite of narcissism no mask whatsoever they were just in themselves what a life like what a gorgeous life you mentioned the uh the deep technique uh don't defend don't engage don't explain don't personalize so how do you argue or communicate with a narcissist to get like your point across if you need to get it across uh you don't you don't you can't so sometimes i but do we life is meant to be lived in a beautiful way not with them so that we should just rip the bandage you know i mean not necessarily we can't right so like i said you know i'll give you an example okay narcissistic divorce family court and family law is not written around saying narcissistic parents aren't good for kids so if you're parenting with a narcissist we're going to give the other parent full cussy not happening yeah state of california 50 50. all right unless somebody doesn't want that so what happens then is a person says if i decide to split up from this person i'm only going to be with my kids 50 of the time and i don't want them with that influence 50 percent of the time so some people will stay i my favorite is when people file for divorce like the day of their youngest child's 18th birthday i'm like i don't know what that was about you see that happen quite a bit they literally wait until and then at 18 those kids are free agents so there's no no one can say you have to be here you have to stay here you have to celebrate this holiday with that or anything they they get to call their own child so how do you so you do something i just have to have extreme patience i feel like it's it's beyond patience it's radical acceptance patience is endurance radical acceptance this thing sounds exhausting it's getting it it is absolutely exhausting it's just knowing that this isn't going to change you ever spend time in chicago i'm sure you have right go to chicago it's february in chicago oh it's miserable are you running are you gonna go for a run in just your shorts and no shirt no unless you're crazy okay yeah why because in february and chicago it's cold it's radical acceptance yeah so you just accept it right if your window's facing east and you don't want the sun to wake you up get curtains radical acceptance you cannot talk to another so i tell people there's another concept i use is something called true north sometimes you have to get into the argument true north are those things that you're going to fight for because they're so they're they're important to your core values so who you are for some folks it's their kids for some people it may be a cause they believe in or a belief they have or they will not listen to i don't know prejudicial language true north gets activated and they'll say i'm taking the fight they pull off the gloves they pull out these they pull up the earrings and then they're in they're just uh they'll go at it it is exhausting nothing good happens nothing good happens right but at least they can say i took the fight dr romini yeah so i could live with myself right to know that i fought for stood up for what i wanted yeah i still put that but do not get into the fight about the dishwasher or well you know why were you late to the party or why were you rude to my sister or whatever i mean if you keep taking every fight it's exhausting the minute you let go it you know what happens though is when a person finally gives up they're overwhelmed with grief they're like there's no there there's nothing here there's nothing to talk about i can't tell them good news because they make fun of it or they dismiss it i can't tell them bad news because they they get really angry and rageful so all we can really talk about is the weather i'm like uh-huh that's it but that's i mean what do you do with the rest of your time you cultivate other stuff in your life interests can you actually can you love a narcissist or is it impossible it's a subjective question right love is such a complicated word it means something different to you it means something different me means different things to the people out in the street so the and that's the bigger question i often get is can a narcissist love is that possible um it depends on what's besides loving themselves what is cold to you right you're in short sleeves i'm in a sweater yeah you know so it's it's it's a subjective word so can a per lots of people love narcissists they do they're like i love this person i they represent something to me maybe this is where it starts getting to a philosophical question maybe when we love someone it's very it's very it is very representational we love what they stand for we love what we believe they are but we don't know maybe we never know someone enough to love them so yeah again that's a philosophical conversation right when it comes down to it there are people out there who will say i do they'll parents are a great example people have narcissistic parents like i love my mother or i love my father i can't stand them sure that love is much more metaphysical yeah right so what's the biggest misconceptions about a narcissist that they love themselves they don't love themselves oh hell no it's self-loathing this is a disorder of self-loathing all that inadequacy and ugly insecurity they hate themselves but then they put it on other people did i project it onto other people you're a horrible lying disgusting person you make me sick they're talking about themselves oh my gosh sometimes you just want to give them a hug narcissists are miserable they're miserable miserable miserable it's awful i actually say that the compassion we can find in ourselves is people like i want to get revenge on them i said you don't have to they have to keep being them they have to live with it the universe wins on that one like they have to keep being them it is a v imagine every day you're comparing yourself to everyone you're thinking they have that and they have that how come i don't have this and how come this and they're constantly anxious they're constantly angry they constantly feel like a victim they feel like everyone is out together that's a very difficult way to live their nervous system must be always heightened too kind of kind of yeah different than their psychopathic cousins there it doesn't feel it yeah yeah but narcissists really really um it's a very uncomfortable way to live because you always feel like they always feel like they're getting a short end of the stick and so what are the signs then if you're a kid and you've thought one thing about your parents but all of a sudden you're starting to see like oh maybe they might have one parent who's narcissistic what would you be what would you say the main signs if a parent for a kid would be narcissistic i don't think when you let's say a child is anyone under 13. i don't even think kids start understanding that their parents are messed up until they're around middle school or high school selfishness inattentive real inattentiveness dismissiveness missiveness um uh devaluation of their emotions shaming them humiliating them expecting them to be like them devaluing them if they don't excel at the things they want what do you mean you don't want to go to harvard or like you want to go to that college like any kind of contemptuous dismissiveness of their children that's all narcissistic parent behavior wow rage rage is a big one and i think that's probably the one my clients have brought in anger but rage like that walking on extras if anyone says to me i felt like i was always walking on eggshells around my parents probably dealing with an antagonistic a narcissistic parent yeah i think i was telling you beforehand i was i felt that for a part of my life and then things started to shift but i've definitely walked in eggshells for many relationships in the past yes which makes people like why did i uh jump into different relationships where i felt that way which maybe i hadn't learned to heal the past yet or i hadn't learned to but you didn't jump into a relationship did you feel that it was getting chills you didn't feel it at the beginning it was like six to 12 months later when i was justified then i justified oh let's just get back to where it was one of the great your i would say your greatest vulnerability quite frankly to narcissistic relationships is your history as an athlete athletes are actually at not only great risk of being narcissistic but for falling for narcissists and a lot of that is because for any gifted athlete all you needed to do was work harder you just had to go to the gym or had to run or do whatever whatever it was you needed to do it just meant more reps yes there was always a way to make it better you're going to you're going to do the sunday workout you're going to go to the gym at four in the morning right and so the more in you had this belief you got better and you were in control so the belief is you could extend that to anyone i just gotta talk talk to them harder i'm going to i'm going to be more clear i'm going to be more loving work more giving everything becomes a workout oh my gosh this is what i did in the last 10 years in every relationship the last 10 years and i remember just being like it would never felt enough and i was always draining to give it was never enough what i gave there was always something wrong with me it was always something to pick at yeah and they never wanted to go to therapy with me i was it was funny because i was like what man you know i don't want to generalize but i was like i'm a guy who wants to go to therapy and and get feedback from my like i'm not perfect give me feedback tell me how to improve because i'm an athlete and i'm like i want to improve and they never wanted justice like i i think women would kill for this you know for a guy who wanted to go to therapy with them another narcissistic woman oh my gosh but that idea of surrender is kind of actually the opposite of what an athlete is conditioned to become right and that's really the core of the narcissistic relationship it's a sense of surrender i'm not engaging with this i'm not doing this it doesn't work and then you just fold it and step away no it's more like i want to make this work what can i do to make it better how can i improve tell me what i can do i'm here i'll support i'll do this and then it's just it drains your energy athletes entrepreneurs or anyone who's a doer and it's worked for them they're screwed it wasn't until i really started lifting the veil with my therapist talks about is like i started to really realize like okay i don't need to keep working working working you talked about this in your recent videos like the marriage and relationships should be hard work it's kind of the narrative and when i realized like it shouldn't feel like it should feel like commitment and that there's attention and presence but it shouldn't feel like this draining hard work no otherwise otherwise i'd rather be single if that's what it is exactly and i think that that and i have to tell you a lot of people have had a lot of harm done to them in therapy where therapists say to them it's hard work relationships are hard work no no no no no it's not i mean yeah maybe having to say no like having to sit through a football game you don't want to watch i don't know that that's hard work like because they sat with watch your french film with you just an uncomfortable moment i'm just gonna read my book while you watch your football game like yeah yeah it's we're good yeah it's fine yeah i can show up for a few minutes that's not hard work yeah hard you know if and the other person's kind right again every healthy relationship every healthy relationship has the same core ingredients kindness compassion patience mutuality of regard reciprocity um respect every every every single one and as long as you've got that flexibility flexibility no narcissistic relationship has even one of those ingredients so that's why they don't work they don't work so yeah they're always going to be hard work because you have not one of the essential ingredients like you're trying to make a bake a cake without flour eggs or sugar good luck with that how do you know when you're entering a new relationship if the person is not a narcissist like maybe you've been in a narcissistic relationship or your parent was or whatever it is and you have some pts from those experiences and you feel like well i'm supposed to be walking in eggshells but i don't need to it's kind of healthy like is this you gonna drop like when you know the person isn't a narcissist how long does that take to find out about the same amount of time it takes to discover that they are in the sense that the difference is narcissists actually there's red flags right okay i call these green flags green flags mean go and green flags are things like watch the person watch how the person behaves under conditions of stress so let's say that you're running late to the airport great because that's a great example of a stress right how are they acting and are they you know they're saying oh i'm a little worried about this but we're gonna make it work and listen what's the worst is gonna happen we'll get rebooked and they're calm and like you know listen i'm just glad to be here with you like we'll figure it out to make the most of the moment yeah we'll go to an airport hotel if you have two friends but we're gonna be fine a narcissist when they're running late to the airport oh oh no no no no whatever so and it just it's just i can't i'm not going to express it right but it's chaos stress accusations this is your fault entitlement let me speak to the manager get me on that plane get that plane back to the gate like that that's the narcissist right whereas with the um with somebody you watch them and that doesn't have to be something as dramatic as the airport it could be even something like hey i noticed you've been working late how about i make some dinner so it's the noticing it's the presence it's the mindfulness it's the willingness to be flexible and make compromise when it's needed um to meet you halfway to listen to you and more than anything is to also see the growth potential in you so not to be threatened by your own success so if you go to this person and you're like hey you know what i got this totally cool new opportunity and the healthy person says that is amazing you have worked your whole life i saw this in you what can we do to make this work for you whereas everybody else and not just narcissists but insecure people will say oh i guess that's just going to mean more time away and you're going to be traveling a lot there's going to be a lot of women on the road and you're like oh my gosh they just got the job of their dreams my gosh bringing back so many members that's the key and i'm a big believer that you know there's actually something in where i'm going a little off-topic but you're a off-topic guy you can handle it there's something called the michelangelo phenomenon one person in the relationship sees the absolute potential in the other in such a way that they say what do we need to do to get you to get you to your dream like do we need to should we like should we take a second on the house should we cut back you know should we move closer in like because i see or or you know what can be simple as simple as they eat a cake that their partner made and said okay this is the best cake i've ever had have you ever thought of making this into a business or a partner of yours might have said you asked the most amazing questions you need a podcast like it's seeing that something bigger in the person that's a good thing that's that's the michelangelo phenomenon that's everything that's a good thing it's the best thing and very few relationships get that because what you've got to do is that person who's saying go be your best you is secure enough to say i'm not going to lose you right like i see all the good in you yeah and that and i want the best for you and i want the best for you and i believe in you and i'm here with you and and that might even mean the person encouraging you might have to make sacrifice things like you know i know that you're gonna have to go take this course for six months and i may not see you and that's okay because this is our future together that's the michelangelo phenomenon what's the opposite narcissistic relationship in in the previous i would say uh 10 years of my relationships i think i was just really good at choosing uh specific people because i was always like i always saw the masterpiece and i said i said your masterpiece and i can see what's possible for you with all these skills and gifts but there was like some insecurities with some of them not all of them and they never were able to see it within themselves right they weren't able to see it and then i remember when i would accomplish something big in some of these relationships not all of them it was almost like they would get depressed or sad and say oh and then make it about what they're lacking what they don't have and wanting to put their intention back on them i remember i i got an email for a year i was training to become to make the usa national team was a dream of mine to go to the olympics and make the usa national team for a sport called team handball it's a big sport in europe not that big in usa i remember getting an email and literally almost in tears that i was selected for the usa team and it was just like a dream for a couple years of a journey this was 10 years ago and i remember i showed her my girlfriend at the time ago i just got called up on the national team and i'm like getting kind of emotional just chills now back in that moment and she didn't congratulate me she just kind of went back into god i wish i was doing what i wanted to do and i wish i was this and i was just like bingo right there just okay well yeah let me come back and help you i kind of put my attention back on like you know you're gonna get these things going and you know i'm here for you but it's like this diminishing i had this happen at one of my big events one time i hosted this annual event called the summit of greatness and uh a relationship at a time made it all about them at the event that i wasn't there for them because the attention was on me and people were coming up to me and i was like this is something i've been working all year to host and then i said you know what let me pause on my event for two hours to give the attention to this person and i was always trying to see the masterpiece but it's like i don't know i'm like you're having so many realizations for me right yeah i mean but that's the idea that that ego and it's interesting not everyone who's not capable of this sort of michelangelo phenomenon in a relationship as a narcissist by any stretch they may just have more of the low-grade insecurity that so many people are plagued by right so insecurity doesn't mean narcissism right insecurity paired with all this entitlement and lack of empathy and all that is the problem and so it's so unfortunate because it is there then again it's talking about self-actualization for the individual i think there can even be actualization in relationships where two people like they really see they see the greatness in each other it can't just be you the only one seeing the masterpiece they have to see the masterpiece in you what because it's just draining yeah if it's just one person right it's also a mirror that's not reflecting back at you so what i'm hearing you say the ultimate experiment in a relationship is when both parties are seeing the masterpiece in each other and are supportive of each other and when one is succeeding uh the person i'm with right now she's incredible she's just a walking success everything she does is just successful i'm so happy for him i want her to succeed i'm like this is amazing let's celebrate you and she's happy for you she's happy for me that's it has to be a two-way stream she admires the work i'm doing she admires the mission we're on to help people and uh she's like what can i do to support you it feels interesting i mean it feels beautiful it is beautiful i mean and that that's the key though because that ability to sort of co like you know again to have that that um that co-located growth that michelangelo you're in essence you're you're realizing the statue from the raw piece of marble every day and you're both sculpting that for the other but that that's again no narcissistic relationship is like that and with a narcissistic relationship it's really the them show like everyone is just sort of in the audience watching them and celebrating them they can so they can be the only great one in a relationship really is it possible that two narcissists would be in a relationship together i actually love when that happens because it kind of gets water supply for everybody else oh my gosh here's what it is they're very volatile relationships they're very superficial relationships a lot of people who are power couples that's sometimes what you're seeing like this kind of they're all about the they're only about the aspiration they're not about the empathy but in any relationship of two narcissists as soon as somebody doesn't stay in their lane so let's say one classical trope of two narcissists in a relationship very one partner very wealthy very powerful very successful the other one very beautiful looks good goes places with this one looks good with them it all looks good together the first time this one though might look someplace else because this one's a narcissist person this person the powerful one it's narcissistic may notice someone else this person's gonna blow up because they're they're doing their beautiful thing full-time and they're like how can someone be more you're not looking at me obsessive than you're not giving me all the attention lots of jealousy lots of volatility lots of meaning lots of egocentricity lots of on social media it's like i'm so blessed love my person hashtag best relationship ever i'm i mean i i laugh when i see likes i'm like ooh yeah there we go you know another nars super narcissistic relationship where it's all about advertising the relationship but it's very superficial very volatile no empathy there's no depth to the intimacy it's almost transactional that that's what happens when two narcissists get together i honestly would be fine with all the narcissists pairing up like noah's ark as long as none of them have kids um because that's a reason because there's a real mess you're messed yeah you're traumatized it's a really empty way to grow up those kids that grow up either they either become incredibly anxious as adults or they become narcissistic as adults it's not a good it's not a good look i don't know if i'm inspired by this conversation you're depressed okay how many what's the percentage how many uh what's the percentage of people in the world who are narcissists do we have that even okay so here's here's where it gets interesting so let's let's start with something we haven't talked about yet so let's give me a way to talk about this a lot of people use the word narcissistic or the term narcissistic personality disorder i actually think it's phenomenal that you haven't been using it because it's a mistake to use that language and i'll tell you why narcissistic personality disorder okay so lots of people out there will say oh i'm in this relationship i've got this boss and they have narcissistic personality disorder i'm always like slow down sister okay because narcissistic personality disorder like all diagnoses require a full workup a lengthy clinical interview it even takes me i i'm honest with you if i have a client in my office usually takes me four to six sessions to be confident that that's what i'm dealing with with the disorder because you could have narcissistic personality traits because it's different than a disorder and it gets into the weeds in terms of diagnostic stuff you don't want it to be like more like when i'm triggered i have narcissistic traits as opposed to it's more complex than that because it's that in order to give someone a diagnosis in the diagnostic and statistical manual of mental disorders of the dsm in order to give someone a diagnosis that person who is showing the symptoms has to either be uncomfortable themselves like we call it subjective distress so depressed people are like they're like i'm miserable i can't i'm miserable i'm sad all the time i can't get out of bed that's subjective distress or they have to have something called social and occupational impairment meaning that the symptoms are getting in the way of their lives in a way that they're aware of right it's causing problems for them where this gets dicey with narcissistic personality is that first of all a lot of narcissists are on top of the world they think their lives are great they walk around saying like i'm i'm the one i'm the guy i'm i'm you know it's working one i'm the best look how great i've got money i've got success i've got the girl or whatever it is it's working so is everything's working for them so that's no subjective no yeah social and occupational impairment now in some cases they may be having trouble at work and then yeah sure they'll meet that criterion but for a lot of folks just walking around in the street they're making they're making bank at work they got they got a partner and a side piece like everything's working out for them so they don't even think they're having that impairment but what they're doing is they're blowing up other people's lives oh yeah we as therapists cannot issue a diagnosis of social we can't say that they have social and occupational impairment because they're someone else is bothered by them makes sense yeah it has to be in the um it has to be that the person is saying uh i'm not i'm not going to work on time or i got a dui those are examples of social and occupational impairment or behavioral impairment i personally think they need to get rid of the diagnosis i think it's worth nothing it's a diagnosis with no treatment so why would you have a disease that you can't treat there's no point to that so let's it's okay so now let's go to the numbers because the the epi epidemiological studies are studies that tell us the number of people or the percentage of people who have a um a given mental illness a given disorder gotcha so the epidemiology statistics on narcissistic personality disorder put the rate somewhere between one and six percent okay that's people who are diagnosed diagnosed with this okay so they've gone into research most people aren't diagnosed because they would never come in and do these sessions and so the million-dollar question what do you how many of you think this is my number this is the doctor romney number yeah okay i'm going with 20 to 25 oh of the world or of the us or the world one in five to one and four you think there's an example one in five is probably and i'm saying adults let's take the kids yeah okay so 18 and above 20 percent that would make it one in five and i would tell you in a major metro like la i'm going to 25 percent i think that just the pressures of new york especially in new york la la being an entertainment city um the nature that sort of the the it's a company town and the business of the town is very superficial and very validation seeking so i'd say 25 here so that's one in five so buddy if you know five people one of them is narcissistic when do you know someone is not a narcissist what are the the qualities that they possess the real qualities it's it's empathy empathy kindness respect flexibility self-awareness um the capacity to reflect on their impact on other people um emotional regulation managing this is more of the emotional regulation like managing negative states like frustration and disappointment um genuine curiosity about others setting goals from an internal space rather than what they think the world expects of them strong having a strong sense of identity um a sense of who they are having a having a solid sense of values um conscientiousness agreeableness these are the things that make a person not narcissistic it's nice to be around those two people oh they're so good and i i feel blessed i have i have a fair number of those in my life but i'm very careful like i curate my world the way some people curate their closets like i don't i and i've made them as recently as this year i've led more than a few in so it happens narcissistic i'm getting you know and i got to tell you it just means that people who've been through what's called narcissistic abuse or all the negative psychological impacts of being in a narcissistic relationship one thing i work with people on is just narrowing their social world like it's it's unfortunately at one in five what are the odds right they're pretty darn good you date five people one of them and depending on what swimming pool you're pulling these people out of it could be one in three so even you you've attracted people in your life 100 and i know what my vulnerabilities are i'm very aware of it my my personal vulnerabilities are things like a um i devalue myself i feel like i'm not enough i um pity people kind of easily and so narcissists actually are pitiful people and that pity can sometimes drive me to say maybe i should try harder so at this point in my life i'm closed off in a way that actually sometimes makes me feel guilty and i'm like yeah that if that's if that's the price of poker i'm good like i don't i i've been through too much too many times at this rodeo that i don't want to do it so it's definitely my own lack of um valuing of myself is what's made me vulnerable to nurses if i boiled it down to one simple thing is that i feel like i'm not good enough because i feel like i'm not good enough i let those kinds of people in so what i found unfortunately is that it's just better off to close the gates and um unfortunately yeah that's kind of the downstream effect or i mean would you say the greatest defense against attracting narcissism is to fully love yourself it's to fully love yourself to be deeply authentic i consider myself authentic-ish authentic adjacent but i know i've got a ways to go because i still struggle with the monkey on my back of feeling like i'm i'm not enough kind of really yeah and i know that and that's my work on my in my own therapy on that consistently and um but it's a i know where my barriers are so anything that pings that it's it's great it's interesting i've got my staff is fantastic i mean and they're much younger than me this is what's so remarkable about it they actually act like guard dogs they're like we feel like one's coming no and i'll be like i kind of feel bad for my good for you go feel bad in another room we're not letting them in so they're they're i mean they're these two are gangster i mean they're the two most amazing young women yeah what's the key to learning how to love ourselves fully so that we don't so then when we see someone coming in we just say nah we're okay we don't need to let you into our life so let's go back to the carl rogers the humanist i was talking about before it's to lift the conditions of worth from our lives that we are lovable and cherishable simply because we are i mean if we could get totally into a different conversation about we're all made of energy who judges energy right like you know we're all lovable because we're just the stuff of life you know where and that makes us beautiful and lovable we're and so it's who said this carl rogers talks about conditions of worth dr romini says and many others i do believe say we're energy like who judges energy it's like judging the sun i guess we do like we were sunscreen you're right right but you know what i mean like it's a these conditions of worth like whatever people say to themselves i'm not attractive enough i'm not smart enough i'm not rich enough i'm not accomplished enough i'm not this enough i'm not that enough that those conditions of worth if i'm i would be lovable if as soon as you put love and if in the same sentence you're screwed wow so it's very much like dropping all that and saying you're lovable because you are everyone is lovable everyone is cherishable all of us not because somebody's more beautiful or somebody's more famous or somebody's more attractive it's not or rich or something like that but it's hard because we're given the message of you're better if you look this way act this way do this way live here drive this it's it's a lot to break out of and so i think that um and those narratives even go deeper than materialism it's almost like as a kid many kids were were taught were they almost felt like you grow up with a parent who's not attentive in any way or not interested of well i'm not they're not paying attention because i'm not interesting i'm not enough and i get attention when i excel in something that they like and so let me do more of that to get more attention exactly and if i lose at that then they're not going to love me that's exactly right so it all becomes like people think like if i do these things then i can be loved rather than you're just lovable and so that's the um that's where people most people lose the plot and and i think the other piece those people don't understand narcissism i think that a lot of people say oh come on now everyone can change or some just they i i just got to get to know them better or they don't really mean that we enable it we justify it but if people really got to learn like no that's unacceptable that tantrum they just threw not okay that that that entitled behavior not okay i and honestly get to the point where i don't care why they're behaving like this they're behaving like this so how do you create boundaries with the narcissist it's not easy i mean i think that the narcissistic people the the key with a narcissistic person is to detect it early set boundaries early because then they get interest disinterested and they walk away right you're not an easy mark anymore right so charm and charisma come walking in the door i think i'm the only person in the world who's telling people if you meet someone charming and charismatic run away like get away from them this is dangerous but are there some people that are charming and charismatic who aren't narcissistic yeah but i i'm like i'm all about throwing the baby out with the bathroom [Laughter] so it's a um because charming charismatic people i would say then always make sure they have humility there you go if you have the humility back that's the unicorn that's the unicorn that's when you're like they're charming and they're and they're humble humble and they're all they're all that they're incredible and they're like listen you know i'm great can you just tell me about you a little bit talk a little bit about you um there's that's a keeper in your life yeah that's a keeper or they you can see how they're talking to other people their interest in other people they're not talking down to people maybe because let's say they're in a service position that evening right that they're not and not in a smarmy like uh the server's my best friend but like they're not like that it's none of that it's really like oh let me wait for the server to come along and see if i can get or whatever they're just really they're present in a situation they're not elitist they're not status conscious that kind of humility you know that they don't brag you know that they're all that and they're not going on about how all that that they are that's cool they're not talking about oh let me tell you about my new this and my new that and this accomplishment and my nah they're just they're actually able to be with you be present with you it's rare because again people who are that hyped up they're hyped up from all sides you have to be really resistant authentic self-actualized to not to not drink the kool-aid yeah what else do we need to know about narcissists is there anything else you think that's important for us i think that um one in five of your friends is a narcissist i mean if we're using this number of 20 okay which i don't think is a bad number to be honest with you i think that just in turn i mean it's it's a spitball number it's just sort of boiled boiled up in this world and it may be a urban myth i don't know it's hard to get good data on this right you know it's it's the assessment of narcissism is one of the hardest things in the business of measurement and psychology because who's going to be honest about it right there's all these back doors we try to do to figure it out but i'd say the other things let's talk a little bit about what happens to a person who's been in a relationship with a narcissist tell me because i think that we've been talking we've been so much focused on the narcissist the question is what if i've just been through this is there a sense of pts that you're gonna face a lot of pts yeah you'll see it's a there's confusion self-doubt a sense of powerlessness helplessness sometimes even hopelessness anxiety a lack of not feeling motivated anymore sort of sense of like i can't be bothered with life rumination regret something we call euphoric recall you remember the good parts of the relationship and say why can't we have that part again i'm like no because that part wasn't really it wasn't real it was like this explosive it's people have physical symptoms they have trouble sleeping because of the rumination they um they might find themselves engaging in less behaviors that are involved like self-care behaviors we call them like things like um working out or eating well or even taking their medications on time they just almost let themselves go because being in these relationships is just basically like completely being you know overwhelmed by them so people aren't in good shape when they're coming out of these relationships because they'll start beating themselves up how could i stay in this what was i thinking i'm an idiot you know worst part it's the self-blame and the self-shame because the self-blame is this is my fault i'm the one who stayed i should have known i'm i'm i'm an and then i'm a fool and then they a lot of people go back right so here why because they think let's talk a little bit i want my whiteboard yes i got it you can use the whiteboard so let's talk about the narcissistic relationship cycle okay step one is something called i'll write it down i'll lift it up love bombing okay okay love bombing is that big seductive exciting experience that happens early in a relationship the we have a magical connection let's have a picnic on the beach wild and crazy sex texting for 12 hours straight good morning princess good night my darling uh let's take a vacation for our third date i want you to meet all my friends i'm so into you let's move in after a month my lease is up love bombing it's exciting it's intoxicating it's seductive and what it does it's a narcissist ground game that's how they're able to get you to not notice all the red flags you're so focused on the ten dozen roses on your doorstep that you're like or the unreal um sex you're having or these amazing like constantly being these text messages or being going to san francisco on your fourth date you know and you're thinking like okay red flow i want red flags i'm having my incredible yeah the minute the narcissist knows they've got you when you kind of let down your guard because some people are like this seems too good to be true and then they're like okay i love you too all right i'm boom that's the day devaluing starts okay now devaluing is characterized by invalidation little digs like um oh gosh you know my ex-girlfriend could cook um or oh my god it's like the digs it's it's little it's subtle you're like where did this go like where's where's this because it's not feeling so good and people in devaluing are confused as heck they're thinking how do i get back here now they start blaming themselves because it was this now it's this it must be me oh my gosh now then i just feel like you're going through my life right now okay we go to something called the discard now the discard is not always a breakup is this okay is this where like they won't speak to you for two weeks the silent treatment it's the um it's the deeper level manipulation it could be infidelity it could be significant lying it could be um even sometimes even the other person leaves the relationship at this point like the not narcissistic person i'm out i can't do this and then comes a phase oh my god called hoovering hoovering is when the narcissist tries to suck you back in they don't like to lose and in the majority of cases once after the discard try to woo you back love bombing part two now love bombing part two is never as heavy as love bombing part one it's always love bombing light the second time around but it'll be like seductive it's a maybe what was i thinking you're the best thing that ever happened to me this could be because they've cheated on you right and they say things like you're so much better and you know what people fall for that because that's that triangulation dynamic that idea very edible that you're the favored child that you're the favored one and the hoovering is choosing you then in the hu part of the hoovering is a dynamic called you're going to love this one it's my guess after what the way you've been putting future faking okay future faking is uh no as soon as this deadline is done we're going to or i'm going to get therapy or i know let's just put it off for another six months for sure i'm going to do it then they keep moving the goal posts and future faking is what keeps people in the game because they're like they're promising six months we're gonna have kids we're gonna have kids yeah for sure you know like i just need to get my career established and now you're 50. and you don't have kids or we're going to you know we're going to definitely move closer to your parents i know we had talked about moving back there and i know you said there's some better opportunities for you years you're waiting or i'm going to get into therapy i'm going to work on these anger issues and then if you push it god you know what you're really impatient you're like you are not a nice person you see what i'm going through my life and i need time and yeah that's the cycle of every narcissistic relationship not everybody gets hoovered okay sometimes the narcissist moves into something else and then they they're done and so people sometimes feel bad if they're not hoovered they're like what's wrong with me it doesn't always happen and consider yourself lucky i always say the lucky or not hoovered because then it goes back to it go this cycle goes again and again and again so what is hoovering again hoovering is when they try to woo you back inside oh they bring you back they bring it back and they'll do that if let's say they're the one who left you okay and you finally you start getting your life in order and maybe you're dating someone else and they find that that's when they want you back they just want to mess your stuff up or you're in a good place you've got a job you want they don't want you happy they don't like losing and they don't like the idea of anyone else winning it's all about domination oh my gosh so i tell people like maybe you could get a good get a good trip to san francisco and a couple of flowers and get out and get out but if that happens where they'll give you like a month or six weeks or two months of love bombing on you and then you're like you know what i'm not in the right place this isn't for me like it's not you it's me i'm not ready they're gonna get mad so either way once you get it once you go on the first weekend love bomb extravaganza you're you're kind of sunk yeah because and they're they actually get out there yeah they want to get out you gotta go with the first weekend you want to get out i listen here's an interesting tell on narcissistic people and it applies more in l.a than in a place like new york they um they they drive really badly they drive dangerously they cut people off and they come up on their bumpers and they cut people off in the freeway and that's actually been uh documented that's a so a narcissist is a bad driver a driver dangerous driver not bad not like dumb driver fast cut people off hong kong roadway driver anything else we should talk about last thing yes give me gaslighting oh i wanted to ask that i had it okay so gas lighting is the word of our time and if nothing else i want you your podcast is so amazing that i want to make sure that people get things right here so what is gas lighting gas lighting is the denial of a person's reality and the taking a part of another person so that they have completely not only given up on their reality they've given up on themselves so let me say that in a little bit more of a clear way gaslighting is a grooming process it's not a one-off right so let's say a day like today we'd set up our shoot and everything and i were to say um uh and we we had our time we were going to meet the date i said you never said we're meeting on that day you'll be like what and then you go back to your email and say no it's right there right but for a minute you might have doubted yourself i don't have that much power to gaslight you because we don't really know each other maybe you trust me a little but it would be enough to throw you off for a minute say did i not did i not send that email right and you you catch yourself okay the reason it's called a grooming process is it happens over and over again i never said that i never did that you're being too sensitive stop making such a big deal about that you really aren't committed to this relationship and they keep saying things to you that are not your reality so what do people do in their gaslighted initially they defend themselves no no you did you really did like you said that or i i i'm not being too sensitive like and now you're getting more more and more worked up right yeah and then you know they'll say things to you like oh yikes somebody's a little bit crazy like have you seen a therapist so now what are they doing not only they doubted your reality and you're a little off balance then boom they they close it by saying there's something wrong with it oh man and you start believing it oh wow many people are gaslighted we'll start wondering maybe i'm the narcissist maybe i have a mental illness maybe i need to get help there's something wrong with me and at that point the gaslighter fully controls this person oh my gosh that's the process and so but the initially the gap the person who's been gaslighted has some level of trust in the gas lighter maybe they're in a new relationship together maybe this is a family member maybe it's a boss or a respected colleague you got to have a little of that from the jump there has to be some skin in the game for someone to be able to gaslight someone then they're groomed now let's say the first time someone gaslights you say uh no here's the email this is the time you said we're meeting and don't ever do that to me again the gaslighter's probably going to move on to a neutral they'll stop with you yeah because yeah so they'll say like uh this is not a fertile target i'm going to move on to another one right but so early on when a person or a person says you're being too sensitive say no that's my emotion don't you dare play judge and jury on my emotions i'm sad right now i'm going to stick with that i'm talking that's a good one right so and then the gas lighter will probably lose interest and but they'll always get their last digging they'll say she's just a really difficult person so they'll still have to get their parting shot and say i i'll wear that as a badge of honor but you but just look how solid you have to be in yourself and understand gasoline in fact i'm doing a gaslighting seminar on saturday literally three hours all gaslighting because that's how much people are confused by this it happens at work it happens in families it happens in relationships it happens from the world at large like no every everyone can every oh the playing field's equal and then the people are like it can't be equal because like you're catch up so the flashlight for the first time you feel like someone's gaslighting you what should you say without them saying because i feel like this has happened to me in a previous relationship where i'd be like no i never said that and then it was like they bring up three other things that were unrelated to try to confuse and be like well you this this this this and i'll be like just focus on the one thing we're talking about and so i have to go to you know go around all these other things and talk about them where i forget what we were talking about in the first place that all of that it's very exhausting let's just focus on this thing so a great example get what gaslighting thing that people will do is they will say something like um in a relationship and you know i'm really uncomfortable with how much time you've been spending with that person and there's been a lot of communication between the two of you like it doesn't feel good it doesn't feel good to me this feels shady it feels like a boundary violation like this isn't okay they'll hit back with let's go back to when you were in college and you and you're like wait a minute and then you know what i tell people have a whiteboard say okay i'm going to table that let's we'll get to that let's write that down i don't want us to not talk about it let's go back to the original so keep going back to the right go back to the original issue until they until discussion so how do you find resolve you don't find results in these relationships there's no resolve there is no closure and that's the radical acceptance so you just got to accept this person isn't going to have these conversations this person's not going to have rationality for certain things it's going to be their way or the highway and they won't be flexible and you've either got to live with it and accept it for a certain period of time or you can choose to move on right but being in an argument is only going to make your life correct and you might say like that seems lonely yeah and so i have worked with people who have stayed in long-term narcissistic relationships who have done everything from get very involved in like a religious community church community something like that to um do a lot of things with their friends really build friendships unless the narcissist tries to control them hanging out if you have a controlling narcissist none of this will work like malignant narcissist it won't work but if you can build out friendships if you can build out collegial relationships if you're working um church community some people do this in online communities if they're not able to easily get out of the house and have friendships that way develop hobbies they care deeply about garden building something whatever their groove is music something like that i've known people that have lovers you know to say like i haven't my body hasn't been touched in 15 years and so they'll do that and they'll say i i felt a little guilty but they're having sex with other people i haven't been touched and they're like you know i know i'm not like i know i'm not very attractive but they found everyone's got someone everyone finds someone and they find there's someone and so i've heard it all i've heard people do all kinds of things finding their way um finding their way to get that support on the um when they're not being uh when when they have to stay because that's where you get on gaslight the right person saying no that's not that's not okay or this person's conduct isn't okay um but i think where most people destroy themselves is they're like a moth to flame they're like i can fix this and i'm telling you here you can't stop trying to fix it stop trying to fix it it's just not gonna work that was probably my challenge is i wanted to fix which again your athletic background it makes sense i mean there are people who have had a track record of being able to get things done they're the ones who are very vulnerable to staying in these relationships too i think i was i think i was attracted to it and then then one of the things that's attractive and then i was just like it just becomes exhausting when it's a when it's a full energy on someone else as opposed to a a combination of let's work together on a shared vision towards our relationship towards life not all the energy in one place correct the correct and it's it's dreary it is very draining and i think a lot of people do feel like you know a good relationship is me doing everything they ask or catering to them no relationships yeah no it's about give and take i'm not saying transactional give and take it's that you feel supported enough that when they say hey do you mind going to this this dinner for work and you're like of course i'll go to that dinner for work because you care about them and even if you both think it's ridiculous you're kind of giggling at each other or you know having fun with it is that you understand that there's a give and take and you give graciously and the other person gives graciously this isn't just about you know grinding your teeth and you know being irritated you have to go but really that that giving with grace but at the i'll be frank with you it really comes down though to finding somebody who has a good personality that it's not it's and i keep doing agreeableness right being agreeable being agreeable and that's actually a personality style how do you know when someone's agreeable all those things i talk about flexibility and warmth and kindness just the time it's just seeing it over time and seeing their words for their actions agreeable men make less money agreeable men make less money the research has shown that pretty clearly bless their hearts and so for everyone out there who want somebody who's got the money and the stuff the probability that that person is going to be agreeable is a lot lower so you just need to find a unicorn someone who's agreeable and who has money i have none you've never seen that i'm very i know yes i have i can think of one person off the top of my head okay billionaire most agreeable man in the world sweet sweet married to a raging narcissist [Laughter] oh my god beyond walked all over but in his business he can go and have killed it he can be assertive and yeah i've met a few agreeable um rich folks i i mean really and we're not just rich like really good at what they do they unicorns like they definitely um [Music] but what was interesting you know with some of that a couple of these folks agreeable very wealthy at the end of their career they got taken down they got like people in the company they they were a soft target they were the vulnerable targets so they're worried and they're gonna we're gonna take the equity from them or they're gonna be on the blame they did they got a group of because they weren't willing to fight for what they well they would know they weren't willing to be disagreeable they just wanted to keep the peace at all costs and because they were they were collaborative people they actually thought they were bringing up the next generation it's interesting because man over the last decade i really started doing a lot of healing work when i turned 30. i was i've talked about this many times on my show that i was sexually abused when i was five by a man that i didn't know and it definitely shaped a part of me for my life until i started to uh heal that that process and really go through a healing journey of you know the shame that i felt for so long the guilt the insecurity the not feeling enough or not feeling lovable all these different things and to kind of reshaping the story the narrative and finding the uh the value in the process and in the the pain i guess and really finding the value from 25 years of holding it in and it's channeling it saying how can i be of service at a greater level how can i use this to support other men who have gone through sexual abuse and that's why i wrote the book the masculine masculine yeah one in six men have been sexually abused one in four women obviously and what i always tell people is that you know men just don't talk about it you know and then they hold it in and then they be become angry or reactive or rageful or you know dismissive or whatever it is they have put a mask on and um you know that shame causes that mask at least it did for me and a lot of men that i've talked to so for for many years i had to learn how to kind of unwind and heal that process and and it's it's been a beautiful journey of healing where i can because i used to be very competitive it was like i had to win at all costs and now i'm like well that didn't work for me you know it got me results but it left me feeling empty and alone and unfulfilled and i didn't have peace because i always needed to win then i started transitioning and when i hit 30 to i just want to collaborate and i just want to support others and work together and it feels a lot more peaceful inside and fulfilling what do you think the function was of trying to win oh to get love be accepted to get love and be accepted maybe to be safe yeah yeah you get loved to be accepted to feel like i was yeah to fit in you know because i didn't feel like i had any friends growing up so i was like well if i win people recognize me and they like me right right and i'm desirable right if i lose and who wants to be you know around me yeah and then the shame gets activated but it's also safety i mean that's why that idea if i win i'm safe yeah that's the ultimate get for any of you i'm not alone i'm not alone if i if i'm accepted i'm safe if i'm loved i'm safe and it's funny when when i moved into and jay shetty talks about this a lot when i talk with jay about this he's like just being in collaboration is the key and i was like i know that's what i feel like yeah the last eight years because you're safe when you're still collaborating you're still with people you're helping each other accelerate together right but there's a fear there's a fear and i think one of the big impediments to collaboration is the sense that others will leave you behind so if you become an island unto yourself you feel safer right so i think that's often a blockade and then yeah i'm at the top of the mountain everyone else is down yes if they leave you it's not even the it's not the collaboration that's the issue it's the potential for abandonment interesting like if i'm if i'm in this business like the billionaire friend i'm at the top but then i collaborate with others but then they take it all and they leave me behind well they think they took it all away i mean this was somebody and that that man that agreeable billionaire was collaborative from the day one of his career so how do you stay collaborative and live in abundance and want others to win around you but also not get taken advantage of it's not easy it's with the one in five number i'm giving you it's not easy i mean it is you know what what is the bet the best offense is a good defense you better have a good defense yeah get your contracts in order get everything contracts in order document um don't put your head in the sand i mean a lot the reason narcissism is proliferated the way it has is enabling people keep giving it a free pass oh come on now you know don't hate the player hate the game it's not how that works right it's a player and yeah so it's it's a player yeah yeah no so like it's it's a we have all this kind of culture around and in some ways people like want to see they they the the best example i can give is that people hate the idea when we see a magician do a trick we know they didn't do magic we know they had something up their sleeve but we want to believe it's magic because that makes the world seem more interesting with narcissists we want to believe in the magic i want to believe there are we want to believe that they're going to be we want to believe that this charismatic person doesn't really is real that they're that someone this larger than life is larger than life rather than an ordinary person who who's just has ordinary things and could fall and you know and um we want superheroes we want that's why we've always written myths as a species but the myths should remain stories not the person who's trying to scream at you from the other cubicle you've got some great books thank you don't you know who i am how to stay sane in an era of narcissism entitlement and incivility um and you've also got another book called called should i stay or should i go i'm just laughing because of all my experiences in my life should i stay or should i go surviving a relationship with a narcissist it just feels like uh the best way to um you know set yourself up for success is don't commit to being in a relationship with one in the first place take it slow learn the person learn as long as you can spot the red flags you talk a lot about this in these books you talk about this on your youtube channel which is amazing i was watching some of the videos very inspiring um so if you want to make sure you learn this i do not get committed until you learn the person you're watching learn the person take it slow and don't justify bad behavior when you witness bad behavior unfortunately it's like you know if it walks like a duck and it quacks like a duck you know it's not going to go away there are no such things as scorpions that hug and so you know once you see a scorpion you just got it's going to sting you so walk the other way and once it stings you once don't pick it up again how else can we be supportive of you right now besides checking out your website youtube social media the books yeah do workshops now i do workshops if you go to my instagram follow me on instagram we often put you know we put the uh let people know what's coming up then we're gonna have a healing program and recovery program for people who've been through narcissistic relationships that's coming up next year um yeah just follow me on youtube we're always making our announcements there every day we have a new video coming out so you will be 365 days wiser if you just keep watching yeah dr romney everywhere right yeah dr romini everywhere there we go okay cool um a couple final questions this one is called the three truths that's what i ask everyone at the end of our interviews so imagine a hypothetical scenario it's your last day on earth many years away you get to live as long as you want but it's the last day and for whatever reason all the content you've ever created has to go with you or go somewhere else but it's not here we don't have access to any of your information anymore books the videos everything's gone but you get to leave behind three things you know to be true from all your life lessons and experiences and this is all we would have from your information what would you say would be those three lessons or three truths if someone else is cruel to you it's not your fault you came into this world lovable and will always be lovable trust and honor your truth and don't let anyone ever take it away from you um those are beautiful mm-hmm those are beautiful uh before i ask the final question dr romney i want to acknowledge you for your commitment to this information to this message i feel like there's a lot of people including myself going i've gone through a lot of this who've always struggled feeling like they're wrong and they're bad and they're not good enough in these types of relationships and so for you to commit your adult life to this to researching studying teaching uh in the university in an academic level and now you know to the the masses with your information your books your content i really acknowledge you for the gift and also the pain that you went through in your journey to learn these things and experience it so you can help educate and teach others to hopefully heal the relationships they've been through make sure they don't get in those relationships and have a much more peaceful life well i appreciate that pain is a hell of a mentor absolutely it is and it's going to keep coming until until we learn the last thing it's going to keep coming my final question is what's your definition of greatness my definition of greatness is humility self-awareness compassion and empathy there you go dr romney thank you appreciate it thank you what should the adult be saying or doing for the younger version of themselves that is having an emotional human experience that is not their age in this moment what's the conversation or the it's exactly what they wished at age that that someone would have said to them we all know what that is we all know

Channel: Lewis Howes

Views: 2,199,112

Keywords: Lewis Howes, Lewis Howes interview, school of greatness, self help, self improvement, self development, personal development, success habits, success, wealth, motivation, inspiration, inspirational video, motivational video, success principles, millionaire success habits, how to become successful, success motivation

Id: fuqT0oSFUSI

Length: 107min 25sec (6445 seconds)

Published: Mon Dec 06 2021