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Welcome to this special masterclass.
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We ve brought some of the top experts in the world to help you unlock the power of your life through this specific theme today.
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It s gonna be powerful, so let s go ahead and dive in.
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If someone watching or listening is in a relationship with someone for a long time that they really love, they care about, and they have this pattern of distancing themselves emotionally, shutting down, or kicking and screaming,
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What can they do to support them in discovering tools, creating awareness around it, finding a therapist or a coach to support them in growing?
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I think one of the most complicated things is you have two individuals trying to navigate a relationship where we both have our stuff from the past.
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Because what often happens in those moments when someone s kicking and screaming or detaching, chances are it could be activating mild
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lived experience, right?
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So if someone removes themselves, distanced, just like my mom once did, to navigate whatever it is that they re feeling, a difficult conversation that we re having, something not to do with me at all, difficult experience they re having at work or with their family,
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inherently in their distance, it s going to activate me, right?
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It s going to bring me right back to in childhood when my mom was emotionally distant or when she was giving me the silent treatment to express her, you know, disappointment at whatever I was doing in that moment.
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And it s going to then activate the way I
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deal with it.
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So what happens is we have two people kind of ever kind of cycling through these threat-based responses and neither of them are able to kind of return to that grounded state of presence.
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So the best thing I think that we can do is, and I have a lot of tools
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not only to begin to self-identify which state of nervous system activation you re in so that you can begin to regulate yourself, really helpful, and this is outside of even romantic partnerships for your friends, for your family members, can be really helpful to have the awareness of signs and signals that they re in a state of emotional system or nervous system activation.
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Because sometimes when we understand that, oh, this person is fleeing the room and can t have this conversation right now, not because it s not important to them, but because they re having their own threat-based reaction, that can give us a moment of compassion.
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It can maybe give us access to do something differently, not to allow it to activate our own threat response, which is going to perceive it probably differently.
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Oh, well, they re leaving because this isn t important for me.
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And then, of course, going back to this idea of co-regulation, the more ground that we re able to remain in those moments and the more open our partners or our loved ones are to co-regulating with us, I mean, we can actually help them calm down from those stressful, reactive moments so that then they can shift their focus.
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They can actually shift the point of the brain that they re operating from and hear us and speak to us and negotiate what s happening in a much more calm and rational way.
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I like to add that point in because sometimes we want to shake our partners and just get them to hear us in this moment where they re a million miles away, or they re screaming and yelling.
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And unfortunately, those aren t the moments where they re going to be able to hear us.
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Until they re in a calmer brain state, quite literally, they re not going to be focused on what we re saying.
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They re going to be locked and loaded in their perspective, and their nervous system is going to be locked and loaded in their habitual way that they need to do right then to find the safety.
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This is fascinating.
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People watching or listening typically are the type of people that want to improve their life.
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They want to grow.
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They want to find tools to have more awareness, more personal power, more progress, all these different things.
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So I m assuming people watching and listening might resonate with this.
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Why is it so challenging for an individual who has been in a trauma-bonded relationship, and now they re aware of it,
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or they re in a family that has maybe had some stagnant behaviors and patterns that doesn t want to grow.
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Why is it so hard for one individual in a family or a relationship to try to improve and grow and develop new habits and transform themselves and think differently and talk differently and act differently?
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Why is it so challenging in a family dynamic or an intimate relationship to grow when others aren t willing to grow?
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while we all are evolving creatures.
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I mean, I think it s kind of intrinsically what the experience of being human is.
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It s a process of evolving, becoming, a process of movement.
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Yet at the same time, our nervous system is wired to prefer the familiar.
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Simply, we don t like change.
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While we can change, and we can create incredible change and transformation,
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Our nervous system actually prefers to stay the same.
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It finds change and movement very stressful.
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So when faced with change, often ourselves even, how to do the work was really around that concept of the resistance and the reason why we re so stuck in these habitual patterns.
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Any time we set the intention to do different, and then more so when we follow through with making new choices, we do meet that pullback to that familiar through the thoughts in our mind, the discomfort in our body.
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Before we know it, we re right back in those habitual patterns.
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So we struggle to change, even though we can change.
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Our nervous system prefers us not to.
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And our relationships equally struggle.
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When we begin to experience someone anew or when we re the person making new choices, especially in a family where dynamics and roles have been repeated and practiced and validated for so long, then really like dominoes, right, here s someone new.
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that s maybe putting a new perspective on the family experience might be really difficult to hear, right?
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A different truth about how it was when we have our own rehearsed story of how the family is or isn t or whatever it is.
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More so when someone begins to act in a new way, then chances are there s going to be some impact on that dynamic.
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Interesting.
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There s going to be a challenge to the individual identity.
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Sometimes it s the challenge to the family identity, what we thought we were.
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Now maybe we re not as much.
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And then there s going to be a reorganization of the different roles within the family.
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So again, it comes down to change.
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How equipped is each individual in whatever relationship, dyad, or family unit
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to deal with the stress of change.
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And as far as I see it, a lot of us who were raised with past generations were not yet equipped.
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We didn t have the tools.
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We didn t have the resources.
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We didn t have the attuned caretaking in our childhood to learn how to navigate the stress of change.
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I know you ve talked about this before on here, but how did you, for those that didn t hear this in a previous interview, how did you navigate this as you were evolving, changing, growing, developing in your 20s, 30s, with your family dynamic?
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Not in your intimate relationship, although that has evolved and changed as well, but let s start with the family dynamic before we talk about intimate dynamic.
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Yeah, it was really challenging in my family, coming from a family that was very boundary-less, codependent.
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We had a very unified family identity.
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I was kind of taught growing up that family is everything, with this idea of putting family, family needs first, even going back to this concept of
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Selfishness so all of that was you know kind of ingrained in my belief system and very dynamically like I was sharing when we began Showed up in how I showed up a little I showed up in my relationship so as I started to become aware and see all of the moments where I wasn t giving myself space and it was glaringly present in my relationship with my family and
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that I was living actually in quite close physical proximity.
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By this point, I had moved home to the Philadelphia area.
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They were living right outside of Philadelphia, so I had endless opportunity to be at family dinner on Sunday or my mom s, you know, standard doctor s appointment with a lot of health issues that continued with my mom until her old age.
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So saying that to say there was a lot of the same dynamic happening at home, and I was awakening to the possibility of and necessity for me of creating some more distance, of not being endlessly available, of beginning to set new boundaries.
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And for the better part of several months, I would try.
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I would try to decline invitations.
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I would try to decline phone calls and not be immediately available.
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And I say try because it was always met with.
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A running theme in my family was when there was distance, and especially contact, immediately, because there was so much health trauma that happened, health concerns and worry and anxiety, the immediate belief or worry would be when someone was out of contact for an unpredictable amount of time, it must be because they re
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something terrible happened to them.
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Interesting.
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Are they in the hospital?
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Are they sick?
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Is something wrong?
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So there was a history of fear.
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History of fear.
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Which would create this... Hypervigilant monitoring of contact.
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Interesting.
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When I didn t call, for instance, on the regular, you know, weekly phone call, it was, you know, is everything okay?
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Just tell me everything is okay.
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And I would call at a very particular time frame up until this period of time where I was like, well, wait a minute.
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You re only doing that, right, to placate this kind of anxiety cycle.
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You don t actually want to be calling in those moments.
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Yes, I wanted contact with my family, but I didn t need to have regular contact every three days to tell them that I was alive, right?
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So saying that to say, I tried.
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to put up boundaries, to create separation, to create distance and space for me to begin to honor what I wanted and needed.
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By this point, I was building a practice.
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I was in a committed relationship.
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I had other things that I wanted to be putting my time and attention to.
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It was always met with this fear, this worry that would escalate into, I mean, I would get texts like, Jesus Christ, Nicole, just tell us you re okay.
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You know, we re getting worried.
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We re going to call hospitals, like endless
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So I came to the really difficult decision to make a break and to take, I always kind of start to say ask for space, but I didn t really ask for space.
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I more or less told my family that I was going to take space away from the family unit, that I would be unavailable for any sort of obligation.
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you know, anything that for the foreseeable future and because I wasn t, I didn t trust myself to communicate to them in person.
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I was so afraid that when my mom started to cry or my dad became upset because my mom was upset or my sister was devastated because her and I were very trauma bonded in a codependent relationship trying to navigate my mom s health.
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I didn t trust myself to stand in my boundary, so I took the opportunity to write a very long email expressing things that I hadn t fully been able to share with them in terms of what I was coming to realize and how things in the past had impacted me, and end it with that statement that I was taking time.
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And I didn t know how much time I would want to take or need to take, nor did I know how they would react to my request.
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I mean, I was very much aware of the possibility that they would be so devastated and hurt that the door wouldn t be open on the other side of it.
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But at that point, I knew, probably from that deeper intuitive place, my heart was telling me that I did need more space than I was able to create.
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So it ended up being the better part of, I think, 18 months before I started to really get curious about where they were at.
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I had built a lot of self-trust in that 18 months, meaning I was getting more confident that I could engage with them again.
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And if the dynamic was exactly as I left it, I was gaining more confident that I could continue to maintain my boundaries and to live into the relationship dynamic that I wanted, regardless of what they were unable or able to do.
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And very gratefully, not only did they email me back near immediately, they let me know that they had been in family therapy and individual therapy and all the different types of therapy since I had ended contact with them.
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And while it was very devastating, they, on some level, were appreciative of the opportunity that it gave them and us to kind of look at things newly.
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We ve re-engaged contact over several family therapy sessions, which felt very safe to me because I wanted to have a contained conversation, not knowing essentially what I was walking into.
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And I signed online for that first Zoom session, and I saw my mom, my dad, and my sister for the first time in eight months.
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And we had some difficult conversations.
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had some future-based conversations and where I was able to kind of acknowledge what I wanted and needed in the relationships moving forward and intended to create for us.
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And since then, it s just been really a gift in a lot of ways.
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We ve been able to not only reorganize as a family,
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We ve been able to separate.
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That has actually allowed us to deepen and build deeper, actual, real, now authentic connections, which has been really beautiful.
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That s pretty cool.
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But it s really scary to get to that place, it sounds like, because what
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Some of your family were thinking of like, okay, I m going to create, I don t know, hyper-safety was actually unsafe for you and didn t feel healthy, right?
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This idea of I want to make sure everything s safe and okay is actually an unhealthy or unsafe feeling.
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And so you had to kind of break the cycle, which we talk about in the book.
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But that s scary too.
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How are they going to react?
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What if they disown me?
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What if they never want to speak to me again?
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How are they going to talk about me to my friends?
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This idea of being outcasted in a sense is also scary.
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But it sounds like for you, you guys were able to come back and create a more meaningful relationship.
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But I think it s so scary for us to think about
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Whether it s family or friends or intimate partners, like having a boundary that might seem so extreme for a while, for a while, because you need it to come back to loving yourself the way that you seek that love.
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And then reconnecting with that partner, family, or friend, right?
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It can be extremely challenging.
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Oh, it actually, because we re social creatures and we ve evolved to connect in groups, to physically survive, to emotionally gain the support that we need, any thought of any actual experience of rejection, any imagined rejection or fear of it,
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activates actually the pain center in our brain.
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So we physically feel pained.
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And your heart feels this pain too.
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Clenching.
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And then so for me, complicating that with my mom increasing in age, having very real health concerns.
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I mean, in the back of my mind, I was like,
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imagining the possibility that I might not have an opportunity, depending on how long I decided to stay disconnected.
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I was entertaining the possibility that something could have happened to my mom.
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She could physically die in that period of time, and then how would that be?
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But my commitment, and at the same time, my commitment and that inner knowing that that is what we all needed was so strong that I was able to make that really, really difficult choice.
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In terms of relationships, I m curious.
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What is the healthiest attachment style that we should be seeking to have?
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And what is the most common attachment style that most people have in relationships?
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Yes.
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Most people do not have a safe and secure attachment.
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This feeling of inner safety and security, peace, the ability to be yourself, and the curiosity to allow someone else to be curious of who someone else is, right?
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Not to be demanding, domineering, manipulative, so that they re the person that you need them to be, to actually allow them the space to be themselves, express their wants, express their needs, and just be who they are.
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Very few of us have that, of course, because we didn t have that in childhood.
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We didn t learn our body for a lot of us.
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A lot of this book is about unlearning, peeling back, right?
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All of the definitions of love and relationship we ve been taught, all of the embodied ways that we ve habitually related to other people so that we could actually teach ourself, not just read a book and be like, oh, this is what a safe and secure attachment looks like.
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Actually teaching our mind and body how to be safe
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Experiencing and feeling it.
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Experiencing it.
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Living it, not just analyzing it.
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And for a lot of us, that living and that practice begins with ourself first.
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Do I feel safe and secure in who I am?
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Can I explore my perspectives, whatever they might be?
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Do I know what they are?
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Can I explore my emotions?
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For decades, my answer was no.
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You would ask me what I wanted to do for dinner, I couldn t tell you.
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I didn t know what I even wanted to, how I wanted to spend my time on a Saturday.
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let alone how I m feeling, right?
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So a lot of this reconnection begins with creating space or a practice in our world to introduce ourself.
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And that was a big reason why I even wrote the workbook, How to Meet Yourself, is because we don t have that connection to us yet.
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We re not safely and securely connected.
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I m a million miles away on my spaceship.
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Someone else is endlessly distracting through work or achievement, right, or whatever it is.
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Or I m always agitated and erupting at the world around me because the reality of it is I m not safe.
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in my body first and foremost.
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And then when I m able to be safe in my body, then the byproduct of that often is developing that safe and secure relationship with someone else, where they feel calm and grounded, and like someone is interested in valuing them for who they are.
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And you re able to, like I always say with the clients I would work with in couples therapy, sit next to each other on a couch and envision a future and negotiate, kind of making sure that each of your needs and wants are factored into that.
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The large majority of us fall into a more dysfunctional attachment style, whether it s avoidant, where you re emotionally shut down, and like me for many years, there s no emotional connection.
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I m a little bit more anxious avoidant, where there s anxiety around distance and a pursuing pattern.
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There could be a disorganized attachment.
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I m just giving you some of the standard ones.
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But there s many ways.
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I focus a little less on what box category do I check and a little more on just individually exploring how you show up in relationships and how does it feel for you when you do.
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It sounds like, I mean, I was probably, I don t know, all these attachment styles in the past at one point that
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were anxious, avoidant, I probably had it all.
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And I attracted certain individuals who also had anxious or avoidant attachment styles too.
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I never attracted a safe, secure individual.
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And maybe because I was too insecure to attract that, or they would have not attracted me, because they would have seen, oh, he s got issues.
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I don t want that in my life right now if they re safe and secure.
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But it s interesting.
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You know, once I started to create that safety and security within me, and it s a constant process and a journey, it s not like it s perfect, but once I started to do that, I started to see others and be like, wow, this is a healthy person.
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I started seeing like, okay, let me explore more about this person.
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So the person, I don t know, they just got something where like their heart is out of coherence.
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I know what that is because I used to experience that constantly.
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I don t think I want
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that dysfunction anymore.
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Let me lean more into the safe-secure. 
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And it was unfamiliar when I got into this current relationship with Martha that I m now engaged to.
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It was unfamiliar but it felt safe.
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And I was just like, man, this is different.
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This is weird.
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I ve never experienced this.
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But do people…have you ever seen people who have an anxious or an avoidant attachment style?
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get in a relationship with someone who s safe and secure, does that ever happen?
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Or is it typically you attract something you have a similarity to or something you re lacking in?
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I think often you are attracting kind of particular dynamics, though if and when you meet a safe and secure individual, I think often what you ll feel, especially if you are more of the anxious type or the high emotions, you come from a chaotic, stressful childhood typically, you might start to see them as boring.
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There s no passion.
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Is there anything even here?
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Is it worth continuing?
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So I would not say it s that you don t attract them or you can t find your way into meeting a person.
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I don t think the relationship would be something that you would pursue or would be pursued for very long.
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And those are typically the languages and how it registers.
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Oh, there s a passion here.
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Maybe we re just friends.
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Friends own this person.
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This is boring or it s not what I m looking for.
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And then on to the next.
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So what are the different types of relationships interdependent?
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Is that kind of like what might seem boring when there s like interdependence?
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Is that would that categorize that?
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I think maybe if you re if you re not if you re in that more chaos cycle the emotional addiction cycle that likely could Though I think the reality of it is
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Maybe there is a little bit of a boring nature when you re living calm and grounded and peaceful.
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There s no stress.
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I think to some extent in the absence of those highs and lows for a lot of us, I do think that even as I too am moving toward a much safe, secure partnership,
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I do think that we, on some level, that expansive part of our mind is, right, is always seeking more or bigger or, you know, what s next?
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So it s interesting to consider if there is intrinsically a kind of boringness and stability for all of us.
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For me, it s like, what I think about is when I am on my purpose and I have a vision that I m excited about, there s going to be challenges and ups and downs when I m on my vision in my life.
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And my relationship,
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I want us to have fun.
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I want it to be like a safe, fun environment where we can connect about our lives independently and share our lives together.
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For me, that s exciting.
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That is like the highs of it, I guess.
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Not making the relationship the battlefield.
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Your life is like, okay, you gotta go out and hunt or provide or create or make music or art.
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That s gonna have its ups and downs.
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Let s make it a,
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your relationship healthy.
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Let s make it fun.
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Let s make it enjoyable.
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It doesn t have to be so heavy and dark and high at the same time.
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It s like, out of the out, that s where I find a lot of peace now, is creating and experiencing that.
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Yeah, that s beautiful.
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And what you re kind of highlighting in there is the kind of aspect of interdependence that honors the unique individual that has passion, has purpose, has those deeper things that I think we are absolutely driven.
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And I think, again, this is sometimes where we
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Set up an expectation of relationships that it s somehow shared I mean a partner is all the same interest as me or You know isn t interested in anything, or I don t know what my interests are yet I think the more we create space for individual you know exploration of unique passion and purpose and hobbies and all that comes along with that and it might be outside and
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of the relationship in some other realm or some other relationship entirely where you go and pursue whatever your hobby is with other people.
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I think if we can expand that that is still part of an absolutely healthy relationship, then I do think we create the space for that.
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How much do others pick up our pain?
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It s almost instantaneous.
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And especially the people that are closest to us, but especially children.
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Because children are very, very keen on picking up on nonverbal cues.
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We actually, when we re like infants, that s the way that we understand.
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whether or not the world is safe or not.
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We actually see the facial expression of an adult that s our caregiver, and if the facial expression is one that mirrors safety, calm, and ease, then what we interpret that as is, the world is safe, I can be calm.
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If the adult feels preoccupied, angry, right, like babies pick up on that,
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And their nervous system is also picking up on that.
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And so it s important for us to actually be more attuned to the ways in which other people also pick up our energy.
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And perhaps that can offer more motivation for people to actually do the nervous system practices that can actually be helpful for them and their families.
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If a parent is watching or listening to this right now, and they re thinking, wow, my kids are 5 or 12 or 16,
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I m just starting to realize that maybe I was too reactive based on my nervous system wounds for many years, or maybe we shouldn t have yelled at each other as parents in front of our kids, or we shouldn t have been so reactive in situations that were explosive and we didn t need to be.
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And they re starting to realize, oh, okay, this could have some long-term effects on kids.
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And they ve been living that way for a decade with their kids growing up.
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What can they instantly tell themselves right now about how they ve shown up?
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And what are some actions they can take to start breaking the cycle for themselves and their kids who still have developing minds, who maybe aren t as comfortable talking about emotions yet because they re younger still?
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How can they start shifting that without thinking, I ve ruined my kids  lives?
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You know, it s important for parents, for anyone really, to understand if I didn t know better, I couldn t do better.
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So if you didn t know that what you were struggling with was intergenerational trauma because you were exhibiting toxic relationship behaviors that were reflected in your childhood home and you absorbed those as the norm, as a status quo, then you wouldn t know to actually disrupt those and not pass those on or not exhibit those in your home.
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However, it s important that if you now do know better, that you take action, that you decide, okay, I know that there s a different way, and I understand that the way that I ve been behaving is unhealthy.
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Let me shift.
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That is already a step in the right direction.
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When it comes to children, it s important to understand that children can also engage in the healing process.
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They can.
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Yeah.
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I mean, there s a lot of age-appropriate ways in which we can integrate the work with children.
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Children can meditate.
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Children can do breath work.
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Children can talk about their emotions.
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Children can, you know, do dance parties with their parents that actually help them to release some of the stress and tension of the day.
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And all of that can be a large part of what families can do together to actually do some collective healing and engage in age appropriate types of practices that can help their children not only absorb the healing in the moment, but also understand for the long term, for the entirety of their lives, that they can do something that can help them to heal.
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Mm-hmm.
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That s cool.
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Yeah, dance party and drawing classes together, just different things.
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You know, going for a walk out in nature.
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Yeah.
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That s beautiful.
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You mentioned these nervous system restoration practices.
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What are a couple other examples you have for that, where we can start healing the nervous system?
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The practice that I tend to integrate into my work the most is humming.
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Humming.
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Humming, yeah.
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It s so calming.
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It is very calming and most people don t know you actually have this tool that you can use whenever and it can actually help you feel calmer.
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Well, humming, I mean, there s so many, you know, there s now science that s backing all this, but this has been the, you know, ancient spiritual leaders have been ohming and humming for thousands of years because of the, you know, I think ohm is like God, right?
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It s like you re connecting yourself to God and you re speaking like source, creator.
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breathing it, and there s chemicals involved, there s dopamine involved, and it s calming.
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This feeling in your heart is starting to get into a better rhythm, right?
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So there s all these benefits to this.
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Yes.
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And when we think about it from just integrating the nervous system perspective into that as well, we have different branches of the nervous system.
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And the branch that actually helps us to feel relaxed and calm
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hum is the ventral vagal nerve, which is what tends to be stimulated when we ohm.
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When we ohm.
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Yes.
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And so, and so or when we hum, right, like, typically, like if I m doing work with a family and or with a child, you know, sometimes I ll pick a song that they like, and we ll hum the song instead of singing it.
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And that already is an age appropriate practice that we can do that integrates the practice that we understand is going to be restorative to their nervous system.
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But we re not necessarily like shoving mental health, you know, just therapy talk all day.
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Right.
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Right.
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But we re doing something that can be very health promoting.
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Now, eventually, you know, people catch on and they say that made me feel relaxed.
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that made me feel more at ease, especially when I had all these like floating thoughts that just wouldn t go away.
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And so when these children are then older, they have the tools.
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And that s what I want for us.
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I want for us to be able to be the generation of cycle breakers that can build the tools for ourselves and for the next generation.
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And even if we want to maybe like pass some of that back.
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my parents are 65 and 71 and I do this stuff with them and they re open and willing and they re Dominican parents like which I would have never thought would sure you know like do anything that was related to mental health period but they re so willing right now after a couple years of talking talking it through and it s beautiful to see how they have never really had any kind of like
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foundational orientation around how they can feel more settled.
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And now they do.
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And that in their old age, they can actually feel more at ease in their own bodies.
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It s beautiful.
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If someone s in a marriage and they realize they want to break the cycle and they re willing to do the work themselves, but maybe their partner isn t as open yet.
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And they re realizing like, oh, this person, I wanna do this work, I m healing, but this person s still in a nervous system reactive state and unwilling to break their own cycle.
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What can they do if they re the only one trying to grow and their partner is not?
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That s a really tough situation.
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And we have to empathize with anyone that is in any kind of environment, particularly a home environment, in which they have to go back to the source of their pain, right?
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Or back to a place where their safety is compromised in any way, their sense of psychological safety, I mean.
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And so what I tend to help people
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reorganize in terms of like their own thinking around this is like, show up as your more healed self.
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Let people see how you walk and move as a more healed version of yourself.
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Model for them, whether it s your kids, it s your parents, it s your partner, it s friends, right?
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Like anyone, let them see how you re modeling, how you show up differently and how you no longer feed the cycles, but you break them.
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and then see who is willing to join you in that process.
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Right.
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And there may be, you know, months of resistance and challenge where you ve got to keep showing up as a healed person or in the process while someone s reactive or crossing your boundaries.
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You ve got to keep creating those boundaries, which is a challenging thing to do.
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It s one of the biggest barriers to people being able to continue their cycle-breaking process, which is going into the spaces where people have not actually done the work, and them feeling like, what am I even doing this for?
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Like, I may as well just like, you know, let it go and just play their game.
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It s so challenging.
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It is very challenging.
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And it s a process that also is going to require that they, in essence, just tolerate the distress, which is why distress tolerance skills are so important when it comes to trauma-based work, because we have to train the mind and body to tolerate the guilt, tolerate the guilt of being the one that s doing the work and leaving others behind.
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That sometimes tends to be how people feel about their healing.
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And so when we re able to reorganize the body and how it s actually internalizing that emotion, it helps them to sit with whatever guilt may still be lingering in a more settled way and not just throwing the towel.
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What do you think of all the different traumas that you ve
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worked on at your clinic and worked out with individuals, all the different types of traumas, abandonment, abuse, neglect, all these different things, bullying, you know, being cheated on, all these different things.
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What one is the hardest trauma to overcome that you ve seen or takes the longest for people to psychologically wrap their heads around the wounds that they ve received?
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You know, grieve, forgive, own, move on, process.
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Which one is typically the hardest to overcome?
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What I have seen has been the hardest and what I have seen like people struggle with the most and has taken the most time has been abuse, childhood abuse specifically.
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Them experiencing childhood abuse.
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Them experiencing it, yeah.
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From a trusted adult, someone who either cared for them or someone who was proximal to them.
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And the experience of feeling almost kind of like their entire life formation was around
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that experience also being a part of it.
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And then having to extract that from all the layers of how it became a part of them is something that can be really, really hard.
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But also there s people that can live really abundant lives once they start doing the work in that direction.
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Usually wherever we feel the biggest triggers, that s where the work is.
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And so when we can centralize the work there in that triggered space, right, it makes it so that we can experience probably the better part of our healing.
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I guess in storytelling mythology, there s heroes and there s villains, and they have a similar backstory.
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They ve both been abused or abandoned or something happened to them, right?
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And the villain uses that pain to hurt others.
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And the hero, you know, works with that pain, transforms it into making sure that others don t have that pain ever again, right?
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And I probably had both of those in my life of like, I ve used the pain to try to be angry at others and like dominate and win in sports.
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And then I ve found transformation and be like, I don t want anyone to feel this pain ever again.
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And so I think we have a decision at different times of life of like, how are we going to use this trauma or this memory or this experience for us?
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Are we going to live it to harm others or to help others and be in service?
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And I think it s really tricky, speaking from experience,
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As an adult mind, trying to understand your 5, 7, 12, 15-year-old self who is sexually abused, childhood mind that s still stored inside of you, it s hard to reflect back and recall all those moments and then think about how you carried that trauma until the adult mind is reflecting on it.
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process however many years that is and all the decisions you ve made your entire life, why you ve been reactive, relationships you ve gotten in, challenges you might have, good that might come from it too, and then learn how to heal that time.
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It s like, it s kind of a mind, you know, it s a mind mess, you know, it s tricky.
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And so I think you re, you know,
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You re probably right in that that s probably a painful one to overcome.
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I know there s lots of different traumas, but that one s definitely painful.
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But I know from experience that there is incredible peace and love on the other side if you re willing to do the work.
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It took me a couple of years to really kind of feel like I could speak about it without having a nervous system response anymore.
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But I think also when you realize you can overcome something like that, it gives you a lot of confidence, a lot of poise, a lot of power, a lot of peace and knowing, okay, if I can take on this as a five, seven, 10 year old, what can I take on as an adult with these tools that you re providing?
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So I think it s a great thing that you re sharing these tools because a lot of adults don t have them still.
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And I m still learning as many tools as possible.
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But why is that so challenging for adult minds to understand sexual abuse or some type of abuse as a child?
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Why is it hard for adult minds to understand that and overcome it?
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Well, because there s been a really pervasive intrusion, you know, like a person feels like they are accessible to people, like people can hurt them, right?
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You know, they re vulnerable and they ve remained stuck in that vulnerability.
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Yes.
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And so the challenge in our adult lives is in the fact that that vulnerability just got carried on.
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And we still feel raw and open and vulnerable and like tender to the touch.
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And people can actually hurt us easily.
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And so that s why very often.
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like people also develop the coping mechanisms to try and protect themselves because they don t want to land in a similar situation where they re, you know, then there s yet another intrusion and how will they then survive that, right?
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And so, you know, it makes it, I always say, you know, when it s doubly hard to actually get through something, the reward would be double.
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Right.
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Even more.
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It ll be exponential, right?
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I think so.
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And I think your story, which I know you ve spent many years now sharing, and I think that it offers a beautiful moment for all of us to also reflect upon the fact that there is hope about abundance on the other side of healing.
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Because most of us think, like, when will this ever end?
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Will I ever heal?
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And we kind of get stuck in that narrative rather than in the narrative of just do the work.
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And trust that there will be abundance on the other side.
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There will be a steady version of you that is meeting you on the other side.
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Yeah.
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I started the healing journey 10 years ago with this, with the sexual abuse that I experienced as a kid.
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And I thought that I had healed a lot of it, but I still kept, and I did in certain areas, but I still kept entering relationships that proved otherwise, and allowing myself to be kind of crossed certain boundaries that I didn t want to, right?
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Because I didn t have the skills or the courage to be able to stand for the inner child inside of me and what he really needed.
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during certain relationships.
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So it wasn t until about three years ago when I kind of revisited it again through intimacy.
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Like I was able to heal in some areas but not every area and that s when it took even more work.
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It was like an extra couple years.
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So you know I feel like healing is a journey.
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It doesn t like mean okay I ve done six months of intensive work now I m good.
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Like new things might come up in a couple years that you have to readdress and at least that s what s happened for me.
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But
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Not thinking you ve got it all figured out, I think, is something we need to have in mind.
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Be like, okay, I don t know the answers.
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Even if I feel better, I m gonna keep working and processing.
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If we don t learn to seal our inner child as adults, what will happen to us?
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Well, we can actually develop the same type of inner child wound in our children.
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Ooh.
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Yeah.
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so they don t have to experience the wound.
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We re just passing it on, right?
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Yeah, and you know, that comes up.
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Of course, you know, we re talking about intergenerational trauma having some biological, you know, connections, right?
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Like, so there s already a family that perhaps is already, from a nervous system perspective, from perhaps an epigenetic perspective, already having tenderness and vulnerabilities that are emotional.
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And then you have, you know, the possibility of there being like misattunement between a caregiver and their child.
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The caregiver may be so preoccupied with their own stress and trauma that they miss the social cues that their child is telling them, I need you.
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and that sense of emotional abandonment can surface, or an inability to really relate to and connect with others, which is kind of like the general foundation of attachment and attachment styles, right?
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A lot of those things can start to surface as a result of those initial imprints of the relationships that are primary to us, which are with our caregivers or individuals that are, in essence, taking care of us in the school system, any of the individuals that have proximity.
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And then, you know, it s going to be really important for us to also understand that whenever we re talking about, like, not wanting that to carry on to the next generation, not wanting that tender little soul in front of us to then experience the pain that we have carried for so long, we have to talk about how we can also heal our own wounds.
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We need to reparent ourselves while we re also parenting others.
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So it s an intergenerational reparenting.
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Something just came up for me as you were saying this because I think a lot of, I m not a parent yet, but I get the sense and the feeling that a lot of parents in America today are very protective of their kids.
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You know, I see this.
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Maybe it s not everywhere, but I see a lot of that happening.
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They re more worried about who they re hanging out with.
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I hear a lot of parents say, I m never gonna let my kid do sleepovers anymore.
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I m taking them out of public school because it doesn t feel safe or whatever it is, right?
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They re just more protective as opposed to allowing their children to kind of fumble and learn along the way.
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And I m curious in your perspective from what you ve experienced and what you ve seen with your clients, your patients,
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Is it worse to allow our children to be free in the world and be vulnerable to potential harm?
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Or is it worse to overprotect them and pass on our own traumas and wounds because we keep them so close to our wounded self?
4
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You know, I would say that it is important for us to actually allow them to have some connection to the world that isn t necessarily overprotected by us.
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However, it is going to be really critical for us to, as parents or parents to be
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to also vet the environments that they re a part of.
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We need to vet the people that are their babysitters and ask them questions that are taboo, that are uncomfortable, that are likely to actually protect our children.
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SPEAKER_00
Right.
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Be uncomfortable with your questioning.
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Be uncomfortable with your questioning so that you don t have to live a life of discomfort because you didn t ask the question and properly met the person.
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Right.
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And then something would have happened that could have been avoidable.
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Not always.
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Right.
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We can t say that, you know, it s the onus is on parents.
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The onus is really on people who, you know, just aren t protective of the children that they re connected to.
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But beyond that vetting process, which is a vetting process that is permissive because you re also allowing the child to be in the world and explore and understand and enjoy the world and fumble and pick themselves back up.
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And what we know about that process is that that also builds resiliency.
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And so we need that process in our lives in order to actually be resilient adults.
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But it s also going to be critical, as I see it, specifically as cycle-breaking parents, for us to then transition into also being advocates on behalf of our children.
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We need to also, in whatever way is possible, advocate for the systems that they re a part of, for them to keep them safe.
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Advocate for better safety in schools, which, as we see in today s world, especially in the US, is really compromised.
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And, you know, also advocate for the laws that hold people accountable when they hurt children.
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SPEAKER_01
Right.
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And it s like all of these things that are also systemic are also going to be a part of the process of how we parent forward in a way that s different.
4
SPEAKER_02
Chemistry and connection are really dangerous words to me.
4
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When somebody says to me, I feel the sense of connection, my question is, shrinks going to be, what does that mean to you, right?
4
SPEAKER_02
Because what you call connection, what I call connection, what a random person in the street calls connection may be very different things, right?
4
SPEAKER_02
There s healthy feelings of connection, feeling attuned to, feeling seen, feeling heard, a conversation that seems to just flow effortlessly.
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You don t feel judged.
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You feel safe.
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I like, I ll buy that as connection.
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But connection when it s sort of like, you kind of feel like you re on your back foot, that now you re sort of game on.
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And how do I win this person over?
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And it s a little bit of like, you re almost like, it s almost like a match.
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Like, how do I sort of, like, it s a little bit gamey.
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That concerns me.
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Because that to me could actually be a throwback to somebody feeling as though I have to win this person over.
4
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What are the tricks?
4
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And you ll see this in people who have sort of a sympathetic nervous fawn response, like how do I have to modify myself to win them?
4
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That familiarity, especially if that s how somebody had to go through childhood,
4
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can actually feel like connection.
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Wow.
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Because it s work.
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It s exciting.
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SPEAKER_02
Oh my gosh, there s something I need to do.
4
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But if one doesn t feel worthy of being loved as who they are, and somebody comes and just likes you for who you are, well, that s not very fun because I don t have a template for that.
4
SPEAKER_02
You re almost like, what?
4
SPEAKER_02
Why are you like, hmm?
4
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But when you re feeling you have to win someone over, that becomes exciting.
4
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So I think that that idea of chemistry can make people irrational.
4
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Listen, if you have chemistry with somebody who is empathic, compassionate, kind, and respectful, you won the lottery.
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We call it what it is.
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SPEAKER_02
You re just a lucky person.
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SPEAKER_02
Wow.
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OK?
4
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And that s great.
4
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And there s people out there who have connection and all those goodies.
4
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And they are as blessed by the heavens as a human being can be, right?
4
SPEAKER_02
The
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The majority of people who have connection, sadly, will say, we have this sense of connection, and that s why I excused the this and excused the that, and the this and the that.
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And it s funny, because when I have worked with people who are in more trauma-bonded relationships, this idea where it s days hot and cold, and back and forth, and you keep having the same arguments, and you re always justifying.
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The hack I have for figuring out whether or not someone s in a trauma bonded relationship, I ll have a client who s in a chaotic dating relationship or like a really unhealthy relationship and will sometimes hit the wall of like, Oh, I know this isn t healthy.
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I love them.
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And I ll say, okay, right now, take a minute.
5
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Tell me why you love them.
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And you know, the answer I get when people are trauma bonded, the answer I get, or with chemistry, the answer I get is,
5
SPEAKER_00
Okay, doc, give me a second.
5
SPEAKER_00
Well, you know what?
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SPEAKER_00
It s, I don t, it s this, I don t know how to describe it.
5
SPEAKER_00
It s like this, I don t know.
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SPEAKER_00
It s just sort of this connect, meh.
5
SPEAKER_00
That s not an answer.
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SPEAKER_01
They can t clearly define why they love you.
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SPEAKER_00
And whereas I ask that to healthy people, because I have friends whose marriages are just, they re beautiful.
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SPEAKER_00
And I ll say to my friend, tell me why you love him.
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SPEAKER_00
And she s like, oh, please.
5
SPEAKER_00
He s my best friend.
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SPEAKER_00
I love him.
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SPEAKER_00
We ve got each other s backs.
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SPEAKER_00
We kind of almost read each other s minds.
5
SPEAKER_00
We do stuff together.
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SPEAKER_00
He s the first person I want to see in the morning.
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SPEAKER_00
I look forward to landing on my flights because he s the first person I text.
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SPEAKER_00
I miss him when I m not with him.
5
SPEAKER_00
Those are answers.
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SPEAKER_00
Nothing trauma bonded.
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SPEAKER_00
But the whole like, I don t know.
5
SPEAKER_01
That s not good.
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SPEAKER_01
How do you know if you re entering in a relationship through trauma bonding?
5
SPEAKER_00
So I don t think anyone enters in that way, Lewis.
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SPEAKER_00
I think that we are, attraction s a pretty universal phenomenon, right?
5
SPEAKER_00
Although we might find different things attractive, right?
5
SPEAKER_00
Different people find different people attractive.
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SPEAKER_00
Attractiveness, there s something that sort of, we re attracted to what we re attracted to.
5
SPEAKER_00
We re attracted to whatever is aesthetically pleasing to us, what might feel so much familiar to us, what is sort of normative for our culture.
5
SPEAKER_00
Attraction s attraction.
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SPEAKER_00
Now, remember, narcissistic folks are charming, charismatic, and confident and successful, right?
5
SPEAKER_00
So that is attractive to everybody, which is why narcissistic people are attractive to everyone.
5
SPEAKER_00
But trauma bonding is not what gets people into relationships.
5
SPEAKER_00
It s what gets them stuck.
5
SPEAKER_00
So a person might be drawn, for example, in a narcissistic relationship to the charm, the charisma, the confidence, the attractiveness, the smoothness, the whole thing, the whole package, and say, wow, I want to meet them.
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And you meet them and they re every bit as charming as they were across the room.
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SPEAKER_00
That s attraction.
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SPEAKER_00
When you re three months in and this person s gaslighting you and manipulating you and doing shady stuff and invalidating you, and you re making excuses for that, that s trauma bonding.
5
SPEAKER_00
So someplace between attraction and trauma bonding is a process.
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SPEAKER_00
And that s the process we d love to be able to short-circuit.
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SPEAKER_00
But the problem is most of that process is something we call love-bombing.
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SPEAKER_01
And it just brings you into the relationship and makes you feel like you re thinking about them all the time.
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SPEAKER_00
How do you pull someone out of a fairy tale?
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SPEAKER_00
It s not easy.
5
SPEAKER_01
How do you?
5
SPEAKER_00
And this is why I m the last person anyone wants to spend Valentine s Day with.
5
SPEAKER_00
Interesting, it s my clinical day.
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SPEAKER_00
I m like, it s best that I just stay locked in with my clients on Valentine s Day and be kept away from everyone else because it s not easy.
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SPEAKER_00
So when people are in the fairy tale, I say to people, listen, if any of you have the discipline to just eat the top off the cupcake, do it.
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SPEAKER_00
But then don t get involved in the stumpy bottom part.
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SPEAKER_00
We don t need that.
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SPEAKER_00
You want to ride it out?
5
SPEAKER_00
Ride it out.
5
SPEAKER_00
Have some fun.
5
SPEAKER_00
Do some fun things.
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SPEAKER_00
But it s pretty rare.
5
SPEAKER_01
Two to four weeks, and then stop.
5
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, yeah.
5
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, it s pretty rare for a person to say, OK, I m sad.
5
SPEAKER_00
Or to leave after the third invalidation, or the third shady thing, right?
5
SPEAKER_00
I m a big fan of threes.
5
SPEAKER_00
First time happens, it happens.
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SPEAKER_00
Second time it happens, it s a coincidence.
5
SPEAKER_00
Third time it happens, it s a pattern.
5
SPEAKER_00
And that s like, ooh, what s happening here?
5
SPEAKER_00
But that overlap, that overlap period where love bombing turns into devaluation is this demilitarized zone that s a really dangerous place.
5
SPEAKER_00
Because it s where the good stuff is still happening at a pretty good frequency, but the devaluing is starting to kick in.
5
SPEAKER_00
And you re now trying to make sense of it.
5
SPEAKER_00
And you want the good stuff.
5
SPEAKER_01
You go back to the good stuff, yeah.
5
SPEAKER_00
But it s happening enough.
5
SPEAKER_00
You re still getting enough good stuff.
5
SPEAKER_00
So it s almost like you re with this, again, it s all intermittent reinforcement, all trauma bonding.
5
SPEAKER_00
It s a slot machine.
5
SPEAKER_01
It s not consistent.
5
SPEAKER_00
It s a slot machine.
5
SPEAKER_01
I think the last time you were on here, or maybe it was the first time you were on, I didn t really know what narcissism was fully.
5
SPEAKER_01
I was kind of like, and I remember just having all these gasping moments where I was just like starting to realize more and more about,
5
SPEAKER_01
the pain of experiencing a narcissistic either person or narcissistic tendencies from a person where I had once in a relationship felt so much love for many many months and then this intermittent
5
SPEAKER_01
make wrong, or you need to change, or whatever it was, like this less accepting of me, more shaming of me, diminishing me, trying to change me, but still bringing some of the love, but then it just faded all the way into 5% of the love, and all blame, make wrong, gaslighting type of experiences.
5
SPEAKER_01
And when you first started telling me about this, I was just like, man, this is a, it s a pain, it was, because it s so painful to experience.
5
SPEAKER_01
It s painful.
5
SPEAKER_01
And so many people have experienced this in some way, whether it s intimate relationship or friendship or with our parents.
5
SPEAKER_01
And it s painful to be in.
5
SPEAKER_01
It s painful to try to get out of.
5
SPEAKER_01
It s painful to heal from.
5
SPEAKER_01
The whole thing is painful.
5
SPEAKER_00
It is painful.
5
SPEAKER_00
And I m so glad you brought up that painful part because the simplistic view is this person s mistreating you, step away.
5
SPEAKER_00
But for some people, they ll say, it feels like cutting off my own arm.
5
SPEAKER_00
And many people, when they re a trauma bonded, will say, I m feeling like a panic attack at the idea of even considering leaving this relationship.
5
SPEAKER_00
You know, not even having the conversation or considering doing it.
5
SPEAKER_00
And so we can t live in tension all the time.
5
SPEAKER_00
That s not how the human nervous system is set up, and the human psyche is not set up that way.
5
SPEAKER_00
So how do we dissipate that tension, that cognitive dissonance, we call it?
5
SPEAKER_00
We undissonance it, right?
5
SPEAKER_00
And we make the justifications.
5
SPEAKER_00
So the justifications make us feel less tense, and now we ve bought another month, six months, 10 years.
5
SPEAKER_00
You know, and when life gets busy, right, which is where when people might get married to a narcissistic person, and then there s wedding, wedding, and busy, busy, instead of a household distraction, then you have kids.
5
SPEAKER_00
I ve worked with so many people.
5
SPEAKER_00
That s why 20 to 25 years is not an unusual time for a marriage with a narcissistic person to break up.
5
SPEAKER_00
Because around that time,
5
SPEAKER_00
everything, like there s no more, there s not so much activity to pay attention to.
5
SPEAKER_00
You re like, I hate this person.
5
SPEAKER_00
I hate them.
5
SPEAKER_00
I don t want to be in this house with them anymore.
5
SPEAKER_00
But there was so much activity before.
5
SPEAKER_00
Or whatever it was.
5
SPEAKER_00
You just dealt with it enough, right?
5
SPEAKER_00
Yeah.
5
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, this is, you know, I have a lot of compassion for people that have experienced this because I just remember thinking, like I would think, how do I get out of this relationship?
5
SPEAKER_01
But I didn t have the courage.
5
SPEAKER_01
Now, I had the courage to do everything else in my life, and achieve, and go after my goals, and have challenging conversations, and succeed, or whatever it might be.
5
SPEAKER_01
But I lacked the courage to have tough conversations in a previous relationship that kept me in it.
5
SPEAKER_01
And when I would think about ending the relationship, I would have heart palpitations.
5
SPEAKER_01
So what were you afraid of?
5
SPEAKER_01
Oh man, let me go back to the state now, because I feel like I m in a healthy place now.
5
SPEAKER_01
Sorry.
5
SPEAKER_01
But I think I felt like I was a failure if I couldn t make the relationship work.
5
SPEAKER_01
I think I was thinking...
5
SPEAKER_01
Um, something s wrong with me if they re not accepting of me or loving me or if they re mad or angry with me or if they re, I was thinking, how come we can t just go back to the first few months when it was just like, everything was amazing.
5
SPEAKER_01
There was never any stress.
5
SPEAKER_01
There was never any like make wrong or blame or you need to change.
5
SPEAKER_01
You can t do that.
5
SPEAKER_01
You have to do this.
5
SPEAKER_01
None of that.
5
SPEAKER_01
I was like, why can t we just go back to that experience again and have that more continuously?
5
SPEAKER_01
But I just also didn t know what a healthy relationship looked like ever.
5
SPEAKER_01
So I never experienced that from the model of my parents.
5
SPEAKER_01
That s right, that s right.
5
SPEAKER_01
I never experienced that from all the relationships I had.
5
SPEAKER_01
So I was unable to know somatically, this is healthy, this is the way it s supposed to look.
5
SPEAKER_01
Whether we work out or not, based on our values or our vision or whatever,
5
SPEAKER_01
But this feels healthy.
5
SPEAKER_01
I d never felt healthy in any relationship.
5
SPEAKER_01
And so I just didn t know.
5
SPEAKER_00
No, you don t know.
5
SPEAKER_00
And in some ways, ending, so being honest with yourself about that moment in a relationship where, like, this is not good for me.
5
SPEAKER_00
I m afraid, like you said, a lack of courage, as it were.
5
SPEAKER_01
And I was also afraid, like, if I end this, this person s gonna go out and try to, like, ruin my life.
5
SPEAKER_00
Okay, well then, see, but see, the thing is,
6
SPEAKER_00
That s a real ... So those fears, some of those fears are fears based on history.
6
SPEAKER_00
Some of those fears are fears based on identity.
6
SPEAKER_00
I m a failure.
6
SPEAKER_00
Some of them are fears based on potential reality.
6
SPEAKER_00
Because if there s one thing anyone ... Because this is what s challenging about narcissistic relationships.
6
SPEAKER_00
It s actually great when they break up with you.
6
SPEAKER_00
And my clients will say, what are you talking about?
6
SPEAKER_00
My heart s broken.
6
SPEAKER_00
You re going to be so glad about this at some point.
6
SPEAKER_01
That didn t happen, though.
6
SPEAKER_00
I had to do it.
6
SPEAKER_01
No, you had to end it.
6
SPEAKER_00
You had to end it.
6
SPEAKER_01
I kept saying, please end this, but they wouldn t do it.
6
SPEAKER_01
And then they were like, you re breaking everything up.
6
SPEAKER_01
It s your fault.
6
SPEAKER_01
And I m like, oh my gosh.
6
SPEAKER_00
But when you end it, then something that often happens is a period we call post-separation abuse.
6
SPEAKER_00
And post-separation abuse can be everything from
6
SPEAKER_00
stalking to incessant texts and email messages, to talking badly to you about other people.
6
SPEAKER_00
Tell your friends, reaching out to your friends.
6
SPEAKER_00
Putting on passive-aggressive posts on social media when they clearly, everyone reads it, knows it s about you.
6
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, of course.
6
SPEAKER_00
And all of that stuff, large or small, I mean, some of the stuff can be, I mean, obviously, the most horrific cases, it s physical violence afterwards.
6
SPEAKER_00
But in, you know, what we re talking about, it s not as dangerous, but still psychologically dangerous.
6
SPEAKER_00
People kind of know that s going to happen, and they don t want that to happen.
6
SPEAKER_00
And so they say, well, there s one way to avoid this from happening, and it s to stay in it, right?
6
SPEAKER_00
But to see one of these relationships, so partly that courage piece is to see a toxic relationship clearly, intimate relationship clearly, especially when we ve had no template of healthy relationships or a history of relationships where we ve made the accommodations in ourselves to make them work, is that to see,
6
SPEAKER_00
to come into that place of courage, to see clearly that it s not OK and something needs to be done, can give people this tidal wave of terror of, that means all this other stuff in my life was a mess too.
6
SPEAKER_00
It s terrifying.
6
SPEAKER_00
It opens up this sort of door on our narratives that we sometimes don t want to look at and examine how these other things have shaped us.
6
SPEAKER_01
Or examines our parents.
6
SPEAKER_00
Our parents, exactly.
6
SPEAKER_00
That s my point, is that it feels like too much.
6
SPEAKER_00
I have to say that, and the other fear that I hear a lot of people have is regret.
6
SPEAKER_00
What if I m wrong?
6
SPEAKER_00
What if I m reading this wrong?
6
SPEAKER_00
Those first three months were good, and maybe this is just a bump in the road.
6
SPEAKER_00
And if I walk away from this, and in fact, and I m out there in the desolation of dating profiles and people s puppy pictures, what am I going to do?
6
SPEAKER_00
And now, and then move on.
6
SPEAKER_00
I ll never find someone as good as this.
6
SPEAKER_00
And the next person s going to get the better version of them.
6
SPEAKER_00
And so then people go down that rabbit hole, and it s almost like a kid with a toy.
6
SPEAKER_00
They re like, I don t really want this toy, but I don t want you to have this toy.
6
SPEAKER_00
If you ve ever had a sibling, the sibling doesn t give up the ball, but you don t want the ball, but I don t want her to have the ball.
6
SPEAKER_00
So it s that.
6
SPEAKER_00
So, people, that fear of regret.
6
SPEAKER_00
What if I m wrong?
6
SPEAKER_00
What if they change?
6
SPEAKER_00
What if they change for the next person?
6
SPEAKER_00
What if they move on quickly?
6
SPEAKER_00
They re going to move on quickly.
6
SPEAKER_00
That s what they do.
6
SPEAKER_00
And all of that.
6
SPEAKER_00
And then, I ve got a bird in hand, and it s so hard to date, and all that stuff.
6
SPEAKER_01
It lasted a year, or two years, or four years, whatever it is, right?
6
SPEAKER_01
Gosh.
6
SPEAKER_01
How do you know when you know?
6
SPEAKER_01
That someone s narcissistic?
6
SPEAKER_01
That someone s the right person.
6
SPEAKER_01
The right person.
6
SPEAKER_01
You know, they say you know when you know, but how do you fully know mentally, spiritually, somatically, this is healthy, this is or could be the right person for me?
6
SPEAKER_00
So you re neither indifferent nor ruminating.
6
SPEAKER_00
Does that make sense?
6
SPEAKER_00
And the reason I m making that distinction is... What does that mean?
6
SPEAKER_00
Okay, so you re ruminating when it s unhealthy.
6
SPEAKER_00
Like, you re ruminating the whole drive to work, like, oh God, I m so... You re asking people, your friends, like, why is this happening?
6
SPEAKER_01
What do you think about this?
6
SPEAKER_00
And asking for advice.
6
SPEAKER_00
All that.
6
SPEAKER_00
So that s bad.
6
SPEAKER_01
Ruminating, yep.
6
SPEAKER_00
Indifference is bad because I was going to say, because you re not thinking about it all the time, but I don t mean not thinking about it all the time because you re literally indifferent to someone and you re like, if they never call me back, I don t care.
6
SPEAKER_00
I would say that in a good relationship, you are looking forward to seeing them.
6
SPEAKER_00
they re the first person you want to tell good news to because you feel validated, that they see something in you that you don t see, that they re genuinely proud of you, that they are, but it s more of the looking forward to them.
6
SPEAKER_00
Like even at the end of the day, I think I m always amazed when I, I was, I have a friend of mine, she s been married for about 30 years, 25, 30 years, and
6
SPEAKER_00
She was visiting me over the summer, and I was listening to her talk to her husband on the phone.
6
SPEAKER_00
I mean, they re an old married couple.
6
SPEAKER_00
Sorry to friend if you re listening.
6
SPEAKER_00
You know I m talking about you.
6
SPEAKER_00
But I was overhearing their conversation, and it was so beautiful.
6
SPEAKER_00
He was so solicitous.
6
SPEAKER_00
He works very hard in the summer.
6
SPEAKER_00
She works very hard during the school year.
6
SPEAKER_00
And she wanted to go do all the stuff.
6
SPEAKER_00
And he s like, sweetie, sweetie, you just need some time to yourself.
6
SPEAKER_00
Don t put so much on the day.
6
SPEAKER_00
Go out there, go with the kids, enjoy the beach.
6
SPEAKER_00
So it wasn t like, oh, you re having a vacation and I m not.
6
SPEAKER_00
And he s like, I miss you so much, but I m so glad you re having a good time and can t wait to see you.
6
SPEAKER_00
And she was ... The tone of their voices.
6
SPEAKER_00
But I m like, oh my God, after over 25 years,
6
SPEAKER_00
She is as looking forward to talking to him as she probably was when they were first dating.
6
SPEAKER_00
I have several friends in these situations, and you don t feel like you re looking at a friendship.
6
SPEAKER_00
You still feel like you re looking at something special.
6
SPEAKER_00
And I have to say that there s a fantasy of, imagine if you grew up with parents who had that kind of a marriage.
6
SPEAKER_00
what that does for you, what that does for your heart.
6
SPEAKER_00
But you know what, Lewis?
6
SPEAKER_00
There s people out there whose parents were happily married, and they end up with narcissistic folks, and that s its own whole kind of mess of a situation.
6
SPEAKER_01
Whose parents were happily married?
6
SPEAKER_00
Super happy.
6
SPEAKER_00
The parents were like love story.
6
SPEAKER_01
But what, the kids are narcissistic?
6
SPEAKER_00
No, the kid marries a narcissist.
6
SPEAKER_00
Why?
6
SPEAKER_00
That s a great question, and I ll tell you why, because I ve seen it happen many times.
6
SPEAKER_01
They re just so compassionate and loving and accepting, or how does it work?
6
SPEAKER_00
So go back to the charm, charisma, confidence, success, all that stuff, right?
6
SPEAKER_00
So the person s shiny and cool and neat.
6
SPEAKER_00
And sometimes that narcissistic person not only love bombs a person, they love bomb their family.
6
SPEAKER_00
And so, especially a close-knit family where everyone s doing stuff together, and so they ingratiate themselves into that system sometimes, right?
6
SPEAKER_00
Especially the happy family that s clearly a united front, but they re not a difficult front.
6
SPEAKER_00
And since they love each other and they love their kids, they believe in love.
6
SPEAKER_00
Right?
6
SPEAKER_00
So that kind of cynicism that you d see in most of the dysfunctional families, I know, that they re like, well, who s this guy, is more of like, come on in, like, welcome to the family.
6
SPEAKER_00
So they re getting so much validation.
6
SPEAKER_00
Right?
6
SPEAKER_00
So then when things start going wonky, talk about the lack of a template.
6
SPEAKER_00
At least those of us from dysfunctional families were like, I know from messy.
6
SPEAKER_00
Okay.
6
SPEAKER_00
Some messy is happening.
6
SPEAKER_00
I don t have a name for this.
6
SPEAKER_00
but they literally have not been to this planet before.
6
SPEAKER_00
They re like, what is this place?
6
SPEAKER_00
They re speaking the language I don t understand.
6
SPEAKER_00
And I ll tell you, this actually can be quite tragic.
6
SPEAKER_00
I consulted once.
6
SPEAKER_00
There was a couple of times, actually, not even once, a few times, with families where, one I remember so well, the parents had been married like 48 years, 45 years, really healthy, did all kinds of wonderful stuff together, and daughter married a narcissist, right?
6
SPEAKER_00
And the parents were almost coming to me like, we don t get this.
6
SPEAKER_00
And they said, we re devastated because these parents literally believe that like, well, he s not a very nice guy.
6
SPEAKER_00
So family court is just going to give the parents to the nicer person.
6
SPEAKER_00
I m like,
6
SPEAKER_00
No, no, no, no, no.
6
SPEAKER_00
This is not how this works.
6
SPEAKER_00
Your daughter needs an attorney, like, yesterday.
6
SPEAKER_00
And they said, well, no, we re already learning this because this process has already begun, and we re watching our daughter fade in front of our eyes.
6
SPEAKER_00
And so they said, we did.
6
SPEAKER_00
And they felt very guilty because they felt like they d given her terrible advice because they kept saying, just love him more.
6
SPEAKER_00
more.
6
SPEAKER_00
That s what we do in our family.
6
SPEAKER_00
We just love more.
6
SPEAKER_00
And sometimes that would come in the way of giving him more money.
6
SPEAKER_00
That would just be like, you guys go away to the Bahamas for the weekend.
6
SPEAKER_00
We ll watch the kids.
6
SPEAKER_00
So it was just like, they were basically giving him supply and he was getting worse and cheating on her more and it was just getting worse and worse and worse.
6
SPEAKER_00
But the family really
6
SPEAKER_00
They said they were so, and they felt almost a sense of moral injury that they had done something wrong to their child by not seeing this.
6
SPEAKER_00
But Louis, they had no template.
6
SPEAKER_00
And there are people out there who are like, they don t know this.
6
SPEAKER_00
They really have this joyful, happy, happy life.
6
SPEAKER_01
And you want to trust the people.
6
SPEAKER_01
You want to trust the world.
6
SPEAKER_01
You want to be open.
6
SPEAKER_01
You want to be, you know.
6
SPEAKER_00
Vulnerable all that stuff, but the good thing is though, but there s a good thing Is that the woman did have this happy family who was this tremendous source of support?
6
SPEAKER_00
That s so as the whole thing fell apart Whereas most people who go through this don t have that I was so they re not only do they are they going through this nightmarish?
6
SPEAKER_00
Divorce or something like that.
6
SPEAKER_00
They don t have a family of origin They can turn to or the family of origin blames them or the family of origin was half their problem So they really it can sort of double down on their grief.
6
SPEAKER_00
I
6
SPEAKER_01
Man.
6
SPEAKER_01
Now, four things you said about a narcissist.
6
SPEAKER_01
They re charming, charismatic, confident, and successful.
6
SPEAKER_01
Is that right?
6
SPEAKER_00
Charming, charismatic, confident, successful, curious, attractive.
6
SPEAKER_00
I mean, we can keep going.
7
SPEAKER_00
Shiny.
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Shiny.
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Now, is it possible to be charming, charismatic, confident, successful, attractive, and not be a narcissist?
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Yes.
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Please.
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How do you know the difference between the two?
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Well, here s how you know the difference.
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Here s the thing.
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Charm and charisma get supply, right?
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They re like the fancy polony thing that sticks out of a flower, right?
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They attract the bees and the birds, right?
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There s an interpersonal skill that s cultivated in the charming and charismatic person.
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It can happen, right?
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So how do you know?
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The charming, charismatic, successful, attractive person who s not narcissistic is empathic.
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They listen.
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They re warm.
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There s always that vision of the person who s at the cocktail party that is talking to you, but they seem to almost be looking through your head at the door behind you to see if something better is coming in.
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You don t get that vibe from them.
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There is a genuineness.
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They don t monopolize the conversation.
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There s a genuine warmth to them.
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You feel it.
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I mean, you definitely feel it.
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And it takes a few hits, sort of a few times up at bat, to be sure that that s what you re dealing with.
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I mean, listen, I ve met charming, charismatic people who are nice, but I ve met more that are narcissistic.
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It s a pretty rare combo.
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Yeah.
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Oh, man, it s probably rare, depending on where you are located in the country as well, too, where there might be more.
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LA.
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LA, right, yeah.
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What is the percentage of narcissists in the country right now, do you think?
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I mean, I m going to spitball a number because we have never gotten good prevalence statistics.
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Here s the problem.
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There s this thing called narcissistic personality disorder that I don t even concern myself with.
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It is a clinical diagnosis that can only be issued by a mental health practitioner who spent enough time with a client to actually unfurl these patterns.
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And no narcissists are going to a therapist.
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They re often not.
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And when they do, they re going in for a backdoor reason, like addiction, depression, optics.
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A court order.
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A court order, being forced, ultimatum by a spouse, that kind of thing.
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And a lot of therapists don t issue it, because it s stigmatizing diagnosis and insurance.
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You know what I m saying?
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The whole world of diagnosis is messy.
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And usually the way we figure out the prevalence of a disorder is what we call epidemiological studies, where people are brought in, and they re actually just put through the interviews, and they re anonymous, and it s not going on any record, right?
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Those studies of NPD show 1% to 6% prevalence, right?
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But again, in the country.
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Which is like, on the spectrum of narcissism, they re at the highest.
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They re in the research studies.
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I can t even say they re at the highest.
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And it s one thing I do want to correct is that just because someone has NPD doesn t mean they re more severe.
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It merely means they were diagnosed.
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That s it.
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Does that make sense?
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There might be others who haven t been diagnosed that are more severe.
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But they re way worse, right?
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But if we were to look at across from mild to severe narcissism, because it is on the spectrum, so mild to severe,
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across the population, the spitballed number that I think most of us in the trenches would probably agree with, enough narcissism that it s causing other people problems, 15%.
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That s my guess.
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Somewhere between 15 and 20.
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I d say certain parts of LA, 20.
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Certain industries, 20.
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Right, right, right.
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But I would say on average, somewhere around 15, and that s all types of narcissism too, which means 85% of people aren t, which is good.
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That s good, yeah.
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And there s what, four different types of narcissism, is that right?
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I d say probably closer to six, but we can go to four, yeah.
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So for, I would say, grandiose, which is the traditional arrogant, pretentious, charming, charismatic, kind of shiny narcissist.
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That s your kind of prototype of the narcissist.
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There s the vulnerable narcissist.
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This is probably to me the most compelling form of narcissism because this is where you see the sullenness, the petulance, the passive aggression, the chronic victimhood, the social anxiety, the failure to launch.
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These are people who live in fantasies of the great things they re going to do.
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but they never do them.
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The grandiose people actually often do get them done.
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They will talk the big game, and they ll kind of do the big game.
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So vulnerable doesn t mean they re actually intimate and vulnerable with you.
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No, no, no.
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It means that they talk of the game, but they don t actually take action.
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Correct.
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You keep telling everyone, I m going to do this project or this thing.
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And you know why I couldn t do it?
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Because that guy didn t give me the money, and that guy scammed me.
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Everyone takes advantage of me, and that person stole my idea.
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That s that.
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The vulnerable.
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The vulnerable.
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Then there s the malignant.
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Now, to me, the malignant narcissist is the most severe form of narcissism, and that s when we talk about stuff like the dark tetrad.
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And the dark tetrad is composed of narcissism, psychopathy, Machiavellianism, the willingness to take advantage of other people, and sadism.
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And I also believe paranoia sits in there too, right?
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So in malignant narcissism, we re talking about people who are more coercive, who are more menacing, who are more isolating.
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This feels a little bit more like psychopathy, but it s still narcissism.
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That s much more severe.
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Okay.
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Then we have the communal narcissist.
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Communal communal and these are the folks who get so all narcissistic folks need validation the nar the communal narcissistic folks are interesting because they get their validation by being perceived as Saviors rescuers and do-gooders like cult leaders or more.
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That s a severe so cult leader would be a communal malignant narcissist That would be so Wow cocktails, right?
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He s like you move every you put it all together Wow at the extreme a communal malignant narcissist cult leader, but some communal narcissists can be
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could be a mother who does all the activities and the PTA and helps the Little League and raises the money and goes to the galas and goes home and screams at her kids and is horrible and abuses her partner.
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But on the surface, it looks like she s- They think she s a saint amongst us.
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It s the person who walks around and everyone thinks they re humanitarian.
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And people are like, no, no, no, I worked for their nonprofit.
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And they re like, it was actually a hellscape, right?
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Yeah, when you look behind the curtain, you see- Bingo.
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So that s the communal narcissist.
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So they get validation.
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by the sense of, look what a good person they are.
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They re rescuing puppies, and they re doing this thing, and they re raising all this money, and they re so good.
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But behind the scenes, they re not.
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Not.
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So it s not saying that people do nice things or are communal narcissists.
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It s that they continue to have that lack of empathy, entitlement, all that other stuff.
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So it s like you can, because I m like, OK, well, I want to build a community and serve people.
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So how do you build a community?
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You ve got a big audience.
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How do we build communities without,
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That becoming a thing, is it just because if you re not consistent with service all around you in your relationships, then you re more... Right.
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So, I mean, are you being mean to other people?
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Got you.
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So, like, if I was... Public facing, you look like the best thing ever, but behind the scenes... Exactly.
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You re nasty.
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So, you re mean to your partner.
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I see.
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You re mean to your family.
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You re mean to your... Got it.
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People who work with you.
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You re inconsistent.
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Well, you re consistent.
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You re consistently mean to the people who are behind the curtain here, consistently sort of putting on a show in front of the curtain.
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Yeah, but you re not consistent on both ways of service mindset.
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No, no, and that s what it is.
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Okay, communal.
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And then there s the self-righteous narcissist.
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And the self-righteous narcissist is judgmental, moralistic, rigid.
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They re often funky with money.
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This would be a kind of person who has so much money, and someone in their family has a hardship.
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They had a job loss, and then their kid needs medical care.
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And they ll say, well, I just didn t create this situation, so I guess you ll have to figure it out.
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They have no heart.
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It feels like no heart, but there s also this really rigid judgmental.
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And they judge people from the sense of, well, look at all I built.
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I guess I must have worked hard.
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They ll never account for their luck.
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Or sometimes their absence of bad luck, that kind of thing.
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They will say, if they say dinner s at six and you show up at 6.30 because your kid got sick, they ll say, I m sorry, we already ate.
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So it feels very rigid, cold, moralistic, miserly.
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obsessive.
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These are people who are often workaholics and with little care for how it would affect.
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And he was like, there s workaholics out there who check in on other people.
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Like I m going to make time for you.
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Sure.
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Or once in a, in, we re going to do, we re taking a vacation when this is done, whatever.
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And they re communicating and people are aware, okay, they re doing this so we could buy the house or whatever.
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So is it possible to be self-righteous and not be a narcissist to them?
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I don t think you can ever be self-righteous and healthy, because I think if you re self-righteous, you re like, I m better than you.
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Ah, gotcha.
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Right?
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You ll even see self-righteous narcissism in some of these kinds of exercise zealots who are like, I wake up at 4 a.m., and then I milk my goat, and I make a smoothie, and then I do 1,000 crunches and run 10 million miles, and then I work, and then I journal, and then I this, and I sleep at 8 o clock.
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What are you talking about?
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Is there no other human being in your life?
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How do you deal with a crying sister?
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I told her to go to hell and I drank more goat milk.
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That can be self-righteous.
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And the reason I m in shape and I m going to live to be 179 years old is because I do all this and you don t, you lazy, awful person.
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That s self-righteous.
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Lack of compassion, lack of understanding, lack of awareness.
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It s lack of awareness of others.
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Self-righteousness is sort of where the lack of empathy sits, right?
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So I don t think you can be self... I don t think there s good self-righteousness.
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I don t think all self-righteous people are narcissistic, but many people said to me that
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self-righteous narcissism is really what happened in their family of origin.
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It was apparent.
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So there would almost be this unrealistic expectation that the child would adhere to rigid, obsessive rules like, don t touch this, don t do this, don t sit there, eat like this.
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And so the kid never got to be a kid.
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Okay.
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Number six?
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And number six would be more of a neglectful narcissist.
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So these are the people who, they will not, they view everyone as object.
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So coffee cup, whatever.
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And they just neglect them until they need them.
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They just discard them.
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Or they just don t give them attention or energy.
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They don t attune.
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They don t give them attention.
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They don t attune to them.
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When a person around them is struggling,
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They won t care.
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It s a lack of empathy.
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It s a lack of empathy, but it s a lack of... For example, a malignant or a grandiose narcissist might actually get mad at someone.
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Like, oh my gosh, why do you keep talking to me?
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And people in relationships with neglectful narcissists will say, I ll take it, because at least that person was listening.
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But people in these relationships will literally feel
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Like they re losing their minds because the person with them is literally not noticing unless they need something from them.
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Wow.
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So they re giving the cold shoulder, they don t speak to them for days, whatever.
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Yeah, whatever.
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They just don t notice and they don t care.
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They won t know.
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You might say, I have the biggest presentation of the year next week.
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They won t even ask.
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Wow.
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It s all about them.
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It s all about them, but in this weird way, and they don t even take notice of other people.
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I ve known clients in this experience and they ll say, it s as though I didn t exist, but then when I had the piece of information or something they needed, I existed.
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So you feel like a really neglected personal assistant.
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I hope you enjoyed today s episode and it inspired you on your journey towards greatness.
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Make sure to check out the show notes in the description for a full rundown of today s episode with all the important links.
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And if you want weekly exclusive bonus episodes with me personally, as well as ad free listening, then make sure to subscribe to our greatness plus channel exclusively on Apple podcasts.
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Share this with a friend on social media and leave us a review on Apple podcasts as well.
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Let me know what you enjoyed about this episode in that review.
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I really love hearing feedback from you and it helps us figure out how we can support and serve you moving forward.
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And I want to remind you if no one has told you lately that you are loved, you are worthy, and you matter.
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And now it s time to go out there and do something great.