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Welcome, welcome, welcome to armchair expert, experts on expert.
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I m Dan Rather.
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I m joined by Monica Padman.
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There s a Dan Rather documentary on the marketplace.
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Have you seen it?
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No.
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SPEAKER_01
Have you?
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SPEAKER_00
I didn t watch it yet, but I watched the little trailer for it on the streaming platform.
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I forget which one it s on currently, but he s got his own doc.
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Wow, and do you feel really connected already?
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I feel like I was first in.
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You were.
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I ve been trying to get him in at the peak of the zeitgeist for a while now.
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That s right.
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The footage in the trailer is him getting physically assaulted at one of these political conventions back in the day.
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Oh no.
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He s been around for so long.
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He has, and it s a good reminder that craziness has been happening the whole ride.
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Yeah, it s true.
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This has been a shit show from the jump.
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You re right.
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Okay, today we have Dr. Ramani Durvasula.
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Dr. Ramani is a clinical psychologist and best-selling author.
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This will interest everybody.
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She specializes in narcissism.
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She has a book out now that is so fascinating called, It s Not You, Identifying and Healing from Narcissistic People.
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And once again, this was one of these episodes with an expert where we found out pretty significant chunk of the population, many millions of people suffering from narcissism and or in relationships with narcissists.
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And one of those weird ones where most are undiagnosed because there s no reason to go get diagnosed unless you think you have a problem and inherent in narcissism is that you don t think you have a problem.
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So it s interesting.
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Yeah.
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Another pop word I ve been saying a lot, non-falsifiable claim.
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That s another.
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Kind of non-falsifiable.
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That s the easter egg for the fact check.
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Yes, it is.
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I admit to my words, I ve been over-indexing it.
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Ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding.
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But anyways, I think for people who loved the sociopathy episode, this is in keeping.
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And I think everyone will be listening going, hmm, am I?
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Hopefully you are thinking that, because I think it s a pretty good indicator that you might not be.
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Yeah.
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Please enjoy Dr. Romany Dervasila.
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He s an armchair expert.
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I would love to bring you up to speed on something that just happened to us recently as we enter into this discussion of narcissism because there were some go-to s you felt very free to use haphazardly.
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You want to describe someone as basically amoral, you d go, oh, they re a sociopath.
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And then we recently interviewed a diagnosed sociopath.
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You know about this.
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Patrick?
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Here s the thing.
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I m never going to touch the third rail of castigating a guest, but I m not loving sociopathy s moment in the sun.
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Oh, interesting.
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Great.
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Well, because, and I said it in the interview, which is, man, is there nothing we can really throw under the bus anymore?
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And on some level, I agree.
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And you ll tell us how this is formed, but certainly people are born and I really can t be upset or terribly judgmental.
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Like if you re born on the spectrum, you re born on the spectrum.
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If you re born with sociopathy, that s something you re born with.
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Right.
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That s different than narcissism.
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Yes.
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OK, great.
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I found myself like, wow, now I got to have compassion for sociopathy.
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You don t have to have compassion for some.
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So that s but that s nutty.
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Right.
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That s like a psychopath.
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Yeah.
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Harvey Weinstein, Bernie Madoff.
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Do you have to have compassion?
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According to whom?
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Well, I guess how do we define compassion?
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Understanding?
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Here s what I would aspire to have is a kind of a lack of judgment.
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I wasn t born with sociopathy, so I don t know what it s like.
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No one chose it.
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How about that?
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No one went to the grocery store and was like, I think I ll pick sociopathy or I want to be on this spectrum or that spectrum.
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So in that there s no fault, I can only be so judgmental of it.
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It doesn t mean I don t safeguard myself from people.
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That s the key.
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It s the safeguarding.
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Even with a narcissistic person, you re going to say this person didn t choose this.
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It s a social developmental phenomenon.
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The way they were parented, the circumstances of their life, some piece of biological temperament, biological vulnerability all comes together, gets mixed up.
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And now you have this narcissistic person who is very interpersonally harmful, who s very systemically harmful.
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No two ways about it.
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Now, my positioning has always been, I am not a fan of mistreat this person.
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If someone s narcissistic in your life, don t be deliberately cruel to them.
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It s never good for any of us to be deliberately cruel to anyone, but this will never be a healthy relationship.
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Never.
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It s not going to get better.
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Never going to get better.
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And it is never going to feel psychologically safe.
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But what gets tricky is a lot of people can t get out of these relationships.
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So they re getting harmed on the daily and they re not inherently mean people and they just don t know what to do.
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Yeah, and then I ll be curious to find out if it also then develops this cycle that I experienced in childhood, which is an abusive guy in the house that s horrific and traumatic, but then the winning you back over part, the please forgive me, accept me back into this group, that is then heightened.
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So you get into this cycle.
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That s exactly right.
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of highs and lows and you kind of get addicted to this weird cycle.
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It s partly addiction, but it s also what we call the trauma bonding, right?
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The narcissistic relationship, by definition, is one where every day is not bad.
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People will say, we have fun watching TV together or we have great sex together or they know a lot about wine and we have fun when we have a few drinks.
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There s these things or they ll say, you know, my mother was terrible, but my gosh, I have these really unique memories with her trying on her clothes or baking something with her, whatever it may be.
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So there ll be these narrow sprinklings.
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It s like a slot machine.
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You put the money in and why do we keep going to casinos?
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Why do people keep going to play these machines?
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It s intermittent reinforcement, right?
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Intermittent reinforcement is the stickiest version of reinforcement there is.
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Because if I knew that every 10th time I was going to do something, I d get $10.
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OK, but that wouldn t release dopamine.
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But the hope for a jackpot every so often you put in the buck and five bucks comes.
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Oh, that s kind of exciting.
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You forget then conveniently that I just put 10 bucks in and nothing came out.
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Right.
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And we don t walk away from the machine because the jackpot always hangs out there as this tantalization.
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And that in a narcissistic relationship is this idea that maybe if we just get past this, maybe if we just do this, maybe if I try this, you know, you watch people playing a slot machine, they re praying, they re rubbing, they re dancing, and they re doing all they can to see if I can get lucky, but they don t want to walk away from their machine, especially if they ve been on it for a few hours.
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Why don t people want to walk away from slot machines?
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Because they think that the odds will eventually tilt in their favor.
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Bingo.
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And let s take that a step deeper.
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Not only do they think it s going to work in their favor, if they walk away, then what?
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SPEAKER_03
They wasted all that time, money.
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More.
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Go one deeper.
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I like this.
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I feel like I m in class.
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Hmm, worse than, okay.
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I don t want to walk away from this machine.
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It would have made all of that a waste.
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I lost.
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I lost.
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Keep going, you re missing one last piece.
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Oh, this is exciting.
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I m a piece of shit, but the world revolves around me somehow.
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I don t know how this works.
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What happens?
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What happens?
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Shame?
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Oh, you got a guess?
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Someone else gets.
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Oh, someone.
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He got it.
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SPEAKER_02
Good job, Robin.
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He gets the star.
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I ve got a star.
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Someone else is going to come up to the machine and get your reward.
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They re going to get your jack.
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I did all this work.
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I did all these things.
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I made them better.
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And now someone else is going to get this.
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SPEAKER_03
Oh, hell no.
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But my job is to say, there s no better version.
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This machine doesn t pay.
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Yeah.
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I have heard that from a lot of people, like, I did all this work and I fixed them.
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But no, you didn t.
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You re leaving it.
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Or the narcissistic person leaves you and you think it s, oh, well, they cheated on me with this next person and now they re going on to live their best life.
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There s no best life for them.
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It s really kind of hollow, not so nice life for them.
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I think what I d love to first start with is I have my explanations for why I was drawn to what I was drawn to.
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And I guess I m most curious right out of the gates why you were pulled to study first psychology and then more specifically narcissism.
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Psychology might have been my one Indian girl rebellion, because, you know, when we were raised, you re younger than me, but in my generation, your options were doctor, doctor, doctor, maybe engineer.
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So my big rebellion is like, I m going to get a Ph.D.
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and not an M.D.
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I ll show you, mom and dad, you re
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Where d you grow up in Connecticut?
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I grew up in Connecticut.
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Were you in an area that had other Indian folks?
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I m about as old a native-born Indian as you re going to find, because the Immigration and Naturalization Act didn t kick in until 65.
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So whatever Indians that were coming in before that time were coming in on limited student visas and stuff like that.
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SPEAKER_03
My dad came in probably the mid to late 50s, arranged marriage, whole nine yards.
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So I m as old as you re going to find.
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I m 58.
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Maybe there s probably a 59 or a 60 out there.
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There s a different wave of Punjabi immigration that came in.
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Like in Northern California, they were doing stuff on the railroads.
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There you will see from that immigration group people born in states who are older than me.
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But at 58, I m old.
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You were born here.
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SPEAKER_01
My mom s in her 60s.
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She was born in India and she came when she was six.
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Right.
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And so in that way, I was the only brown kid in small New England town.
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It was very much a sense of otherness.
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Well, also, let s just add, even as a hillbilly, you can feel out of sorts in Connecticut.
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It s very waspy.
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I mean, it s the whitest of the white.
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It s like apex whiteness.
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SPEAKER_03
Yes, it was apex whiteness.
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SPEAKER_03
And definitely multicultural was not a word people used in the 1970s.
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SPEAKER_03
Right.
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So people don t want you to play with their kids and they couldn t pronounce my name.
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SPEAKER_03
And so the aesthetic was white, white or white.
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So you never felt attractive.
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SPEAKER_03
That was a profound developmental kind of thing.
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We didn t fit in the town.
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People would vandalize our house.
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And did you feel like no boy was ever gonna like you?
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as much, didn t go to the prom, like all the things.
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Look at you two babes.
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It makes me happy to see the power of younger Indian women.
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It s everything to me.
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But I had that.
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But you had it too.
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It s not that far from the tree, unfortunately.
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It is, unfortunately.
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And I still have daughters who are mixed race who struggled with that sense of like, oh, no one s going to fit in because my elder daughter resembles me.
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She s probably about your skin tone.
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SPEAKER_00
Lucky her.
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Well, you re very kind.
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So the university I went to, they had a very special, you could do this integrated study where you would bring together film, literature, psychology.
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I m like, well, that sounds cool.
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SPEAKER_02
So my rebellion- This was at UCLA?
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SPEAKER_02
No, I went to University of Rochester for a year.
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SPEAKER_00
Okay.
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I stayed on the East Coast.
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SPEAKER_02
I stayed there only a year.
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I ended up finishing my degree at UConn, which was such a blessing because the University of Connecticut had one of the strongest psych departments in the country.
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And it s like, as an undergrad, you don t even know the genius you re in the midst of.
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And that was UConn.
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SPEAKER_02
In fact, I m their commencement speaker on Sunday.
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Oh my gosh, congratulations!
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I hope you cry like I did.
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I can t even believe they asked.
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I m still in a state of shock that they asked.
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It s such an honor.
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But that was where my interest got piqued.
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It s sort of the why.
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I struggled my whole life.
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Why do people do the things they do?
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And then I went to UCLA.
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Sorry, did you have a parent whose behavior was inexplicable to you?
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Yes, but that was not what was driving me.
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I think I really sort of felt, why do I feel so odd, so out of place, so out of sorts?
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Did you think you might feel safer if you truly understood how people thought?
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Absolutely.
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And so when I finally got to UCLA, I worked in New York City for three years doing HIV research, actually.
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Oh, no kidding.
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And that s sort of the psychosocial and it was really extraordinary and painful time to do this work because there were no meds yet.
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So people get HIV and die.
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And so the privilege, this little research, tiny person, because I was so junior,
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to work in this huge study in New York City, which ended up becoming sort of the turning point for me because it got me introduced to the area of HIV, which would be a research focus for me for years.
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And then at that time, we were focusing on injection drug users and women who got HIV at that time either got it through sex work or injection drug use.
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And so it was a whole different game.
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And then I came to UCLA and I got my PhD.
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This is neither here nor there, but now that you ve done all this work in this, I think this might interest you.
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I m an A. Several of the gay dudes in my meeting while COVID was happening pointed out to me, they re like, we already did this.
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To be intimate is to potentially die.
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The way they reacted to it was just interesting.
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It was observable and they actually vocalized it.
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It was really cool.
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Gay men went through it times a million because of the bias and the stigma and the fear and the unwillingness to do anything about it.
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Yeah, they deserved it.
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Because they were so devalued.
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Exactly.
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So that s part of what drew me to it, because it was the othering.
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HIV was such an othering state.
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So I think anything that involved othering, I was drawn to it.
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You become a champion for all underdogs.
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SPEAKER_01
Monica has this too.
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SPEAKER_01
Sometimes she thinks certain underdogs are underdogs, but maybe they re not.
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SPEAKER_01
But yes.
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They still are.
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SPEAKER_00
I don t know who you re talking about, but I m sure they are.
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SPEAKER_00
Yeah, obsession with justice a little bit.
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SPEAKER_00
Yes.
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And then I did a postdoc at UCLA.
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Then I took an academic position and it was there where the narcissism thing got hit for me the first time.
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I had student research assistants that were going to labs and hospitals around the city.
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They d come back, we d meet.
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One day one of them came back and they looked like they d been through war.
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And I said, what s the deal?
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Like you kind of come back very demoralized from these sites, what s going on?
1
SPEAKER_02
And they said,
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SPEAKER_02
It s just like this one or two patients and they come in.
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SPEAKER_02
They re terrible.
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SPEAKER_02
They re abusive to me.
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SPEAKER_02
They re abusive to the nurses.
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SPEAKER_02
They re abusive to the doctors.
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SPEAKER_02
And I m listening to them.
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I m like, this is interesting.
1
SPEAKER_02
They re describing people who sound quite narcissistic, entitled, selfish, no empathy.
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SPEAKER_02
Everything s about them.
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SPEAKER_02
Really dysregulated.
1
SPEAKER_01
And for context at that time, this is what?
1
2001.
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SPEAKER_01
Okay.
1
SPEAKER_01
And in 2001, the understanding in the studying of narcissism out of 10 was what?
1
SPEAKER_01
How much did we know at that point?
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SPEAKER_02
We were probably at a five or a six.
1
SPEAKER_02
I still think we re only at a seven or an eight.
1
SPEAKER_01
Okay.
1
SPEAKER_01
Okay.
1
SPEAKER_01
We were most of the way there for where we re at today.
1
SPEAKER_02
I think when I say most of the way there, the psychoanalysts have been writing about it forever.
1
SPEAKER_02
If you go back late, late 1800s, we saw the first mentions of it.
1
SPEAKER_02
Otto Rank, what was that?
1
1912.
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Freud then writes on narcissism.
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SPEAKER_02
It s a bedrock that nobody pays attention to.
1
SPEAKER_02
It s a bedrock that no one studies because it kind of makes you feel helpless.
1
SPEAKER_02
It doesn t feel good to be the doctor, if you will, who takes on the incurable condition.
1
SPEAKER_01
Well, of course it appealed to you because you were taking on HIV when there was no cure.
1
SPEAKER_02
Well, I was trying to understand what would make people more vulnerable to HIV.
1
SPEAKER_02
And was it possible that these people who are angry and acting out, were they more likely to behave more irresponsibly, sexually or around substance use?
1
SPEAKER_02
Those are the things I was interested in.
1
SPEAKER_02
But interestingly, what I did come to find out is the narcissistic people actually did wear condoms and did protect themselves.
1
SPEAKER_02
They did use substances.
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SPEAKER_02
I mean, addiction and narcissism are highly overlapping.
1
SPEAKER_01
Do they over-index or is it the country average?
1
SPEAKER_02
I think they over-index.
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And I think that part of that is one would argue either the substance user is trying to manage the negative emotions of the narcissism.
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SPEAKER_01
They re also great for self-aggrandizement.
1
SPEAKER_02
I was going to say, either you re a stimulant user who s using it to get the
1
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pump up or you re using alcohol, weed, opiates to manage the negative emotionality.
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SPEAKER_02
So it really depends.
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And I ve worked with substance users using so many different substances that were narcissistic.
1
SPEAKER_02
The backstory had a lot to do with how that would show up, but that s how I got into it.
1
SPEAKER_02
And then at the same time, I had a private practice and people kept coming in with the same story about their marriage.
1
SPEAKER_02
It was always about these very antagonistic, unempathic, entitled, manipulative, gaslighting, cruel partners
1
SPEAKER_02
but who to the world seemed like well put together and successful.
1
SPEAKER_02
And so that actually led to my first book in 2016, because I actually kept writing the same notes to my clients to give them.
1
SPEAKER_02
I m like, I might as well get paid for this.
1
SPEAKER_01
Also, you just grab anyone s notes.
1
SPEAKER_02
And so, yeah, it just went to two, three, four.
1
SPEAKER_01
Let me guess, he denied he had any wrongdoing and you ve never heard an apology from him?
1
SPEAKER_01
That s right, perfect.
1
SPEAKER_02
We ll put that down for all of it.
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SPEAKER_02
So that s what led to that book.
1
SPEAKER_02
And then ironically, people s like, was this your origin story?
1
SPEAKER_02
It wasn t until I was deep into doing this research and I was in therapy, I ve been in therapy for a long time.
1
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And I thank goodness for that through lying in my life.
1
SPEAKER_01
Well, can I just add, ironically, a lot of therapists aren t in therapy.
1
SPEAKER_02
And that s not cool because we have to carry away too much pain to not address this.
1
SPEAKER_01
Right, right, right.
1
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Do you know what I m saying?
1
SPEAKER_01
The stuff I hear- Because you understand it doesn t mean you re above it.
1
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Hail to the no.
1
SPEAKER_02
I have a nervous system and that nervous system is getting activated by what I hear in the room.
1
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And if I m going to be present and not triggered in that room, I better have a place to work on it.
1
SPEAKER_02
So my therapist, years into it, she s like, I was wondering how long it was going to take you to get to this.
1
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And I was like, bitch, why didn t you tell me sooner?
1
SPEAKER_00
That s a side note we should talk about.
1
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But nobody talks about it in the field of mental health.
1
SPEAKER_02
I m still a bit of a renegade and a pariah for doing what I do.
1
SPEAKER_02
And I m willing to take that on because this is not meant to be grandiose.
1
SPEAKER_02
I think just this conversation on narcissism has helped millions of people who are saying, I no longer feel crazy.
1
SPEAKER_01
This is one of the rare positive outcomes of social media is I think it s getting amplified because so many people are finally addressing it.
1
SPEAKER_01
But we kind of blew past the therapist said, OK, when were you going to get to this?
1
SPEAKER_01
So I imagine what you discovered is that you
1
SPEAKER_02
I d been through it in family relationships.
1
SPEAKER_02
I d been through it in intimate relationships.
1
SPEAKER_02
I d been through it in friendships.
1
SPEAKER_02
I d been through it in workplaces.
1
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And they all harmed me, but they were often turning points.
1
SPEAKER_02
Like I ended up leaving careers I thought I was going to stay in because it got to be too toxic.
1
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I thought there was something really, really wrong with me.
1
SPEAKER_02
And I sort of integrated that into my sense of self.
1
SPEAKER_02
And so once you lifted the lid off of it and I said, oh, now I see it clearly, that was it.
1
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, because I would have to assume you yourself have been a victim of it to be so passionate and driven to expose it.
1
SPEAKER_01
Let s start with how would we define a narcissist right out of the gates?
1
SPEAKER_01
Like what would be the clinical, is there a DSM criteria?
1
SPEAKER_02
One thing I always tell folks is
1
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The way I want to have the conversation about narcissism is not diagnostic.
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It s a personality style.
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You ve got a personality, you ve got a personality, I ve got a personality.
1
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And they were shaped by the experiences we ve had in our lives.
1
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We had a biological temperament and that came up against all the experiences we ve had and that now results in our adult personality.
1
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Personalities are
1
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kind of who we are.
1
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They re like a psychological fingerprint.
1
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The healthier the personality, meaning the more pro-social, the more flexible, the more amenable it is to a little bit of change.
1
SPEAKER_02
An agreeable person could learn to set better boundaries because they d be open to that change, but it s not going to be easy for them because they re agreeable and they want to be warm and connected.
1
SPEAKER_02
I m giving you this backstory only because I want people to understand what I mean by the word personality.
1
SPEAKER_02
People have kind of gotten too caught up in this idea of narcissistic personality disorder.
1
SPEAKER_02
I hate the diagnosis.
1
SPEAKER_02
It s not helping.
1
SPEAKER_02
It s muddied this conversation.
1
SPEAKER_01
What is it doing that has a negative outcome?
1
SPEAKER_02
The vast majority of people who are narcissistic have not been in a clinician s office.
1
SPEAKER_01
You have a great explanation of this in the book.
1
SPEAKER_01
They re not suffering.
1
SPEAKER_02
The tricky part here is that when we hear somebody has NPD, we assume that it s more severe in them.
1
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Frankly, I ve met walking out in the wild narcissistic folks who ve never seen the inside of a shrink s office, who are the most severe narcissistic people I ve ever seen.
1
SPEAKER_02
And the people walking around with the NPD diagnosis just happened to be in therapy.
1
SPEAKER_01
And so they- It s almost evidence that they re low on the spectrum.
1
SPEAKER_02
Maybe it s not as bad.
1
SPEAKER_02
So, narcissism.
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The personality style is characterized by entitlement, low, invariable empathy, selfishness, egocentricity, sort of self-centeredness.
1
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An excessive need for validation and admiration.
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Superficial kind of vapid quality.
1
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Difficulty with intimacy, closeness.
1
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They really view relationships as benefiting only them.
1
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There s no care for the other person.
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There is a need for control.
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power, domination.
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I just want to point out that I bet people are listening the same way I m listening, where you say one and I go, ooh.
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Everyone s doing it.
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And then you say another one, I go, ooh.
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And then you say another one, I go, ah.
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And then you say another one, I go, oh.
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SPEAKER_00
Is it narcissists that we re thinking of ourselves?
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SPEAKER_00
Some dude, I think, put out a TikTok video recently, something I ve been saying for a while, but he did it really cutely.
2
SPEAKER_00
And he s like, if you think you re narcissistic, then you re not.
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SPEAKER_00
And frankly, a lot of people who ve been in narcissistic relationships, they re the ones who walk around wondering if they re the narcissistic.
2
SPEAKER_00
That makes sense.
2
SPEAKER_00
So the grandiosity, the low empathy, the entitlement, the need for admiration and validation.
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SPEAKER_02
Because I have that one.
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SPEAKER_01
We don t need to highlight every single one.
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SPEAKER_02
I just want to own mine.
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SPEAKER_00
They don t tolerate frustration or disappointment well, so they ll rage.
2
SPEAKER_00
That s the stuff of narcissism.
2
SPEAKER_00
Now, it s on a continuum.
2
SPEAKER_00
So the mild side is your annoying, immature Instagram narcissist who at 55 is still wondering if they got a lot of likes on their sunset cocktails picture.
2
SPEAKER_02
That s going to be tough to hear for a lot of them.
2
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, exactly.
2
SPEAKER_00
And the thing is, they re getting upset.
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SPEAKER_00
They re not getting likes.
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It s one thing you want to do that.
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SPEAKER_00
I love when people post their happy cocktail pictures.
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I m like, good for you.
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SPEAKER_00
But when they re angry, I can t believe people don t think I m the coolest.
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Or monitoring who didn t like their thing.
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Yeah, that s the next level.
2
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Put that still on the mild end.
2
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I ve heard that from a lot of people as well.
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They re like, well, you re monitoring who s liking.
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Someone s who didn t like my thing.
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Like, oh, look who liked.
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And I m like, oh, my God, that sounds dark.
2
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For a grown person.
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I ll cut grace until 25.
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Prefrontal is done.
2
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Exactly.
2
SPEAKER_00
And at the far end, though, we re talking about malignant narcissism, which in the book, as I put it, malignant narcissism is sort of the last stop on the train before psychopathy station.
2
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And we veer into something a lot darker.
2
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Because that s what s confusing for the lay person is like so much of it seems to overlap with psychopathy or sociopathy.
2
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At the severe end.
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At the severe end, it s more manipulative, more exploitative.
2
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You see more isolation.
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You see more coercive dynamics.
2
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It s just an unsafe relationship.
2
SPEAKER_00
Sadism maybe?
2
SPEAKER_00
When you talk about sadism, you take me to the dark tetrad.
2
SPEAKER_00
And the dark tetrad is where we see the overlap of psychopathy, Machiavellianism, narcissism, and sadism.
2
SPEAKER_00
Ew, this is horrifying.
2
SPEAKER_00
I would like to add the fifth piece of paranoia, because these are folks that are very suspicious and really thin-skinned.
2
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So they re really provocable.
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They re like, what are you looking at?
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And then they ll get into a scrap or a scrape or a fight with them.
2
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And you re like, literally, you re looking at something behind them.
2
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Or they ll pull on the tiniest thread and assume you re criticizing them and become very vindictive.
2
SPEAKER_01
People have to walk on eggshells, yeah.
2
SPEAKER_00
So the dark tetrad, and I would love it to be the dark pentagon, is that when you have five sides?
2
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
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SPEAKER_00
I guess it feels satanic.
2
SPEAKER_00
But at that level, what we re acknowledging is all this stuff does overlap.
2
SPEAKER_02
That s the inherent flaw with the DSM, is it tries to break off and compartmentalize, but it s like, oh, all this stuff s just a big stew of shit.
2
SPEAKER_00
Or make it dichotomous.
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SPEAKER_02
Or arbitrarily dropping a landmark here and there.
2
SPEAKER_00
Well, that s why we talk about the P factor, and the P factor is where sort of all psychopathology comes together, and you really separate out psychotic versus non-psychotic, and it s much broader strokes than you would think.
2
SPEAKER_02
OK, now what?
2
SPEAKER_02
Because were we to believe the statistic brought in by our sociopath guests, 5% for sociopathy?
2
SPEAKER_00
That s higher than I would think.
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SPEAKER_00
A colleague of mine just gathered data and what s called a general population sample.
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SPEAKER_00
So meaning we literally dipped our ladle into not college students, nothing like that.
2
SPEAKER_00
And we were pulling back numbers closer to 10% of narcissism, not sociopathy.
2
SPEAKER_02
Great, so that s quite high.
2
SPEAKER_02
But again, spectrum.
2
SPEAKER_00
In that case, that would be narcissism at a level that would be enough for a partner to notice it.
2
SPEAKER_02
OK, well, this is a later question, but you just said it.
2
SPEAKER_02
So I m going to ask now.
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SPEAKER_02
No, I m going to save it.
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SPEAKER_01
The part on the spectrum that you re talking about, the social media cocktail picture, like feels a little bit to me more self-absorbed.
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SPEAKER_01
Is there a difference between self-absorbed?
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SPEAKER_00
To be at the mild side of narcissism, it s not just a self-absorbed, you have to be entitled to, right?
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SPEAKER_00
The entitlement is sort of the one ring that rules them all.
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SPEAKER_00
Entitlement is what cuts universally across all types of narcissism.
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I m more special than you.
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I deserve better treatment than you.
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SPEAKER_00
And the rules apply to you and not me.
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SPEAKER_00
So there s an inherent hypocrisy there.
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SPEAKER_00
And this specialness, that s the grandiosity.
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SPEAKER_00
I am more special.
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SPEAKER_00
Why am I waiting in this line?
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SPEAKER_00
Wait a minute, what s happening here?
2
SPEAKER_00
Every time you re in an airport, there s a person who bounds right to the top of a line that s got 200 people in it.
2
SPEAKER_00
What are you doing?
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SPEAKER_00
That s entitlement.
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SPEAKER_00
So you have to have that low empathy, that entitlement, and the selfishness.
2
SPEAKER_00
If somebody is just all about, why don t people like my pictures?
2
SPEAKER_00
That s not narcissism.
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SPEAKER_00
It s the sense of,
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SPEAKER_00
They re being a little bit snippy with the waiter, and they re, why isn t everyone liking my pictures?
2
SPEAKER_00
And they re the friend where you listen to them talk every day for three hours a day for a month about their breakup.
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SPEAKER_00
But when you call them two months later for a problem, they don t have time for you.
2
SPEAKER_00
That s what you re talking about.
2
SPEAKER_02
How do people become narcissists?
2
SPEAKER_00
So it s a social developmental phenomenon, just like most personality styles.
2
SPEAKER_00
So the strongest argument would be that there s some form of biological vulnerability, and that s what we call temperament.
2
SPEAKER_00
Anyone who s a parent, you re a parent, you said, right?
2
SPEAKER_00
Do you have more than one child?
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SPEAKER_00
Two.
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SPEAKER_00
So you saw already at a very baby age, they had different personalities.
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SPEAKER_00
Same with mine, very different temperaments.
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SPEAKER_00
Shocking, right?
2
SPEAKER_00
Yeah.
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SPEAKER_00
because you re like same house, same parents, same everything, and yet temperamentally, how you soothe them, all of that.
2
SPEAKER_00
Well, that temperament gets shaped by the environment around it.
2
SPEAKER_00
So what we know is that narcissistic people, and I m simplifying it a bit, but there s sort of two primary pathways.
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SPEAKER_00
One is the pathway of what I call a pathway of adversity.
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SPEAKER_00
These are kids who had that difficult temperament, difficult to soothe, lots of attention seeking, couldn t self-regulate, very externalizing.
2
SPEAKER_00
Take that temperament and you combine it with adversity like trauma,
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neglect, abuse, attachment fails, chaos in the home, devaluation, emotional abuse.
2
SPEAKER_00
That s one formula for narcissism.
2
SPEAKER_00
Now, the second pathway is more new research.
2
SPEAKER_00
It s folks in the Netherlands doing this research, I think some folks in the United States now, and they still have a little ways to go.
2
SPEAKER_00
But what they re picking out is that people who tell their child that they re more special than any other child.
2
SPEAKER_02
Oh, so all parents?
2
SPEAKER_00
No, mine didn t.
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SPEAKER_00
No, mine didn t.
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SPEAKER_00
I was going to say, hell no.
2
SPEAKER_00
Like, why aren t you doing better?
2
SPEAKER_00
Where s the aid?
2
SPEAKER_00
You re so careless.
2
SPEAKER_00
It s not that you re telling your child they re special.
2
SPEAKER_00
It s that you re saying that you re more special than the others.
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SPEAKER_00
And these rules don t apply to you.
2
SPEAKER_00
I m going to talk to the coach.
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SPEAKER_00
I m going to talk to the teacher.
2
SPEAKER_00
And the child is really given this sense of, you re better, you re more special.
2
SPEAKER_00
And then that starts becoming the seed that s shaping up.
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SPEAKER_00
They re being overvalued.
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SPEAKER_00
They don t learn to regulate their negative emotions.
2
SPEAKER_00
They assume someone s going to fix their stuff.
2
SPEAKER_00
That s going to be probably more the birthplace of grandiose narcissism.
2
SPEAKER_00
These narcissistic folks, the people who came through that adversity channel, you re going to tend to see more of the vulnerable narcissism, which is a more sullen,
2
SPEAKER_00
passive-aggressive, victimized, resentful narcissism, or you re going to see the malignant narcissist, those mean, isolating, coercive narcissists.
2
SPEAKER_00
That s where we tend to see that.
2
SPEAKER_00
So there are subtypes of narcissism.
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SPEAKER_00
It s on a continuum, so it s not one flavor.
2
SPEAKER_02
Right.
2
SPEAKER_02
And then is there any treatment to correct?
2
SPEAKER_02
We interviewed Phil Stutz.
2
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He said, what shocked me, he said, you can treat it, but it takes like seven years and the person has to be crazy willing when you just don t see much.
2
SPEAKER_00
I don t disagree.
2
SPEAKER_00
Is it treatable?
2
SPEAKER_00
When you say treatable, what does treatable mean?
2
SPEAKER_00
What s the end game?
2
SPEAKER_02
That you would have a set of tools you re applying that would prevent you from repeating this pattern you put partners through.
2
SPEAKER_00
I don t think that.
2
SPEAKER_02
You don t think that s an option?
2
SPEAKER_00
The reason I m saying that is that some people say, well, what are you basing that on?
2
SPEAKER_00
That kind of sea change, to be fully aware of the other, to regulate yourself, to be fully present with them, attuned to them.
2
SPEAKER_00
That is a take it down to the studs makeover.
2
SPEAKER_00
That s a lot.
2
SPEAKER_00
I was giving you the example before of a person with an agreeable personality, right?
2
SPEAKER_00
It s a more flexible, changeable personality.
2
SPEAKER_00
But you know what you couldn t do with that agreeable person?
2
SPEAKER_00
You wouldn t be able to turn them into someone cold, entitled, and cruel.
2
SPEAKER_00
If I can t do that with the agreeable person, why would I be able to turn around the narcissistic person?
2
SPEAKER_02
And I might argue, again, simply because this was my experience, if you are forced to go to AA because your life s in danger, you can make some pretty radical changes.
2
SPEAKER_02
But again, I think short of your life being in danger, these kind of massive changes are really hard.
2
SPEAKER_01
They don t think of themselves as costing though, right?
2
SPEAKER_02
Right, I m saying like your narcissism would rarely threaten your existence.
2
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, but you wake up one day, fourth wife has left, none of your kids are speaking to you, your business is crumbled, so your life has actually crumbled.
2
SPEAKER_02
But does the narcissist recognize?
2
SPEAKER_02
Because here s my understanding.
2
SPEAKER_02
I gotta give you one anecdote.
2
SPEAKER_02
The bottom line is a therapist explained to me someone I was dealing with and they had met them too, was a narcissist.
2
SPEAKER_02
And they said to me very clearly, you need to understand the rules of a narcissist.
2
SPEAKER_02
You will never hear them say, I m sorry.
2
SPEAKER_02
So you have to get your expectations correct about how this is going to go.
2
SPEAKER_02
They will never say they re sorry.
2
SPEAKER_02
And when you say you re sorry, even though you don t need to, they re going to become the victim in this situation.
2
SPEAKER_02
And they re going to really indulge in that.
2
SPEAKER_02
And hopefully on the other side of that, we re going to get them to agree to this one boundary.
2
SPEAKER_02
So my question is, if a narcissist can never see their own fault in something, would they ever even change?
2
SPEAKER_02
Even if the obvious landscape around them was in ruin, I don t know that they would do what an alcoholic would do, which is go like, well, I m clearly the source of all this wreckage.
2
SPEAKER_00
It s never going to be reflexive.
2
SPEAKER_00
And you bring up an interesting issue, which is the issue of 12-step, something I speak about a lot, because I talk a lot about addiction and narcissism.
2
SPEAKER_00
A lot of the folks I speak with are using 12-step models in their treatment centers.
2
SPEAKER_00
And this is the big question, because I m sure you re aware of the term, the dry drunk.
2
SPEAKER_00
To me, the dry drunk is a narcissist.
2
SPEAKER_00
This is a person where they re sober, but they re unempathic, they re entitled, they re selfish.
2
SPEAKER_00
So they re all the stuff, the addictive character, the step six stuff, but they re not using.
2
SPEAKER_00
And I ve worked with enough families where family members
3
SPEAKER_01
goes to treatment four to six weeks, family member comes back.
3
SPEAKER_01
Now family member is sober, but family member is still a dick.
3
SPEAKER_01
And the family is devastated.
3
SPEAKER_01
And in fact, sober, they re a little bit more mean.
3
SPEAKER_01
They don t have their medicine.
3
SPEAKER_01
So the dry drunk element, when I was reading the big book, I m like, this is a narcissist.
3
SPEAKER_01
And this is one of the interesting debates in the field is, could 12-step be just as useful a program for narcissism treatment as any?
3
SPEAKER_01
Because so much, when you think about the core to me of 12-step as a psychologist, is humility.
3
SPEAKER_01
It s taking responsibility.
3
SPEAKER_01
It s understanding that you are not all powerful, that we are all just nothing more than ordinary human beings.
3
SPEAKER_01
And that ordinariness is what brings narcissistic people to their knees.
3
SPEAKER_00
Terminal uniqueness is terminal.
3
SPEAKER_01
Exactly, and so, if you could get people to commit to the program, now, I ve had mixed success.
3
SPEAKER_01
I ve had some clients, narcissistic, who ve been in recovery for years, who are very committed to working their program, but the narcissism still persisted.
3
SPEAKER_01
It still pushes through it.
3
SPEAKER_01
They re sponsors, everything, they re very committed.
3
SPEAKER_00
My favorite step of the 12, the one if I got to only have learned one of them, it would have been the fourth step in that I learned an actionable process through which I could discover my own culpability in every situation I ve been in and through that illuminate my fears that are driving all of this behavior.
3
SPEAKER_00
So they couldn t do that step.
3
SPEAKER_01
Step four is such an important step when we re dealing with narcissism, because that unwillingness to take responsibility, which is really all anyone in relationships with them want.
3
SPEAKER_01
Own it.
3
SPEAKER_01
Sometimes if a narcissistic person would own it, people who love them wouldn t even necessarily expect them to change it, but they don t own it so the other person feels crazy.
3
SPEAKER_00
Yeah.
3
SPEAKER_01
To your point about treatment, I ve had clients where I ve worked with them for years, and I don t disagree with Stutz s characterization of seven years.
3
SPEAKER_01
I m seven years, twice a week, great therapist and motivated.
3
SPEAKER_01
So that s a lot of unicorny stuff coming together, right?
3
SPEAKER_01
But I ve worked with clients where we did the work, they came in every week, deeply motivated, intelligent, engaged.
3
SPEAKER_01
I wouldn t put up with their BS.
3
SPEAKER_01
And at the end, I remember one guy came in and he s like, so I m clear after this about two years, what you re telling me is.
3
SPEAKER_01
healthy in a relationship is that I have to listen to them.
3
SPEAKER_01
I have to listen to their emotions.
3
SPEAKER_01
I have to do things they want to do that sometimes I don t want to do.
3
SPEAKER_00
Compromise.
3
SPEAKER_01
I said, yeah, that s pretty much the punchline after two years.
3
SPEAKER_01
And he s an incredibly smart guy, too.
3
SPEAKER_01
And he never missed sessions.
3
SPEAKER_01
Like, I want to take next week off.
3
SPEAKER_01
I ll come back in two.
3
SPEAKER_01
Come back in two.
3
SPEAKER_01
He d filed for divorce and broken up with his mistress.
3
SPEAKER_00
And he s like, I m not going to do that.
3
SPEAKER_01
And he said, this feelings thing, I can t, I can t listen to this crying.
3
SPEAKER_01
It s nonsense to me.
3
SPEAKER_01
And he said, but sex matters.
3
SPEAKER_01
And so he had someone, he s like, I pay her every two weeks.
3
SPEAKER_01
It s consistent.
3
SPEAKER_01
She leaves at 2am, does what I want.
3
SPEAKER_01
That s the closeness I need.
3
SPEAKER_01
He was incredibly successful.
3
SPEAKER_01
He had a life full of friends, experiences.
3
SPEAKER_01
He had made a
3
SPEAKER_01
a ton of money.
3
SPEAKER_01
He was at a stage of his life where he didn t have to work.
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He had a very rich, full life.
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Ironically, though, other people had known of him, and the word had gotten back to me, that he was back to the same old patterns with women.
3
SPEAKER_01
It doesn t change, you know, as much as even when a person has a revelation.
3
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Relationships for narcissistic people are a place where they regulate themselves.
3
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They get their admiration, they get something called narcissistic supply.
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That s what they get in the relationship.
3
SPEAKER_01
Either narcissistic people are always relationship jumping, or they re angry at people for not getting into relationships with them.
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Because they re entitled to a great relationship.
3
SPEAKER_00
Stay tuned for more Armchair Expert, if you dare.
3
SPEAKER_00
Okay, what is the impact and is there a predictable impact and pattern for children of narcissists?
3
SPEAKER_01
So the most common thing that s going to happen when a person has one or occasionally two... Yeah, because that s going to be a follow up question.
3
SPEAKER_00
Can two narcissists be in a relationship?
3
SPEAKER_01
So let s just say one narcissistic parent for now.
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And when a child has a narcissistic parent, the most likely outcome is they re going to be very anxious, self-doubting, drops in self-worth grown up.
3
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You often feel like you re not enough.
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These are people who might be prone to perfectionism.
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How can I be better?
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How can I do more?
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SPEAKER_00
Could you gotta regulate mom or dad?
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It s a reversal.
3
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You have to make mom and dad feel good.
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You can t have needs, you can t have wants, you can t have emotions.
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If you do, you re shamed.
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How could you do this to me?
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I do so much for you.
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SPEAKER_01
So it s very much a reversal situation.
3
SPEAKER_00
Okay, this is interesting.
3
SPEAKER_00
I ll just drop this anecdote on you.
3
SPEAKER_00
I know someone whose dad was a narcissist, no question about it.
3
SPEAKER_00
And I noticed when we re together, she tries to regulate me.
3
SPEAKER_00
How so?
3
SPEAKER_00
I can feel her monitoring my mood a lot.
3
SPEAKER_00
And offering me kind of some unsolicited compliments and stuff.
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SPEAKER_00
And I think because I am charismatic and a little grandiose and stuff, it makes sense to me that I m kind of reminding her of her dad.
3
SPEAKER_00
And I can see the panic and anxiety, like I m someone that needs to be regulated and I got to be monitored a lot and I can feel it.
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SPEAKER_01
Assuming that what your friend or this person in your life is doing... Let s say I got all that right.
3
SPEAKER_00
Okay, let s say you got all that right.
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But assuming what she s doing is not conscious.
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Like if she d say, you know, it s funny when I m around you, Dax, I just do this.
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That s something we call the Fawn response.
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And the Fawn response is a sympathetic nervous system response that s not unusual for people who ve had a narcissistic parent to engage in.
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It s not only just a form of regulation.
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What I d argue for your friend is that it s how she keeps herself safe.
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It s a survival mechanism.
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It s safety.
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SPEAKER_00
Right.
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SPEAKER_00
I m exhibiting these familiar character qualities and she s waiting for the shoe to drop, I think.
3
SPEAKER_00
Exactly.
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SPEAKER_00
And I want to say to her, like, hey, you know, the shoe never drops.
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SPEAKER_00
I never kind of fly off the handle or do any of this stuff.
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SPEAKER_00
You can breathe easy.
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SPEAKER_01
She s trying to feel safe around you.
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So she s doing what she did with dad.
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She s complimenting you.
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And that is how she can feel more in her body when she s with you.
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Because if she doesn t, then I don t know what her fear is.
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SPEAKER_01
Everyone has different fears depending on what their origin story was.
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But that s what s happening there.
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But one thing I want to make clear is that the fawn response is involuntary.
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We often think of fawning as an active state.
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I m going to compliment that person so they like me.
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A lot of people think it s voluntary because that feels manipulative.
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SPEAKER_00
It s not at all.
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SPEAKER_00
I see someone panicked.
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SPEAKER_00
It s exactly what it is.
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SPEAKER_00
It s a fight, flight, fawn.
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SPEAKER_00
It s in there.
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SPEAKER_01
Fight, flight, fawn, freeze.
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Yeah.
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It doesn t feel manipulative.
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SPEAKER_00
It just feels exhausting to her.
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But I think just that awareness and that it doesn t need to be this, but also patience with it because it takes a minute.
3
SPEAKER_01
I have a friend actually writing a book on the fawn response, so we talk about it a lot.
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It s really misunderstood and under addressed, but I think when people start to understand it and it doesn t go away.
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nervous system responses are actually really great because they re designed, our body s keeping us safe.
3
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So we can t just say, oh, I m not going to fawn around Dax anymore.
3
SPEAKER_01
It s more to be kind to herself when she does.
3
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
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SPEAKER_00
Not fault herself and self-flagellate.
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SPEAKER_00
I would imagine people who had a parent who was narcissistic, did they disproportionately find themselves in relationships with narcissists?
3
SPEAKER_01
A lot of people have this framework of, if I had a narcissistic parent, then I m a magnet for this, or I m choosing these people.
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SPEAKER_01
We choose narcissistic people because they re charming, charismatic, confident, compelling, attractive, successful.
3
SPEAKER_01
Like, who doesn t go for that person?
3
SPEAKER_00
Right?
3
SPEAKER_01
So there s that piece of it.
3
SPEAKER_01
The narcissistic people are also not going around sniffing for the person with the broken leg, like the lion with the broken gazelle.
3
SPEAKER_01
The narcissistic person is looking for people who are a good source of supply.
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SPEAKER_01
So that could be someone who s successful, attractive, helpful, whatever is their supply, that s what they re looking for.
3
SPEAKER_00
And what I ve heard as well is adding to their own facade.
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SPEAKER_00
They re an extension of their accomplishments and achievements.
3
SPEAKER_01
If you re hot, if you re tall, if you re rich, if you drive a great car, if you re from the right family.
3
SPEAKER_01
What happens is when a person is a narcissistic parent, it s not that they re more likely to get into these relationships, they re more likely to get stuck in these relationships.
3
SPEAKER_01
Because even as the red flags start popping up, because it s so familiar,
3
SPEAKER_00
I would imagine, too, that they re going to be easier for that person to extend because they know the playbook.
3
SPEAKER_00
Like someone else would have to learn it.
3
SPEAKER_00
Why is he in a bad mood?
3
SPEAKER_00
Oh, I find if I tell him he looks handsome that, you know, they already came with the instruction manual.
3
SPEAKER_01
That s right.
3
SPEAKER_01
Because what also happens is pretty early on, there s gaslighting and stuff happening.
3
SPEAKER_01
When any of us are gaslighted, in most cases, the first few times we push back, we re like, yo, that s not what happened.
3
SPEAKER_01
I didn t say that.
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SPEAKER_01
But then the narcissistic gaslighter is so skilled.
3
SPEAKER_01
And again, especially if you had a narcissistic parent and there s any of that self-doubt inside of you, they re so skilled at playing on that vulnerability.
3
SPEAKER_01
And now you are doubting yourself.
3
SPEAKER_01
Now that doesn t happen once or twice.
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SPEAKER_01
It happens many, many times.
3
SPEAKER_01
A narcissistic relationship is death by a thousand cuts.
3
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, it s a chapter of your book.
3
SPEAKER_01
Thank you.
3
SPEAKER_01
Dax did his homework.
3
SPEAKER_01
He sure did.
3
SPEAKER_01
I m very proud.
3
SPEAKER_00
I m a high-functioning narcissist.
3
SPEAKER_00
Well, we re getting there.
3
SPEAKER_00
You could describe yourself as charismatic.
3
SPEAKER_00
I was always like, I m going to sit back a little bit.
3
SPEAKER_01
So that vulnerability is you re more willing to fall for their subjugation.
3
SPEAKER_01
That s really what it is and get sucked into it.
3
SPEAKER_01
It goes from love bombing to subjugation and you don t clock that transitional moment.
3
SPEAKER_00
Right.
3
SPEAKER_00
Did you happen to watch Couples Therapy?
3
SPEAKER_01
Some.
3
SPEAKER_01
It s a little bit of a busman s holiday.
3
SPEAKER_01
I was like, I can t.
3
SPEAKER_00
What s a busman s holiday?
3
SPEAKER_01
A busman s holiday is when the busman went on a bus to go on his vacation.
3
SPEAKER_01
Because it s her life.
3
SPEAKER_01
It s hard to, it s like us listening to podcasts, even though I do like to read.
3
SPEAKER_01
Though I did love Succession.
3
SPEAKER_01
I loved Succession and I watched Succession.
3
SPEAKER_01
So Succession was like the mother load of narcissism.
3
SPEAKER_01
So like that kind of show I ll watch because it s fiction, but when it s real people s lives, it s just too much.
3
SPEAKER_00
Well, that s what I was gonna say.
3
SPEAKER_00
And again, I m not in a position to have labeled one of the participants as a narcissist, but one appeared to be one to me.
3
SPEAKER_00
And to watch the dynamic, what this man was putting this woman through, I was thinking, boy, if I was a therapist, I could handle it one-on-one.
3
SPEAKER_00
I could sit and talk to a narcissist all day long, but it d be very
4
SPEAKER_01
hard for me to watch it all unfolding and not call it out immediately.
4
SPEAKER_02
I m curious because I didn t watch the show, what did the therapist do?
4
SPEAKER_01
You know what was happening, what you could see, the magic of what was happening, we got to be very careful we re not seeing the specific person because I don t want to get sued by this person, but what Orna was great at was
4
SPEAKER_01
letting the wife know the reality you just told me is the reality.
4
SPEAKER_01
And you could see that when she had a comrade in the room, it wasn t being overpowered by that.
4
SPEAKER_01
So I think maybe her focus, which was probably smart, because there s nothing to do with this guy.
4
SPEAKER_01
So I m just going to let her know that her reality.
4
SPEAKER_02
Right.
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SPEAKER_02
She s un-gaslighting her.
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SPEAKER_02
The role of the therapist is to un-gaslight the gaslighted client.
4
SPEAKER_02
And it only takes one person.
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SPEAKER_02
Sometimes it only takes one time.
4
SPEAKER_00
I felt like the woman in the couple was there to get that.
4
SPEAKER_00
That s what she needed.
4
SPEAKER_00
She needed someone to just see her that was not wrapped up in this bad dynamic.
4
SPEAKER_01
But for anyone that might feel the shame, I would imagine some of the shame about being in one of these relationships is similar to that of having been conned, where this is a very underreported crime because you feel stupid.
4
SPEAKER_01
All the time.
4
SPEAKER_01
And so what I observed is, man, you gotta be real quick to outmaneuver this narcissist.
4
SPEAKER_01
This gentleman was fast.
4
SPEAKER_00
Oh my God, he was brilliant.
4
SPEAKER_01
The way he could be caught dead to nuts and then just by himself enough time.
4
SPEAKER_01
It was fascinating to watch.
4
SPEAKER_01
And then the counter move.
4
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, because he would say things and I was like, I guess that does kind of make sense, but I know that s wrong.
4
SPEAKER_00
You yourself as the viewer are like getting gaslit by him.
4
SPEAKER_01
They re clearly good at it, that s why they can do it.
4
SPEAKER_01
Yes.
4
SPEAKER_02
Right.
4
SPEAKER_02
Well, it works.
4
SPEAKER_02
At the end of the day, we are rats in a maze.
4
SPEAKER_02
For the narcissistic person, their central motivation in an intimate relationship is power, domination, and control.
4
SPEAKER_02
Nothing else.
4
SPEAKER_02
It s not affiliation.
4
SPEAKER_02
It s not love.
4
SPEAKER_02
It s not connection.
4
SPEAKER_02
It is power.
4
SPEAKER_02
So they re playing a ground game that s designed to get them power, which means destabilizing the other person.
4
SPEAKER_01
Okay.
4
SPEAKER_01
Now, can two narcissists be in a relationship?
4
SPEAKER_01
All the time.
4
SPEAKER_01
It happens all the time.
4
SPEAKER_01
So how do they coexist?
4
SPEAKER_02
These are incredibly volatile relations.
4
SPEAKER_02
It s like all of reality TV is predicated on two narcissistic people getting together.
4
SPEAKER_02
There s a lot of jealousy.
4
SPEAKER_02
There s a lot of criticism.
4
SPEAKER_02
There s loud arguments.
4
SPEAKER_02
There is breakup makeup cycles that go on over and over and over again.
4
SPEAKER_02
So it happens all the time.
4
SPEAKER_02
You just kind of hope they don t reproduce.
4
SPEAKER_02
I m like, good for all of you.
4
SPEAKER_02
Let s put you all together, but just don t have kids.
4
SPEAKER_01
Now, what would be interesting is I assume they have to somehow assume the other role at times for it to function.
4
SPEAKER_01
So they are probably a narcissist at one point, but then they are also serving the other role that s required.
4
SPEAKER_02
To a point, but I think actually it just stays volatile.
4
SPEAKER_02
I remember working with a couple like this and he was 20 years older than her.
4
SPEAKER_02
So there s already a power difference.
4
SPEAKER_02
He had a lot more money than her, but she knew how to get him off.
4
SPEAKER_02
And so that was her, if you will, power, but he definitely was the more powered person because he held the money and she was in it for the money.
4
SPEAKER_01
I hate to stereotype, but I feel like it would over-index in these couples where it s like a super rich older man and then a super bombshell.
4
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, it s like two narcissists getting there.
4
SPEAKER_01
She s using him, he s using her.
4
SPEAKER_02
Exactly.
4
SPEAKER_02
It s parasitic.
4
SPEAKER_02
It s like a remora on a shark.
4
SPEAKER_01
Symbiotically parasitic.
4
SPEAKER_01
Symbiotically parasitic, right.
4
SPEAKER_00
But ultimately, I guess good for them.
4
SPEAKER_00
No.
4
SPEAKER_02
I mean, I d rather them pair up than one of them pair up with a nice guy.
4
SPEAKER_02
It tends not to last.
4
SPEAKER_02
I was speaking with someone recently where they had had an affair with someone and then they got into a committed relationship with that someone and they were shocked when that person cheated on them.
4
SPEAKER_02
I m like, past behavior predicts future behavior.
4
SPEAKER_02
There s a lot of exceptionalism here.
4
SPEAKER_02
I will be the exception in this narcissistic relationship.
4
SPEAKER_01
Sure.
4
SPEAKER_02
There s no such thing.
4
SPEAKER_01
Is it equally distributed through the genders?
4
SPEAKER_02
It depends on the type of narcissism.
4
SPEAKER_02
So with grandiose and malignant narcissism, it s more men.
4
SPEAKER_02
Kind of a male thing.
4
SPEAKER_02
Vulnerable narcissism, again, that more sullen, socially anxious, resentful, sad, victimized, equal gender distribution.
4
SPEAKER_01
Okay.
4
SPEAKER_01
And are there occupations that over-index?
4
SPEAKER_02
Yeah.
4
SPEAKER_02
CEOs and high corporate positions, entertainment, athletics.
4
SPEAKER_02
Well, there s a lot of money and power in all of these.
4
SPEAKER_02
Law, finance, politicians.
4
SPEAKER_02
And then from there, any occupation that is high status, high pay, and hard to get.
4
SPEAKER_02
Tech has a lot of narcissism.
4
SPEAKER_02
So these are high return, high status, risk-taking.
4
SPEAKER_02
Any job that has those characteristics,
4
SPEAKER_01
I could imagine a narcissist coming about later in life.
4
SPEAKER_01
This is why I say this.
4
SPEAKER_01
He s not, but we were with Bill Gates for a solid week in India and we re watching him move through the world and he does bend the whole reality around him.
4
SPEAKER_01
It s not his fault.
4
SPEAKER_00
Everyone is bending to him.
4
SPEAKER_01
And he s not asking for it.
4
SPEAKER_01
It s just like, there is a force field.
4
SPEAKER_00
You know what I m saying?
4
SPEAKER_01
So then the reality becomes, now I m going to be very fucking clear, he s not at all.
4
SPEAKER_01
But I was watching it thinking, how does he not become one?
4
SPEAKER_01
Because everyone around him is putting their best foot forward.
4
SPEAKER_02
You bring up something interesting.
4
SPEAKER_02
I actually wrote about it in my second book.
4
SPEAKER_02
The one we re talking about today is my third book on narcissism.
4
SPEAKER_02
My second book on narcissism, I get into this topic.
4
SPEAKER_02
And it s when we get into ideas of privilege and entitlement.
4
SPEAKER_02
So to your point, this idea of can something develop over a life?
4
SPEAKER_02
His feet don t touch the ground, that doors are opened, jets are waiting.
4
SPEAKER_02
He s not going through TSA pre-check.
4
SPEAKER_02
The military is following us through the airport.
4
SPEAKER_02
He doesn t do stuff like regular people.
4
SPEAKER_02
He doesn t wait in line at a restaurant.
4
SPEAKER_01
He s removed from the human experience on some level.
4
SPEAKER_02
He s removed from the human experience.
4
SPEAKER_02
So that can result in a, the only word that fits here is supercilious.
4
SPEAKER_02
I ve never met the man, so I don t know, but I ve been in the presence of people who have that kind of feet, never touched the ground money.
4
SPEAKER_02
There s a remoteness to them.
4
SPEAKER_02
There is a can t quite get in there with them.
4
SPEAKER_01
I was worried for him because he actually is a really beautiful, sweet man, and I thought, this feels very isolating.
4
SPEAKER_01
Everyone s too aware of your presence when you re around.
4
SPEAKER_02
You never get a down moment, like I d imagine the Queen of England might have had.
4
SPEAKER_02
But you walk through the world in a very certain way.
4
SPEAKER_02
I m guessing, though, I don t know, because I ve met people like this.
4
SPEAKER_02
I haven t met him.
4
SPEAKER_01
Also, I ve been around a million movie stars and I myself have some fame.
4
SPEAKER_01
I have to police it all the time.
4
SPEAKER_01
I ll say this to my wife.
4
SPEAKER_01
She s a very wonderful, optimistic person and believes the best in everyone.
4
SPEAKER_01
And we ll walk into Starbucks and the person will like bend over backwards to get a thing.
4
SPEAKER_01
And she ll go, that person was so nice.
4
SPEAKER_01
And I ll be like, well, and we re on TV.
4
SPEAKER_01
We can t necessarily assume that person is that.
4
SPEAKER_01
I try to be aware of it because it just becomes reality.
4
SPEAKER_01
And so if you re not constantly remembering,
4
SPEAKER_02
My point about this whole idea of the privileged entitlement, feet not touching the ground folks, is are they checking in with themselves and how are they treating those more vulnerable around them?
4
SPEAKER_02
So how are they treating household staff?
4
SPEAKER_02
How are they treating people on a set?
4
SPEAKER_01
Let me just say, my wife couldn t be nicer to everybody.
4
SPEAKER_02
No one thinks she s a narcissist.
4
SPEAKER_01
No, no, no, none at all.
4
SPEAKER_00
She s not.
4
SPEAKER_01
But she has such a benevolent view of everybody.
4
SPEAKER_01
She also misses that we do get special treatment sometimes, and it kind of blows over her head.
4
SPEAKER_01
But that s just because she really trusts and believes everyone.
4
SPEAKER_01
It s kind of a beautiful quality.
4
SPEAKER_02
Yeah, it s a beautiful quality, but it s a tricky quality, too.
4
SPEAKER_01
But I have to tell my kids, like, I point it out to my kids, hey, we got in because of this thing, and that s not how it works.
4
SPEAKER_01
And just so you know, like, this is this abstract thing that we got lucky, you know?
4
SPEAKER_02
So it s the awareness of that, but it s how dismissive someone might be because they have that power in the world.
4
SPEAKER_02
I don t know that they re necessarily narcissistic.
4
SPEAKER_02
I d imagine if somebody had like a bazillion trillion dollars, people must always be hitting them up for money all the time.
4
SPEAKER_02
So there has to be something that you ultimately must create a little bit of a cage around you because it s exhausting.
4
SPEAKER_02
And I think people make you other.
4
SPEAKER_01
What I think I ve observed with some people I ve known go through the ride where they just go to the top of the mountain.
4
SPEAKER_01
I think I have observed, if they re not on top of it, it does affect them.
4
SPEAKER_01
I m not going to say that it makes them a narcissist, but I just think if you re not really on top of it, and I don t even fall to them, it s just like the whole world changed around them.
4
SPEAKER_02
but they have a responsibility because they don t have to deal with the stuff all the rest of us have to.
4
SPEAKER_02
So with that, the one tax that should be on them is look alive because everyone else is struggling.
4
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, exactly.
4
SPEAKER_01
Yeah.
4
SPEAKER_01
Okay.
4
SPEAKER_01
So what s important about it s not you is I m asking you to just explain in great detail with the narcissists, but this isn t just a manual about narcissism.
4
SPEAKER_01
This is to help people that find themselves in relationships with narcissists.
4
SPEAKER_01
So let s talk about death by a thousand cuts.
4
SPEAKER_01
What is the pattern of the relationship that people might recognize?
4
SPEAKER_02
What s tricky is, especially when we re talking about intimate relationships, these relationships can start like a fairy tale.
4
SPEAKER_02
Attention, great experiences.
4
SPEAKER_02
Good night, my queen.
4
SPEAKER_02
How s my princess this morning?
4
SPEAKER_02
You know, like it s all that kind of stuff.
4
SPEAKER_02
It s a lot of attention within whatever means someone has.
4
SPEAKER_02
It might be reservations at an impossible restaurant or a picnic on the beach.
4
SPEAKER_02
It s gifts.
4
SPEAKER_02
It s little scavenger hunts.
4
SPEAKER_02
Sometimes it s that gamesmanship of you have a great day.
4
SPEAKER_02
It s good night, queen.
4
SPEAKER_02
And then crickets for three days.
4
SPEAKER_02
Now they re already playing the slot machine early in the relationship because they know three days later when they drop that message in, the other person s like, woo, they re flooded with that relief.
4
SPEAKER_02
And now you re buying in.
4
SPEAKER_02
That s actually how addiction works is that taking away that bad feeling.
4
SPEAKER_02
Reward is not how people become addicted.
4
SPEAKER_02
It s taking away icky feelings is how people become addicted.
4
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And so you re so relieved and you re like, I want to be the cool girl.
4
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I don t want to tell them that I didn t like that they didn t text me.
4
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And so now you get caught in their subjugated system quickly.
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This love bombing phase can last anywhere from six weeks to six months, usually not much longer than that, because I don t think the narcissistic person is going to play that game.
4
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And once they feel confident that they kind of gotcha, whether it s I love you, whether it s you move in, then they start pulling back.
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And I always say, you know, for a while it feels like 99% great and only 1% bad.
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and it s 90% good, 10% bad, 80, 20, 70, 30.
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At those numbers, you feel like, oh, that s just a relationship.
5
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It s settling in pains.
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I did want to flag that because I do have some concern that we re also talking about overlap of just falling in love with a non-narcissist.
5
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Well, wait till you hear the rest of this trajectory.
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OK, so 70, 30 people are still saying like, this is life.
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Everyone s putting their best foot forward at the beginning.
5
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At 50-50 it starts becoming a problem because half the time it s good, but half the time it s gaslighting and manipulation and being lied to.
5
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And narcissistic relationships, the consistent core of all of them, is about betrayal.
5
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Not necessarily lying, cheating, betrayal, but just not being attuned, not being mindful, not being aware.
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Then it becomes 40% good, 60% bad, 30, 70.
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Now when you re at 10-90,
5
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10% good, 90% bad.
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As soon as we get under that 50-50 point, that s when we get into this trauma bonding, where the person in the relationship is justifying it, trying to make sense of it, blaming themselves.
5
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I m trying to be perfect for this person and thinking it s me.
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Maybe if I
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lose weight, maybe if I make more money.
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And so they keep digging themselves into a deeper and deeper hole, more and more and more confused.
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Why is nothing working?
5
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Because nothing is going to work.
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That s sort of the lifespan.
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So what happens is when, and many people don t end their narcissistic relationships, but when they do, it s often the catalyst to that wasn t even the big, I caught you in bed with my best friend.
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It s they gaslit them in front of a boss.
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It was one more thing.
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And I can t, or they get into therapy and the therapist is like, yeah, no, this is not okay.
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Yeah.
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Oh, man.
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Yeah.
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It s intense.
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It s intense.
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It seems like a pretty well-worn strategy for the narcissist to isolate the person from outside people.
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A, is that a pattern?
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And B, is that a conscious move on the narcissist s part?
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The more severe the narcissism, the more, I think, awareness there is of the isolation.
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Yeah, you hear about this boyfriend, it s like, I don t want you hanging out with your friends, or I don t like your friends, and I don t like this person.
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I don t like your friends, I don t like your mom.
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No men, okay, that s, I guess, people joke.
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Take all your exes off social media.
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And I wonder how aware they even are that they re doing that, because obviously the threat to them is that they will run one of these ideas by a trusted friend and discover they are being gaslit.
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But the narcissistic person s not seeing the threat that specifically.
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You re isolating your supply.
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And other people are competition.
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It is support if it s a couple and their best friend s always like, oh, come on, don t say that to her.
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She s so great that narcissistic partner s like, I don t need her to have her agent in the room.
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Out.
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Okay, what is the fallout of this relationship?
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It s bad.
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People in these relationships are confused.
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They re anxious.
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They feel helpless and powerless.
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They ruminate all the time, like, could I have said that differently?
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Like, what was happening?
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So you get very distracted.
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People are very hyper-vigilant.
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They re on edge.
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I got to say it the right way.
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Did I say it the right way?
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Let me make sure the house is clean.
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Let me not mention that.
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People are lonely.
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They re isolated.
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They feel like nobody gets it.
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They feel like they look foolish.
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There s a lot of shame.
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How did I let it get this bad?
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People have trouble with sleep.
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Some people get physically ill.
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and the adrenaline, all the adrenaline, yeah, autoimmune I imagine.
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Okay, so if someone does recognize that they are in a relationship like this, you have a prescriptive course of action, one of them being radical acceptance.
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So what is radical acceptance and how does someone embrace it?
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In its most simple term, it s aware of this is it.
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It s not going to change and have realistic expectations for what this relationship is moving forward.
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Stop taking responsibility for their behavior and nothing you do or say is going to change their behavior.
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That s it.
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It s that simple and it s that complicated.
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It s funny how similar that is to dealing with an addict.
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Very similar.
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As you d imagine, I get called all the time with people who are dealing with someone they love in their addiction.
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And I m like, you re not going to like this.
5
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You got to throw them to the wolves.
5
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That s how this works.
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They have to have consequences.
5
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They got to get abandoned.
5
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They got to get to a low point.
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That s how it is.
5
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That becomes a slightly different conversation than this person you love, who a lot of people in the world think they re cool and great.
5
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Because remember, the narcissistic person is great at public appearances, but once they re in a car with you or once they re closed inside a space with you, they ll go off.
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So you will be in a dinner party with them and you re having a great time.
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You re even thinking, oh, I ve read this relationship wrong.
5
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Everybody loves him.
5
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And then you re in the car on the way home and it s like,
5
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And you re like, did anyone see that?
5
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And no one saw it.
5
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So they just think you re with a great guy.
5
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I am realizing when you describe that there is only one person I think I dated that wasn t actual narcissist.
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And I do remember when I wanted to break up with them, I was conscious of the fact that everyone else liked them and that I was losing something everyone wanted.
5
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Yep.
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I mean, it was a pretty powerful force, to be honest.
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It s also a self-doubting force.
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How could everybody be right about this person and I m the only one who doesn t see it?
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Have you ever heard of Solomon Asch s research?
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Basically, in that psychological research, think of like eight people in a circle, right?
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And two people in the circle were in the know.
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They were confederates, all right?
5
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Everyone else, just students.
5
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They were given a piece of paper with three lines.
5
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Clearly one was longer than the other, right?
5
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And they had to pick the longest line.
5
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And then the people in the study were like, obviously line B is longer, line B is... And then they d get to the first confederate, it d be like line A. You d start to see people changing their judgments.
5
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Yeah, this is kind of halo effect too or something.
5
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Halo effect, but it s also just that social...
5
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and all that happens, that we re very affected and we all have some level of suggestibility.
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But there is this sense, especially when it s human beings, and especially after you ve been through this relationship for a while and you re indoctrinated and you re already full of self-doubt, when you re thinking, everybody likes them, I don t, it s gotta be me.
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Well, also there s something deeply primitive from an anthropological lens, which is we are a social primate obsessed with status.
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So when we are linked to something with high status for all of time until now, that was our road to high status, which increased our survival and the survival of our children.
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So you re really breaking a very primitive instinct to turn your back on status.
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And we re a hominid species, but we obviously broke off and we are a status-oriented species.
5
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But even the way status works, also, if you take it back anthropologically, and you know this better than I, you studied it, is we also see differences in terms of, were they herding cultures?
5
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Were they hunting cultures?
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Farming cultures?
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All of that would even change how status would evolve in those kinds of communities.
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Have you interviewed Robert Sapolsky yet?
5
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Indy talked about his baboon research with you.
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I taught that study every semester I taught from the beginning of my career to when I retired.
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Tell me your favorite part, because I have a very favorite part.
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So I ll tell you my favorite part.
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In that one troop of baboons that the alphas all got killed by eating the meat.
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Okay.
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So they ate the tainted meat in the safari park.
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They all died leaving an alpha-less troop.
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And Sapolsky watched very carefully.
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And what did he do?
5
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Kept measuring cortisol levels.
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And what did he find?
5
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They all dropped.
5
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Oh, they dropped?
5
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They dropped.
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You remove the alphas and the stress went away.
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Cooperative grooming remained between the non-alpha males and the females.
5
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The health of the troop improved.
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Think of it institutionally.
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You work in a job where there s a bunch of narcissistic people and then the narcissistic person left and the cohesion and the harmony was palpably felt.
5
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Well, it s just like when an abusive person leaves, then the relief.
5
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But also grief.
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The challenge is it s so complicated that sometimes you sort of still feel in it.
5
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And so the radical acceptance, you would think like, OK, now I get it.
5
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No, there s a grief.
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I ve lost.
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I thought I was going to be in a happy marriage.
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I thought there was something that could be done.
5
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I thought I came from a normal family of origin.
5
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So all the dreams come crumbling in and now you realize that this marriage will never be happy or I may have to get a divorce and now my kids are growing up in two separate homes.
5
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People will say, I don t miss the narcissist.
5
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What I miss was the life I thought I was going to have.
5
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That s a lot of grief.
5
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Yeah, you got to mourn that.
5
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And you do.
5
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Some people say, I should be happy they re gone.
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I said, no, you shouldn t because you had invested a narrative and you in it.
5
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So grieve it.
5
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It is a loss.
5
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And we call it ambiguous grief because a lot of people don t identify it as such.
5
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But grieve it.
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And then when you come to that grief, giving it the time and space, now we can do the big work, which is the discernment.
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the awareness, the disengagement, because not everyone can leave.
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I d say all of us have at least one narcissistic relationship we cannot get out of.
5
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It s a family member, it s a colleague, it s just someone we just can t get out of the relationship.
5
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We still have to interact with them.
5
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That s where radical acceptance makes a big difference.
5
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Because I always tell folks, I know radical acceptance is working when you re no longer surprised by their bad behavior.
5
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Interesting.
5
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Yeah, because if you have a parent that has it, that s the hand you were dealt.
5
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And so you re deciding whether your kids are going to meet their grandparents or not.
5
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And so you re highly incentivized to maintain some version of a relationship.
5
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Interesting.
5
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So you think of those people just had radical acceptance over the reality of the dynamic.
5
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It would have less impact.
5
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Stop reacting, but it s also stopping surprised.
5
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If you have a narcissistic person in your life, you re still in contact with never share good news with them.
5
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Never share bad news with them.
5
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Stick to the weather, stick to there s an eclipse, stick to Topanga canyons closed.
5
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I ll tell you one part of that equation that benefits the oppressed in my personal experience with it is this very, very tasty habit we have of self-righteous indignation.
5
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So there is a great deal of pleasure when you observe the narcissist, be narcissistic, and you call it out amongst each other, and there is this kind of moral superiority
5
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That in its own way can get a tiny bit addictive.
5
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We get to go into the bedroom at night and be like, oh my God, you see this?
5
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And then I recognize like, we re getting a little bit of a bump out of this.
5
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We also enjoy the righteous indignation.
5
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I m going to pull it away from you as a bump, Dax.
5
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I m going to say it s an intimacy.
5
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It s a shared experience that you could have with each other in a workplace.
6
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It s actually some really interesting literature that shows in the face of a toxic boss, the cohesion that can happen, like, can you believe this?
6
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It can actually lead to innovation and better mental health in those people.
6
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I think this happens on sports teams, too.
6
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I agree.
6
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Yeah, like it bonds the team against...
6
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It s also two people are then validating each other s experience.
6
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Like not one person isn t crazy.
6
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We can see this is not healthy.
6
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That s true.
6
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I just know to please myself when I m enjoying something a lot or I m like, I m really enjoying this.
6
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We love telling the stories of the bonkers behavior.
6
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Yeah, I don t disagree with you.
6
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And I think where it gets challenging is if the status quo doesn t shift.
6
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In any case where there s a narcissistic person and people are sort of talking to each other and if you will, creating greater alliance around that, that s all good as long as it doesn t keep in a static toxic thing going.
6
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But if it s someone who might pop, like let s say it s a consultant that jumps into an organization from time to time and everyone s like, here we go.
6
SPEAKER_02
And then you all chuckle about it, but it beats the heck out of going home and staring at the ceiling at 3 a.m.
6
SPEAKER_02
and saying,
6
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I can t believe this person said this.
6
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And to your point, Monica, there s this attunement and intimacy, empathy, you know, shared ickiness can actually bring people together when you re sort of able.
6
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And it un-gaslights people, too.
6
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Yeah.
6
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Because you feel like, I did see that correctly.
6
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How can someone become narcissist resistant?
6
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Know what it is and know that it won t change.
6
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So that when you re in the face of it, you re like, oh, I see this.
6
SPEAKER_02
And we often feel this in our body.
6
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We often feel something about this person is making the hairs on the back of my neck stand up.
6
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Most people say, yeah, no, I wasn t thrilled with them, but I thought I was being judgmental by thinking that.
6
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I m like, no, your body always tells the truth.
6
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Your mind gaslights your body, but your body s usually on point.
6
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So trust that experience, number one.
6
SPEAKER_02
Number two, you need good social support.
6
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You need people around you, even if it s just one person who will say, whoa, that was messed up.
6
SPEAKER_02
And you re like, really?
6
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I thought so too, but I wasn t sure.
6
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That one interchange can save a person to say, okay, I am not crazy.
6
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And you might learn to slowly trust your judgment.
6
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And I know a lot of people talk blah, blah about meaning and purpose.
6
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In this case where it matters is you need something that gets you out of bed in the morning that has nothing to do with the narcissist.
6
SPEAKER_02
It could be work.
6
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It could be a creative pursuit.
6
SPEAKER_03
Do kids help sometimes?
6
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Kids can help a lot.
6
SPEAKER_03
As you start observing the narcissists do to the children, because I find people can be more protective of their children than they can themselves.
6
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They re more protective.
6
SPEAKER_02
But the key becomes, there s a radical acceptance around a narcissistic co-parent is only going to participate in parenting in a way that works for them.
6
SPEAKER_02
that aggrandizes them, that regulates them, that satisfies them, that fits with their schedule.
6
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So I think a lot of times people get frustrated because they re saying, I m doing everything.
6
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And the radical acceptance piece, what I ve worked with so many people in this situation, I say, and you re always going to do everything.
6
SPEAKER_02
And you re going to actually make it more messed up for your kids if you keep getting into the argument about why they re not helping with this.
6
SPEAKER_02
They re not doing it.
6
SPEAKER_02
If one day he s feeling it and decides to take the kids to the water park, just take it as the gift it is.
6
SPEAKER_02
instead of trying to get this person to get up and do the breakfast thing with them, because they re not going to consistently.
6
SPEAKER_03
Yeah, that s not spectacular enough.
6
SPEAKER_03
Stay tuned for more Armchair Expert, if you dare.
6
SPEAKER_03
Okay, so learning the fine art of discernment.
6
SPEAKER_03
Are there really obvious things people can look for right out of the gates?
6
SPEAKER_03
Is it too nuanced to actually give something quite prescriptive?
6
SPEAKER_03
I would imagine a narcissist that s good is smart enough to on a first date ask you about yourself, whether they re listening or not.
6
SPEAKER_03
They must have a playbook to some degree to dodge detection at the beginning.
6
SPEAKER_03
What are some telltale signs?
6
SPEAKER_02
Couple things.
6
SPEAKER_02
One is, are they interrupting you a lot?
6
SPEAKER_02
Is the conversation just sort of have that jagged edge of you feel like they re interrupting you or they re not really listening to you or they re distracted, they re looking at their phone a lot.
6
SPEAKER_02
It just sort of feels like they re not present or they re just sort of rude.
6
SPEAKER_02
Number two, watch how they drive.
6
SPEAKER_02
Narcissistic people, the research is very clear on that.
6
SPEAKER_02
They are bad, scary drivers.
6
SPEAKER_02
If I was in a car with them, I m like, no, I can tell you this person s narcissistic.
6
SPEAKER_02
There s at least a dozen published research articles about this.
6
SPEAKER_02
You mean, what do you mean?
6
SPEAKER_02
They drive fast.
6
SPEAKER_02
They come up behind someone quickly.
6
SPEAKER_02
The zig, zig, zig, zig, zig through the lanes.
6
SPEAKER_02
There s a lot of entitlement.
6
SPEAKER_02
There s a lot of entitled driving.
6
SPEAKER_03
I exhibit that.
6
SPEAKER_02
You ve got to stop, Dax.
6
SPEAKER_02
But he did.
6
SPEAKER_02
Because you don t want me to be on the freeway and not know who you are and say, narcissist.
6
SPEAKER_01
They will.
6
SPEAKER_01
OK, but then this is where you start parsing everything out, right?
6
SPEAKER_01
Because yes, on paper, that s not good for you.
6
SPEAKER_03
No, it s not a good look.
6
SPEAKER_01
But also, you
6
SPEAKER_01
I race cars.
6
SPEAKER_01
You race cars and you grew up in Detroit.
6
SPEAKER_02
Let me ask you this.
6
SPEAKER_02
Someone s in the car with you.
6
SPEAKER_02
Yeah.
6
SPEAKER_02
And they re like, hey, hey, hey, could you slow down?
6
SPEAKER_02
I m a little anxious.
6
SPEAKER_03
Every trip I m with my wife.
6
SPEAKER_02
Okay.
6
SPEAKER_02
And what do you say to her?
6
SPEAKER_02
I drive slower.
6
SPEAKER_02
There s the test.
6
SPEAKER_02
If you said, oh my gosh, grow the hell up.
6
SPEAKER_02
What is wrong with you?
6
SPEAKER_02
Stop being a baby.
6
SPEAKER_02
Stop being a baby.
6
SPEAKER_02
That would be the narcissistic response.
6
SPEAKER_00
Okay, there we go.
6
SPEAKER_00
I m just barely guiding myself.
6
SPEAKER_02
So if I get into their car with them.
6
SPEAKER_02
But other things that you might see in the beginning is how do they take feedback?
6
SPEAKER_02
You might even give them the most innocuous feedback, like, hey, the theater s over there.
6
SPEAKER_02
We could park here.
6
SPEAKER_02
What do you think?
6
SPEAKER_02
I don t know how to park a damn car.
6
SPEAKER_02
Now they do park in the wrong place and you re walking this long way.
6
SPEAKER_02
And now they realize they re wrong.
6
SPEAKER_02
And they re like, oh, I know.
6
SPEAKER_02
Yes, you re the genius who knows where to park the car.
6
SPEAKER_02
And I m the idiot.
6
SPEAKER_02
And you re like.
6
SPEAKER_02
Oh, wow.
6
SPEAKER_02
Okay.
6
SPEAKER_02
That s a lot.
6
SPEAKER_02
You re a know-it-all.
6
SPEAKER_02
They re a victim.
6
SPEAKER_02
One woman had told me how she had been dating a guy early and he had worn, I don t know what it was, like a jacket or something like that.
6
SPEAKER_02
It was blue and he had blue eyes.
6
SPEAKER_02
And she said, I love that you re wearing that jacket again.
6
SPEAKER_02
And I love how it brings out your eyes.
6
SPEAKER_02
And he s like, what are you trying to tell me that I only have one jacket?
6
SPEAKER_02
I have a whole closet full of clothes.
6
SPEAKER_02
So she was like, oh my God.
6
SPEAKER_02
And to run away, that kind of sensitivity to feedback, sensitivity to criticism of any kind, or even just sort of pointing something out.
6
SPEAKER_02
You might see that kind of early on.
6
SPEAKER_02
You might see how they treat people in any kind of a service profession of L.A.
6
SPEAKER_02
Parker.
6
SPEAKER_02
Are they either inappropriately flirty or are
6
SPEAKER_02
Are they rude, entitled, what do you mean my table s not ready kind of stuff?
6
SPEAKER_02
Those would be some of the ringers that I would say that we often see, that sort of dysregulation, the entitlement, making fun of someone who s struggling, kind of getting off on humiliation, that s an early sign.
6
SPEAKER_03
Okay, did you have any fear, because let s just back out of narcissism for one second.
6
SPEAKER_03
Most people leave a relationship and they can list you all 10 things the other person was doing wrong.
6
SPEAKER_03
That s very common.
6
SPEAKER_03
You break up.
6
SPEAKER_03
Why d you guys break up?
6
SPEAKER_03
She did X, Y, and Z. He did X, Y, and Z. Then they have 10 relationships and same thing.
6
SPEAKER_03
They had that and there s never what they did.
6
SPEAKER_03
Are you at all fearful that
6
SPEAKER_03
Because that might be a little bit of a predisposition of us that we might be arming people to quickly assess someone as a narcissist and just hop out of relationships and never explore what s going on with them.
6
SPEAKER_02
I don t because the vast majority of people, first of all, these signs I m giving you, whether it s the driving fast or being sensitive about the blue sweater, are embedded in all these other things that feel dazzling.
6
SPEAKER_02
So in all that dazzle, the one little argument in the parking lot, now you go into the best concert ever and you have a great time, you ve even forgotten about the parking lot.
6
SPEAKER_02
I think that actually most people will never attune to the icky stuff that happens in the beginning.
6
SPEAKER_02
That s number one.
6
SPEAKER_02
We re a social species.
6
SPEAKER_02
We are an attachment-oriented species.
6
SPEAKER_02
We want to be with other people.
6
SPEAKER_02
So when a person finds someone they re attracted to, drawn to, and enjoying their time with, they re much more likely to stick around for more abuse than they are to leave at the sign of red flags.
6
SPEAKER_02
That s another thing that we know.
6
SPEAKER_02
Unless somebody really has been burned in these relationships before.
6
SPEAKER_02
And what s very interesting is that modally, when a person s been through a narcissistic relationship,
6
SPEAKER_02
Even as they re going through a breakup, as a therapist, I ll tell you what I hear in the room is, I m so confused, Doc, I hope I did the right thing.
6
SPEAKER_02
I was upside down, like he cheated on me, but it s still a lot of self-blame.
6
SPEAKER_02
More of what I hear in that room is not, he did this, he did this, he did this.
6
SPEAKER_02
It s, is this me?
6
SPEAKER_02
It s not you, that s why the book s called It s Not You.
6
SPEAKER_02
It s like, what s wrong with me?
6
SPEAKER_02
What did I do wrong?
6
SPEAKER_02
Maybe I didn t try hard enough.
6
SPEAKER_02
Narcissistic relationships pull for much more of a strong thread of self-doubt by people who are not narcissistic in those relationships.
6
SPEAKER_03
Yeah.
6
SPEAKER_03
Now, quick question.
6
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You re listening to this.
6
SPEAKER_03
How does someone, I guess we ve laid out a bunch of them, but how do you know if you yourself are a narcissist?
6
SPEAKER_02
It s very promising if you re actually asking yourself that question, number one.
6
SPEAKER_02
Number two, are you present with other people?
6
SPEAKER_02
Do you listen to them when they have problems?
6
SPEAKER_02
How do you feel about other people s emotions?
6
SPEAKER_02
Do you truly believe you are entitled to special treatment?
6
SPEAKER_02
I think what we have is there s one group of people who is never gonna ask themselves those questions.
6
SPEAKER_02
They re not listening to this episode.
6
SPEAKER_02
They re not interested.
6
SPEAKER_02
Let s take them out, okay?
6
SPEAKER_02
You have a group of people who are not at all narcissistic, but were told they were narcissistic or selfish in the course of a narcissistic relationship.
6
SPEAKER_02
And those poor folks, I m saying, it s not you.
6
SPEAKER_02
Then you ve got this group in the middle.
6
SPEAKER_02
That is an interesting group that might have some of those unicorny features of, yep, now that I look back at my divorce, there s a little bit of taking accountability, going over what s happened, saying, I ve been told this by other people.
6
SPEAKER_02
I ve noticed that I ve burned a few bridges.
6
SPEAKER_02
you might have some people who are doing that, to which I d say, get thee to a therapist s office and talk it out and talk about what s happening for you.
6
SPEAKER_02
Now, narcissistic people are 60% more likely to drop out of therapy, and they tend to drop out when the heat gets turned on, when the work becomes more vulnerable, when it becomes more emotional.
7
SPEAKER_00
Well, they can often guess like the therapist if they re not really experienced.
7
SPEAKER_00
But the other thing is when the therapist puts their feet to the fire and doesn t want to just engage in storytelling, because a lot of narcissistic people will come into therapy and just tell stories.
7
SPEAKER_00
It s an audience.
7
SPEAKER_00
And when you try to push them to feeling, they ll often sort of brush off the therapist contemptuously.
7
SPEAKER_00
If you push too hard, they won t come back.
7
SPEAKER_02
Yeah.
7
SPEAKER_02
I had a moment when I was making an argument that I wasn t a narcissist.
7
SPEAKER_02
This is what happened.
7
SPEAKER_02
I was driving to work and I weirdly, as narcissists, tell the story, but here we go.
7
SPEAKER_02
I was driving to work and I was kind of just like going through my checklist.
7
SPEAKER_02
I have a great fear of being a narcissist.
7
SPEAKER_02
I m not sure why.
7
SPEAKER_02
Well, A, I exhibit some of these behaviors.
7
SPEAKER_02
But I go into work and we re in a scene rehearsing and one of the actors, she is complaining about
7
SPEAKER_02
her dialogue.
7
SPEAKER_02
And this is going on and on.
7
SPEAKER_02
It s taking up all this time.
7
SPEAKER_02
And I just had this one moment where I was like, okay, well, here s something that I think is unique to a narcissist, which is I don t like my dialogue either, but I recognize no one likes their dialogue.
7
SPEAKER_02
I don t think I uniquely have bad dialogue and the rest of the script s brilliant.
7
SPEAKER_02
She thought everyone else was brilliant.
7
SPEAKER_01
Again, specialness.
7
SPEAKER_02
Yeah, special.
7
SPEAKER_02
Like she was being uniquely punished.
7
SPEAKER_02
She was a victim
7
SPEAKER_02
Yeah, and I was like, I might be thinking I m being put upon, but I recognize everyone else is being put upon in the exact same way.
7
SPEAKER_02
It was like helpful.
7
SPEAKER_02
I was like, okay, well, don t do that.
7
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, but it s that perspective taking.
7
SPEAKER_00
And there might be times in an airport and you re waiting and there s a weather delay and they change the airplane and you re in a different seat and you might feel like, I can t believe I m being punished with this middle seat.
7
SPEAKER_00
And a narcissistic person would be throwing the fuss of the century, but a healthier person would say, OK, number one, if the other plane was broken, thank goodness they changed it out.
7
SPEAKER_00
Number two, can t control the weather.
7
SPEAKER_00
This sucks for everyone here.
7
SPEAKER_00
And so that capacity to take perspective in that way is all the difference in the world.
7
SPEAKER_00
Listen, every one of us has a moment where we ve behaved in an entitled way.
7
SPEAKER_00
We snapped at a receptionist.
7
SPEAKER_00
We rushed a friend off the phone.
7
SPEAKER_00
We were selfish and we chose what we wanted to do and it might ve hurt someone.
7
SPEAKER_00
What a healthy person does in contrast to a narcissistic person is a healthy person will register that, feel uncomfortable and attempt to make amends very quickly.
7
SPEAKER_00
in a meaningful way, call the friend and say, I am so sorry, I did not listen to you and I m not even gonna sit here and give you the litany of excuses.
7
SPEAKER_00
You deserve better, I hurt you, I m sorry.
7
SPEAKER_00
That kind of an apology is reparative and relationships move forward from that.
7
SPEAKER_00
A narcissistic person would blame you.
7
SPEAKER_00
How could you ask me this when you know I m so busy and it s all about projection of blame and that s a whole different experience for the other person.
7
SPEAKER_02
Man, so if 10% of the country is narcissists, that s 30 million people.
7
SPEAKER_02
That means 30 million other people are in a relation.
7
SPEAKER_02
I mean, not everyone.
7
SPEAKER_00
More than 30 million.
7
SPEAKER_00
Are you only in one relationship?
7
SPEAKER_02
Good point.
7
SPEAKER_00
How many dozens of people do you work with that are your friends, that are your family members?
7
SPEAKER_00
So every person probably has a little world around them of 30 to 50 people.
7
SPEAKER_00
When you start doing that math, that s a lot of people.
7
SPEAKER_00
I would imagine all of us are affected.
7
SPEAKER_02
Yeah, fascinating.
7
SPEAKER_02
Well, this is such a riveting topic.
7
SPEAKER_02
I m really glad that you ve studied it so much and have so much to share with us.
7
SPEAKER_02
I think everyone should check out It s Not You, Identifying and Healing from Narcissistic People.
7
SPEAKER_02
Also, you have a podcast.
7
SPEAKER_00
I did.
7
SPEAKER_00
Navigating Narcissism, the episodes are still out there.
7
SPEAKER_02
You may do other seasons.
7
SPEAKER_00
And we re doing this whole new thing with Fireside, Mark Cuban s new company, starting a network on there.
7
SPEAKER_00
It s much more interactive, so you can go check that out.
7
SPEAKER_02
I think that s going to be huge.
7
SPEAKER_02
Again, I really feel a swell of awareness around...
7
SPEAKER_00
I m so much aware.
7
SPEAKER_00
But you know what it is?
7
SPEAKER_00
This isn t about being able to say, can I pin someone as a narcissist?
7
SPEAKER_00
That s not interesting to me.
7
SPEAKER_00
It s about giving people permission to recognize when something that s happening in a relationship feels unhealthy or unsafe.
7
SPEAKER_00
Giving themselves permission to call it out to themselves, not to the other person.
7
SPEAKER_00
And also letting people know, again, it s not you.
7
SPEAKER_00
I can t tell you how much human potential we ve lost because people have been shamed for who they are because the narcissistic person wants to hold power.
7
SPEAKER_00
I m actually not even that interested in the narcissistic folks.
7
SPEAKER_00
They ve got enough really care about the people who are in these relationships.
7
SPEAKER_00
I want to let people know there s always room for an act, too Oh last question.
7
SPEAKER_02
Is it advisable?
7
SPEAKER_02
Is it someone s right if they are concerned and love someone that they feel like is in one of these relationships?
7
SPEAKER_02
To call that out
7
SPEAKER_00
Not call it out, because if the person s not ready to hear it, they re going to defend.
7
SPEAKER_00
It s a bit like what we see in substance use, right?
7
SPEAKER_00
If you push that on that person and say, I m not drinking too much, they don t have a problem, right?
7
SPEAKER_00
So what you want to do is you might see a narcissistic person talk to them at dinner, take their friend inside, say, hey, I wanted to touch base.
7
SPEAKER_00
Are you OK?
7
SPEAKER_00
I saw that.
7
SPEAKER_00
And I don t know, that felt disrespectful to me, but I just wanted to make sure you re OK.
7
SPEAKER_00
Your friend might even say, no, no, it s nothing.
7
SPEAKER_00
But then you ve planted a seed.
7
SPEAKER_00
I promise you that seed s going to take flight.
7
SPEAKER_02
Okay, great advice.
7
SPEAKER_02
I wouldn t know how to do that.
7
SPEAKER_02
I d be like, hey dude, she s a narcissist.
7
SPEAKER_00
A little bit more of a soft touch.
7
SPEAKER_00
A little bit more of a soft touch.
7
SPEAKER_02
You need a ride?
7
SPEAKER_02
You need me to bring the truck over and move everything out?
7
SPEAKER_02
Dr. Ramani, thank you so much for coming.
7
SPEAKER_02
This was really, really fun.
7
SPEAKER_01
Thank you so much for having me.
7
SPEAKER_02
One part company, one part scary.
7
SPEAKER_01
We gotta know.
7
SPEAKER_02
We gotta know the stuff.
7
SPEAKER_02
Thank you so much.
7
SPEAKER_02
I hope everyone checks out It s Not You.
7
SPEAKER_02
Be well.
7
SPEAKER_00
Stay tuned for the fact check.
7
SPEAKER_00
It s where the party s at.
7
SPEAKER_01
Okay.
7
SPEAKER_02
I m gonna start by saying I m disappointed.
7
SPEAKER_01
Why?
7
SPEAKER_02
From the description of your face until now, your face.
7
SPEAKER_01
Oh yeah.
7
SPEAKER_02
I almost wanna read what you wrote because I had the highest expectations.
7
SPEAKER_01
Okay.
7
SPEAKER_02
All right, let me just find it.
7
SPEAKER_02
Okay.
7
SPEAKER_01
I sent a text to Rob and Dax yesterday.
7
SPEAKER_02
Warning us that your face would be, let s see.
7
SPEAKER_02
Hey team, I got a herbal peel at my witch yesterday, and it takes multiple days, and the first part of that, all the pigmentation comes to the surface of your face, so just prepping you both that my face is going to look absolutely hideous and crazy tomorrow.
7
SPEAKER_02
I ll bring Zofran so everyone doesn t gag.
7
SPEAKER_02
And you said this is like someone spattered random dark purple paint on my face, smeared it all around, and then did it one more time.
7
SPEAKER_02
One more time.
7
SPEAKER_01
Yeah.
7
SPEAKER_02
So I was looking forward to like some purple spattery as promised.
7
SPEAKER_01
Okay.
7
SPEAKER_01
Well, yesterday was worse looking than today, which feels- Big gains last night?
7
SPEAKER_01
Well, it feels a little scary because it s supposed to get worse before it gets perfect, right?
7
SPEAKER_02
Yeah, so when you texted us, that must have been at the nadir of the experience, like the worst.
7
SPEAKER_02
And you thought maybe it was going to keep getting worse.
7
SPEAKER_01
Well, no, because it hasn t even started peeling yet.
7
SPEAKER_01
So, yes.
7
SPEAKER_02
But the pigment part.
7
SPEAKER_01
The pigment part.
7
SPEAKER_02
I m the most excited about the pigment, like peeling I ve seen.
7
SPEAKER_01
Right.
7
SPEAKER_02
I ve never seen someone s pigment completely change.
7
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, it looked very splotchy, dark purple spots.
7
SPEAKER_02
Okay, what is the process?
7
SPEAKER_02
What happened?
7
SPEAKER_02
What is the treatment you got?
7
SPEAKER_02
What does it do?
7
SPEAKER_01
It s like a chemical peel, but not chemical, it was herbal.
7
SPEAKER_01
So she put all this stuff on.
7
SPEAKER_01
And also, by the way, it s only on one part of my face.
7
SPEAKER_02
What do you mean?
7
SPEAKER_01
She only did one part of my face.
7
SPEAKER_01
We didn t do my full face.
7
SPEAKER_02
Tell me why.
7
SPEAKER_01
because that is the part of my face that has the most like scarring or hyperpigmentation.
7
SPEAKER_01
The other parts don t really have it.
7
SPEAKER_02
So no need.
7
SPEAKER_01
So no need.
7
SPEAKER_02
Don t fix what s not broke.
7
SPEAKER_01
Exactly.
7
SPEAKER_02
Okay.
7
SPEAKER_01
So she put some goop.
7
SPEAKER_02
And it s herbal?
7
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, it had like ginger, it had all this stuff.
7
SPEAKER_02
Okay, was it, did it sear?
7
SPEAKER_01
You know I don t ask too many questions, you know?
7
SPEAKER_02
Yeah, yeah.
7
SPEAKER_01
So first it had all these herbs and she like rubs it all over.
7
SPEAKER_02
I m like picturing twigs and leaves and like was it a chutney?
7
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, I think it was.
7
SPEAKER_02
Okay.
7
SPEAKER_02
Where s it happening?
7
SPEAKER_01
Where?
7
SPEAKER_02
In like a dark cave or?
7
SPEAKER_01
What?
7
SPEAKER_01
No, at my witch s office.
7
SPEAKER_01
She has a fancy office in Beverly Hills.
7
SPEAKER_01
And she smashes that all around, right, for a bit.
7
SPEAKER_02
And what s the feeling like when it s covering your face?
7
SPEAKER_01
That part?
7
SPEAKER_02
Any pain?
7
SPEAKER_01
It hurts a little.
7
SPEAKER_01
It does, okay.
7
SPEAKER_01
But nothing crazy, but then she s putting other stuff on it, and I don t know what that is, but I think it s like acids and all kinds of stuff.
7
SPEAKER_02
Okay.
7
SPEAKER_01
And it hurts really bad.
7
SPEAKER_02
Then it really takes off.
7
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, like as she s doing it, she s like, gonna feel like glass is cutting you.
7
SPEAKER_02
Ooh, wow, shards.
7
SPEAKER_01
And it did feel like that.
7
SPEAKER_02
Did you scream at all?
7
SPEAKER_01
I didn t but I did for a second have to like breathe deep.
7
SPEAKER_02
Center yourself and before you lost control of your.
7
SPEAKER_01
Bowels.
7
SPEAKER_02
Because herbal I just want to remind everyone like poison ivy s still herbal.
7
SPEAKER_01
Oh for sure.
7
SPEAKER_02
Like just because something s herbal doesn t mean it can t be like terribly harmful to your skin.
7
SPEAKER_01
Right.
7
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, I don t think it s harmful because she knows what she s doing.
7
SPEAKER_02
Oh yeah, I m just saying like, making it relative to acid, like, well, it s not acid.
7
SPEAKER_02
I was like, well, I d rather have acid peel than poison ivy.
7
SPEAKER_01
True, yeah.
7
SPEAKER_01
So she puts acids on, I don t know what acids.
7
SPEAKER_02
After the chutney.
7
SPEAKER_01
Exactly.
7
SPEAKER_01
And then that was kind of it.
7
SPEAKER_02
How long was the treatment?
7
SPEAKER_01
35 minutes, 30 minutes?
7
SPEAKER_02
30, 35 minutes.
7
SPEAKER_02
Yeah.
7
SPEAKER_02
And when you left, was your face on fire?
7
SPEAKER_02
Did it feel like it was on fire?
7
SPEAKER_01
Yes, it hurt.
7
SPEAKER_01
I looked crazy.
7
SPEAKER_02
Right immediately, you looked crazy.
7
SPEAKER_01
Very red, like so red.
7
SPEAKER_01
Oh, and at first it was all white.
7
SPEAKER_02
Whoa, what?
7
SPEAKER_02
How come white?
7
SPEAKER_01
Salts and stuff.
7
SPEAKER_02
Okay, and were you allowed...
8
SPEAKER_01
to put like any ice packs on it or anything?
8
SPEAKER_00
Nope.
8
SPEAKER_01
No, you gotta just- Absolutely not.
8
SPEAKER_01
You gotta live through the- The pain.
8
SPEAKER_01
Oh wow, how long did it last?
8
SPEAKER_00
All day and- That was Saturday?
8
SPEAKER_00
This was Saturday.
8
SPEAKER_00
And I had a lunch plan, I had to cancel it.
8
SPEAKER_01
Sure.
8
SPEAKER_00
Because I could not be in public.
8
SPEAKER_01
You probably couldn t even move your mouth to eat.
8
SPEAKER_01
You ve been sneering pain along the creases.
8
SPEAKER_00
Well, it was just embarrassing.
8
SPEAKER_00
It was one of those moments where you remember some people might recognize you.
8
SPEAKER_01
Mm, uh-huh, yeah, and you look insane.
8
SPEAKER_00
You look crazy.
8
SPEAKER_00
So I decided that I was gonna cancel all my plans for the day.
8
SPEAKER_00
I went home, and I started Six Feet Under.
8
SPEAKER_00
Oh, wow, blast from the past.
8
SPEAKER_01
Had you ever seen it?
8
SPEAKER_00
No.
8
SPEAKER_01
Great show, right?
8
SPEAKER_00
So good.
8
SPEAKER_00
I m loving it.
8
SPEAKER_00
I watched eight episodes.
8
SPEAKER_01
Wonderful.
8
SPEAKER_01
Young Peter Krause.
8
SPEAKER_00
I know.
8
SPEAKER_00
And I wanted to tell you, it s so funny to see him then.
8
SPEAKER_00
He s so good in it.
8
SPEAKER_00
And his character on that show.
8
SPEAKER_01
Is Krause being unparalleled.
8
SPEAKER_00
Yes.
8
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, he would tell me that all the time.
8
SPEAKER_01
Because I was working with him before I had seen Six Feet Under.
8
SPEAKER_01
I then fell in love with him and then went and watched Six Feet Under.
8
SPEAKER_01
And he said, you know, sometimes I m envious of your role because I used to have it.
8
SPEAKER_01
And it s really fun to be the good time Charlie.
8
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, it was definitely, I was like, oh, these two are brothers.
8
SPEAKER_00
This character in this show is actually Crosby s brother.
8
SPEAKER_01
Right, right, right.
8
SPEAKER_01
It s fun to see that range of people, right?
8
SPEAKER_01
Because like Peter and I could do an entirely different thing.
8
SPEAKER_01
And it would be a totally different dynamic.
8
SPEAKER_01
Peter, if you re listening, I ll do it.
8
SPEAKER_00
It did make me think when I was watching him, because he s so good and so believable, and then he s so good in parenthood in such a different role.
8
SPEAKER_01
But he s also like sexy in Six Feet Under, which is fun.
8
SPEAKER_01
He s so sexy.
8
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, yeah.
8
SPEAKER_01
Peter, you re so sexy in Six Feet Under.
8
SPEAKER_01
It should have been called Sex Feet Under.
8
SPEAKER_00
Oh my God.
8
SPEAKER_00
It s just weird, though, because
8
SPEAKER_00
I mean, I guess it just shows how good of an actor he is, but it does make you think like, who is he?
8
SPEAKER_00
Because when, when I watched parenthood, I definitely thought, oh, he must be like that.
8
SPEAKER_01
But like, yeah, I almost said Peter Braverman, no Adam Braverman.
8
SPEAKER_00
Yeah.
8
SPEAKER_00
Like a little more straight laced.
8
SPEAKER_01
No, not at all.
8
SPEAKER_01
No, he s not straight laced at all.
8
SPEAKER_00
So that, it was just so fun to see that connection, but it was a very fun day because I just watched TV all day.
8
SPEAKER_01
Like you had a cold?
8
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, like I had relegated the day to just like be a TV day.
8
SPEAKER_00
And because of it, I was in a very kind of.
8
SPEAKER_00
Rascally mood a little bit.
8
SPEAKER_00
I was kind of in a fantasy world that day Which was fun.
8
SPEAKER_00
I like giving myself that once a year Yeah, do what I kind of shouldn t do which is like live in fantasy.
8
SPEAKER_00
Yeah.
8
SPEAKER_01
So what were you living somewhere with Peter in this fantasy?
8
SPEAKER_00
I
8
SPEAKER_00
Lots of fantasies were scrolling through the day.
8
SPEAKER_00
And I just wasn t living presently at all.
8
SPEAKER_00
Which was fun.
8
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, it s your drug.
8
SPEAKER_00
It is my drug and I let myself have it for the day.
8
SPEAKER_01
Now does it come with any hangover on Sunday?
8
SPEAKER_00
No.
8
SPEAKER_01
Great.
8
SPEAKER_00
Unless, it would have if I couldn t snap out.
8
SPEAKER_01
Snap out, okay.
8
SPEAKER_00
That probably would have been bad.
8
SPEAKER_01
But you woke up and you were back to present day.
8
SPEAKER_00
I felt fine, it was sunny out.
8
SPEAKER_01
But there s no way you can be outside, right?
8
SPEAKER_01
Or can you?
8
SPEAKER_01
Did she give you any aftercare instructions?
8
SPEAKER_00
She typed out some instructions, but... You didn t read them?
8
SPEAKER_00
She made me read them out loud.
8
SPEAKER_00
Oh, wow.
8
SPEAKER_00
But they re just... They re written in which?
8
SPEAKER_00
Yeah.
8
SPEAKER_00
It s in a language I don t understand.
8
SPEAKER_01
A bunch of symbols.
8
SPEAKER_00
Yeah.
8
SPEAKER_00
No, it just says kind of normal stuff, but she just wants me to be checking in.
8
SPEAKER_00
She s going to tell me what to do.
8
SPEAKER_01
Now, how many times has she pitched you this treatment?
8
SPEAKER_01
Have you said no to this treatment in the past?
8
SPEAKER_01
And then said yes.
8
SPEAKER_01
No, that was the first time she just hit you with that out of the blue.
8
SPEAKER_00
She was like, I think we need to do this.
8
SPEAKER_01
Okay.
8
SPEAKER_01
I think that s what we got to do.
8
SPEAKER_00
Yeah.
8
SPEAKER_01
We don t really shock the system basically.
8
SPEAKER_00
Cause my skin is not in very good shape.
8
SPEAKER_00
She tries, like this is not extreme, but it s more extreme than what we do normally.
8
SPEAKER_00
And normally she does all these acids, but she calls it a peel, no peel.
8
SPEAKER_01
Right.
8
SPEAKER_00
So my skin needed a little something extra.
8
SPEAKER_01
Okay.
8
SPEAKER_00
But as I was leaving, there was an Indian lady in the waiting room and my witch was like,
8
SPEAKER_00
Oh, Monica, this is blah, blah, blah.
8
SPEAKER_00
She s had a lot of peels.
8
SPEAKER_01
Oh, she outed her.
8
SPEAKER_00
And then I was like, hey, my first one.
8
SPEAKER_01
And you were were you feeling insecure because your face was a flame?
8
SPEAKER_00
Of course.
8
SPEAKER_00
Yeah.
8
SPEAKER_01
Now, do you stereotype?
8
SPEAKER_01
Like remember when Sanjay was in here and it turned out you both didn t have coffee for the first time until after 30 years old, which I think is so interesting.
8
SPEAKER_01
And I said, it s hard for me not to assume, oh, I guess Indians don t drink coffee till late in life.
8
SPEAKER_01
So when you, if you bump into an Indian at the Durham and they, oh, she s had a million things.
8
SPEAKER_01
Do you think like, oh, this must Indians must deal with.
8
SPEAKER_01
These skin issues here in LA.
8
SPEAKER_01
Do you draw conclusions?
8
SPEAKER_01
Interacting with another Indian that s got the same story as you, are you inclined to guess that that s a common story?
8
SPEAKER_00
I think in certain circumstances, yeah.
8
SPEAKER_00
And then others, no.
8
SPEAKER_00
I didn t think that this time.
8
SPEAKER_00
I wasn t like, ugh, us Indians have all these skin problems.
8
SPEAKER_00
I just thought, oh, her skin looks really nice.
8
SPEAKER_00
this is probably gonna be good for me.
8
SPEAKER_00
Like my skin is probably similar to that person s skin type.
8
SPEAKER_00
And so if it s working on that, like if I see a white person who s had like a laser treatment.
8
SPEAKER_00
And they ve had a laser treatment.
8
SPEAKER_00
They might be like, this is so good, you should definitely do it.
8
SPEAKER_00
But my skin is different from their skin.
8
SPEAKER_01
Right, you re inclined to not take their advice.
8
SPEAKER_00
I just can t.
8
SPEAKER_01
Trust Whitey s.
8
SPEAKER_00
No, I just know that it s different.
8
SPEAKER_00
So I can only take that to heart so much.
8
SPEAKER_00
But this woman has the same skin as me, so then it felt like, oh, this is gonna be good.
8
SPEAKER_01
I did it as recently as yesterday.
8
SPEAKER_00
Say it.
8
SPEAKER_01
So, um, I noticed like Molly can stay in the sauna indefinitely.
8
SPEAKER_01
She could probably do three hours in there.
8
SPEAKER_01
Her discomfort seems to be lowest other than yours.
8
SPEAKER_01
And she s half Ecuadorian.
8
SPEAKER_00
Yes.
8
SPEAKER_01
And of course people live on tropical climates.
8
SPEAKER_01
They have a different setup.
8
SPEAKER_01
And so I literally just yesterday, I was like, yeah, Monica and Molly, they have tropical background.
8
SPEAKER_01
Gotta be part of it.
8
SPEAKER_00
I assume it is.
8
SPEAKER_00
Yeah.
8
SPEAKER_01
Now, if you re an Indian that s very sensitive to high heat, please hit me in the comments and say.
8
SPEAKER_00
Oh, yeah.
8
SPEAKER_01
Or Ecuadorian.
8
SPEAKER_00
Let us know.
8
SPEAKER_01
And if you see some, like, blonde, some towheads with translucent skin chilling in the snow in a t-shirt, which I can do.
8
SPEAKER_00
Yeah.
8
SPEAKER_01
I m sure if I were you, I d go like, these fucking white people, man, they can really tolerate some cold, which makes sense.
8
SPEAKER_01
We ve been living in a northern climate for so long.
8
SPEAKER_00
I think what you re saying makes sense.
8
SPEAKER_00
I just, it s not where my brain goes.
8
SPEAKER_01
I don t do that.
8
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, you re not, well, so I feel bad because I do, I do do it a lot with people, but I m really categorical and I m really obsessed with patterns.
8
SPEAKER_01
And I don t think that you re as obsessed with patterns as I am, or are you?
8
SPEAKER_00
I m very obsessed with psychological patterns.
8
SPEAKER_00
But I wouldn t say I pay much attention to racial patterns or like historic patterns.
8
SPEAKER_00
I care less about gender patterns.
8
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, I m constantly like if I m with my guys who ride at the motorcycle track and I m like listening to this banter and I m like picking up things that are different from the banter in my actory friends thing.
8
SPEAKER_00
Yeah.
8
SPEAKER_01
And then I m with some other subset of people I like to hang out with.
8
SPEAKER_01
I m like really conscious of all these different patterns.
8
SPEAKER_01
that they have and how they were drawn to each other and I just can t help but see it or be aware of it.
8
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, I mean that s an anthropological thing I m sure, a lens.
8
SPEAKER_01
Like you go to, I was at Monster Jam this week.
8
SPEAKER_00
Oh yeah.
8
SPEAKER_01
Yes.
8
SPEAKER_00
How was it so fun?
8
SPEAKER_01
Of course.
8
SPEAKER_01
I mean, it s the greatest show ever.
8
SPEAKER_01
There s fucking pyrotechnics, there s destruction, there s horsepower galore.
8
SPEAKER_01
It was the world finals.
8
SPEAKER_01
There were so many trucks.
8
SPEAKER_01
There s also one truck that s the zombie and they play Thriller.
8
SPEAKER_01
And the zombie thing has arms on it, like zombie arms.
8
SPEAKER_01
And everyone has to go like this.
8
SPEAKER_01
I m making the Thriller, the famous Michael Jackson movie s arms back and forth.
8
SPEAKER_00
Yes.
8
SPEAKER_01
And the entire arena does it.
8
SPEAKER_00
I know, that s so fun.
8
SPEAKER_01
It s so funny because it s so stupid.
8
SPEAKER_01
No one looks cool doing this.
8
SPEAKER_01
And so to watch everyone just play along.
8
SPEAKER_01
I like it.
8
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, I really like it.
8
SPEAKER_01
But again, I imagine the people who are going to the Philharmonic, they re not those people.
8
SPEAKER_00
Right.
8
SPEAKER_00
For the most part, probably not.
8
SPEAKER_01
Probably not going to do the zombie arms.
8
SPEAKER_00
Well, but then, and maybe this is why I don t think of life in that way, maybe, because I ve
9
SPEAKER_01
cross so many of those boundaries.
9
SPEAKER_01
That zombie arm thing reminds me of in college at Georgia games in the fourth quarter, the beginning of the fourth quarter, everyone does this whole motion thing.
9
SPEAKER_01
You re holding like four hands up and you re just like, it s so stupid.
9
SPEAKER_01
But yeah, but everyone does it and you re all doing it together.
9
SPEAKER_00
It puts, what s funny though about the zombie arms, is like I m watching it and I m like, ooh, and I go like, oh, I d be so embarrassed doing that.
9
SPEAKER_00
I m gonna do it because everyone s doing it.
9
SPEAKER_00
And it makes you feel fun.
9
SPEAKER_00
It does.
9
SPEAKER_00
Like it actually reverses into yourselves and you re now having fun because you re doing something so stupid that is inexplicable.
9
SPEAKER_01
Also, it does make you feel like you re a part of the tribe.
9
SPEAKER_01
Like you are included in something.
9
SPEAKER_00
Also there s an absurdity to we re doing it to this truck.
9
SPEAKER_00
So it s almost like actually no one s taking it seriously and yet everyone s abiding by it.
9
SPEAKER_00
That s like there s some magic to it.
9
SPEAKER_01
I agree, yeah.
9
SPEAKER_01
But I did that and do that.
9
SPEAKER_01
But then I would also go to the Philharmonic.
9
SPEAKER_01
So I guess it s harder for me because I bounce around a bit.
9
SPEAKER_01
And so it s not as interesting to me to do harsh categories, because I think I quickly feel like, but not really, because I can t even fully relate to that.
9
SPEAKER_00
And I think anyone that would join any one of the cultures would change.
9
SPEAKER_00
I I m just identifying the pattern within each subculture.
9
SPEAKER_00
Like what are the things that cue each other into the fact that we re an in-group.
9
SPEAKER_01
Yeah.
9
SPEAKER_00
Is very fascinating to me.
9
SPEAKER_01
Definitely.
9
SPEAKER_01
Yeah.
9
SPEAKER_00
Yeah.
9
SPEAKER_00
And there s certain things at the track and then there s certain things in F1 and there s certain things.
9
SPEAKER_00
Um, I was up getting interviewed and then grand marshaling, so I had to scream
9
SPEAKER_00
at the top of my lungs, Los Angeles, this is Monster Jam World Finals.
9
SPEAKER_00
And I made a commitment to myself before I started, I m gonna go to 11.
9
SPEAKER_00
Wow.
9
SPEAKER_00
I m gonna look right in the camera.
9
SPEAKER_01
Did you practice?
9
SPEAKER_00
No, because I knew I d be so embarrassed by what I was doing that it was be one, leave it all on the court.
9
SPEAKER_00
One and done.
9
SPEAKER_00
Yes.
9
SPEAKER_00
And I fucking went nuts.
9
SPEAKER_00
I was at peak volume.
9
SPEAKER_01
Is there a video?
9
SPEAKER_00
There has to be, yes, it plays live on YouTube and then it s on TV some delayed thereafter.
9
SPEAKER_00
But what was fun is, now as much as I say that there s this shared culture, I can t even guess who s gonna be there.
9
SPEAKER_00
So I start getting texts from people.
9
SPEAKER_00
Once I kick it off, Grand Marshall style.
9
SPEAKER_01
Make yourself known.
9
SPEAKER_00
Nate Tuck s like, holy shit, we re here.
9
SPEAKER_00
Oh my God.
9
SPEAKER_00
The boys just saw Uncle Dax.
9
SPEAKER_00
Almost popping a vein screaming to get excited for monster trucks.
9
SPEAKER_00
And then my old agent, he s there with his boys.
9
SPEAKER_00
Uh, yeah, so it was, it was really fun.
9
SPEAKER_00
And then I guess the thing I wanted to say is that Charlie eight, we were there for a while.
9
SPEAKER_00
We got there at five.
9
SPEAKER_00
We did not leave until nine 39 40 in Charlie eight for 100% of the time he was there.
9
SPEAKER_01
Wow.
9
SPEAKER_00
It just never stopped.
9
SPEAKER_01
What did he eat?
9
SPEAKER_01
What was he eating?
9
SPEAKER_00
Every single thing.
9
SPEAKER_00
Chicken wings, chicken tenders, hot dogs, hamburgers.
9
SPEAKER_00
Wow.
9
SPEAKER_00
Smart corn.
9
SPEAKER_00
Popcorn.
9
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, smart popcorn, Fritos, a couple brownies, then back a salad.
9
SPEAKER_00
Whoa.
9
SPEAKER_00
He would eat, and that would take, whatever, he d make a plate, he d eat that for about 30 minutes, then he d get up, and then he d return with another plate, and then another, and another, and it just never stopped.
9
SPEAKER_00
Wow.
9
SPEAKER_00
And I had eaten a lot myself, but what he did was,
9
SPEAKER_01
Epic.
9
SPEAKER_00
I felt like he was in a competition with somebody, but we didn t know who.
9
SPEAKER_00
And then in the box next to us, John Legend.
9
SPEAKER_01
Oh my God.
9
SPEAKER_00
I m not guessing he s there at the Monster Truck.
9
SPEAKER_00
Right.
9
SPEAKER_00
But anyone with a little kid, you might find yourself at Monster Jam.
9
SPEAKER_00
Interesting.
9
SPEAKER_00
Because the little ones love Monster Jam.
9
SPEAKER_00
You know, the adults do too, once you go.
9
SPEAKER_01
Yeah.
9
SPEAKER_00
Alba was in our box.
9
SPEAKER_01
Cool.
9
SPEAKER_00
Yep.
9
SPEAKER_00
It was a real throw a dart at a board.
9
SPEAKER_00
Who s going to be there?
9
SPEAKER_00
You d picture all the rednecks like me would be there.
9
SPEAKER_01
Well, I guess you re sort of defying what you just said.
9
SPEAKER_00
I know.
9
SPEAKER_00
I am.
9
SPEAKER_00
I know.
9
SPEAKER_00
I know.
9
SPEAKER_00
I know.
9
SPEAKER_00
But we re, but let s be honest.
9
SPEAKER_01
Harmonic when you re talking about John legend.
9
SPEAKER_01
Okay.
9
SPEAKER_01
We have a cliffhanger.
9
SPEAKER_01
Did you cry on Friday?
9
SPEAKER_01
You did the ancestor.
9
SPEAKER_00
Okay, so I don t know how much to say because it ll air and I don t want to ruin anything of their show.
9
SPEAKER_01
I get that.
9
SPEAKER_00
But I did not cry.
9
SPEAKER_01
Okay.
9
SPEAKER_00
I laughed so uproariously for such a long period of it because, and I can t wait for this to air.
9
SPEAKER_00
Yeah.
9
SPEAKER_00
There s so many more stories about the Honchos.
9
SPEAKER_00
And I thought, there s no way there s more.
9
SPEAKER_00
I have all the newspaper clippings, multiple murders, multiple jailbreaks, multiple robberies, kidnappings.
9
SPEAKER_01
Yeah.
9
SPEAKER_00
Oh no, there was still a couple major doozies that they had found.
9
SPEAKER_00
And then I guess I just found out that side of the family is like one of the first in on Kentucky.
9
SPEAKER_00
Like they, they were in Kentucky since like 1740 or something crazy.
9
SPEAKER_00
And then same with Michigan.
9
SPEAKER_00
Like one of my relatives is the oldest existing settler of Monroe, Michigan.
9
SPEAKER_01
Oh, cool.
9
SPEAKER_00
You know what s so weird is I ve already said, and I told him and warned him, I don t feel any connection.
9
SPEAKER_00
And even while I was hearing a lot of the stuff, I m like, yeah, those sound like people in a history book or something.
9
SPEAKER_00
But I did find myself getting a bizarre amount of pride knowing that we ve been in Michigan forever.
9
SPEAKER_01
That s lovely.
9
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, I love Michigan and I love that we ve been set up there since way before it was a state.
9
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, that s cool.
9
SPEAKER_01
When you re talking, it s...
9
SPEAKER_00
Putting you to sleep a little bit?
9
SPEAKER_01
No, it s not putting me to sleep, but it is reminding me that my brain does not register time.
9
SPEAKER_01
Like, when you say 1740, I black out when you say that.
9
SPEAKER_01
Like, I don t know what that means, really.
9
SPEAKER_00
Well, I wanna give you a couple of markers I use to make it relevant.
9
SPEAKER_01
Okay.
9
SPEAKER_00
I go 1492 we got here.
9
SPEAKER_00
Sail the ocean blue.
9
SPEAKER_00
Is that the same?
9
SPEAKER_01
Columbus sail the ocean blue.
9
SPEAKER_00
Okay.
9
SPEAKER_00
Yeah.
9
SPEAKER_00
1492 we got here.
9
SPEAKER_01
Early 1600s Mayflower.
9
SPEAKER_00
Okay.
9
SPEAKER_01
That s helpful.
9
SPEAKER_00
The Enlightenment, I got kind of preoccupied with this, he wanted me to move on, but my French relatives that left France, my paternal grandfather s side, they left in the 1600s, and I was like, oh wow, that was during the Enlightenment.
9
SPEAKER_00
Like if you think of, there s like some, you only have to remember like four or five of them.
9
SPEAKER_00
There s some huge compartments of history, which is like 1300, you get the Renaissance in Italy and that s, you get Galileo.
9
SPEAKER_00
We start figuring out we revolve around the sun.
9
SPEAKER_00
It s a humongous, you know.
9
SPEAKER_01
Advancement.
9
SPEAKER_00
Huge leap forward in what we understand.
9
SPEAKER_00
And then in France, you get the Enlightenment in the 1600s, and you have René Descartes, and you have the first atheists, and you have science, and Newton, and all this stuff.
9
SPEAKER_00
Those are huge.
9
SPEAKER_00
Those ones I remember.
9
SPEAKER_00
And then, of course, 1776, we declare our independence.
9
SPEAKER_01
Right.
9
SPEAKER_00
So whenever you re finding out someone got here in 1740, you re like bonkers.
9
SPEAKER_00
They came here when it was British and the Revolutionary War hadn t happened yet.
9
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, that s true.
9
SPEAKER_01
Okay, cool, cool.
9
SPEAKER_00
The Honchels owned slaves, surprise.
9
SPEAKER_01
As we knew.
9
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, that was ridiculous.
9
SPEAKER_00
But the people in Michigan never did.
9
SPEAKER_01
Oh wow.
9
SPEAKER_00
The majority of the family didn t.
9
SPEAKER_01
That s good.
9
SPEAKER_00
Only one threat.
9
SPEAKER_01
That s pretty good, but it was fun.
9
SPEAKER_00
He s so sweet.
9
SPEAKER_01
Yeah.
9
SPEAKER_00
By the way, he s very much like us.
9
SPEAKER_00
He s an irreverent motherfucker.
9
SPEAKER_00
He is so rascally and playful, like the way he s talking to his crew and he clearly has a great relationship with everybody.
9
SPEAKER_00
Yeah.
9
SPEAKER_00
And he s like, he s a provocative, rascally guy.
9
SPEAKER_00
Yeah.
9
SPEAKER_00
So yeah, we had a really good time and he had ordered lunch from somewhere.
9
SPEAKER_00
And I said, Skip, we are like eight blocks from the best pastrami in North America.
9
SPEAKER_00
Langers.
9
SPEAKER_00
Langers.
9
SPEAKER_00
So I talked him into getting a corned beef and pastrami platter, which he got and I got.
9
SPEAKER_00
That was a highlight of the day for sure.
9
SPEAKER_00
Yum.
9
SPEAKER_00
And that knocked him right on his ass.
9
SPEAKER_00
He was floored with how good it was.
9
SPEAKER_00
So I felt pretty cool that I had hit him with a legendary historic.
9
SPEAKER_01
That is cool.
9
SPEAKER_00
But it was totally fun and he s lovely.
9
SPEAKER_01
I went to a children s play on Friday.
9
SPEAKER_00
You saw Lily s.
9
SPEAKER_01
I saw went to Lily s play.
9
SPEAKER_00
She was Wednesday.
9
SPEAKER_01
Yes.
9
SPEAKER_01
She was Wednesday in the Adams family at a private school here in Los Angeles.
9
SPEAKER_01
That s like very artsy.
9
SPEAKER_01
And it was so good.
9
SPEAKER_01
It was so good.
9
SPEAKER_00
Kristen said the production value was like off the charts.
9
SPEAKER_00
It was like watching a real Broadway play.
9
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, it s incredible.
9
SPEAKER_01
But also just seeing these kids just really give it their all, and they re really good.
9
SPEAKER_01
They re very talented.
9
SPEAKER_01
It was so life-affirming and heartwarming.
9
SPEAKER_01
It was just lovely.
9
SPEAKER_01
And it made me so happy to see all these beautiful children.
9
SPEAKER_00
Was it after school?
9
SPEAKER_01
Yeah.
9
SPEAKER_00
Okay.
9
SPEAKER_01
just seeing these kids being so confident and playing with comedic timing.
9
SPEAKER_00
Yeah.
9
SPEAKER_01
It was sweet.
9
SPEAKER_00
And you know what s great, as she said, unanimously all thought Saturday show was the best by far.
9
SPEAKER_00
They thought Friday show was a disaster.
9
SPEAKER_01
Damn it.
9
SPEAKER_01
And that s what I went to.
9
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, yeah.
9
SPEAKER_00
But isn t that funny?
9
SPEAKER_00
But it wasn t at all.
9
SPEAKER_00
I know.
10
SPEAKER_00
It s like the mind of a performer.
10
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, exactly.
10
SPEAKER_00
Cause that s what Eric was saying.
10
SPEAKER_00
He s like, do you think that there s really any difference between these shows?
10
SPEAKER_00
Like they re all certain of what one was great and bad.
10
SPEAKER_00
And I said, yeah, it d be interesting if like AI could watch the show and objectively say whether it was good or worse.
10
SPEAKER_01
I mean, it would be like 1%, which to them, I m sure, I m sure Friday was just, I mean, there was like, there was a couple sound, like there was a couple sound things.
10
SPEAKER_00
Tech issues?
10
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, a couple tech issues.
10
SPEAKER_00
Okay.
10
SPEAKER_01
But like.
10
SPEAKER_00
Come on.
10
SPEAKER_01
Barely.
10
SPEAKER_00
Not like when you go see a play at my kid s school.
10
SPEAKER_00
No.
10
SPEAKER_00
It s just one tech issue after another.
10
SPEAKER_01
But that, yeah, that s so fun in a different kind of way.
10
SPEAKER_00
Well, they gotta really be thinking on their toes.
10
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, they do.
10
SPEAKER_00
It gives you a different skill set when you re going to the public school.
10
SPEAKER_00
Oh, so funny.
10
SPEAKER_01
But yeah, anyway, so that was very sweet.
10
SPEAKER_00
Oh, quick update.
10
SPEAKER_01
Yeah.
10
SPEAKER_00
Oh, and classic me.
10
SPEAKER_00
And you were the victim of one of my underestimations of a task, which is I thought I could paint the fence around the property in a day.
10
SPEAKER_00
Sure.
10
SPEAKER_00
And what it ended up taking us like seven, eight days.
10
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, a while.
10
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, yeah, a long, long time.
10
SPEAKER_00
Well, similarly, I m like, now that I played pickleball one time and loved it, I m like, I gotta convert my driveway to a pickleball court.
10
SPEAKER_01
Yes.
10
SPEAKER_00
So that was Thursday.
10
SPEAKER_00
I was like, okay, I m doing this.
10
SPEAKER_00
It involved like moving my little portable carports to a different area, cleaning out a whole area, getting the bus all the way up against the fence.
10
SPEAKER_00
And then I m like, okay, now I got to power wash the driveway so that when I put the tape down for the lines, it sticks.
10
SPEAKER_00
It s not dirty.
10
SPEAKER_01
Yeah.
10
SPEAKER_00
Am I gonna be able to do this in one hour for sure.
10
SPEAKER_00
Power wash rip right through this.
10
SPEAKER_00
Five uninterrupted hours of power washing.
10
SPEAKER_00
Never stopped for five hours.
10
SPEAKER_00
My lower back.
10
SPEAKER_00
Oh, I did an honest days work and that wasn t even the point, but it just occurred to me because I was in so much pain that I was like, yeah, that s an honest day work.
10
SPEAKER_00
I almost need to go to the doctor.
10
SPEAKER_00
But yes, uh, it was, it turned out to be way bigger project than I thought, but I did get the tape down and we did play for the first time as a family Saturday morning and Lincoln s obsessed, which I love and she s good.
10
SPEAKER_00
You can play, you can actually play with her.
10
SPEAKER_01
Yeah.
10
SPEAKER_00
And now I m debating whether or not I go all the way and paint the pavement.
10
SPEAKER_00
Oh, it s really hard to know if this is something we re going to like for a week or for the rest of our lives.
10
SPEAKER_00
Cause I think once that paint goes down, that s that like sport court paint.
10
SPEAKER_01
Maybe you give it a minute, I would give it a minute.
10
SPEAKER_00
I wish there was some kind of halfway step you could take, like paint that you knew would wear off.
10
SPEAKER_01
It s also because it s right in front of your house.
10
SPEAKER_00
It is, yes, it d be a full, and we got a net that s got wheels on it, so we can just roll it in, roll it out, roll it out.
10
SPEAKER_01
I like what it s looking like now.
10
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, it would be really nice though, right, if it was also painted?
10
SPEAKER_01
It would be really nice.
10
SPEAKER_00
When you re playing.
10
SPEAKER_01
When you re playing, probably, but also,
10
SPEAKER_00
It s a big swing.
10
SPEAKER_00
The funny thing is, is I learned no lesson with the power washing.
10
SPEAKER_00
Cause I m telling you, I know I could have that court painted.
10
SPEAKER_01
Oh my God.
10
SPEAKER_00
In two hours for sure.
10
SPEAKER_00
I ve already thought it through.
10
SPEAKER_00
Like I get all my buckets of paint lined up and my trays and my rollers definitely be able to knock that out in two hours.
10
SPEAKER_01
All right.
10
SPEAKER_01
I,
10
SPEAKER_00
Chris is like, you re gonna have to hire someone to come do that if you re gonna do that.
10
SPEAKER_00
And I m like, absolutely not.
10
SPEAKER_00
I know I can do it in an hour, why would I have someone do it?
10
SPEAKER_01
Can you undo it?
10
SPEAKER_01
Can you paint over it regular?
10
SPEAKER_00
Well, I would have to then power wash it with a really strong power washer to get that paint off.
10
SPEAKER_01
Okay.
10
SPEAKER_00
Yeah.
10
SPEAKER_01
Okay.
10
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, it s a pretty permanent.
10
SPEAKER_00
I think you have to wait.
10
SPEAKER_00
It s a tattoo.
10
SPEAKER_00
I d be putting a tattoo on it right away.
10
SPEAKER_01
Oh my God, you need to wait.
10
SPEAKER_00
Can t do that.
10
SPEAKER_01
You literally just.
10
SPEAKER_00
I just did it.
10
SPEAKER_00
We ve only had one weekend with it.
10
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, and you just got the house to like where you guys wanted it to be for five or six years.
10
SPEAKER_00
The workers are just about to leave, yeah.
10
SPEAKER_01
And just wait.
10
SPEAKER_00
Okay.
10
SPEAKER_01
I know it s hard to wait.
10
SPEAKER_00
I mean, there s 100% the addict in me, which is like, I did it once and it was so fun for two hours, I m like, I wanna do this now all the time.
10
SPEAKER_01
I know.
10
SPEAKER_00
Yeah.
10
SPEAKER_01
And you might.
10
SPEAKER_00
I might.
10
SPEAKER_00
I did get some great shoes.
10
SPEAKER_00
I m happy I made that decision.
10
SPEAKER_00
That s fun.
10
SPEAKER_01
I really, really wanna learn.
10
SPEAKER_00
It s right there.
10
SPEAKER_01
But you have to teach me.
10
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, so easy.
10
SPEAKER_00
I ll teach you in one second.
10
SPEAKER_00
You ll be paddling around.
10
SPEAKER_00
I bet once you play, you ll be like, yeah, you gotta paint this.
10
SPEAKER_00
This is how I could get you on my side, probably.
10
SPEAKER_01
Maybe.
10
SPEAKER_01
Well, does Kristen not want to?
10
SPEAKER_00
No, Kristen s more rash than I am, weirdly.
10
SPEAKER_00
Weirdly, our dynamic, I have to pump the brakes on her.
10
SPEAKER_00
She also will be like, yeah, let s do this whole thing.
10
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, you guys are kind of similar in that way.
10
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, we kinda like gas and matches when it s like, let s do this crazy thing.
10
SPEAKER_01
Yeah.
10
SPEAKER_00
Yeah.
10
SPEAKER_00
It s really turned into a sports complex.
10
SPEAKER_01
I know.
10
SPEAKER_00
With the volleyball court and now the pickleball court.
10
SPEAKER_01
Volleyball is easier to be rid of, it s just a net.
10
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, and the grass is the grass.
10
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, so.
10
SPEAKER_00
We need an ice rink in the winter.
10
SPEAKER_00
I think that s next.
10
SPEAKER_00
Hockey, over the pool.
10
SPEAKER_00
No, I got a bunch of driveway I can use that s all the cobble.
10
SPEAKER_00
I d turn that into an ice rink.
10
SPEAKER_01
You didn t even go classic basketball court, which would have been easy.
10
SPEAKER_00
That s coming because.
10
SPEAKER_01
Oh, it is?
10
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, that s no sweat because Lincoln has showed just a tiny bit of interest in that.
10
SPEAKER_00
So of course I m gonna have to put up a. Basketball hoop.
10
SPEAKER_00
Basketball hoop, but that s nothing.
10
SPEAKER_00
I put one up at my old house.
10
SPEAKER_01
Yeah.
10
SPEAKER_00
That was also a thing.
10
SPEAKER_00
I was like, a half hour.
10
SPEAKER_00
dig this hole, mix this cement, put this pole in, and the guy was like, sun s going down, I m trying to level the pole.
10
SPEAKER_01
It s a blessing.
10
SPEAKER_01
It is a blessing, because if you were more like me, it just won t happen.
10
SPEAKER_00
I wouldn t tackle any of this stuff.
10
SPEAKER_00
Sometimes you win, sometimes you lose.
10
SPEAKER_01
Does Lincoln use her pavilion?
10
SPEAKER_00
Never, that I know of.
10
SPEAKER_00
Maybe.
10
SPEAKER_00
That one doesn t bum me out because it s really the lesson we re always trying to live by, which is like, it was all about the process.
10
SPEAKER_00
I know.
10
SPEAKER_00
I don t really give a fuck if she uses it or not.
10
SPEAKER_00
Like her and I building that thing was one of my great memories.
10
SPEAKER_00
Of course.
10
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, yeah.
10
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, it s not about.
10
SPEAKER_00
And we ll convert it into a weed smoking shack when they re teenagers, I guess.
10
SPEAKER_01
Speaking of process, I had therapy on Saturday, not the end of our session.
10
SPEAKER_01
She was imploring me to do more present awareness exercises.
10
SPEAKER_01
So I m gonna start doing.
10
SPEAKER_00
Did she teach you some or did she refer you to any resources?
10
SPEAKER_01
More like I need to probably start meditating.
10
SPEAKER_00
Breathing stuff maybe.
10
SPEAKER_01
Yeah.
10
SPEAKER_00
Gratitude list?
10
SPEAKER_01
More meditation, it s just like, instead of like future and past, like living in those areas, it s a reminder that all I have is the second, that s gone.
10
SPEAKER_01
Now I have this, so that s gone.
10
SPEAKER_01
So it s just being here.
10
SPEAKER_01
And so meditation s great for that.
10
SPEAKER_01
So I m gonna start doing that.
10
SPEAKER_01
I might start reading some Buddhist stuff.
10
SPEAKER_01
She was talking about.
10
SPEAKER_00
Well, a lot of people in the comments ask, what s the book I m reading?
10
SPEAKER_00
I don t have the author s name memorized, but the book is called What the Buddha Taught.
10
SPEAKER_01
Okay.
10
SPEAKER_00
Walfa Rahula Thero.
10
SPEAKER_00
I assume he did a good job, but I can t know for sure.
10
SPEAKER_01
Well, there s no way to know.
10
SPEAKER_00
Well, we ve been getting a suspicious amount of signals.
10
SPEAKER_00
We ve had like four experts in a row that their whole scientific thing really ended up being Buddhism, and they acknowledged as much.
10
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, and Camila Cabello.
10
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, she was saying it, but then the memory expert and James Doty.
10
SPEAKER_01
Yep.
10
SPEAKER_00
And then I sat next to a guy at this dinner, at this conference I went to last week, and he teaches at Madison, same thing, neuroscientist, obsessed with Buddhism.
10
SPEAKER_01
Oh, cool.
10
SPEAKER_01
Anyway, okay, this is for Dr. Romney, narcissism.
10
SPEAKER_00
Very interesting, so interesting.
10
SPEAKER_00
Yes, very.
10
SPEAKER_01
So, the addiction and narcissism link, connection, whatever.
10
SPEAKER_01
There s a article, Medical News Today.
10
SPEAKER_01
Okay, both grandiose narcissism and vulnerable narcissism show a strong link to substance use disorders.
10
SPEAKER_01
A 2019 article in Frontiers in Psychiatry looks at the relationship between the problematic use of substances and narcissism, concluding that self-esteem plays a major role.
10
SPEAKER_01
Both fluctuating self-esteem and low self-esteem can lead to the use of alcohol, drugs, or other addictive behaviors as a method of validation, which is important to people with narcissism.
10
SPEAKER_01
The authors of the article also note that grandiose narcissism is a factor in several other forms of addiction, such as social media use, smartphone use, compulsive shopping, gambling, compulsive working.
10
SPEAKER_01
There are widely accepted parallel traits between people with narcissistic tendencies and those who abuse drugs, including the ability to see the consequences of actions known as invulnerability, a lack of empathy, feelings of superiority problems with fluctuating or low self-esteem defensive behaviors to deflect scrutiny.
10
SPEAKER_00
Okay.
10
SPEAKER_01
So.
10
SPEAKER_00
Oh, um, a few different people have pointed out in the comments that my new favorite word is overindexing.
10
SPEAKER_00
And so, and I ve been very forthcoming and admitting that in the comments, but in case you re not on the comments and you ve been thinking, I just want to acknowledge.
10
SPEAKER_00
Yes.
10
SPEAKER_01
Yeah.
10
SPEAKER_00
I am.
10
SPEAKER_00
Um, overindexing is my favorite word.
10
SPEAKER_01
You re overindexing on saying overindexing.
10
SPEAKER_00
Um, so just owning it a thousand percent.
10
SPEAKER_00
I use it probably too much.
11
SPEAKER_00
But I will say, it weirdly comes up so much on this show.
11
SPEAKER_00
We re talking about things where people have a dis... Here s why I love it.
11
SPEAKER_00
It s so much more efficient than disproportionate outcome, and then you got to specify whether it s high or low.
11
SPEAKER_01
I agree.
11
SPEAKER_01
I think it s fine.
11
SPEAKER_00
Okay.
11
SPEAKER_00
I mean, it s not bad.
11
SPEAKER_00
But it is the word I have been obsessed with using for the last few months.
11
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, we all circle in it.
11
SPEAKER_01
I have these.
11
SPEAKER_01
We all do this, where we circle in and out of words.
11
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, I know, but what s weird is I can t imagine letting go of over-indexing.
11
SPEAKER_00
I would have to have a different job.
11
SPEAKER_01
What s my word?
11
SPEAKER_00
What is your word?
11
SPEAKER_01
What do I say?
11
SPEAKER_00
Do you know?
11
SPEAKER_01
I don t, I m not aware.
11
SPEAKER_01
Bader-Meinhof frequency, ding, ding, ding.
11
SPEAKER_01
I mean, these aren t really vocab words, say sim a lot.
11
SPEAKER_00
Another word I use with enormous frequency is counterintuitive.
11
SPEAKER_00
I feel like I use the word counterintuitive way more than your average person.
11
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, I know I have them.
11
SPEAKER_00
Juxtaposition maybe a little bit.
11
SPEAKER_01
Oh, see, I didn t even know.
11
SPEAKER_00
I don t even know that either.
11
SPEAKER_00
Did you just make that up?
11
SPEAKER_01
No, I do say it.
11
SPEAKER_01
I do, but I don t realize I m saying it more than others, but maybe I am.
11
SPEAKER_00
I haven t said juxtaposition in years.
11
SPEAKER_00
I don t think.
11
SPEAKER_01
Yeah.
11
SPEAKER_01
It takes a, it takes an outsider.
11
SPEAKER_00
When s the last time you said counterintuitive?
11
SPEAKER_00
It a little bit, it a little bit betrays what you re interested in.
11
SPEAKER_00
Like I m interested in things that are counterintuitive and I m interested in things that over or under index things that stick out.
11
SPEAKER_01
Yeah.
11
SPEAKER_00
to help with my categorical.
11
SPEAKER_01
And I m interested in juxtapositions.
11
SPEAKER_00
I am.
11
SPEAKER_00
And mixed messages.
11
SPEAKER_01
It is.
11
SPEAKER_00
I m gonna think on yours and see if I can.
11
SPEAKER_00
Maybe the one will come up as I m talking.
11
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, and I ll just pay attention more.
11
SPEAKER_00
I ll look for it a little more.
11
SPEAKER_00
Let s see if we can t figure out what one you re using a lot.
11
SPEAKER_00
But I don t think there s one that jumps out, like mine, over indexing.
11
SPEAKER_00
I mean, that thing is, I ll use that three, four times in one episode sometime.
11
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, I try to cut it.
11
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, I bet.
11
SPEAKER_00
There s probably more.
11
SPEAKER_01
You say incongruous.
11
SPEAKER_00
Incongruous.
11
SPEAKER_00
Yeah.
11
SPEAKER_01
I don t say that one because we have a friend who says it s incongruous.
11
SPEAKER_00
Right.
11
SPEAKER_01
And I don t know which one is right.
11
SPEAKER_00
There s debate.
11
SPEAKER_01
So I just don t say that one.
11
SPEAKER_00
I actually think the majority think it s incongruous.
11
SPEAKER_00
I don t like that.
11
SPEAKER_01
You know what else you say a lot?
11
SPEAKER_00
Tell me.
11
SPEAKER_01
Scatty wampus.
11
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, that s intentional.
11
SPEAKER_01
Well, I love that, but
11
SPEAKER_00
It s not really.
11
SPEAKER_01
It s cattywampus.
11
SPEAKER_00
And scattywampus sounds a lot more fun.
11
SPEAKER_01
It sounds way more fun.
11
SPEAKER_00
I learned that word from a sketch in the groundlings.
11
SPEAKER_01
Oh.
11
SPEAKER_00
Some girl had written that in a sketch, and I thought that was the best.
11
SPEAKER_00
It was the first time I ever heard it.
11
SPEAKER_00
Yeah.
11
SPEAKER_00
I think it s a Southern saying, maybe.
11
SPEAKER_00
Maybe.
11
SPEAKER_00
Something like cattywampus.
11
SPEAKER_00
It sounds Southern.
11
SPEAKER_00
But scattywampus sounds so much better.
11
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, it does.
11
SPEAKER_01
Okay, so the Sapolsky research, I mean, there s so much Sapolsky research about the baboons, but the one she was talking about is very interesting.
11
SPEAKER_01
I had not heard of it.
11
SPEAKER_00
I would say that I was going to push back in that whole moment, and I appealed to the better angels of my nature, and I just let it lie.
11
SPEAKER_00
Because yes, cortisol levels dip, but that s not to say that that s the ideal scenario for a troop of baboons, because they would be murdered by another troop.
11
SPEAKER_00
It kind of insinuated that the problem is alphas in those troops.
11
SPEAKER_00
And also I wanted to point out, which I didn t, that the gamma males slice the throat of the beta males the second they re tranquilized.
11
SPEAKER_00
So everyone lower on the hierarchy is acting just as scumbaggy.
11
SPEAKER_01
There is an article in New York Times, and if baboons can do it, why not us?
11
SPEAKER_01
The bad news is that you might have to first knock out all the most aggressive males to get there.
11
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, in a world where you re not competing with other troops or predators, it s great, it works great.
11
SPEAKER_00
But we just, we re not in that world yet.
11
SPEAKER_00
Humans are, humans don t need aggressive males.
11
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, there s a lot, it makes me wanna read a lot more about his work.
11
SPEAKER_00
Sapolsky.
11
SPEAKER_01
The baboon work.
11
SPEAKER_01
Look into that, read about that.
11
SPEAKER_00
Read up on that.
11
SPEAKER_01
There s another one about baboon study shows benefits for nice guys who finish second because alphas are notoriously more depressed.
11
SPEAKER_00
Yeah.
11
SPEAKER_00
They have a miserable existence.
11
SPEAKER_01
Yeah.
11
SPEAKER_01
Okay.
11
SPEAKER_01
That s it.
11
SPEAKER_00
That s it.
11
SPEAKER_01
Oh, no, one thing.
11
SPEAKER_01
I only feel the need to bring this up because I just had my own experience with it.
11
SPEAKER_01
Because you were talking about how you worked with a person who was a narcissist.
11
SPEAKER_00
Yeah.
11
SPEAKER_01
And for you, it was you liked
11
SPEAKER_01
seeing it because it showed you that you weren t.
11
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, or that minimally I didn t have that characteristic.
11
SPEAKER_01
Right, because hers was very evident.
11
SPEAKER_01
But I learned this kind of from you that that s sort of a trap, like that s like an addiction trap, right?
11
SPEAKER_01
Like, well, I m not as bad as that guy, so I m fine.
11
SPEAKER_01
I did that the other day.
11
SPEAKER_01
Someone was talking about a shopping thing, a shopping addiction.
11
SPEAKER_00
Yeah.
11
SPEAKER_01
And I was like, well, I don t know.
11
SPEAKER_01
Then I definitely am fine because I don t do that.
11
SPEAKER_00
Right.
11
SPEAKER_01
But then I was like, oh, you re not supposed to do that.
11
SPEAKER_00
Well, right, I think where I think that s most evident is when people are trying to decide if they re an addict or not, and they just look at someone worse.
11
SPEAKER_00
And the example I always give is there is that HBO doc about addiction, and there was a guy who was buying crack, then melting crack and shooting it.
11
SPEAKER_00
And I m like, well, great, as long as that guy exists, everyone else can go like, well, I m not melting down crack and then shooting it intravenously.
11
SPEAKER_00
I ll say, to be a little more specific, it s not that I felt superior to her, but you re right.
11
SPEAKER_00
I was trying to come up with what my definition of narcissism is.
11
SPEAKER_00
And then when there was this one aspect on display, which is like, it s only happening to you, that specific thing.
11
SPEAKER_00
Felt Liberated by I m like, yeah, I don t ever think I m the only one freezing when it s cold outside Only one that s got shitty lines on a show or the only one totally, you know Yeah, I certainly think about myself all day long.
11
SPEAKER_00
I think about what I need and what can make me more comfortable or happier Yeah, and so I start worrying This feels like a lot of time thinking about myself
11
SPEAKER_01
Yeah.
11
SPEAKER_00
Is this normal or is there?
11
SPEAKER_01
But it s also not connected to what you just said, but it is all a spectrum.
11
SPEAKER_00
What was the shopping thing you heard that you were like, oh yeah, I don t do that.
11
SPEAKER_01
Oh, she, this woman just buys stuff and like has stuff shipped and stuff, but she doesn t open the boxes.
11
SPEAKER_01
Oh my God.
11
SPEAKER_01
It s like, it s just to buy.
11
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, does she return?
11
SPEAKER_00
She don t return.
11
SPEAKER_00
Probably not.
11
SPEAKER_00
She must be rich, right?
11
SPEAKER_00
Or is she in debt?
11
SPEAKER_01
Well, she s probably in debt.
11
SPEAKER_01
I think that s how a lot of shopping addictions come to the surface.
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SPEAKER_00
I want to interview Elton John on his.
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SPEAKER_00
He s been very open about having a shopping addiction.
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SPEAKER_00
Oh.
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SPEAKER_00
Because you couldn t make more money than Elton John.
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SPEAKER_00
And he, at one point, I think bankrupted himself just from buying stuff.
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SPEAKER_00
Really?
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SPEAKER_00
Yeah.
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SPEAKER_01
Yeah, we should talk to him, Cautionary Tale.
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SPEAKER_00
I would love that.
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SPEAKER_01
Armchair Anonymous.
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SPEAKER_00
Yeah, save us an Armchair Anonymous episode.
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SPEAKER_00
Ooh, that s a good shopping addiction prompt, or kleptomania.
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SPEAKER_01
Yeah, narcolepsy.
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SPEAKER_00
No.
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SPEAKER_01
Kleptomania and shopping addiction, I d like to hear the craziest.
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SPEAKER_00
I d like that.
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SPEAKER_01
What if I wrote in?
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SPEAKER_00
Add it to the list.
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SPEAKER_01
Yeah, that s a good one.
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SPEAKER_00
But I will say that our guest, who is very knowledgeable, and I really enjoyed talking to her, I think she took a really hard line against this.
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SPEAKER_00
And I just, it wasn t necessarily in keeping with my position on it, but I do think there are other people on planet earth.
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SPEAKER_00
And I just wanted to say there was some, I don t know, palpable hatred towards me.
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SPEAKER_00
These folks.
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SPEAKER_01
Well, they can be extremely destructive.
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SPEAKER_00
They can, absolutely.
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SPEAKER_00
But I m just not ready necessarily to go like, oh, they re evil incarnate.
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SPEAKER_01
No, they re not.
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SPEAKER_00
I have compassion for,
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SPEAKER_00
The end of the day, they don t have relationships.
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SPEAKER_00
They don t have actual relationships.
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SPEAKER_00
They don t know what that feels like to evaluate how much love they ve given and feel that wave of purpose.
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SPEAKER_01
So actually they might, they might think they are like, that s the thing.
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SPEAKER_01
They might convince themselves that they are giving love.
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SPEAKER_00
Well, I think per her definition, the ones I ve heard, the score they re keeping is how much approval of validation and adornment are they receiving.
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SPEAKER_00
Their main objective is to receive and take as much.
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SPEAKER_00
And so I don t think they re in the process of sacrificing and providing and dedicating and
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SPEAKER_01
Well, unless the sacrifice is very grandiose, because that s part of it, too, because it s a self-aggrandizement.
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SPEAKER_00
What they can t do is make someone flourish and then have the pride in having helped someone flourish.
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SPEAKER_00
That they re completely not.
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SPEAKER_00
They have no access to.
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SPEAKER_00
They can t experience on planet Earth, and that might be the sweetest joy of being on planet Earth.
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SPEAKER_01
Yeah, it s sad.
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SPEAKER_00
And they don t have that.
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SPEAKER_00
And so I feel bad that they don t.
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SPEAKER_01
I agree with you.
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SPEAKER_01
But I also think her goal is to protect the people in the relationships, which is why she s coming.
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SPEAKER_01
coming at it with that perspective.
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SPEAKER_01
She really wants people in relationships with narcissists to know reality.
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SPEAKER_02
And I said it in the episode, but I do have some fear that people are just going to label everyone they re not having a successful relationship as being narcissists and not look at themselves.
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SPEAKER_02
So I m a little... Yeah, I agree.
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SPEAKER_02
That s a fear I have.
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SPEAKER_00
Yeah, anyway.
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SPEAKER_02
Anyways, very fascinating.
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SPEAKER_00
Such an interesting topic.
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SPEAKER_00
And that s that.
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SPEAKER_00
All right, love you.
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SPEAKER_00
Love you.