Hello, Psych2Go viewers. Our guest for today's live stream is clinical psychologist and expert Dr. Romani. You may know her from her videos on MedCircle, which have been viewed millions of times on the topic of narcissism, but she also has her own YouTube channel with over a million subscribers and her own podcast, Navigating Narcissism. Dr. Romani's work has been featured in Vogue, TEDx, Red Table Talk, The Today Show, and Investigation Discovery, just to name a few. Welcome, Dr. Romani. Thank you so much for joining us today. Thank you so much, Michelle, for that wonderful introduction. Thank you. Of course, and you're super impressive, so we had to, right? Thank you. So can you tell us a little bit about yourself and your background? So I am a licensed clinical psychologist. I'll go back a little bit further. I did my undergraduate work at the University of Connecticut where I got a Bachelor of Science in Psychology and then I went on and got my master's and doctoral degrees at UCLA and I did my clinical training at UCLA as well and my postdoctoral training at UCLA and then I went on to become a professor of psychology at California State University. I'm retired from there now and I'm a professor emerita there. Again, licensed clinical psychologist for all of these years too and I am now currently have a, my own company where we focus a lot on psychoeducation, teaching people things like narcissism, healing from these kinds of relationships, that sort of thing appear on various forms of media, write books and adjust. My fourth book comes out. It's my third book on narcissism and this one's specific to healing from these relationships. That comes out in February and then I have again a large YouTube channel that focuses on narcissism. We have a program for people who are healing from narcissistic relationships. We have that every single month and so in my podcast, Navigating Narcissism, we just did a spectacular guest on it. So it's all these different things are meant to provide ways for people to be able to get educated by this because it's something where only in the last 10 or 15 years have you really been talking about it. That's me. I'm a mom. I have a beloved cat and that's about it and I work all the time. That's awesome. That's amazing. So thank you so again. Thank you so much for being here. We're super excited. So just to start off in simple terms, what is narcissism and how would you define a narcissist? So narcissism is a personality style. I think we could argue that it's a maladaptive personality style and it is a personality style characterized by variable or limited empathy, entitlement, grandiosity, egocentresty being incredibly selfish, a chronic need for validation and admiration, a need for control, a arrogance, pretentiousness, envy of other people or the assumption that other people are envying them little regard for other people's needs or wants. It's sort of a personality style where there's a real drive for sort of power and control and dominance over other people. And all of this stuff I'm talking about, which is interpersonally quite taxing, it all covers up these are grandiose defenses that cover up a rather strong core insecurity. These are people internally who are very insecure, who carry a lot of shame, who when that shame gets activated will often respond in a very rageful manner. So that's what narcissism and what it is and what a narcissistic person looks like, sort of in broad strokes. So what is narcissistic personality disorder and how is someone diagnosed with it? So narcissistic personality disorder is where we get to sort of a trickier place, right? So for any diagnosis to be issued, you need a person, the person making the diagnosis needs to have been trained in psychology, psychiatry, counseling, psychiatric nursing, finished the education, gone through licensure, and only in the end have spent enough time with the client to be able to make this determination, right? So with all those pieces in place, can you make this determination? Are there a lot of narcissistic people out there wandering the world who probably have NPD, but have never been in a therapist's office to get diagnosed? Absolutely. So that's the piece. So there's plenty of people out there who aren't diagnosed probably meet criteria, but they've never received the formal diagnosis. When we give someone a diagnosis not only of narcissistic personality disorder or any personality disorder, it is we're looking for the pervasiveness, the stability and the consistency of these personality patterns, right? So we're looking that they're pretty constant and that they're either resulting in distress for the person who's narcissistic, which doesn't always happen or results in what we call social and occupational impairment. And what that means is that it's getting in the way of their lives. Now, what's tricky about narcissism is that for a lot of them, they're not perceiving a problem in their lives. Other people are, but they're not, they may actually be coming into therapy if they come into therapy, because I don't know the relationship's gone wrong. They're in trouble at work. They may be struggling with depression, irritability or something like that. They're having, but usually it's cause something in their life isn't going the way they want or someone's given them an ultimatum. We also know that narcissistic personality disorder has a relatively high rate of co occurrence with other clinical patterns, including ADHD and addiction. So the person may very well be in treatment for those other things for addiction for ADHD, if that makes sense. And so all of that together means that they might get in the door that way, but because if they come in with something else, depression, anxiety, addiction, ADHD, the clinicians focus will often be on those things and they might even miss the NPD. So I think NPD is woefully underdiagnosed, honestly. And the other problem tricky bit with a diagnosis is a diagnosis is really only has one function and that is to organize the symptomatology of the client into a meaningful characterization, you know, construct, if you will. So we can treat it, right? We know if a person is depressed, there's a series of treatments. We use anxiety series of treatments. It informs how we do therapy with them in theory, right? Well, here we have NPD and while there's some people who are doing some interesting research in this area, there are no randomized clinical trials and no real evidence of treatment that would work for clients in anything but the longest term therapy with highly motivated clients. To me, that's not a readily available treatment. Most people can't afford years of therapy with a highly skilled therapist. Number one and number two, most aren't motivated to change. So it's sort of a, it's a, it's a disorder where probably other people are more likely to go into treatment because of it than the person with NPD. I don't, the NPD has muddied the waters a lot because what has happened is we end up getting into these big semantic debates of, well, if they have a diagnosis, then how responsible can you hold them for their behavior? And this is discriminatory against people with a diagnosis and yada da dan. And what we miss is the diagnosis, the, the prevalence rates of NPD in the research as, as it exists sits somewhere between one and six percent. But I think we can say with relative confidence that the proportion of people out there who have narcissistic symptomatology at a level that it causes problems, maybe not only for themselves, but other people, it's probably closer to 20 percent. You know, probably one in five people are narcissistic enough that it's a problem. And so we have this, this, I think that doing away with this NPD designation would be the best thing we ever did. I don't, it doesn't seem to serve a function and to focus on narcissism as a personality style that can be a real problem and that can, that should be addressed in therapy and may play a role in magnifying other mental health problems. Sure. But this idea of NPD and all these debates we have it have about it. What it does is it misses the vote on the bigger issue to me, which is the harm that this pattern causes to other people. Absolutely. And do you think that maybe it's hard for people who have NPD to recognize that they have NPD because maybe it hurts their ego like because they're like, um, sort of admitting that they have a personality flaw. Do you think maybe it hurts their ego because it is, I don't know, to, you know, to say that, oh, I have narcissistic personality disorder implies that you have a maybe a bad personality, right? I don't think it's quite that simple. I think it's actually that a person who is narcissistic lacks something we call self reflective capacity. So what it means is that there's a, there's a lack of willingness or a lack of will or a lack of maybe even capacity to reflect inwardly on their own motivations on how their behavior affects other people to really be self reflective in that way. It's just this, this what we call a mentalization capacity, right? That appears to be lacking in narcissistic and people with narcissistic personality. So I do believe there's one camp where they don't want to be characterized as narcissistic because it's a stigmatizing thing to be called. It's not nice. Yeah. So they're going to say, I don't, that's not true. I'm a great person. And in fact, the research has shown that people who are narcissistic significantly over, over estimate their levels of empathy. They actually walk around thinking that they are very, very empathic people. So that's a sort of an inaccuracy kind of thing out the gate, right? So they don't understand how they affect other people. They think they're good people. So if they were to be called narcissistic, it would often be, it would raise a lot of rage, a lot of denial, a lot of blaming and in fact, they probably say, you're the narcissistic person for saying that to me. However, there is an interesting subset of folks who are narcissistic are like, yeah, that's me. And you know what? It's working for me. So there's almost an arrogance to it. You know, there's, they're almost doubling down on the grandiosity and arrogance when they're saying, I still think that the insecurity is, it's a defense at that point. They're still defended against it. So instead of crumbling in the face of that characterization might say, yeah, so what of it?  I'm more successful than you. So it's really almost like, again, the narcissism magnifying that kind of experience. Right. Yeah. But it's really what it carries. Do you think it's fair though? Like, I mean, if, if someone's being called like narcissistic, I guess it's fair that they would lash out a little bit though. Right. Maybe that's not the best way to approach it. Do you think that there's a way of approaching someone who's narcissistic in a way that's empathetic?  Maybe that might make them defensive. Do you think that's valid or so one should never call a narcissistic person out. It's the biggest mistake you could ever make. And when I've worked with people on this over the years, I said, just don't call them out. Some people say, I've watched the videos, I've read the books. It's so good. So what is I want to tell them? I know what they are to which my point is to what end it's not going to change them. It's more likely to agitate them. So if anything that knowledge that somebody's patterns may be consistent with narcissism is a tool for you to use to say, Okay, I'm going to have to approach this person in a very different way. So if a person recognizes that somebody is narcissistic, the patterns add up, they're consistent, the whole laundry list I gave you, then you really need to start sort of sliding into a place of realistic expectations of the limitations of this relationship, radically acceptance that it's not very likely to change and that it is never going to be a deep relationship. It is never going to be a reciprocal or mutual relationship. It's never going to be a respectful relationship. It's just not. It's going to be superficial. It's going to be perfunctory. It's going to be if you're lucky, you can talk about very basic things. You and you might think, well, that's not a relationship. No, it's not. You're right. It's really not, but these might be people in long term committed relationships or marriages. It could be family members. It could be siblings. It could be parents. It could be someone's adult child. These aren't people that anyone feels that the relationship they can easily walk away from, but they keep breaking their hearts trying to make it work. I'm here to tell you it's not going to work. So once you recognize this is the pattern, now it's time to disengage a little bit and see what this relationship really is about. Absolutely.   So is this a person, maybe who's very abrupt, but they're actually very tuned into the people around them. They're actually even very self-reflective, like, yeah, my behavior is very rude. I'm going to go back and apologize to that person. So is there some form of accountability? Do they take responsibility for their behavior?  So we're looking for some of those other core issues. We're looking for the capacity for closeness. We're looking for empathy. We're looking for how much this person is able to self-regulate.  You know, they're definitely problems. It's rare. It's very rare for a rude and selfish person to also be unentitled and empathic and self-reflective. Because if someone's reflective, they wouldn't be rude and selfish. See what I'm saying? So it's like rude and selfish by themselves would not be a slam dunk on the narcissistic person. But let me tell you, if I see pepperoni and cheese somewhere, I'm guessing I'm probably getting a pizza. Right. And so the difference is the capacity for empathy and self-reflection. And also that it's not a pattern of selfishness and rudeness. Is that the difference? Like some, yeah. Yeah, it could be.  This person's only rude and selfish at work. That's how they are. That's how they do their business. And the business has grown.  They're a devoted parent. They're a devoted partner. They're good to their family. But they're very abrupt and rude at work. And in fact, kind of everyone sort of knows that about them. But they say that, you know, we don't feel hurt by this person because we kind of, they're very, they don't ever blame us. They always correct their behavior. They're like, I just blew my stack. I know it. I know it. I love you all. And, you know, it's a, that's such a rare thing, right? For it to show up like that. It could. It could. And in that case, I'd say, okay, I'm seeing something happening here. Like they're very aware of what they're doing. We'd have to account maybe a little for culture. Is it an abrupt style of communication? Something that's part of a person's culture that might get normalized. And in fact, the people around this person might say, you know what? We're not that bothered. We're so clear. They love us. We just sort of know what they mean. And so they may very well occupy a system where other people are experiencing this person who actually is quite present. Like I said, this is why it's not as simple as I met someone and they were rude. They're narcissistic. Maybe, maybe not. We'd have to dig deeper. It's unusual. The thing I'm describing is unusual, but it could happen. So as a narcissist, like a narcissist in every area of their life at work with their family, their friends. Yeah, because narcissism is a personality style, right? You have a personality. I have a personality. Narcissistic people aren't the only people with personality. Every human being has a personality, right?  That doesn't make sense. I say, okay, let me ask you about your personality. I don't know yours. I know mine. So I'll give you the example. I'm a very agreeable person. I'm a very conscientious person and I'm a very introverted person. What does that mean? It means that tomorrow, if somebody said, okay, Romani, we need you to change. We need you to become really unempathic. We need you to be rude. We need you to be selfish. We need you to stop caring about everyone around you.  We need you to do all of that by next week and be the life of the party and leave all your stuff in a mess and not do your deadlines. I bet I can't. I can't. What do you I can't? I can't do those things. Those those things are me. That's who I am. Now some of them I say, well, Romani, that's a silly example because those are all good things. Maybe maybe they're good things. I think a narcissistic person will say you waste too much time caring about other people. Right. So I'm saying that those things that would be changing my personality. I don't think I could do them and if I did, I would be extremely uncomfortable. So why would a narcissistic person be able to change? I can't turn to my personality. Why would they change theirs? So you don't think they have that? You don't think a narcissist could change? I know that very little. The very, the kind of change we could see is maybe again, there might be bells and whistles around the narcissism. So for example, a narcissistic person may also have ADHD. They may also be living with addiction. They may also have post trauma. They may also have depression. Those things are all eminently treatable and manageable, right? So those things might get treated and it might smooth out the roughness of the edges. For example, a person is no longer intoxicated. That could bring down their impulsivity. But the core, the narcissism piece the lack of empathy, the entitlement, the grandiosity, the selfishness. That's not going anywhere, right? Clean up the fringes, but you still have that core. I have worked with a lot of narcissistic clients in my practice a lot. And some of them I've had the fascinating experience of working with them and then having a break from seeing them for maybe three or four years and I'll see them for a few sessions. And when I tell you almost, they've made so little movement and I contrast this to clients who are not narcissistic and we have made huge leaps, huge leaps in our work, right? And so it's the rigidity. Narcissistic personality is a very rigid personality style. That's why it's considered less healthy. Agreeable personality styles are very flexible.  The two go together. So that lack of flexibility means a lack of change, right? They're not, because for a narcissistic person under stress or conditions of disappointment, they will always slide right back. So they might be able to put on good behavior for a minute. They might go to therapy. They might learn a better way to be with people. They may learn all of that, but when anything on the outside is pressing them, they feel a sense of shame coming up. They don't feel adequate. Any of those things, they'll snap right to and they'll be lashing out like they always did. So it's a very resistant personality style to change. Like most personality styles are relatively resistant to change. Right. That is true. It is hard to just like change your personality. I mean, it's probably impossible, but if so, if, okay, so if parents notice that they're kids, I really think this is an interesting point. If parents notice that their kid is kind of narcissistic, if someone's young, could you catch it early and maybe save that person from becoming a full-blown narcissist? If it's caught early. So the tricky bit is that we don't really talk about personality and concrete terms in children. Okay. So personality is developing from when a child, from young childhood into adulthood. In fact, I would say personality does not really fully gel until a person is in their mid-20s because of how much cognitive development is still going on. So all adolescents are narcissistic. They're very selfish. They're very self-serving. They're very dysregulated. They're very impulsive. They're not really narcissistic though. They're nervous systems going through the leaps and changes that they're going through. I've had many parents say to me, I am convinced my 17-year-old is narcissistic. I'm like, first of all, and I say this as the parent of adolescents, they're a handful. I mean, any phase of life I would, of client population, I think wouldn't work with is probably adolescence because they're tough. The people who work with them well though realize like there's so much promise. There's just, I could work with infants. I don't think I could work with adolescents, but the adolescents though are going through. We have to show them grace because they're going through so much, right? Their bodies are adults. Their bodies are acting like adults, but their brains are very much. There's still a childlike element to it.  They're not. They're thinking with a 17-year-old boy's brain, right, which is why they can be so vexing. But so I don't think it's right to ever call an adolescent narcissistic. I think we can call them more impulsive. We can call them dysregulated, maybe even oppositional, these various pieces that form the mosaic of narcissism, but I think that whole idea that it ties into a full style, I always tell even parents, I say all bets are off till they're 25. Again, I can tell you this, unless even be generous and say 30, when a person is narcissistic at 30 and we look back at their 15, 16-year-old selves, they were definitely narcissistic then. But when a person is, when we look at that 15 or 16-year-old who is really impulsive and oppositional and difficult, we really can't predict what they're going to be like at 30. So we can go backwards, but we can't go forwards. And so here's the thing is that we know and what the research is suggesting is that where narcissism comes from, it's a complicated conversation, right? It's a mix of temperament, which is our sort of inborn aspect of our personality. It's probably a genetic piece. It's people think there's certain elements of personality. Impulsivity is a great example where there seems to be a heritable component. Some temperaments are lovelier than others, especially in small children. Some kids are easygoing, flexible. They soothe easily. They're well-regulated. They're just easy. That's the only word I can use is easy. I'm not even going to say good as much as I'm going to say easy. And then there are kids who have difficult temperaments, attention-seeking, difficult to soothe, often quite behaviorally agitated. They're a handful. And because they're more difficult, those difficult kids get a little bit more pushback from their environment. They're harder to parent. They're harder to teach. They may even be more likely to be abused if there is abuse in the environment. I don't think that a healthy person, parent would abuse a child. Like if they were not prone to abuse, but in an environment where there is that historical, like the parent has a history of abuse, they're going to be more likely to lash out at that kid who is more quote-unquote difficult. Well, those difficult tempermented kids, if they are in an invalidating early environment, that could be trauma. It could be chaos. It could be other adverse childhood experiences. There could be a lack of limits. It could be no one teaching them how to regulate. Those are the kids who tend to go on to become narcissistic, right? But there's another subgroup. And that other subgroup of kids are kids for lack of a better word who are spoiled. They are never told no. They are never told to regulate. And they're told, and this is interesting research by this guy named Eddie Brumelmans, who suggests that they're told that they're special and more special than any other kid. Kids are special, but they're not more special than anyone else. Parents who communicate you're more special. You're more deserving. You're better. That kind of communication can also set a kid up to be narcissistic. And if you throw in there that the parents aren't emotionally available, then you're really pushing the accelerator. Now, do kids grow up in adverse environments and not become narcissistic all the time? In fact, that's more likely. But this combined stew is what gets people there.  And I've consulted with them. I was like, even at five, six, seven. And their kid really is disruptive and challenging for teachers and challenging for peers. I will listen to that parent seriously. I said, no, your child's not a narcissistic person, but you've got your work cut out for you because it's gonna be about finding environments which will sort of meet this child where they're at because these are often kids where teachers don't like them. They're considered them too disruptive. And so the kid gets very pathologized in school at a very early age, which can become a downward slope. So for parents dealing with these sort of handful kids is really about whatever that means. It might be sports. It might be different kinds of activities. It might be working with the school and setting up an individualized education plan that meets that child where they're at. So the kid isn't always hearing this quiet message, difficult kid, difficult kid, difficult kid, but rather there is a neurodivergence here. And neurodivergence can also mean that not all kids are the same kind of learners. They're not always gonna behave the same way, but these kids often experience a lot of invalidation. So it's complicated. So maybe, well, that's true. And so maybe our society should like approach it differently. Yeah, 100%. Yeah, like absolutely. And so speaking on like children, this is like perfect segue. How does someone develop narcissistic personality disorder? Essentially what makes a narcissist? So everything I just said, you know, it's that idea of temperament coming up against early environment, coming up against, it could be adverse childhood experiences. It could be early chaos. It could be early invalidation. It could be frank physical sexual abuse. It could be witnessing violence. All of these things can make a child more prone. In fact, there's a, there's a, one group of folks that say narcissism is a post-traumatic state. I don't disagree with that, but I don't think that's all it is. I think in a subset of folks, narcissism is a post-traumatic state that it is a, it could very well come out of again, all of these early adversities. However, there's that other group that I just told you about, which are the kids who are really growing, grow up in these very over, sort of materially overindulged, being told they're special, but are often not emotionally where they're at. They're not attuned to, they're not met, you know, they're sort of not, they're very performative. They do good in school, be a great soccer player, be at this, look like this. You know, it could be that that they're really learned to be valued on superficial characteristics. And that also can spin a person into narcissism. Narcissistic parents have a higher probability of raising a narcissistic kid. However, they have a much higher probability of raising very anxious kids. So by and large, people of narcissistic parents don't, again, none of these are absolutes. Adversity doesn't always lead to narcissism. Overindulgence doesn't always lead to narcissism. Having a narcissistic parent doesn't always lead to narcissism. So as with everything in psychology, everybody wants these simple cut and dried answers. It's all about probabilities. That's what this is about. And so when people are trying to deconstruct this story, how did this person become like this? Every narcissistic client I've ever worked with, as I got to know their history, it was clear as day how they came to where they were, right? And there were things that could have been done differently in childhood that probably would have yielded a different outcome. But there are just, there are many, many more people who were raised the way these narcissistic people were and didn't turn out narcissistic. So it's not all, it's a variety of developmental conditions that meet up against temperament that will then yield all of this. This is some argument that early impulsivity that then becomes adolescent impulsivity also sets people up potentially for narcissism. But it's a very, very complex mix of stuff that gets people to that point. So since narcissists are usually created through what you mentioned, like either trauma or parents who are emotionally unavailable, do you think that we have to view narcissism to some extent with like a sense of empathy? Like, okay, narcissists suffer too. I think we need to view everyone with a sense of empathy, narcissistic people, right? We need to view everyone with that. And regardless of what anyone's going to, whether they're living with mental health issues, addiction, narcissists. No, absolutely. It's just, it's harder to view narcissists with a sense of empathy. I guess that's why I bring it up.  What if their mom or dad is narcissistic, which could often be the case? I think that's why. So is that maybe, should we change the way we view narcissists to some degree? Change it from what to what? Like to maybe have, maybe approach it with more empathy. Like, okay, this is someone who maybe it's not about me. They have their own issues. Just, this one. Okay. So this is a very delicate kind of a conversation because here's the thing. Most people who survive these relationships have regarded the narcissistic person with an amount of empathy that surpasses anything that you could ever imagine in human history. They've made excuses. They've justified everything they can. They're like, they didn't mean it. They had a tough childhood. I'm going to give them a second chance. I'm going to be forgiving. I know this is hard for them. La, la, ba, ba, da, da, la, la, da, da, da, da, da. They will do that for years, years and years and years. The therapist, let me meet them where they're at. Let me show them. Let me do the ba, ba, ba, ba, ba, ba, ba, ba, ba. So how much is enough? No, you're right. I mean, I guess I was, I was talking about like maybe our societal approach to viewing narcissism, but of course like victims of narcissistic abuse, they view, they're usually extremely empathetic people. They're usually empaths and they've given their all, right? So no, I see what you're saying for sure. But okay. So let's say society. Yeah. Narcissistic people make more money. Narcissistic people are more successful in dating in relation and getting into new relationships. Narcissistic relation, narcissistic people are more likely to be overrepresented in leadership. Would one not argue that they're doing just fine where society is concerned? Yeah, you're right. So that's the data in the statistics. Right. So my point is this, I understand where you're going with the question, which is we're in a phase where we're now talking about this and it's an uncomfortable conversation.   You should know better.  You should have your license taken away from you for being so cruel to narcissistic people. And I'm like, okay. That's interesting. So what do I tell a person who's been in one of these relationships for 30 years, 40 years, 50 years, they've been betrayed at every turn in the road. They have been, their trust has been tested. They have been verbally and emotionally abused. So what do I tell them? Yes. Sorry, I can't help you because we've got to be empathic to everyone. Like where does it end? You see what I'm saying? So I think that what I attempt to do in my content is to give a very holistic look at this. I'm like, listen, I'm telling you their path to this moment may not have been an easy one. The radical acceptance piece is that because I think what people do is they get caught up in this loop. I'm going to help them. I'm going to change them. I believe in them. Well, if this is their history, then can't we fix this? Like I said, no more than you can change your personality. But what I tell folks is you can be empathic from a distance. You don't have to keep enduring the invalidation, the manipulation, the gaslighting, the verbal abuse, the emotional abuse. That is not love. Enduring that stuff isn't love. It is actually quite compassionate to take a step back and say, I see it all. I understand. I can't stand here and endure this any longer. Now the narcissistic person will lash out at the person whoever dares set that boundary and the other people in their sphere will probably do the same. Say, well, they have been through a lot. Is it really nice for you to leave them or couldn't you be forgiving? That's my favorite. People always tell people you have to be forgiving and there's actually good research out there. Five studies I can think of at the top of my head that have all said that when a person forgives somebody who keeps betraying them, it actually results in drops in well-being for the person doing the forgiving. So how do we guide a person say, oh, forgive them. They're going to do this to you again, but forgive them. So it's a very complex conversation. So I think that what's happened is this is why it's getting risky in places like TikTok and social media where people are posting videos and saying, my boyfriend is a narcissistic monster. And what boyfriend did was he had a one night stand.  I don't know that he's narcissistic. He may be, but we're going to need a minute to figure that out. But when we keep making these equations that just because someone's unfaithful, they're narcissistic. Just because somebody yells once, they're narcissistic. You know, just because I don't know, somebody doesn't split the check with you the right way. They're narcissistic. That doesn't hold up. That is dangerous. Absolutely. That's what I was going to ask. Like, do you think the term is being thrown around more than ever these days? It's just like, it's just like everyone's narcissistic and that's really troubling. Right. And everybody can't be right. I mean, so I think that's not possible. Selfishness is not narcissism. Posting on Instagram is not narcissism. Now, if a person posts multiple pictures of themselves waiting for validation are very irritable when they don't. They're also unempathic and entitled and grandiose.  They get irritable when they don't. I might be willing to take the bet, but I'm not sure that I'm going to push all my chips to the middle of the table. I mean, it's these soft signs that tell us like, there's something here that's unhealthy. And I think that that's the big piece of this conversation of people are getting get lost. Like, tell me, tell me, tell me, is my partner narcissistic? And I'm like, why is that term important? Shall I say tell me what's happening in this relationship? And they'll give me a laundry list of terrible things that are happening in the relationship to which I'll say, that's just unhealthy. But I need to know that they're narcissistic. As though if they know that, then they'd feel more empowered to leave, but 1,000 unhealthy things isn't enough. So I think people get stuck on the label versus an unhealthy relationship is an unhealthy relationship and something's going to have to give. Yeah. And I love saying that you mentioned that you can have empathy from a distance. Like no one should ever deal with narcissistic abuse.  Like, you know, you have to take care of yourself, right? You can't just... If you can because not everyone can like... Early phases of dating, I totally agree with you. Then you can get out. The challenge becomes if a person's in a relationship for longer term, five years, ten years, they have kids, they have shared finances. There's cultural or religious pressures. There are other financial pressures that they themselves are sort of prone to trauma bonded patterns where they feel as though they feel really stuck in a loop of I want to help them. I want to save them. I have hope for this. And it very much might be replaying a cycle from childhood with a narcissistic parent. All of those things can be... Can keep a person stuck and make it very hard for them to get out of the relationship. Thank you. And then this is a very important one. What are some red flags that someone in your life could be a narcissist? What are some signs of... Well, just starting with that, yeah. What are some signs that someone in your life could be a narcissist? So there are...  I mean, I think that you would be looking for...  One thing I tell people, you almost need to give it a year. Much before a year, it's hard. And this is so... I think the whole wish that... Five red flags. That's my favorite TikToks I hear people... Five red flags to tell a narcissist on the first day. I'm like, good luck with that. And so it's not going to work because initially, narcissistic folks have a unique capacity to be very charming, charismatic, engaging. I mean, it's a little different if you're talking about a vulnerable narcissistic or a malignant narcissistic person. But by and large, many narcissistic people are very, very... Are very charismatic and charming, right? And so as a result, what that means is people are not even going to... Whatever tiny little red flags may pop up, people are very quickly going to justify them. Like, oh, they were late, big deal. People are late all the time. They have a busy job. They have an important job. So even some little things, like maybe your time being just respected and some of them being chronically late or a person interrupting you and talking over you or a person on their phone when they should really be paying attention to you.  A person who gets very, very... Who's very reactive, if you make even a mild comment, like, might be your fifth date and say, oh my gosh, I love that shirt. You wore it on our first date. What are you trying to say? That I don't have a lot of clothes? Like, what's that dig? You're like, oh my gosh, I actually really like their shirt. So you look for that kind of reactivity. You watch how a person drives. The research shows that narcissistic people tend to drive in a more erratic, dangerous, high speed, riding up on other people's bumpers, cursing and the finger and all that. If you're uncomfortable with their driving, pay attention to that. Watch how they treat other people. Are they entitled with a server in a restaurant or a clerk in a shop or a person in a car?  Do they throw a tantrum when things don't go their way? Maybe you get to the restaurant and they've lost a reservation. And while a person certainly could be frustrated, do they really lash out at people? Pay attention to that. The signs are there, but they're often, if you have one difficult bad sign against 10 things you really like, it's really hard to pull that stuff out. In a lot of ways is like, is it like a lack of emotional intelligence to some degree?  Is narcissism to some degree a lack of emotional intelligence? Not necessarily, because they can be incredibly emotionally intelligent when they need or want something.  They talk to someone who could be a really important business ally. They're talking to someone they need to want to seduce. They're talking to someone they want to win over.   Absolutely. Well, that's very, that's right. Very interesting. And so that brings me to our audience segment where we answer your viewer questions. This is your chance to get your questions answered by the amazing Dr. Romany. So let's begin. Let's start. Just going to look through the group chat. So we have a lot of people in here. Okay. Perfect. This is a really good question. So I don't want to butcher your name, but Ray asked, how can someone who was emotionally abused by a narcissist co-parent with them? Such an important question. So see what I'm saying with these are the subtleties, right? Is that when you're parenting, it's probably one of the most emotionally demanding tasks where you have to be incredibly present, you know, where we're even dealing with our own legacy issues from childhood when we're parenting. It's a very complex thing to do.  So a couple of things. Number one, anyone co-parenting with a narcissistic person needs support. Ideally, other people going through this. Find those support communities because you, no one else will get this. If somebody, if you're talking to somebody who's co-parenting, they may be divorced or split up and but they're co-parenting with someone who's actually kind of healthy or not, at least not narcissistic or not emotionally abusive. It's an entirely different game and they're going to look at you like you have two heads but talking to people going through it makes a very big difference. So you need support so you don't feel like you're losing your mind. Number two, have realistic expectations that you are going to have times when at the narcissistic person at the last minute is going to decide I can't take the kids or I won't take the kids will shift plans on you. You have to have realistic expectations for that.   The third thing is that you is a technique developed by Tina Swithon who's a major advocate in this space and she calls it yellow rocking. Lots of people talk about gray rocking being flat and non-emotional non-responsive. Yellow rocking is different. It's where you don't take the bait but you don't get deep in with them. You say you're like, great. Hi. Yeah. Thank you. Sounds good. But you're not getting into it with them. You don't get into it with them. And if you say it's too hard, I can't help myself taking the bait. Get into therapy because that's a place to practice that skill. That's why the support becomes so important. But to understand it is hard. Big thing you want to do model empathy for your kids. Show them what healthy looks like be that healthy place for them. Be that soft place to land. You also have the tougher role of sometimes having to be the more tough parent the homework all that other stuff. The other usually the narcissistic or emotionally abusive co-parent gets to be inconsistent all of that but your kids need that one soft place to land. So like lead by example lead by example but particularly when it comes to empathy and emotional regulation and finally never ever to speak badly about that other parent as tempting as it may be as much as you were like I need them to know the truth they'll get to the truth it just can't come from you it is absolutely crucial when you're co-parenting with an emotionally abusive person you keep that under your hat you could talk to someone else talk to a therapist anyone else do not talk to your kids about it but let them come to that conclusion when they're older they may they may not usually they do sometimes they don't which is heartbreaking but it can't come from you. Yeah, absolutely. I agree with that and then just Michelle ask how can you know the difference between a narcissist and a psychopath in a romantic relationship and how do you know if someone can potentially get dangerous? So there's sort of two different questions here so narcissism and psychopathy are very close but also quite different. Narcissism is that whole the whole entitlement grandiosity and security thing I'm talking about the difference is though with the and the narcissist can feel shame and their anger comes from that the psychopathic person is a different game they're very cold callous calculating but they often don't have any remorse so they'll do bad things and not feel bad believe it or not a narcissistic person does feel bad when they do bad things but they're so overwhelmed by the shame of doing that bad thing because the narcissist if he has to view themselves is almost perfect that they'll blame other people for that but they do feel bad believe they really do if psychopathic person does not feel bad so it can be more menacing a psychopathic person many people will say it truly feels like Jekyll high like they'll say I thought I knew this person then I learned they did all these terrible things or they'd been married four times before or they're still married or they have kids I don't know about or they had they were in prison and I didn't know it like a psychopathic person is very very skilled at lying because their nervous systems are are different and so they can lie more smoothly they can again they for them a relationship is completely and only serves the purpose of power profit or pleasure when they get into a close relationship is to get something it could be to legitimize them it could be whatever purpose of marriage would it would be a house to live in a car to drive it is definitely manipulative and cold and they will ice you and they have no more need for you and move on or whatever but they will leave you in terror while they're in it narcissistic person isn't quite that calculating not at all they may actually really they may actually genuinely like you you're still supplied to them but it's not as calculated now in terms of danger one of the things you want to pay attention to and this is when we even talk about malignant narcissism what's in these relationships early on what you're going to start seeing is control shows up early and that control can look like isolation it can look like somebody talking badly about the people around you it can be a person kind of grousing about why do you need to work late who's that guy you work with why does that person text you lots of show me your phone who's this person liking your pictures it's a lot of that stuff and initially for a lot of folks and might feel like attention like oh they really care or they're jealous because they're into me they may want to spend all their time with you how come you need to go out with your friends how come you need to use your family aren't you into me don't you want to spend time with me so they'll want to spend time but it's it's from a place of control yeah jealousy you'll see also I tell people when you're in a new relationship never ever ever except a phone or other device as a gift ever not an iPad not a phone and I'll tell you why if they're putting a service contract on it you just gave them the greatest tracking device ever you can say well that's a nice gift I'm good or leave it at home or don't carry it with you mean we're seeing that those AirPods for a minute until Apple show to show people like the way that your your phone can detect there's one near you is a you know became it all of a sudden tracking people became something you could do for 20 bucks you think you always used to do like that yeah so there's a there's an intensity and a jealousy and a oh what you want us to work like you're not you don't even like me and they'll be like you know what you know I'll show you I'm going to go hurt myself and people back what is happening and they'll be terrified and so I would say if early in a relationship and it'll be early like in the first month or two somebody's really saying how come you need to do that how come you're talking to that that's a sign to say this is not cool like a relation if they're they're not trusting you out the gate and it's that intense and it almost feels like if I want to have my life they're going to tell me I'm being I'm I'm not into them then if you indeed are into them and someone's telling you you're not because you're doing the things that you normally do in your life this may not be your person but especially for young people I see this more often they're really into me and they want to spend all their time with me and this is like this is so intense and this is amazing and intense amazing quick relationships can often really can really be problem they want to move in quick they want to get engaged quick they want to get married quick slow down and it's usually coupled with love bombing right like it's controlling jealousy and it's also like giving you flowers every day right it's like kind of a combination it can be it can be it can be the flowers but more and with the malignant narcissistic folks it's more like I have to be with you all the time right and again for a lot of people especially for somebody who might have had a history where they didn't feel seen and they didn't feel heard and especially if they've had past relationships where a person was kind of distance and didn't get back to them in time the idea that somebody could be so into you even though it might be controlling for some people can actually feel like well this is actually great that somebody wants to know what time I got home or touches base with me good morning good night they text me a lot during the day in my last relationship the person never even answered my text that kind of contrast can also set someone up so but I here's the ultimate answer to that question when we get break it down don't take a phone don't do it this you feel it in your body when we feel unsafe with someone we feel it we feel it internally our past of the way we've hold we've held harm threats and trauma in the past we feel it and the key is to pay attention to that sometimes people say I think I'm just overthinking it pay attention because I think for the vast majority clients I've worked with if they paid attention to that feeling early on that it would have probably gotten out before it got too much like a week or two in it might still be at a point where you could step away but I listen I've worked with people say after two weeks I I stepped out of relationship we'd gone on all of two days and the person sent me these really abusive texts and that went on for weeks or months so it's not always easy Yeah, absolutely it can be difficult especially if you're attracted to the narcissist yeah often they are attractive right like they they spend a lot of time curating an image right yeah and they're taking care of their parents I mean narcissistic people you know they will ensure that they look good I mean the way things look are really important to narcissistic people very important I mean again it's a it's superficiality as part of the personality style so are you an attractive partner? Are they attractive? So whatever that means however they make themselves attractive it's going to be different for everyone it's going to be really important because they derive a lot of their identity from that and they derive their identity from what their partner looks like or what their family looks like so either they're going to lie about it to make it sound better than it is or they're going to be attracted to someone who will bring that into a relationship Absolutely and then explore further ask and I think this is a great question because he or he or she asked I have a colleague in my office who I believe has a who has narcissistic behavior I always feel anxious and drained after meeting up with him what should I do to save my mental health? This is such a great question and I think it's very relatable because for a lot of folks they may actually have a very healthy relationship have good family ties have good friends but say where I'm encountering this is at work and don't discount how much of an impact that can have we spend a lot of our waking hours at work in fact we know workplace stress can have significant health and mental health impact so in this case so the person said it beautifully they said I feel drained and depleted after I spend time with this person pay attention to that feeling now work is tough because sometimes you have to have contact with someone you work with otherwise you may not be able to afford to leave your job may have benefits you might have spent a long time there it might be a hard job job to get many reasons we have to stay mostly because we need money right that's why we keep on to work and so but that that experience my some guidance I give to someone in that situation is number one make sure you document stuff because if this keeps getting worse and worse in the absence of documentation there's almost nothing you can do in the workplace number two when you know you have to encounter this person prepare for it so if you're like shoot I have a two o'clock with this colleague the night before make sure you get enough sleep be good to like almost like you're preparing for an exam or something like before the meeting some deep breaths recognize above all else and I always tell people it's not personal like narcissistic people are going at people because you are bringing out their shame you're bringing out you're disappointing them you're frustrating them you could be anyone right a lot of times we think what could I do differently I mean other than given to them on everything there's not much you can do you can't do that at work so prepare for that recognize I have to be realistic I'm going to keep it I'm going to play it tight I actually remember once having a work meeting where I watched someone do this and he did it brilliantly he knew what we were going to be dealing with and he said Romani don't say a word just let this person talk just let him talk and talk and talk and we're going to nod politely and say mm-hmm yep we're going to make our notes the other person I thought the narcissistic person was going to lose it because we weren't giving them what they wanted but we were taking it all in we're very clear on what we needed to get done like the thing that needed to get done got done but his advice was brilliant because we didn't engage and in fact a piece of guidance I give everyone when you're dealing with narcissistic people is an easy thing to remember I tell you don't go deep go what do I mean by don't go deep deep stands for don't defend D don't engage E don't explain E and don't personalize what that means is don't get in the mud with them they're not going to take responsibility they're going to they're going to make it sound like you're the one doing something when you're going to say no, no, no, no let me explain mm-hmm keep it tight and then and then when the meeting is done when you feel depleted do something about that whatever that looks like if you're able to take a break take a walk if you're even a place where you can actually literally step away and take a nap do that you may not always be able to do that take a breath text a friend who's something who's supportive if you have a book you read that something helps you center journal do something to bring yourself down in an intentional way it's not like Oh God so the clue that I got to go on to the next thing take a minute and recognize that yours your nervous systems like I am exhausted from sort of being that on edge and then and then know that when you get home from work that day whatever you can do you know to do something for yourself again to almost bring yourself back to that parasympathetic state of relaxation what go to bed earlier do your workout whatever it may be but it's about really bringing yourself back in to that healthy space and these these encounters they exhaust and deplete all the time and so I have to tell you when I have narcissistic workplace encounters those are nights and I say you know what I'm going to have to shut it down early tonight because it is this one really want me out and on the topic of narcissism in the workplace do narcissists tend to be very Machiavellian in the workplace just very much so yeah very Machiavellian the triangulated gossip mongering turning people against each other sometimes passing rumors you tell them something in confidence they might tell someone else always trying to figure out the best opportunity for them in the worst cases they might even steal your work or your intellectual contributions this is why I'm saying documentation is everything when you're working with narcissistic people absolutely and then Captain Kerr asked and this question was asked a few times how do I know if I'm the narcissist it's a great question actually yeah it's a difficult question because here's the thing there are patterns in narcissism the sometimes the problems with impulsivity the egocentricity like the sense of I I got to do my own thing the the challenges with intimacy the challenges with empathy we can see some of those things parallel other patterns post trauma in some cases addiction in some cases even depression in some cases so I would say to folks who are asking this number one be self-reflective on how you are with other people do you genuinely care about them and do you let them know that do you take the time even if it's not convenient for you from time to time to hear other people and be present with that do you truly believe that your needs are more important than other people's you know do you really believe your own hype or are you not that person I think what I've typically seen is that the people who ask that question will be struggling with another mental health issue but it's resulted in some patterns particularly sort of the not feeling they can connect with other people and feeling sort of indifferent to people and because I can be paralleled and so many other mental health issues I'll often say to people go go ask yourself those other questions like how do I feel about other people do I care about them you know do I really genuinely feel like I'm special do I feel like I'm I might everyone's out to get me do I shift blame those are the questions you have to ask yourself that's the border and then I answer them honestly yeah but then also if you're still a concern talk to a therapist and see you might say like listen ever since something's happened to me I notice and I'm more selfish than I've ever been and that could be something that can be discussed Ariana asked sometimes my boyfriend can act narcissistic he always reminds me that he's better looking than me and that I'm lucky to have him how do I address this to him that it hurts me when he calls me ugly can we go to Ariana's question after we go to Renee's because Renee's questions like I don't want to lose Renee yeah my mother is okay so Renee sorry about that Renee my mother is narcissistic is it possible that she actually loves me it's a great Renee it's a great question yeah it gets into a much bigger philosophical question of what is love and what does it mean to be like yeah everyone's walking around with different definitions of love and that your narcissistic mother believes she loves you she really really does and Renee your experience of what she gave you of love may not feel like love you might feel like it was always her needs first I was secondary I was actually a place she got her needs met I would have to listen to her I'd have to do things as long as we did what she wanted then she was happy if somebody's convinced they love you I actually think it's gaslighting to say no you don't all right if some if you somebody says they love me I I take that at face value however it is valid to say I know you say you love me I am not having that experience because your actions aren't showing me that because I think again for me I'm an actions kind of gal so I really do believe that actions really matter when people say they love you I I think a lot of people out there would say I'd be fine never hearing the words I love you once if the other person did write by me and that's what's Renee sounds like she'd hope for in her mother what's challenging is that for the narcissistic person love is a paradox in order for them to love it really has to be about self love so to the degree Renee's mom might view Renee's an extension of herself or because Renee's part of her mom so thus you know it's sometimes be narcissistic people love because it's like what they know is the right thing to do I but I don't ever believe we get to doubt that I think Renee though that the tricky bit is you may not have felt loved and I understand that because that's the paradox of anyone who's had a narcissistic parent is that you don't feel like you were loved and that can feel painful I think the hard part is to recognize that just because you didn't feel love doesn't mean you're not lovable obviously you are and that your mother believed that she loved you so it's meaningless to get into the conversation with her about whether she loved you but to understand that you likely didn't have that experience of feeling loved and sometimes people can feel guilty for believing that that like I felt like my parents doesn't love me but that's not okay because they fed me or they kept shelter over from like that's good and well that's not enough for Rene there can be a real period of grief and you recognize I know that she thought she loved me it didn't feel loving and there's grief around that because you can't go back and get a do over on childhood but to recognize so that all of that never undercuts that you Rene are lovable yeah you're deserving of love Rene I'm sorry that you're going through that we're all deserving of love from our parents right it's like fundamental right so mm-hmm yeah and so back to Arianna's question my boyfriend always reminds me that he's better looking than me makes me feel ugly um how do I address this to him because I just feel worthless okay so Arianna if somebody even thinks it's within the realm of reason to say something like that that's abusive right yeah to comment on someone's appearance and just to give you to give you a framing around that commenting on another person's appearance to them is a boundary violation commenting on their weight how do you think I look and then you're like you know I think it looks great or you know you might want to go a size bigger that's very different going up and saying I think you look this but for somebody who you're in a relationship with an intimate relationship with where part of that sort of social contract is some level of attraction for somebody to say these things about how I'm attractive but you're not that's a power and control play right that's putting you on your back foot on in that relationship you feel sad and hurt and ashamed and humiliated embarrassed whatever feelings you're having I can't tell you how you feel but they're not good feelings and when we don't have good feelings we're diminished right we're almost having to put our psychological resources and managing the hurt in the wound right and so that that the that when that when your boundaries violated in that way and you're being harmed and I feel like critiques about appearance are abuse I really do absolutely that and you're on you're on your back foot and the other person in the relationship really actually does get to maintain a position of dominance the tricky bit with Ariana is I don't know that there's a direct path to saying something because my guess is by now Ariana has said I feel hurt if you haven't start there for no other reason that at a minimum the other person try it once I feel hurt when you say that but if somebody's capable of saying that that we go back to that self-reflective capacity this person to be able to say you're not attracted if indeed that's his story and he really believes that he might say I know this is going to be hard but I don't feel attracted to you anymore I want to end the relationship Ariana with self a broken heart but that's very different than a person maintaining a relationship with you while saying I'm better than you it's better that they end the relationship that's the more I that's the more honest move but this to me feels like a power play and it is not good for you and it is again it is a boundary violation when somebody comments on your appearance any way when it is unsolicited and I think we live in a world where everybody's commenting on other people's images all the time and frankly it's really made a sloppy at that even if a parent is if you are a child and your parents said to you hey you know somebody's getting a little chubby boundary violation yeah that's it mm-hmm and I wanted to address this Ariana you're not worthless I'm sorry that hell to the know I'm sure your health and I'm sure that Ariana is gorgeous you know absolutely that's what it breaks my heart when I hear comments like this that somebody would have the unmitigated gall to sell someone that they ostensibly love someone and then would go tell someone they're not attractive oh by the way I am again Ariana you've got that light in some ways you know the painful answer to this but whatever happens in this please oh please recognize that that beauty you carry because I I just it it when I when I hear that and that's why I do what I do so you keep go shining your light out there girl Ariana you're beautiful and you don't deserve to feel that way well thank you Dr. Romani that's you end of the audience segment and I just have one more question you're froze prevalent than ever can you go back and could you froze for a minute when you were saying that oh sorry um can you hear me now sorry mm-hmm do you think that in our society narcissism is more prevalent than ever or is it just being exposed now because of social media and tiktok and all of that I think it's a mix back I think that this personality style has probably existed since time immemorial we're a hierarchical species there's always going to be someone who's trying to be the the big bossy you know mean person that where we have alphas it's hierarchical we're primates it is what it is right if you want to look at the most simple terms but we are definitely are hominid species we're hierarchical species so I think it's always been around but I think the difference is that now that there's you know greater behavioral accountability it used to be that we just sort of you know because the diminished roles people had you know other than the people people in the highest positions of power could do whatever they want and everyone else got to say nothing about it mercifully the world has shifted somewhat and we do have the capacity to say there's some things that aren't okay you can remember and I think people forget this we have not even been talking about trauma about it that way for maybe 60 70 years that's new yeah with all of this is new mental health is still the field in its infancy we've always known when somebody sort of was having those struggles but we've never really been able to approach it in the sort of compassionate way we should so in this way is it more prevalent it's hard to know if it's more prevalent some research suggests it's not I do think though that what we're starting to learn about what is and what is not speaking out about it about it instead of people suffering in silence absolutely well with that being said this is the end of our first episode of psychology round table thank you so much for being Dr. Romany you're so brilliant intelligent amazing thank you for your questions thank you Michelle for your amazing questions I really appreciate it and to the audience for your fantastic to every one of you you know just remember that like you know it's always always seek out the help you need and never let anyone dim your light absolutely you guys are all worthy of love and healthy relationships so that is the end of our stream thank you psych to go viewers until the next one bye bye


We're just going to launch our own distribution for Duke. Come see at SiliconANGLE.com and download it so you can find the link. Thank you for coming on the field. Thank you very much for having me. Thank you. Appreciate it. Great to meet you. Thank you. Sorry for the scheduling. Snapoo. Great to have you. Dave, great conversation. I love the conversation about the database. It's really that the RDMS misuse and design is really right on the money. Stefan is super smart about that. I really appreciate that comment. Good insights. Great insights. Are you Jacob? Yes. Hi. Pleasure to meet you. Pleasure to meet you. Welcome to the Cube. We're live on day two in New York City for Hadoop World 2011. We are on the ground. This is our flagship telecast, the Cube, where we go out and talk to the smartest people in the room who can find and extract that signal from the noise and share that with you. We find the top stories. The entire team is here. The bloggers are here. The news is here. We're getting all those stories, Dave, and covering the trends. Obviously, big data in Hadoop, the funding, and we're here to predict the future. So welcome to the Cube. Jacob Rapp from Cisco Systems, Manager of Technical Marketing. Right? Yes. So welcome. We're going to talk about the intersection of networking and big data, but there was news the other day, right? Didn't Juniper bring down the internet or something like that? BGP table, Dump, Core Dump, and Crash Internet. You've never seen that in Cisco. Sorry, Juniper. A little tongue-in-cheek. Tongue-in-cheek. Now, so Cisco, obviously, networking vendor, this whole monitoring and performance stuff has been around on the network side for many, many years. So data's used a lot in networking for a lot of reasons, configuration management, automation. So you're no stranger to it, but why Hadoop now, I mean, log analysis and all that stuff. What are you guys doing with Hadoop and share with us at Cisco's view of this? Sure. So we at Cisco, I mean, traditionally have been a really large player in the big data with our networking for a while and with traditional big data with the Web 2.0 industries. And what we're seeing now is really an influx of enterprise customers coming to us and asking, how do I integrate this into my enterprise system? So moving from the Web 2.0 to the enterprises now, and what do I care about? So how do I architect my network? What's really behind the scenes in Hadoop? So I mean, there's a lot of material out there of, okay, Hadoop's this, Hadoop's the other thing for the network. But what we really wanted to do is run a series of benchmarks. Because before we make any recommendations at Cisco, we want to do a little bit of due diligence beforehand. And we built this 128-node cluster about a petabyte worth of data. I think, as Claudia mentioned on the first day, the average cluster size around 120 nodes. So it's a pretty good representation, I think, of what we're seeing out in the enterprise today. And we ran all these benchmarks to come up with what really is happening on the network. If you're running different types of jobs, if you're using different types of compute nodes, what's happening? And that's to really provide some sort of, some value into the ecosystem with some real data. So how are the network requirements in Hadoop and big data different? So there's a lot of, so I think a goal out of this was to really demystify it, make it less scary. Right? So it's all about integration into the enterprise and how we can integrate really well with the current infrastructures. So there are some things in Hadoop, and it's largely dependent on the data models, whether you're running an ETL-like job or a business intelligence job, what affects on the network. One thing that is crucial is your reliability and redundancy mechanisms. Because if you have a rack go out, if you lose a top of rack switch or wherever you're connecting into, and say you have 16 servers or 32 servers in that rack, each server has 8 to 24 terabytes worth of data, that's a lot of data to lose. And if you lose that rack, HDFS is redundant, so rebalancing will happen. So all of a sudden all those 16 or 32 servers times 8 terabytes or 24 terabytes worth of data, all of a sudden it needs to replicate throughout the network. So this causes a lot of issues. So I think reliability and redundancy are really key pieces in the puzzle. So you're saying there this is the amount of data that you have to accommodate just makes it all even more important than the traditional enterprise to have higher availability? Yeah, absolutely. Because I think HDFS was built with redundancy in mind, but if you lose something like a network component that's a little bit, I mean you know we're cover, but it's going to be painful. It's been a long, long time. Another thing that you may, though we found out of our study, and actually our study is published online now on our website. We did a nice comprehensive white paper with all the results, but it's buffering. So as you're depending on the workload, take for example like an ETL workload, extract transform load, you're just transforming a lot of data. You start out with say a terabyte worth of data, a 10 terabytes worth of data, you end up with 10 terabytes worth of data at the end. So with MapReduce, how MapReduce works, in the middle of that, I'm going to shuffle that data across the network. So I'm taking that one, five, 10 terabytes, shuffling it across the network, and then at the very end, if I'm replicating it for redundancy at the end, that one, five, or ten turns into two, ten, or 20 terabytes as you're replicating out through the network. So these can be really bursty traffic patterns for the top of rack switches, and so, I mean optimized buffering is what you really need. I'm not saying buffering has been a pretty big debate in the industry of how much do I need, do I need a gig, two gigs, do I need nine megs, do I need two megs? So I think we've, the position I think we've taken is really optimized buffering. Yeah, you had your recent announcement, didn't you have a Nexus 3000 announcement that had some expanded buffering that fits, right? Yeah, so there's a Nexus, there's two platforms actually we just came out with in recent launch, the 3048, which is the new 3K, and the 2248TP-E. So whether our customers want an architecture with a top of rack switch, like a 3K, or a fabric extender architecture to really optimize on cost and management, we have either platforms now that are really optimized for big data in mind. You know, we talked to a lot of people on the Cube and in the industry around big data, we've been covering it for two years, like a blanket, and it's fun. But there's always a conversation around, oh, commodity hardware, and that's the story, right? But with the cloud movement, compute really isn't the problem. And the constant thing that we're hearing, and I'd love to get your perspective on this, is it's not so much the compute, and there is some storage issues with Hadoop that kind of goes away. The biggest problem everyone's facing is moving the traffic on the network, right? So this is what you guys do, right? This is where it's all about, so that's a big focus here. So there's tons of compute storage works with MapReduce and HDFS, but really the issue is the network. What are you guys seeing, and I'm obviously, it's the first step with Hadoop, and what's the vision and how are you guys tackling that, obviously making, you know, that's the bottleneck. Well, I think there's, depending on the workload, we actually have had customers that come to us and say, well, I've had zero issues on the network, it's deployed at no problem whatsoever, and then some that have, some that are like, I'm moving a ton of data because I'm doing this type of workload versus another type of workload, because if you do a business analytics type workload, where I start out with a ton of data and try to find some analytics out of it, I may start out with 10 terabytes, but end up with a few megs that I have to shuffle. So it's really dependent on the workload, what we're going to see. But a lot of what we're seeing is that they want this to be integrated into their current IT infrastructure, because there's a lot of customers out there that are, there's proof of concepts, demo labs, the science projects right now, where there's a Hadoop cluster out, kind of out of the normal IT infrastructure. So it's really the key is integrating it back into the IT infrastructure, because they've found tremendous value of it, and now they're like, let's integrate this thing, and they want to make sure that their network is resilient enough for it. So I think the good news is in most cases, it's not an issue because the size of the clusters aren't that big right now, except for those spot data jobs where there's moving around. Clusters are going to grow. Absolutely. So I mean we've deployed thousands of nodes of clusters out there on the network. And if there's, it's just a solid design principles, right? So a lot of the design principles have been kind of evolving as we go. So for example, like the new faxes that we're coming out with, or the new 3Ks are coming out with this optimized buffering, more visualization into what's happening. Because if you look at, I mean it's all providing more intelligence to the operators, more visibility, where we can go monitor buffering, we can monitor different statistics. And I think it's more important as these, like I just said, once clusters grow and then you get a bunch of different business entities that want to use that cluster all at the same time, what if this business entity is doing something really strange, is affecting the network, that's multi-tendencies an issue. So providing the visibility and the configuration and options to actually change the way you're doing buffering or QOS, those types of, will become more important as these clusters grow and multiple users are using it. Well, it's great to see you guys here. Jacob Rapp from Cisco, you guys have a table, we see you guys over there. What's some of the feedback you're hearing at the show?  You talked about some of the network concerns you guys are on top of. That being said, what's your view about this whole ecosystem as it's developing and Hadoop in general? So I think this conference was a really great conference and there's a really good technical core audience here. So there are some larger conferences out there that are maybe not big data, there's big data themes in it, but the quality of people I think at this conference has been really good. And we've had some really good questions and comments and how should we do this, how should we architecture? The sessions are really attended, I mean, the people actually really there to listen and come in. Yeah, they're there and then the questions that they're asking are the deeper level questions that you are really happy that they're getting that feedback from. So I think it was a great conference to be at.  Thanks for coming on theCUBE, we really appreciate it. Thank you. Great to see you guys here and thanks for your time. Nice to meet you, Jacob. Appreciate it, thank you. All right.


It's time to pump it off. Today's road check tip is to remind you to check for proper inflation, air leaks, exposed fabrics, or cords on your tires for your truck and your trailer. Check back again tomorrow for another road check tip.


Hello and welcome to this session in which we look at some simple algorithms on graph. In particular we look at what are called graph traversals. So what is a graph traversal? As we have seen the most basic question on graphs is given two nodes N and N, find a path in the graph that starts from N and ends at N. That is we want to start at node N, move to some successor of N and keep moving to successors of node till we reach the node N. So this is exactly the problem of trying to go from city X to city Y by using an airlines connections that are available. There may not be a direct connection but there may be a path from X to Y which is essentially a sequence of flights that you can take to reach from X to Y. So the representation of a graph gives us only local information about the graph. For every node it tells us which nodes are its successor or given two nodes it tells us whether one is the successor of another. But the properties of graphs that we are interested in are you mainly global properties of the graph. The existence of a path for example is a global property. Just by looking at all the successors of a given node we cannot say whether there is a path from a given node N to N. We need to go through list of all the nodes in the graph to see whether it is possible to reach a node N by a path starting from a node N. And a graph traversal is a systematic way of collecting information about the entire graph and we gather the information by traversing the whole graph in a systematic way. And this information then can then be used to solve many other problems on graph. So we look at one such method which is called depth force search in a graph which is a systematic way of visiting all nodes of a graph. So while traversing the graph we will gather information about it and use this later to solve many other problems. So depth force search turns out to be the first step for many problems on graph and in many algorithms the first step that you perform is depth force search. And this is especially useful for finding paths and cycles in a graph and related problems. So what is depth force search? So we define a function called traverse s comma v. So s is a sequence of nodes in the graph to be visited and v is a sequence of nodes that have been visited. So traverse will finally return as a sequence of all nodes that get visited. But it uses currently two sequences of nodes one which is yet to be visited and v is visit those which have been visited. And the important point is it will return a sequence of nodes in a particular order in the order in which they get visited during our traversal. So this is similar to for example pre-order traversal of a tree which generates a sequence of all nodes of the tree in a particular order. Similarly depth force search and generates a sequence of all nodes in the graph in a particular order. So traverse pi comma v is v. So if no more nodes remain to be visited then we just return the list of nodes that have already been visited and that is the final list of all nodes in the graph. So traverse pi comma v is v. If the sequence of nodes to be visited is not empty. So there exists a node n the first node n to be which we know has not been visited or which may or may not have been visited. We check whether it already occurs in the set of visited nodes. If it does then we do not do anything we just move to the next node in the sequences. So if a node in s is already occurred in v then we ignore this node and do nothing. Otherwise we will do what is called depth force search starting from node n and with the set of visited nodes v and take that as our new set of visited nodes. So the set of visited nodes is expanded starting from this new node n. So we found a node n which was not visited and we start what is called a depth force search from node n with the current set of visited nodes and expand the set of visited nodes to be the set n comma v dfs n comma v and then traverse the remaining sequence of unvisited nodes in s. And dfs essentially to starting from node n all it does is it adds v to the list of visited nodes. So new sequence of visited nodes becomes obtained by concatenating v and the sequence push n comma 5. So we add n to the end of the sequence of visited nodes v and that is our new list of visited nodes. And now we traverse through all the successors of the node n and again look check if any one of the successors has been visited or not. So if you find a successor which has not been visited it will again call depth force search for that successor and again it will push that successor into the list of visited nodes and so on. So this is a compact way of describing depth force search in a graph. Essentially we keep expanding the set of visited nodes. Every time a new node is found which is unvisited we start a depth force search function from that. All that depth force search does is it adds this node to the set of visited nodes and it calls depth force search for the successors of itself. So traverse s comma 5 so when we start with the set of all nodes in the graph and empty set is the initial visited sequence of nodes. This will return all nodes in the graph in the order in which they give visited. On the other hand DFS n comma 5 will return a sequence of nodes to which there is a path in the graph from node n. So if there is no path from node n to some node it will not get added to the sequence DFS n5 and this is something that you can prove by induction. By just looking at the definitions of these functions can show that only if there is a path from node n to node m will node m appear in the sequence DFS n5. So the function that we have defined only test whether there is a path in the graph but we can modify to actually return the sequence of nodes in the graph from node n to node m and we usually need to do many other computations apart from ordering the nodes in the graph while doing depth force search. So alternatively we can write this in a more programming style. So here DFS n comma 5 constructs a tree with root n of nodes that are reachable from n. So instead of returning just a sequence of nodes now DFS n5 is actually returning a rooted tree with n as the node and it will essentially return a tree of all the nodes that are reachable from node n in the graph. And then the path from any node in this tree to n can be found by following the parent array in this tree. So for every node we will find its parent in this tree and that we will finally come back to the root node which will be n and that will give us the path from n to any node in this tree. So initially the tree contains only the node n and no subtree the list of subtrees is empty and we add n to the list of vertices which are visited. So DFS nv just modifies the set of visited vertices and it constructs a tree and returns the tree as a return value. Then all that we need to do is look at all successors of the node n and pick any element i in that list of successors. If m has not been visited if it does not belong to the sequence v then we attach the or we call DFS m with the new list of visited vertices that returns a tree and attach t itself to attach to the tree t the new tree that has been written. So that is the new subtree that gets attached to the list of subtree of the tree t that we have got initially when we had no subtree to that when a successor is found which has not been visited we will call DFS for that successor it will return some subtree of nodes reachable from that successor and we will attach that as a subtree of the tree t finally we will return the tree t. So this is a more programming style of describing that for such much more compact if you use the functional description but this is more powerful you can do more things like computing the parent and so on using this. There is an alternative way of traversing a graph so just as in tree we had pre-order post-order this is a different way of traversing a graph which is called breadth-first search and this is especially useful when we want to find a path with minimum number of nodes from a given node to another node. So depth-first search will just give you one possible path from node n to node n but it may be a very long path so if you are using it to find a flight from x to y we may end up going through a very roundabout way but then breadth-first search is a better option which gives a shortest possible path from a node n to node n. So this is also defined in a similar way we have a list of nodes to be visited and a list of nodes which have been visited and we defined the traverse function in a similar way if node n has already been visited then we do nothing we just traverse the remaining sequence of node the list of visited nodes remains the same if node n has not been visited then we call breadth-first search from this node and we will add a new set of nodes to the visited set of nodes so the visited sequence now will be defined by BFS and BFS will be obtained by concatenating the node n to the set of visited nodes and we will add n to another sequence which is a Q. So BFS takes two parameters V and Q V is essentially the set of visited nodes Q is a set of nodes which we have visited but whose successors may not have been visited so the property is that V contains all visited nodes Q contains nodes which have been visited but whose successors may not have been visited. So this is what breadth-first search with view if the Q has become empty that is all nodes have been visited and their successors have also been visited then we just return the sequence V of the set of visited nodes otherwise we pick out the front element of the Q and remove it from the Q look at all successors of that element n if some successor does not occur in the sequence V so that is it has not been visited so far then we add this element m to the sequence V insert this element in the Q because now we do not know whether successors of m have been visited or not so we will also insert m in this Q and in this case again we set parent of m equal to n so this will again define a tree called a breadth-first search tree finally we return the sequence VFS VQ after modifying V and Q in this form so this is an alternative way of traversing a graph now we can use the similar ideas for many other problems on graph so we consider what are called directed acyclic graph so a graph with acyclic effect does not contain a cycle so many graphs in different applications are required to be acyclic so for example graph of course prerequisites cannot have a cycle because that would mean that you cannot start on any of those courses every course has a prerequisite which is in the cycle so then there is no course that you can start on that at all so this graph surely cannot have a cycle so property of such graph is what is called a topological ordering so it is an ordering of the nodes of the graph such that every ordered pair nm corresponding to n edge n occurs before m in the ordering so all the edges of the graph go from a node which occurs earlier in the ordering to a node which occurs later in the ordering and such an ordering can be used to solve many problems for directed acyclic graph and we can use depth-first search to find this ordering so here is a simple definition of top sort similar to this so this is exactly similar to the traverse function we will again call dfs if the node has not been visited and add the set of node flood get visited to the set of visited nodes nb the only difference here is in the dfs instead of pushing the node into the set of visited nodes right at the beginning of the call to dfs we do it after looking at all its successor so we will first do depth-first search on all the successor that will end up visiting some other nodes and then the node n itself is added last to the sequence b or it is added at the beginning of the sequence v so instead of adding it at the end of the sequence v as we were doing previously we will add it to the beginning of the sequence so in this case the nodes in v will actually appear in the order in which dfs was completed for that node rather than the order in which the nodes were visited so this gives a different ordering but this will have the property of a topological ordering if the graph is directed acyclic so this will give a valid ordering if the nodes in the graph is acyclic however it does not check whether the given graph is acyclic so after you have got the graph and you have got this ordering you can go through the list of edges and check that every edge goes from a node which occurs earlier to a node which occurs later if it does not then this graph is not acyclic and you can modify this function to actually find the cycle so you can try that as an exercise and this completes our session on graph we will see more about graphs when we consider implementations and algorithms on graphs thank you