Protecting Yourself from Narcissistic People with Dr. Ramani Durvasula
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Hello and welcome to Being Well. I'm Forrest Hansen. If you're new to the show, thanks for listening today. And if you've listened before, welcome back.

I've been looking forward to this episode for a while. We scheduled it a while back, and today I am joined by one of the world's leading experts on narcissism and narcissistic abuse, Dr. Ramani Dervasula. So Dr. Ramani, thanks for joining me today. How are you doing? Thank you so much. I'm well, Forrest. It's so nice to see you. It's been a long time, so thank you again for having me. Yeah, we did this years ago. I actually think before we were even on YouTube or anything like that. It was a great conversation. I really enjoyed it. And since then, your work has totally exploded.

If you're interested in this topic, you're probably already familiar with Dr. Romani. She is a clinical psychologist, a professor emeritus at Cal State University Los Angeles, and the author of a number of books, including her most recent, It's Not You, Identifying and Healing from Narcissistic People. Her work has been featured

pretty much everywhere. The Today Show, CNN, the New York Times, and she also has her own very, very popular YouTube channel. I think that it's approaching 2 million subscribers, which makes it just an enormous channel in the space. There are very, very few that cover mental health topics that get that big. And so yeah, so just really a credit to you and the work you've been doing over the last little while.

Thank you. That's very kind. You know, I always feel like it's a bit narcissistic to talk about what I've done. So I think we just keep slowly pushing the boulder up the hill and hoping to hell it doesn't roll back on us. Yeah, for sure. So I want to start just by framing kind of what we're talking about today. What do you mean when you say that somebody is narcissistic? When we use that language, I use that language that somebody's narcissistic, it refers to their personality style, right? So a narcissistic person is somebody who has

variable, low, often performative empathy. They are entitled, pathologically selfish, have an excessive need for admiration and validation and get quite angry if they don't get it.

There's a very superficial style, not only in how they present, but also in relationships. Relationships don't go very deep. They can often be quite transactional or even exploitative, taking advantage of another person. Again, like a deep, deep entitlement. I should be treated special. I am someone special and different. But the thing to remember about narcissism is that all of that stuff I just listed, which is really the stuff that makes relationships so uncomfortable, is that it's

It's kind of a coating or a suit of armor around a rather insecure and shame-filled interior. So those external defenses are constantly operating. So anytime the narcissistic person doesn't feel on top of their game or they're not getting their way or somebody's not giving them the praise they feel they need or deserve or they get criticized, whatever it is.

those defenses kick in. And they can also look like rage, anger, passive aggression, screaming at people, silent treatment in people. So these are very, very difficult relationships to navigate. And those traits that

That's what I mean by a narcissistic person. Translate into behavior. And that behavior can look like manipulation, invalidation, gaslighting, minimization, betrayal, domination, control, shifting blame onto the other person. So in the macro, these are really psychologically unsafe relationships. But the other issue, though, is they're not always like that.

When the narcissistic person is doing well, things are going their way. Maybe they're making the money they want. Maybe they have the job title they want. Maybe their team is winning, whatever it is. And they are well-supplied and well-regulated. They can be quite charming and charismatic and easy to get along with and fun and compelling. And in some ways, really the most interesting person you could meet. So you have this vacillation.

that gets sort of tipped off by what's happening internal to them, but people in these relationships blame themselves. If only I hadn't said it that way, if only this, if only that. And increasingly a person in one of these relationships is not only walking on eggshells, they're sort of coveting those normal moments, thinking like, well, if that could just last, we'd be fine. Well, that can't just last. It doesn't happen with this personality. That's what I mean by a narcissistic person.

So I think that people have an image in their minds when we say the word narcissistic or refer to somebody as a narcissist. And that's typically what you refer to as the grandiose narcissist. It's this particular pattern of personality traits that tie in very neatly to what you've described. One of the things that I really appreciate about your work is that you do a great job of piecing apart the different ways that narcissism can present, including some that people might be a little bit less familiar with.

In the book, you talk about vulnerable narcissists, communal narcissists. If you're interested in this territory, you might have heard those terms before, but I think it could be helpful to kind of just piece this apart a little bit for people to start with.

One of the challenges with the narcissistic personalities, we want it, we sort of think it's one sort of linear presentation. It's very multifaceted. The core is the same, the variable empathy, the entitlement, the pathological selfishness, and so on. But a lot of the forward-facing characteristics can be different. A lot of folks have what we call more of a vulnerable style. And that vulnerable narcissistic style is characterized more by

Being aggrieved and angry and victimized and sullen and feeling that the world has passed them by and there's like a real failure to launch. They feel owed something. And these are people who don't look charming and charismatic. They often look quite sad, sometimes anxious, sort of downtrodden and always have this sort of brooding anger.

Now, these are not separate states. Grandiose narcissistic people have vulnerable underbellies, meaning that for that grandiose narcissist, if stuff starts really going badly for them, they lose the job, their partner leaves them, they get caught out in a scandal, you'll start seeing these vulnerable types of patterns show up. If the vulnerable person, if the tide shifts for them, things really start going their way, they get the things they want, you might see more of that grandiose sort of peace happening.

turning up. So one style predominates, but that other style is lurking behind. Now, then there's other styles. Malignant narcissism is actually something that almost has more of a feel that's akin to psychopathy. Here we see a form of narcissism that's not so much charming and charismatic, but menacing, dominating, controlling, overpowering, exploitative, coercive, very psychologically kind of

controlling, but that insecurity is still there. And that's sort of what differentiates it from psychopathy, that the malignant narcissist can still feel some sense of remorse or even guilt, though it's much more attenuated. It's not as intense at all as you'd see in other forms of narcissism. And when that kind of sense of shame or guilt comes, they come and domineer even more.

So that's the malignant narcissist. And that's probably the form of narcissism where we're most likely to see things like escalation into physical violence and that sort of thing. The communal narcissistic type is a term that started, I first read it for the first time, like in the early 2000s.

And it was developed by a researcher in Germany who saw it as that most narcissistic people get their validation by being told they're great. You're so great. You're so wonderful. No one can do whatever it is like you. The communal narcissist derives their

validation from the sense of this doing good for others. So their motivation for doing good is the validation. It's not the compassion of doing good. Someone's suffering. I need to help them, even if nobody sees this. The communal narcissistic person definitely puts it on display, right? So here's where we might see people who look like they're in humanitarian spaces, but actually may treat

The people doing the actual work in the fields badly. You see that in cultic spaces. You might even see this in sort of new age spiritual spaces. Oh, self-help environments, would you say, Dr. Ramadi? Have I bumped into one or two of these people? Yes.

communal narcissism. I recently had contact with one and I was like, Ooh, wow. And there's a real, there is an almost delusional adherence. Like I am saving the world. And if anyone questions that, like, Oh, do you have the science behind that? You'll see this rage kind of come over their face. Like how dare you question me when I'm trying to save the world. But you can see how a style of communal narcissism could throw someone off. And

And there's even a form of narcissism we call self-righteous narcissism. There's old words like anechastic that have been used to describe it. This is the form of narcissism that's very moralistic, judgmental, almost Calvinist and workaholicy. So there's a very sort of trotting the straight and narrow and there this almost absolute lack of flexibility and this concrete kind of there is only one right way.

And I am the one who gets to hold that standard of what this one right way is. There's the entitlement. The selfishness is I don't need to help someone if they're not doing things the way I want. There's no awareness that other people are having a different experience. There's a rigidity. They may, for example, reject a child who comes out as gay or something like that. There's only one way to be and you're not my kid anymore. And so you can see how this gets kind of mired into maybe religious beliefs or other kinds of

long-held beliefs, but there's a coldness. And people will say as kids, it was all about keeping rooms clean, following the order, getting the grades, but there was no viewing us as human beings. And so, but many people view that self-righteous person as virtuous, as look how they, how honorable they are and how ethical they are. And so, but that rigidity can really, really result in a cold, inflexible, judgmental quality in relationships.

And so what all of these patterns have in common, in addition to the great list of personality traits that you described at the top, you know, lack of empathy, grandiosity, insecurity, entitlement, all of these aspects, is that they're all different ways that a person can pull for what are called narcissistic supplies. People who are listening might have heard this phrase before, that essentially people who have this personality structure, at least my understanding of it,

is that they can't really self-generate a sense of fulfillment, a sense of at-easiness. There's that insecurity that they're dealing with. And so these are all ways that a person can fish for that externally and kind of pull it toward them. If you think about somebody who's operating in a more communal way, this is a way for that person to feel very entitled, very in a position of power, very like they're doing something that gives themselves

a sense of meaning and purpose and identity in the world because there's that underlying sense of lack and emptiness that kind of runs beneath it. Am I understanding this more or less correctly?

Yeah. I mean, again, the narcissistic person is very externally focused, right? They get, they even set their goals based on what they think other people think they should be doing. Right. So it is, there's, there's very little that's internally found is everything's done forward facing. Now the narcissistic supply is the admiration and validation that keeps the insecurity and shame at bay. This can look a lot of different ways. Very common is money and power.

It can also be education, social status, possessions, but it can also be being viewed as the pillar of the community. It could be viewed as being the best helper, like look how much she does for the church group or something like that. So supply is supply for some people. Narcissistic supply is

people continuing to perpetuate their identity as a victim. Like, yeah, no one is fair to you. No one ever gives you what you deserve. That can be supply, right? So again, we usually go for the low hanging fruit of the money and the power and all of that. It could be, it could be a part

is a source of supply, a very attractive partner, a very well-resourced partner, rich, famous, whatever it may be. So all of those things can be supplied. That's going to vary depending on the narcissistic person, but it's basically pulling from the outside in that which should be internally regulated. And that's the source of

of what we call the narcissistic dysregulation, which is moods all over that place. You know, they'll be fine. And then the smallest thing, like somebody used their charger, will spin them into an absolute rage. And you're like, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. I bought that. That's my charger. You're also sloppy. I spent so much money on myself. You're like, oh my gosh, it's just a charger. And then they'll get even more angry because in a way you're sort of critiquing them and putting a spotlight on their shame. So it spins pretty quick.

or the narcissistic person will give someone the silent treatment. So these all become ways that ultimately control the relationship because what happens is a person in a narcissistic relationship, for lack of a better term, in essence, gets trained to behave the way the narcissistic person wants because either you got to get out, which isn't always an option, nor is it what people want, or you have to tolerate all this, either the silent treatment or the rage. So people just say, I just mind it, we'll do it their way.

and things will go fine. And that creates this phenomenon of walking on eggshells that's so often cited in these relationships. I really want to talk with you about that. We're definitely going to go into the relationship aspect of this whole thing. Before we get there, I did want to ask you about essentially what's the difference between me, somebody who definitely wants to have narcissistic supplies of different kinds. I want people on some level to think that I'm a good guy.

and somebody who has disordered narcissistic traits. So what I mean by this is that we all have a desire for narcissistic supplies in different kinds of ways, shows up for all of us. It is a part of personality that is present in everyone to some degree. So clearly there's some kind of a spectrum that's operating here all the way up to diagnosable narcissistic personality disorder, which I know that you also have some critiques of. And so I'm wondering how you think about that spectrum.

So I think that the term narcissistic supply, we've got to differentiate that from normal needs, right? Everybody likes getting praise. Everybody likes getting compliments. However, how do you tolerate when you do the job and that doesn't come? Do you tantrum? Do you rage? Yeah. Can you self-regulate in the face of not getting those external sources? And are you able within yourself to have enough self-reflection to say, I did a good job. I'm going to clock out. It would have been nice.

if someone did notice it, but I know I did good work or it is what it is, you know, sort of a capacity to regulate. It's not to say we wouldn't be disappointed or sad. Yeah, totally. Yeah, but we don't take it out on other people. Remember, the narcissistic person by definition uses other people to regulate.

right? To shift blame onto, to scream at. And then after the narcissistic person either does their silent treatment or their tantrum or whatever, they expect everything to go right back to normal and actually will be quite angry and frustrated that other people are still upset. Like, okay, can we just let this go? Because why? That tantrum brings up shame. But that normal desire for wanting to be recognized and seen as good in the world, that's normal. And in fact,

wanting to enter healthy relationships partly is that being viewed as good. In fact, if somebody is entirely indifferent to how they're seen in the world, that's its own set of problems. And that's also not unusual in vulnerable or malignant narcissism. So,

That normal desire to be seen, experienced, someone bearing witness to you, someone recognizing you, very, very normal. And again, this also has a developmental arc to it. In childhood, if the child was seen, heard, experienced, safe, all of that, that internal sense of self gets developed. So the child needs less of it in adulthood. Unfortunately, many people didn't get that. Yeah.

A lot of even kids who are not people who grow up to be narcissistic people didn't get it. And a

A lot of people who are not narcissistic didn't get it. So it becomes a very fraught space. And again, it's a normal need. So there's a difference. There's a difference in terms of how we react when we don't get it, how much we need it versus want it. All of that comes into play. Yeah. And I think that this gets to a lot of the confusion that people have about the difference between how you approach this, which is as essentially a personality style. Like if you think about that almost in terms of like big five ocean traits,

Yes. You know, somebody who is zero on conscientiousness, not particularly agreeable but they can show up as agreeable every once in a while. Yeah. Like that kind of thing. You can almost think about it in terms of that as opposed to a

personality disorder, which is where we go up to with like diagnosable NPD. And I've heard you say things like about one in six people, roughly ballpark, are people that you would describe as having this narcissistic personality constellation. The published rates for diagnosable NPD are like one or two percent of the population for a whole bunch of different complicated reasons.

And I think that that just highlights the difference between what you're speaking to, which is this general tendency in people that is really helpful to be aware of, and the standards that somebody needs to hit to qualify for a personality disorder or something like that. And sometimes in the past when we've talked about narcissism on the show, I think that that's been a little bit of a source of confusion to people.

people because they have the experience of being like, wait a second, Forrest, you're saying, you know, 2% of people are this way. I've got the experience that it's a lot more than 2%. And I think that most people would co-sign that.

So the idea of it, first of all, the whole idea of personality disorders is a very tricky space in the realm of how we think about mental health. And it gets into a much deeper conversation on how diagnoses are even generated, medical model, who actually got to be inside that room, all of that. So I think that what we and what, for example, the International Classification of Diseases, which is a World Health Organization model for conceptualizing mental health,

want to do is focus on this as a series of traits, some more adaptive than others, some more maladaptive than others. Narcissism and antagonism and all that would fall into the more maladaptive bucket.

So this idea of a diagnosis and the way it's done in our diagnostic manual, it's a bit like ordering like on a price fixed menu. You got to have one of this. You got to have one of this. And no, you can't have two desserts. No, you can't have two entrees. It's that. You got to check the boxes, right? Got to check the boxes, right? Which is very medical, which is not what mental health conforms to, right? In the insurance and all. I mean, again, I'm not going to get onto that whole rant. But so what happens is that we diagnose by narcissistic personality disorder has a list of five traits, right?

associated with it in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, or the DSM. The person needs five of those nine, and then you have to establish this is a persistent, consistent pattern. But the only one person who can really flick the switch on that is a licensed mental health practitioner. People with this personality style don't come to therapy as a rule unless things really go south for them or there's something else happening for them.

co-occurring depression, co-occurring social anxiety, co-occurring addiction, something like that, or they're court ordered or something. Right. Number two, a lot of therapists don't record the diagnosis anyhow because it doesn't work with insurance. Like I said, all these other kinds of unrelated issues. And then what happens is for us, there are people out there who did get diagnosed with narcissistic personality disorder, which I said, it's a five out of nine kind of model. That's all, which is that list I gave you. But

They actually, these people with NPD, their narcissism is no more severe than that one in six, one in seven I talk about walking around the world. The difference is that group never was subjected to that level of evaluation. And then keep in mind, a lot of narcissistic people, as we've been talking about, care about what they look like to the world and they know what looks good in the world. There's research showing that narcissistic people actually overestimate their levels of empathy.

And so they think of themselves as very empathic people. So there's actually a lack of self-reflective capacity, which means if you ask them questions, I don't know that they're going to answer them accurately. So this is why I don't like us talking about diagnosis, because what it does, not only does it muddy the waters, I have people coming and say, tell me, Dr. Ramji, they have a diagnosis of NPD. I said, how the hell am I supposed to know? They're not sitting in my office.

But the second piece is it's not the narcissism that's the issue. It's not the NPD that's the issue. It's the behaviors. And what I try to bring people back to is let's talk about these behaviors because you, I want people to know

this set of behaviors in a relationship is not healthy. So when you're exposed to this, you're going to feel sick. It's like a person, recently I'm trying to, I'm involved in a real estate transaction right now, and you're testing radon, and you're testing mold, and all this other stuff, right? So when those reports come back, what do they tell me? They say, with this level of these things, you could get sick, you could get very sick. There's something in the environment. I ain't nothing personal against radon,

I have nothing personal against them all, but I don't want them to be where I'm living. So you see what I'm saying? Because it's a thing. It's an entity, but it's going to make me sick. And so I need to address this. In a relationship, it's a lot harder to think that way because we have this other wrinkle. The narcissistic person isn't the only person in the relationship. We're in it too. And we as human beings, we're like heat-seeking attachment missiles. We want attention.

Even to unhealthy figures. The younger the person is, like a child with a narcissistic parent, they ain't got options. So they've got to attach to that narcissistic parent, which means really, in essence, silencing themselves. But as we get into adulthood...

and we love someone narcissistic, we are going to want to attach to them too, which may mean overlooking their toxic behavior or never having learned that these patterns are actually really unhealthy for us. It's about the behavior, right? And so the term narcissism is a way for me to avoid saying,

Carrots, celery, chicken, broth, salt, rosemary, every single time. I like that word soup because it cuts to the chase. The word narcissism talks, if accurately used, about a bucket of traits that result in those behaviors that are not good in relationships. So no, I am not a fan of the diagnostic framing. I think it gets us absolutely nowhere. And

as the powers that be actually age out and we bring in hopefully newer, younger blood into these decision-making boards, there'll be a much more better take on it. But I actually don't think, I think that it's all about understanding personality and take the word disorder out. Yeah. We'll be right back to the show in just a moment.

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Now, back to the show.

One of the problems with these kinds of diagnostic models that they have, to your point, is that they don't necessarily capture people's experience very well. Somebody could have just, in quotation marks, three of the nine traits for NPD and still be an absolute pain in the ass to be around in a total mess inside of a relationship. So we don't want to get kind of buried in the diagnostic criteria when we're dealing with it practically. I want to also spin that around. A person could be

very selfish and yet you're able to find a path forward to having a relationship with them you might say like they're very selfish I do not want to go on a trip with them because they want to do it their way every way I gotta say though they're not cruel they actually are like when we're together and it works it really works and I've never felt

devalued by them. They just like things the way they like things. And I hope to heaven they never have kids or something like that where that kind of selfishness doesn't work. But we sometimes when we're not being psychologically, emotionally harmed in a relationship, you might have some and listen, entitlement's an interesting one because there are some people who become very entitled because they've always had a lot of privilege or money. They live those lives where their feet never touch the ground, right? Like there may be an entitlement in them, but actually their empathy is preserved.

They may not need admiration and validation all the time. They just may have grown up in such a privileged, protected way that they don't get how the world works and it shows up as entitlement. I come from a dance background. I dance as a major hobby. I still do it these days. I've been doing it since I was 18. It's a long time now. There are a lot of people running around like a performance art community who have a little grandiosity, a little self-preoccupation, maybe a little need for dominance that comes out every once in a while, the competitiveness, so on and so forth.

And I would refer to a ton of these people as a friend of mine because it doesn't show up in our relationship in a way that I find difficult to deal with. They're just personality traits and they're popping out of them. I understand them and I can kind of manage my proximity to them in a way that helps out. Now, I'm not dating them. They're not my mother. And that's where all of this gets complicated. And

And another place it gets complicated is Forrest's experience of that person is different than the other person's experience. So if that grandiosity and other stuff is reminiscent of a harmful person in their lives, particularly a parent, all of a sudden this person becomes unmanageable. What people have to understand is the trait and isolation model, just the grandiosity, just the selfishness, it's not normal anymore.

This stuff, the way personality works is traditionally this stuff all links into a net. It all correlates. So where there's one, usually the other one is around, but not always, right? Or like you said,

a person can find their way through it. You've got the grandiose friend who talks the big game and you know half of what's coming out of their mouth is nonsense, but you've learned that. Someone else might find that very off-putting and both of you are having your subjective experience of that and that's okay. It's not about saying, no, they're a jerk, they're grandiose. No, they are grandiose. That seems to be an objectively agreed upon opinion, but it's affecting the two of you differently. You may be able to navigate a very different friendship with them. But like you said, when the stakes are high,

parents, partners. It's a whole different game. And the thing that might feel like, ah, that's just how they are, is actually really intolerable in higher stakes relationships. I'm really glad that we talked about that, Dr. Romani. I think this is just an area where people get really confused about stuff, and particularly that aspect of it, which is about how do I experience somebody

versus how somebody else experiences them, these could be radically different experiences of the same person. I might experience that person as I would never call them a narcissist, whereas somebody else would be a little bit more prone to. And again, this is one of those ways where it gets a little fuzzy for people and the language can almost get in the way sometimes of what we're actually trying to communicate because the word narcissist or narcissism has become so loaded for people. So for those relationship situations, which is where a lot of people come to this,

A lot of people are trying to figure out whether or not they're in a relationship with somebody who has these traits right now. If narcissists have all of these problems that you've described, why is it that people seem to be drawn to them and wind up in relationships with them so frequently?

Well, I mean, I think maybe the word problems is the problem, right? Because what they have is patterns, right? Problems almost puts its valence on it. They have patterns. And when you really bring down some of those patterns like selfishness and entitlement and grandiosity and needing to be admired and validated all the time and charm and charisma, you can actually see how in some places this could turn someone moderately successful. Make them very romantically appealing. Yeah. Yeah. And make them very romantically compelling. So

Because narcissistic people do have these qualities, charm, charisma, they're compelling. They also are, because it is so superficial, if you're going in deep and they're going in shallow, there's a slippery quality to them. And a person who associates, you know, sort of chases

as part of the relational dynamic, almost feel like they want to get, they want to be able to hold onto this slippery eel of the narcissist. So there's also that there's also tactics and even patterns in them, but there's something very attractive about narcissistic people, right? That's why they are our celebrities and our world leaders and our, you know, people we, we, our eyes are always going to them in a strange way because the need to be seen famous, all of that is so top line for a narcissistic person.

They don't get lost in some of the stuff that other people say well I don't want to be famous because I don't want all those headaches but the famous is such a it's the most compelling thing that narcissistic people are often sort of at that sort of like that at the head of the food chain and all of that stuff all of this stuff combines it narcissistic men tend to make more money narcissistic people are more successful at dating because again they've got the tactics and the game kind of figured out all of these things mean that

That this is an attractive group of people. The steady diet of fairy tales and rom-coms we've been given all almost romanticize this kind of, you know, this sort of relationship model. Every dating show that's ever been on television romanticizes this kind of narcissist or I'm going to be the one who tames the narcissistic person. The self-confidence, the whole thing.

All of it. We really do. We think when people are confident that they've got the goods because so many of us don't have confidence. We do have the goods and we don't have the confidence. They seem to be buying what they're selling. Maybe I should too. Totally. That's right. That's exactly right. So that combination of all that is why they're attractive. The challenge becomes though,

three, four, five, six months in, you start having this drop off, something we call devaluing and even the beginning of discarding. They're not as interested in you anymore. Some of the cracks start coming through. You start seeing the dysregulation. You start seeing the blame shifting. You start seeing the dismissiveness, but you may have fallen in love with this person. And so there's a tendency at that point from an attachment perspective to

Keep putting the spotlight on the things you like. We're still having fun. The sex is still great. They love to travel. We love to travel together. We do this together. We do that together. You keep it there. Or it's so hard to meet someone. Or this is a person who we could have a good life together. Whatever it may be.

that those things are starting to get more of the spotlight. And there's a tendency to sort of not fully encode those really problematic patterns or they get written off as, ah, new relationships are tough or there's always growing pains. We have all this sort of folk wisdom that's meant to keep people in harmful relationships. Yeah. And a piece of it that I really want to emphasize for people here, because I think this is a source of so much of the

the self-shame and the confusion that is tied to these relationships is what's called variable reinforcement. I would say it's variable intermittent reinforcement. Yeah, variable reinforcement or intermittent reinforcement. So the basic idea of this is that if every time you pulled a slot machine you lost 10 cents, no one would ever play slots. The reason that slots are addictive for people is sometimes you win and sometimes you lose. And this is really what's present inside of a narcissistically patterned relationship. When they're great,

They're so great. You are on top of the world. You are flying high. All of that. I see you nod back and forth. That could sometimes be the case for people. I'm going to make it a little more subtle. Please go ahead. Lots of slots and been in narcissistic relationships. It's more subtle than that. Because...

here's the challenge is that even the sideways, sometimes they kind of go a little sideways and sometimes they go really sideways. Sometimes the payouts like sometimes the slot machine pays nothing. Sometimes a slot machine pays a dollar. Sometimes a slot machine pays $10. Woo. $100. Great.

But there's always a million dollars hanging out there. So the intermittent reinforcement is not just you're going to get rewarded, but there's a differential reinforcement that rewards go up and down. And it's always going to take the same dollar from you, but it may take that dollar from you 100 hits at a time. And at the 100th time, it takes a dollar and you get nothing. That's when you might say,

I'm going to go. But then you pull it one more time and you get a hundred bucks. So even though you're just at dead even, you're like that hundred dollars. So there are the hundred dollar experiences, which might be, honey, I'm taking you to Hawaii. There may be the $10 experiences, which are you come home and the kids are already in bed. And then there are the $1 experiences where they don't yell at you when you come home.

Do you see what I'm saying? So those start accumulating in very different ways. And that's why people are confused. It's not just some days are great and some days are bad. Some days are okay. And some days are just free of abuse. And some days are just a little bad. And some days are terrible. And some days you find pictures of they're cheating on you on their phone. So that range of stuff is why it's so confusing.

And this is what keeps people stuck a lot of the time, I think. Because you can tell yourself the story of like, well, they were good that time. Right. And it could happen again. And it may just be that if once they get the promotion, once the kids are older, once we move to the new house. They're just really stressed right now. Then everything's going to boom, jackpot. I'm going to get the person who I fell in love with in the first month of the relationship. So based on your clinical work with people,

Are there common patterns in the kind of person who tends to get more trapped by a narcissist, sucked into a narcissistic relationship? Everyone's vulnerable to getting in. There's this whole idea of the narcissistic magnet, narcissistic, you know, like who they're going to go. That's not true. We're all vulnerable because all of us are probably supply for someone.

Someone might like to meet a dancer and who has a podcast and that's what they're looking for, right? Someone else. So you don't know. So people say, well, I don't know. I'm not all that. And they went for me. I'm like, you have your all thatness. And I think a lot of times it's always like, what's wrong with the survivor? Nothing's wrong with the survivor. You were attractive. That's why they went for you. However, the issue is not the getting in. Everyone can get in. It's like you said, it's the getting trapped. It's the getting stuck.

The getting stuck is the problem because that's where we see there are certain vulnerabilities. And those vulnerabilities can range from a person who is highly almost, I would say, overly empathic if there's such a thing. It's some of the stuff we might see, for example, in Elaine Aron's work on the highly sensitive person. There might be such a deep well of empathy that just doesn't ever go away, even with these kinds of

Deconfirming experiences, people who really believe in forgiveness, people who are naturally rescuers or fixers and want to help people out and keep throwing money at the problem. And sure, you can have my car and you need a place to live. Sure. Move on in that kind of stuff. People who are highly optimistic get stuck because they're like, it's going to get better. I see the good in everyone. I can see the light in them. And I'm like, ooh,

boy. So that optimism can put people at risk. People who have a history of narcissism in their families of origin, it normalizes it somewhat. They could be vulnerable to getting stuck. People with other histories of trauma, that can also leave a person to get stuck. It really can negatively impact those attachment approaches and even the

safety approaches and the responses people have when they're triggered in a relationship. Believe it or not, people who are from incredibly happy families could be at risk. Now, they have an advantage that when it does fall apart, they should have that supportive family. But at the same time, there's a belief that

We can talk through everything. Boundaries work. All problems are solvable. I think you almost have to be, you have to have just the right amount of dysfunction in your family that doesn't break your spirit, but not so much, you know, so not so much that doesn't break your spirit, but not too little. So you're not walking around like sort of naive. And then there's other factors that can affect that.

that vulnerability to even getting in, which are more structural factors. I always say these are things like being in a rush. People saying, okay, all my friends are getting married. I just broke up with someone. I'm 37 years old. I need to get in this relationship. And this person's good enough. And we'll say, I can't go back out there again. So that being in a rush and also being in a time of transition can matter because let's say you've just...

ended a relationship. External stressors. There can be sort of, yeah, so other, it could be you've moved to a new city, you're traveling, so you don't have both of your legs under you the same way because you don't have your usual touchdowns. And then finally, for us, and I don't think we talk about this enough, there's also the kinds of

societal differences in power a person may have. So for example, their immigration status, race, ethnicity, social class, money in the bank, other supports. So there's things that how a person who is at all marginalized is treated by the world

can create also inner narratives that could make somebody vulnerable to getting stuck. And that sense of which society feeds all the time to people who don't have power in society is, well, you know, I'm lucky that I have this. There's that gaslighted societal message of like, you're lucky. You're lucky to be living in this neighborhood. Yeah, exactly. And when you really look at it, when people do have vulnerable statuses,

great example would be like immigration or money. They could get stuck in one of these relationships and feel like, I can't leave this because if I do, I'm truly trapped. Exactly. So you can see there's a lot of different ways. And many times these things couple up. A person can be very empathic and have a tendency to be a rescuer and really tend to want to be forgiving and come from a narcissistic family of origin. I mean, that's so much to unbraid and so much that's keeping them stuck.

Do these relationships tend to follow a general pattern? So if somebody gets into a relationship with a narcissist, you were mentioning earlier, I think you talked about devaluation. And if people have been listening to the show for a while, they might be familiar with the idea of idealization and then devaluation, which is a common pattern inside of abusive relationships. Do these have a normal structure or flow to them? Yeah, they do and they don't. So I think that what I want to get people away from is that it's always the lockstep of,

you know, idealization goes to devaluation, goes to discard, goes to end, goes to Hoover, rinse, you know, kind of rinse, lather, repeat, whatever the heck that is. It's not that. These relationships will often start from a seductive, idealized place. But even that whole idealized love bombing

isn't always grand gestures. It isn't always vacations and gifts and all that. Sometimes it's a person rolling up and saying exactly what you want to hear. I'm never going to leave you. I'm going to love you forever. No one's ever loved you this way. So if that plays on existing wounds,

That is the love bombing and they don't have to show up with a damn gift at all. That's all you need, right? So when that happens, that's even more powerful because a gift, I mean, a gift, you throw it away. But this, these are the words you wanted to hear. But over time, that devaluing will happen mostly because a narcissistic person is a sprinter. They're not distance runners. So they're not going to keep this up and the cracks will show. Again, their dysregulation will happen. Life will happen.

So that devaluation, though, could take as long as three to six months. Now you're in. And I will tell you this, on average, people I've worked with will say, I didn't even start picking up on what I would have called patterns that made me say, woo, until like one to two years in.

So enough to say, this is a problem. By then, some of them said, I was pregnant. We moved in together. We were engaged. We were already married. All these heavier things, these heavier structural things are happening. And that's when people start self-blaming, self-doubting, all that stuff. This takes a minute, but then that devaluing happens. Now, that devalue phase can last a very long time.

When we talk about the so-called discard phase, the discard doesn't necessarily mean the relationship ends. It could. The narcissistic person may leave you. You may leave the narcissistic person. But what tends to happen more often is there are some heavier betrayals. There are breaches of trust. It's not even devaluing anymore. It's like this is not even a trusted, safe place. Right.

All things being equal, leaving is probably the best option, but it's not one that's open to people. You may have young kids. You may not have the money, all the things, cultural reasons. When a narcissistic relationship ends...

One of a couple of things happens. What often happens, especially if the not narcissistic person ends the relationship, is something we call post-separation abuse. Narcissistic people do not like to be the ones not in control of the narrative, and they have what we call strong rejection sensitivity, sometimes full-on abandonment issues. So if somebody leaves them, they're going to get punished.

And that punishment can look like everything from stalking to smear campaigns to legal action to even escalated to much more severe kinds of harms. And some people knowing that's going to happen, they're not staying because they're like, I think this is great. They're not staying because they're a so-called codependent. That's not a thing. They're staying because they know that what could happen if they leave would be a disaster. In fact, they say every day I wake up wishing they'd find someone else. So that's one group of people.

In some cases, though, the narcissistic person does leave. This is often we'd see the narcissistic person has already scored new supply. Narcissistic people don't tend to leave relationships until they've got their plan B sorted and squared away. So you might see infidelities or other improprieties that the narcissistic person then goes into and denies that there was ever an overlap. And people who don't understand narcissism and are what we call trauma bonded will feel devastated that this person left them and assume that the new person's going to get a better version.

What sometimes happens, not always though, is once the narcissistic relationship ends, that the narcissistic person may engage in something called hoovering, which is like a vacuum cleaner hoover, sucking a person back into the relationship. This happens for a few reasons. Sometimes the new supply doesn't work out for the narcissistic person. Sometimes the narcissistic person sees that you've left and now you're starting a really good new life.

How dare you go and be you without me? How dare you be someone... The fact that they're succeeding without them is problematic. Or that your true self is coming out. And so it becomes a game. It becomes a very cruel game of cat and mouse.

This cycle can play out over months or years. It doesn't always play out the same way. Not everyone gets hoovered, but this cycle could play out in a day that a person, because in the morning, like your partner's trying to win you over and then you kind of come down from your anger. Then the devalue starts. Then there is some discard. Then you get angry again and then they pull you back in. So what I'm saying, like this, the sort of architecture is one of seduction,

dismissiveness, and control. I would love to help people get even a little bit more of a sense of what some of these more abusive behaviors look like in practice, particularly two things that people talk about a lot, the more manipulative aspects of them and the gaslighting that can be associated with that for people. Because again, this just can be so hard for people to identify.

So, you know, manipulation, when we think about what manipulation is, manipulation is a process of the manipulator having a need they want met.

but pitching it as though it's in the other person's best interest. That's a great framing. That's a really, really clean framing. That's what manipulation is. Yeah. Okay? Yeah. And so because the narcissistic person is singularly focused on their need and want with very little regard for the others, that's always going to be the pitch. Now, Forrest, have we all done that once? Yeah. We

We've tried with the restaurant we want. We've really tried to sell it. No, it's cheaper, but we really just wanted a normal relationship. Totally. Totally. Yeah. Right. Over time, though, what this manipulation does, though, it also plays on the other person's vulnerabilities. Right. Vulnerabilities such as maybe a fear of abandonment, vulnerabilities such as a lack of power in the world, vulnerabilities such as a fear of of losing custody of kids, vulnerabilities of all sorts get played on depending on the relationship.

And that becomes the manipulation too. Remember, the narcissistic person is quite socially perceptive and they were paying attention in the beginning of the relationship. They know where your wounds are. They know where those pressure points are and they remember them.

So something that once felt so safe, they'll come and say, okay, well, what would we expect from somebody with such a messed up mother? I guess you're messed up too. So the vulnerability you might've had sharing about something that happened in your family history is now turned against you. You're viewed as a broken person. This dynamic then really goes to gaslighting, which is probably one of the more malevolent forms of manipulation because not only is it a

doubting and denying of a person's experience, reality, memory, or perception, it doubles down and tells the person there's something wrong with you. You're nuts. You're crazy. You're broken. People with histories like you never amount to anything. And then when that happens repeatedly with someone you trust, what the gaslighter is saying seems somewhat plausible.

What ends up happening is we kind of go with it, not because we're foolish, not because we're passive, but because it allows us to maintain the connection. Gaslighting can be easily broken out. I shouldn't say easily. It can be broken out of.

When somebody says, for example, you might have a narcissistic partner, say, I never said that, I never said that, I never said that. And then a third party says, no, actually you said that, I was sitting right here. That's enough to kind of take the, you know, to lift the curtain kind of thing, right? So the manipulation really becomes...

a way of the narcissistic person maintaining control, holding all access to reality, making the narrative fit for them, and playing on anything, even playing dirty. And like you said, using techniques like baiting. Even as people understand narcissism more, it's like, ooh, I guess I get it. I'm not supposed to engage with them.

the narcissistic person will poke and bait. And if they're not getting a reaction out of you, that's not going to work. So then they're going to poke and bait more. And the thing that they're going to bait you on are things that are often very

felt close to your heart. A narcissistic parent, for example, may poke and bait, get no reaction. Then they may start going at your kids. And that will be the point where a person's like, no, no, no, no, no. And now you're engaging. And the more dysregulated and angry we become with the narcissistic person, it's not unusual then for the narcissistic person to say, whoa, while somebody's out of control, that's gaslighting. You're being painted as being out of control. So these are incredibly confusing moments

These unsafe, asymmetric, imbalanced relationships. And so the manipulation is the most confusing part. And a lot of this, you didn't remember this wrong, playing on the vulnerabilities. You don't really know how to do that. I'm the person who made you so great. You'll be nothing without me. All of that.

So you mentioned one thing right there, bringing in a reputable third party who could reflect to you, get an outside opinion, that kind of stuff. Another one that we've mentioned on the show in the past is that people with narcissistic tendencies tend to hate record keeping. Journals are their enemy, record keeping of various kinds can be their enemy because you're removing their ability to have this kind of mutable reality.

That's another something that Rick likes to say is that narcissists have like a reality distortion field around them. It just everything changes when it's in their presence. And so the more that we can do to kind of pin down, wait, what is actually happening here, which again is typically a process they're quite resistant to, the better that we can be at protecting ourselves. But I'm wondering if there's anything else that you've found that tends to help people become a little bit more resistant to this. So therapy can be with a therapist who gets it. Yeah.

that sort of that third party. Listen, I always say to folks, there are two and really one ringer to me that lets me know someone's being gaslighted. Somebody tells me this, I'm like, ooh, they're being gaslighted. I don't even need to hear anything more. When

When they say, I need to start recording what's happening in this relationship because I keep doubting. Like, I can't remember it right. That's why would you ever need to record a conversation? You'd only need it if somebody is completely doubting reality. And so many people will. They will start recording those conversations. They can't do anything with it.

but they do it. So they are like, I'm not crazy. They did say that, right? It's literally uncrazy themselves. And I say, don't even bring the recording into the conversation with them because it's going to go sideways. Another real ringer for me is when people start feeling the need to write these really, really, really long text messages and emails that go on. They spend days writing it. I'm like, you spent days writing this. This is a

great email, they're not going to read it and what they're going to respond to is going to be so invalidating that this would be a huge mistake to send this. And everyone's already made that mistake sometimes too, as though if you can get it in writing, they can't confuse you, they can't interrupt you, they can't throw you off the course. So

I think that it's sometimes you keeping records that reality distortion field, keeping those records so you have some sort of reminder that this is what's happening is one thing. Having those validating voices in your presence who can every so often say, no, that's not okay. It's a good therapist. It could be a good friend. And then also something I recommend is doing things where you

lean into your reality, which is that often involves building social support outside of the narcissistic relationship. Remember, the narcissistic relationship only works insofar as it's asymmetric, which means the narcissistic person has more power.

Being in more balanced spaces where you're seen more clearly is where you might have people say, wow, you're really competent or that was very interesting or you're very wise or you can show emotion and not be judged. Once you start having those different kinds of experiences with other people, it starts to normalize them and also lead you to look at your own relationship and say, okay, that's not happening there. So, and this feels a lot better to me, but that's not always easy for people to

to create, especially if they're in a more controlling narcissistic relationship. And then sometimes it's just learning to touch into yourself. In my book, It's Not You, I even talk about, it's amazing to me how much people in narcissistic relationships have lost all sense of what, they don't even know what they like anymore. If you were to say, what do you want in your pizza? They'd be like, ah,

I don't know. Like we always get pepperoni because that's what they want. I'm like, okay, you're going to order pizza. What's it going to be? Like I can get anything. I'm like, what would you want in this pizza? And it's actually an overwhelming experience. Like what temperature do you want the thermostat at?

What do you like to do when you wake up on a Sunday morning? All these kinds of, what time do you like to go to sleep? What do you like to do before you go to bed? What TV shows do you like? These very kind of almost surface level subjective experiences are taken away many times in these relationships. So it's forget about feelings. And then I do, in fact, in my healing program last month, one thing we really worked on is

really working on naming feelings as they come up, not judging them. Like I'm angry today and many people will judge. And I had no right to be angry. You're angry. Hold. Stop. That's a feeling. Let's stay with that. You don't ever. And teaching people like the feeling you have. And there's all kinds of push notifications and stuff you can have on apps that will help people do that. So lots of things to bring you sort of back to yourself. But it's a very, very slow process. That validating voice, though, is probably the most important.

Yeah, and this can also help people a little bit diagnostically. If you feel like you're somebody who used to have a great sense of that before your current relationship that you've been in for three or four years or whatever, that's a light bulb. That doesn't necessarily mean that the person you're dealing with is a narcissist, but hey, it's a strong indicator. If you look back over your life as a whole and you think about being a little kid,

And you feel like ever since then, you had a hard time looking inside and saying what you wanted. But you can definitely remember your dad having various things that he wanted, your mom having various things that she wanted, and these wants and needs kind of constantly trumping yours in ways that were problematic, not just about normal parental power, but

these are good ways to start to think about the presence of these patterns for people. And they can be a little diagnostic too. Yeah, absolutely. And I think that it's the person as object versus person as subject, as we call it, right? And so if you grew up with a narcissistic parent, you are my piano playing kid, my soccer star kid versus my kid, whoever, and all the things that they are. So I think it's, if I'm remembering correctly, I think it's the last chapter of your book

You talk about becoming narcissist-resistant and the kind of recovery process that people can go through from these relationships. You just named a few things there previously. You also mentioned this takes time.

And I do want to emphasize that for people. This can be a long process. It can be a very intimate one. Oh, yeah. It's a lifetime process. No, I'm telling you now, this is not a, and then you come out, and then you're fully narcissistic resistant. I wish I could give people the three-point plan here, but it doesn't really work that way. No, there isn't one. And it is the more you are surrounded by healthy people and healthy relationships. One of the things in that narcissism resistance, though, is what I call the 90-10 rule. And the 90-10 is this idea that when you really stop and think about it,

And where you think you, if you have antagonistic, narcissistic, manipulative relationships in your life, you likely put 90% of your bandwidth thinking about it, planning for it, responding to texts from it, you know, figuring it out 90% there and 10% into your healthiest relationship because they don't need that much. The healthy relationships you show up there, there's no demand. The communication can be very clear. You're not walking on eggshells.

I tell people, can you try to switch that math? Because there's nothing you can say or do with a narcissistic person that's going to make it work better. And if you could really view those healthy relationships as a place where both of you benefit from you putting effort into that, at least get to 50-50. So at least you're even putting half of your bandwidth yourself into those healthier relationships. The more time you spend in healthier spaces...

the more you do become sort of narcissist resistant. Now, that's not to say anyone's, I still, to this day, people will get in and I'm like, oh, nope, yep, no, not good. And I still, it still happens, right? Because I still am approaching it from a trusting place or an interested place. Each time it gets to be a shorter, shorter window before I see it. And that's what I tell people. People say, I can't believe I did this again. They were married 25 years to a narcissistic person.

Then they start dating again at some point. And then they figured out in a year, I said, "You took your 25 years the first time. You did make progress and you got out." That is huge progress. And so I think people don't, they see it, "I got played again," versus "I saw it and I got out." The saw it and got out is the win. One of the pieces of the narcissist resistant chapter that I really appreciated was how you talk about radical acceptance and particularly assuming no change from the other person.

because there are relationships that we have that for whatever reason, we're probably not going to go cold turkey on them. You talked about a lot of structural reasons that a person might stay in a relationship, but you can still protect yourself. And I just thought the way that you framed that, the really accepting of the nature of the other person, seeing it clearly, appreciating that it's very unlikely to change because we know that narcissistic patterns are very unlikely to change in general, and then asking yourself, okay, now what?

Now what are we going to do here? Appreciating that this is the case. And a lot of people don't want to engage in that inquiry because it begs that now what question, and now what can be a tough question.

Yeah. So radical acceptance is, I mean, it's, it's in some ways it's an unfortunate term because I think a lot of people take the word acceptance and they think of it as signing off on something. I'm accepting us, right? Maybe it's radical awareness. I don't know what a better term is with radical acceptance, what we call it. And the reminder people need is that radical acceptance isn't you saying this is okay. Radical acceptance is not you going along

Radical acceptance is seeing it clearly and recognizing you don't need to engage with it in the same way. And above all else, that it's really not going to shift and change and nothing you can do is going to make it change. That that responsibility is housed in that other person.

When people begin to radically accept, I have to say the first reaction is grief. I wish I could say it was relief, but it's grief. Because so many years of investment have gone into the idea that this marriage could get better. I will ultimately one day be close to my father. And when that is lifted, the space is left. And that's loss. That hope. We grieve loss. And this is a loss. Right? Right.

But as people sort of navigate that, and listen, it can be a long, protracted process. Sometimes people need to see the harms repeatedly before they're like, okay, got it, got it. And then in the wake of that radical acceptance, listen, not everybody leaves, but many people engage differently. They'll say, we're not going to spend a week at the holiday time. We're going to go for a day, get a hotel, and then fly back the next day, even if they're going to rage. And if they're going to rage, then there won't even be a next year. It's the...

I always tell people that I call it the good, bad, indifferent approach. It's part of becoming narcissist resistant, which is the mistake a lot of people make from the most loving space or the most hopeful, I should say, space within them is they take their good news to the narcissistic person first, thinking like, now they're going to see I'm great, right? And they'll tell them, I got a promotion or I got a compliment or I got this or I got that. And remember, what you've just done is basically threatened the narcissist, right?

Because it shows that you're doing something good. They're not going to view it as like, great, I have a great partner. It's going to be, especially if they didn't have that happen or something similar to that happened that day. They may tolerate it once or twice. But if each time you take it there, many times people find that they're dismantled. Yeah, great. You got a promotion. It's not going to make more money. Or like, so why am I supposed to care about this? Like someone gave you a compliment. So it can be very minimized and trivialized. I always say to people, you need your good people list.

Those people you take your good news to and who celebrate it and are your cheerleaders. And then and only then, after you have that moment of enjoying it, you can tell the narcissistic person. And when they're dismissive of it, you can hold in your heart that you had that good moment. And the same thing applies to bad news. Because many people then also think that if I tell this person the

the narcissistic person something that's happened in my life that maybe they will be kind, maybe they will help me, maybe it'll bring out empathy in them, and it's probably going to do none of the above. And if anything, it may leave the narcissistic person, if they, let's say it might even make them anxious, which brings up the shame, which means they'll yell at you. They may not be interested. You may be viewed as an inconvenience.

I always tell folks, you need your bad news plan. So it could be something as severe as a medical diagnosis. And you've got people you go to first. You may have to tell the narcissistic person because they're close to you, but you were held and supported the way you needed to be. And sometimes it's silly stuff like a busted appliance. Well, the narcissistic person isn't going to help you get it fixed and they're going to rage at you.

you're going to get a fix they're going to scream at you for what you paid but at least now you got a functioning dishwasher so you kind of get into that awareness of it all right and so i tell them indifferent is all you got it's sharing in different information it's the weather it's the did you see that they're opening a new such and such coffee shop down the street um i heard that they've decided to build a new elementary school it's and people say well that's what is that

Like that's not a relationship. I said, it's a superficial relationship with this person. That's the reality. And sometimes that good, bad and different exercise is what actually really pushes the accelerator on the radical acceptance. They realize, yeah, that is all that works. And I don't want to be in this relationship. I'll say, well, then that's a different conversation. Yeah. We'll be back to the show in just a minute. But first, a word from our sponsors.

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Now, back to the show.

There's so much else that I would love to talk with you about here. Dr. Romany, I know that I've got like 10 minutes with you left. You have a great section in the book. I just want to point to it real quickly on the role of the nervous system in all of this. We did a whole series of episodes on nervous system responses. As a very, very, very quick question that we could do a whole episode on, I'm just a little curious myself. Do you think that narcissists lean toward people? I mean, obviously we're talking about anyone can be drawn to a narcissist for any reason, but do

But do they tend to lean toward people who are more freezers or fauners by nature as opposed to fighters or runners? Does that kind of make sense? I don't necessarily think so, no, because I think that the fighters...

A narcissistic person loves a fight. If anything, those are those volatile kinds of narcissistic relationships we often see, even just because it actually gives the narcissistic person some juice. I think with the fauners and freezers, it is a sense of asymmetry where the narcissistic person can keep doing their thing and they're not getting clapped back on. So I don't know that there's any particular sympathetic nervous system trauma response that would be

more likely to get a person more or less stuck. I think it could look very, very different. And I think what would happen is, for example, a fighter where these things might escalate and there's a lot of pushback. You will then end up having that person with that that tends to have the fight response as a go-to that may actually take in more self-blame. Well, I'm behaving as badly as them. I'm the one who's screaming right back. And I've often heard that from people who say, well, I'm part of the problem too.

And remember, too, that that fight response, and Janina Fisher said this really wisely once. She said sometimes the fight response is simply your willingness to reflect that there's an injustice, like this isn't fair, right? And that is actually, that there's a rebellious quality to that fight response, right? But the fight response isn't necessarily always as...

socialized in women, bonds and freezing are often a lot more likely. But at the end of the day, that's what is happening here is that these narcissistic relationships, really a lot of the response we have is very protective, not only of self, but of the schema of the relationships.

I want to be married. I love this person. This is my family. So there's multiple levels of that. And so what will happen is these protect yourselves really do evolve. There's a lot of fragmentation that can happen to a person over time in a narcissistic relationship, all ultimately protecting the organism, right? But a lot of that fragmentation results in all these protective pieces kind of running the show. Yeah, yeah. And we have done a whole bunch of episodes on exactly what you're talking about because it's a huge topic. I do want to ask you about one more thing.

that I don't know how to talk about effectively, and maybe you'll help me out with that a little bit here. So you talked toward the beginning of the episode about communal and covert narcissism. And psychoeducation has become so much more prevalent these days. People know this terminology, they're extremely familiar with it, they've got access to it.

And something that you'll sometimes see are people who have slightly more covert or vulnerable narcissistic patterns seem to find it very easy to call other people narcissists.

And it's kind of the old adage, like if you meet an asshole in the morning, they're probably an asshole. But if you're surrounded by assholes all day long, you might have something going on that's drawn out that behavior. At the same time, we really want to validate people's experience. And there are people who are truly surrounded by narcissists because they're in a narcissistic family system or they're in a place in the world that has a disproportionate concentration of narcissistic personality types, career path. Like I was talking about dancing earlier, it's just going to attract a certain grandiose personality. Right.

And I don't really know how to walk that tightrope when I talk about this stuff, if that makes sense. Because I want to let people, I want to give them a thing to look out for without invalidating their experience. So when you hear this, everyone's an asshole, everyone's narcissistic, where I start with them is say, talk to me, what's been going on? I want them to lay out the pattern. Because if what I'm hearing is,

I don't get to have my way. You're starting to see patterns that feel more in the victimized realm versus these more sort of more harmful realm. That's one place where I'm, my ears are kind of perking up, right? When it is, everyone is being called this because they have

This person saying I'm chronically, everyone disappoints me, that kind of global language also versus the capacity to say I'm really disappointed by this person. I feel lucky or feel fortunate. I do have some really great people in my life, but this is an important relationship and I'm often disappointed in it.

That's circumspect. That's saying that this person disappoints me versus everyone disappoints me, right? That's that kind of put upon quality of the vulnerable kind of narcissistic pattern. Never and always are words that set off alarm bells for me. Never, always, all people do this to me. But it's sort of like nobody appreciates me enough. Right.

Right. That kind of talk. And then they'll go to. Yeah, because everyone around me is narcissistic. And so it becomes sort of a reflexive sort of a fly swatter.

that's what you're looking for. But I always tell therapists, I say, listen, you may have a client that comes in and says, my everyone and everyone is narcissistic. Don't hit them with everyone can't be narcissistic. You engage them at the level of talk to me about the patterns you're seeing, what's going on. Let the client share their subjective experience. And then and only then are you going to be able to sort of say, okay, I see the picture that's sort of forming in front of

That makes total sense. And I will try to internalize it as part of how I talk about this with people. Dr. Romney, thanks so much for doing this with me today. I've totally loved this. I thought this was a fantastic conversation. Thank you so much, Forrest. Thank you for having me. I had a great time today talking with Dr. Romney about narcissism, narcissistic abuse, and how we can get better at recognizing and recovering from narcissistic relationships. I really like how Dr. Romney frames narcissism broadly.

She is very focused on the fundamental behaviors that come out of narcissistic tendencies that end up messing up our relationships. And she cares about that a lot more than she cares about the formal diagnostic criteria for narcissistic personality disorder and differentiating between NPD, a diagnosable condition,

And more of the spectrum of narcissistic traits broadly was one of the things that we focused on in the first half of our conversation. So what are narcissistic traits? What do we mean when we say that somebody is narcissistic? If somebody has a need for constant external narcissistic supplies, they probably have some narcissistic tendencies.

These people really struggle to self-regulate. They have a very difficult time internalizing positive experiences in a lasting way. They're kind of like a bucket with a hole in the bottom of it. So they need to constantly fill that bucket with new supplies. These people tend to be entitled

fundamentally insecure. This is the core pattern of narcissism. And then they have this kind of consistent inconsistency about them. We talked about this in the section where we talked a bit about variable reinforcement. Some days with narcissists are good, some are bad, some are just okay, some are really good. You can never quite pin them down.

And this up and down quality is one of the things that makes identifying and recovering from these relationships so difficult for people. It becomes very easy to blame yourself. It becomes very easy to make yourself the reason that things couldn't be a little bit better. What was it about you that made them the way that they were? When you start thinking about things that way, that's a bit of a red flag. They tend to have a lack of empathy, a lot of grandiosity and self-preoccupation, and I

a need for dominance over other people. Bottom line, if somebody is willing to take accountability for their actions, apologize to you, and then critically change their behavior in the future, they are probably not a narcissist. So that's a great thing to look for as a rule out. And this then took us into a conversation about the spectrum of narcissism. Again, Dr. Romney is very focused on behaviors. What are the traits that lead to behaviors that then mess up

our relationships and this is quite different from something like narcissistic personality disorder which is a box score approach where a person needs to essentially check five of nine boxes in order to qualify for this diagnosis there are some problems with this first

Narcissists tend not to go to therapy. They tend to get a lot of rewards for their behavior, so they're pretty unlikely to opt into therapy to try to fix something that they don't really perceive as being a problem in the first place. Then narcissism broadly is somewhat treatable, but treating narcissism, again, treating a problem that somebody else doesn't really experience as a problem, has got some limited utility associated with it. So somebody might not have the five of nine

that qualifies them for a formal diagnosis of narcissism. But that does not mean that they are not a total pain in the ass to be around or that they're egocentric and antisocial and whatever else. And then we also talked about how I gave the example from my dance background. Plenty of people wandering around who've got a little bit of soft egoism or a kind of look at me quality. Maybe they want to protect their spot. They're highly competitive. Maybe there are some of these narcissistic traits that are

you know bubbling up in them and yet i'm totally capable of having a great functional relationship with them because the relationship is bounded i understand what i'm getting myself into and these traits are not coming at me in a really maladaptive or problematic way we're all kind of on the same team we're all rowing in the same direction so these traits aren't so problematic

This is very, very different when you're in a relationship with somebody with these patterns or if this person is your boss or your parent, somebody who has a lot of power over you.

When we think of narcissism, we tend to think of the kind of narcissism that's referred to as grandiose narcissism. And this gets different from other kinds like vulnerable, communal, self-righteous, or malignant, all of which we talked about during the episode. I'm not sure if we named neglectful. That's another type that Dr. Romany identifies in her book. And she does a great outline of all of these types in that text. We talked about it a bit as well.

We then spent the rest of the episode talking about the narcissistic relationship, these relationships that people can get sucked into or get trapped in with somebody who has this pattern of behavior.

And when we talk about this, it can be easy to say, wow, if somebody has all of these bad behaviors, why would you get trapped in a relationship with them? And the answer is kind of right there. Self-confidence, a kind of soft egoism, a charm, a charisma, these can all be very, very attractive traits inside of a relationship. Dr. Romney refers to the C-suite in her book, charm, charisma, confidence, curiosity, and credentials.

A narcissistic person might well have all of these things, and that can make them a very attractive relationship partner. But the patterns of behavior then lead to all of these problems long-term.

Dr. Romney then talked a bit about the arc of a relationship with a narcissist, how it tends to go through different kinds of phases, but she was also really clear that you don't want to over-infer from that general structure that she's giving. So sure, a relationship with somebody who has these traits might include a kind of love bombing or an idealization, then it goes to some devaluation, then it goes to discard, and then maybe it goes through this phase even

after some form of separation where they try to kind of pull you back into the relationship. But again, all of this is on a spectrum and a relationship doesn't necessarily have to go through these kinds of prescriptive steps in order for it to be a relationship with a narcissistic person. So you want to kind of keep your mind a little bit open here.

Key things to look out for in these relationships are manipulation and a particular form of manipulation called gaslighting. If you're listening to this, you've probably heard the word gaslighting before. It's when somebody causes you to doubt your reality. If you feel like you need to be carrying a tape recorder around in conversations with this person because every time that you exit it, you

You feel sort of like you know what you talked about, but then when you talk with it about them three days later or a month later, they seem to have totally different recall than you did. That could be a sign that you're dealing with somebody who might have some of these patterns.

Toward the end of the conversation, we talked a little bit more about how a person can become more narcissist resistant. What can they do inside of themselves to develop a little bit more space, more of a buffer zone with these people, or to recover from these kinds of relationships once they exit them? Dr. Ramani talked about bounding the scope of the conversations that you have with people with these personality traits. You're not really bringing to them your biggest wins because they tend to invalidate those. You

You're not bringing to them your biggest complaints. They tend to invalidate those. Instead, you're talking about the weather. You're talking about superficial things. And a lot of the time when people come to terms with this, this kind of radical acceptance that this is what your relationship with these kinds of people needs to look like in order to keep on protecting yourself, there is a now what to it all. Wow, is this really what I want a relationship with somebody else to look like? Wow.

do I want to keep on doing this? And people are often quite resistant to going through that kind of a process, very understandably, because it begs the question, now what? And people don't like now what. Now what is a scary question. And also it can include a lot of grief. That was something that Dr. Romney really emphasized. For people who feel constrained in life, like they don't have a great ability to escape this relationship for whatever structural reason,

That can be an extremely painful experience for somebody. But this is all part of the radical acceptance process, which again, Dr. Romney really emphasizes how you need to start by assuming that the other person will not change. And so you can radically accept something and choose to stay in that relationship.

For whatever reason you have, life is complicated. We make this stuff way too linear and simple sometimes, and that's great for TikTok or whatever, but it doesn't really reflect people's lived experience. So you can stay for whatever reason, but if you're going to protect yourself, it really helps to have realistic expectations here and to bound the relationship to a set of circumstances where this person can't harm you as much.

At the very end of the conversation, I asked Dr. Romani about something that opened a little bit of a Pandora's box

Covert narcissism is a thing. Communal narcissism is a thing. There's no reason to believe that people who consume self-help content are any less likely to be a narcissist or to have narcissistic tendencies than people inside of the general population. And they're very aware of this terminology. And as we said, one of the things that narcissists are very good at is manipulating other people and using the levers that they have.

And so there are situations where people will use psychobabble, this kind of psychological terminology, as part of their narcissistic control strategy. And this might look like calling you a narcissist or saying that everyone around them is a narcissist. Wow, why don't I ever get my needs met? Everyone is just so preoccupied with what's going on inside of them.

And at the same time, the reason that this is such an effective strategy is that we don't want to invalidate people's experiences, in part because they have already been gaslit by the narcissists who are around them or the people with these narcissistic tendencies. And so I don't want to put something out there to the world that

even in the vaguest sense, suggests that by calling somebody else a narcissist, you are yourself narcissistic, right? And so there's this real kind of catch-22 about it all.

And I thought that Dr. Romney did a fantastic job of slicing through this Gordian knot, cutting through this complicated and tangled problem by applying a lesson that I should know better that I talked about recently in a video, start by joining. She started by moving toward the experience. She wanted to understand what was going on for the person.

What do they really mean by I'm surrounded by narcissists, by everybody that I encounter is a narcissist? Because as we said during the episode, there are some people where there are a lot of narcissistic people in their life because they come from a narcissistic family or they are in a career path that tends to attract more people with these personality traits. You know, whatever's going on for them.

And then you can start to look for the presence of never and always. Everybody is this way. I never get what I want. Why do they always act like this? Again, there's that pulling that you can see in there for that support, that narcissistic supply, all of that. And again, if you are somebody who feels that way, that does not necessarily mean that you're a narcissist. This is why this stuff is complicated and hard.

Because those same patterns, those same traits could come for somebody, could rise from coming from a family environment or situation where your needs were never considered. And this is all of the nuance here. And I think that this was a fantastic conversation in part because Dr. Romney was so great at living with and exploring this nuance, exploring these different ideas in a detailed way. And she's had a real impact here on how I'm going to think about this moving forward.

So I hope you enjoyed today's conversation. As I said, I got a lot out of it personally. Again, Dr. Romney's new book is It's Not You, Identifying and Healing from Narcissistic People. If you're watching on YouTube, this is the cover of it. Nice cover, beautiful book. She did a killer job with it. If you would like to check out Dr. Romney's other work, she has the Dr. Romney Network. You can check that out through her website. That is access to a whole bunch of different shows that she's been on, different content that she's created.

And then she also has a program that's focused specifically on people who have experienced narcissistic abuse. I'll include a link to it in the description of today's episode. Again, you can check it out through her website. It's a very cool program.

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