Are They Really a Narcissist? Do They Really Have Borderline? Are They Truly Gaslighting You? How To Know. And What To Do When People Weaponize Therapy-Speak Against You. | Isabelle Morley

26:22Yes, absolutely. Yes.

26:27Coming up, Isabel talks about what boundaries are, how to set them, and how to know if yours have actually been violated, how to spot a narcissist, the difference between being a narcissist clinically and just being a little bit selfish, and much more.

26:48Okay, so let's talk about boundaries because I'm skipping ahead here, chapter 11. Did they violate your boundaries or did they just not know how you felt? That's probably not the question I mean to ask you. I'll get to that question in a second. But what is a boundary? How do we set one with a person who, as you described before, is unlikely to change? A boundary is a way to keep yourself safe and autonomous in a relationship. It is a thing that you need, that you express, and that you enforce. So it might be your boundary that if we're arguing and you start screaming, I cannot keep talking to you because it's too upsetting.

27:27I get overwhelmed. I can't stay in that conversation. I don't feel safe with you. That doesn't mean that you will never scream at me again. That means the next time you scream at me, I'm leaving the room until you're calm and then we can keep talking. there are some boundaries that i call universal boundaries you cross those boundaries it's abuse you steal from someone you physically assault them like these are not okay things to do we can all agree if that happens to you that is a boundary violation that's a red flag watch out for that but a lot of things are individual personal boundaries that i might feel okay with but you might not.

28:07And those are the things that you have to communicate. And if you don't, the other person only know they've crossed it when it's been crossed. I want to pick up on that part in a second, but let me just stick with the problematic, toxic person, whatever terminology we want to use. I can have some compassion for these folks because I think there are reasons why they've become this way. And we do need to set boundaries with them. If you're married to somebody like that, I think the answer is it's not easy, but it's somewhat clear, which is divorce. It's obviously very hard if you have a kid with them, et cetera, et cetera.

28:42But there is a remedy. Harder to do if it's your mom or if it's your boss. So what recommendations do you have for boundary setting in those contexts? You have to consider if it's a relationship that you're willing to leave because that is the ultimate boundary is leaving that relationship. If it's someone who's too important or you're dependent on, unfortunately, you're going to have to try to reinforce your boundaries repeatedly. You're going to have to pick your battles with your boundaries, which nobody likes to hear, but you may not get all of your boundaries respected with that certain relationship.

29:15And you will have to maybe shift the dynamics of that relationship. Maybe you see your mom less frequently because she cannot respect what you need. Maybe you get a new job at some point because your boss is disrespecting you. Okay. So just to reflect that back to you, if you've got a problematic person in your life who can be abusive and in the real sense, not in the weaponization of the word sense, obviously cutting them off is one hard, hard boundary, but it's sometimes that's really, really hard to do. So what I'm hearing you say is the modalities or the strategies that are available are see them less and also just get into the habit of kindly but clearly and firmly restating your boundary whenever you need to do it.

30:03Yes. And people hate this. Boundary violations do happen. Even when somebody knows it's a violation, they will continue to do it. And humans can survive that. You may not want your boss to email you at all hours. You may not want them to call you at 5 a.m. They may do it anyway, and you can survive that. And if you can't, then you can leave. But we can't control other people. Right. So you're not saying accept the unacceptable. What you're saying is, if you're unwilling to accept it, you can leave. And short of that, you can set and reset and set and reset the boundary. But like you can survive when people, as Charlie Murphy says, when people are habitual line steppers.

30:51Yeah. The issue with boundary setting is that you can't control the other person. You can control your reaction to it and you can try to sort of recondition them to behave the ways in which you would like that make you feel safe and autonomous in that relationship. But you cannot control what they will do. If you're using the word boundary to control what they do in that way. That's ironically weaponization of the word boundary. Okay, so let's go back to weaponization of the word boundary. You tried to answer this question before and I redirected you, but the question that is the chapter title is, did they violate your boundaries or did they just not know how you felt?

31:26Can you say a little bit more about that specific question? People aren't mind readers. If they don't know what you need or what makes you feel safe or happy in a relationship, they can't give it to you. And so I think a lot of us feel offended when a boundary has been crossed. But if the person didn't know it was our boundary, then maybe that's why it was crossed. People also cross boundaries repeatedly because maybe it takes a few times of hearing, that's not okay for me. I can't handle when you do that until it actually sinks in. People are just so imperfect. I feel like that's the message of this book is like, even when they're trying their best, even when they know all the right things to do and they have gone to therapy for 10 years and they have all the coping strategies at their disposal, they will still let you down, disappoint you, make mistakes sometimes, cross your boundaries, do toxic things, not because they're a terrible person, but because humans are just messy.

32:22Right. I think it's a question of degree. The way I would gauge that, and this is unscientific, is are they, quote unquote, here's a cliche, doing the work? Are they going to a therapist? Are they meditating? Whatever it is, is the trend line good with an exception and a mistake at a regular interval? Yes. But I think especially younger generations do not have that generosity. They feel like people should not be misstepping so much. If people know better, they should be doing better. If somebody's in therapy, they shouldn't be ever crossing a boundary. What's going on there? Why is that happening?

33:01Partly because there's just such a focus on all of these words. And I feel like people think that, again, if you know better, you should do better. We have very high expectations for other humans and how they should behave. And partly because we don't want to suffer in our relationships. We would like to skip the part where somebody rejects us or makes us feel terrible. And focusing on these words is a way to get out of that suffering. One of the critiques, I'm always so wary of critiquing younger generations because my generation, Gen X, has made plenty of mistakes and we do dumb shit all the time too.

33:37So I'm not saying this from a position of being overly judgmental. And often like when I think about some of the quirks or unhealthy or unadaptive behaviors of younger generations, I actually feel like the older generations should take responsibility for it because we created the world in which they grew up. So that caveat issued, one of the critiques of younger people these days is that they're addicted to comfort. They're intolerant of discomfort. And so maybe that's part of what you're describing here? Absolutely. Yes. You can skip the hard part. Nobody wants to feel the pain of, you arrived late once again.

34:16I'm not important to you. I was embarrassed. I was waiting at the party. Everybody was looking at me. Where were you? Once again, why do that part and express how you feel and feel that pain? If you can just say, what a narcissist, once again, only thinking about yourself, right? Okay. Well, so let's go to that chapter. That's chapter seven. Are they a narcissist or did they just hurt your feelings? Can you say more about that? Only at most 6 % of the population qualifies for narcissistic personality disorder at most. And that's probably the clinical population, right? The general population is maybe like 0.5%.

34:57There are not that many clinical level narcissists in the world. and if you go online or you're in my practice every spouse every ex every in-law every boss is a narcissist when we say that we're really saying they have narcissistic personality disorder which has a whole set of criteria it's lengthy what they mean is you acted in a way that hurt me or seems selfish or unempathic or you have a narcissistic trait that you're acting grandiose You think that you deserve better treatment or you're better than other people. But that does not a narcissist make. I probably told this story before on the show, so I apologize.

35:40But I once asked a shrink, do you think I'm a narcissist? And he was like, well, it's a spectrum. And you're like maybe on the... Yeah, somewhere. But we all are, or we go through narcissistic phases. Like I'm just getting at the other side of one, of like a very self-focused... Writing a book, you mean? Yes. Yeah, and talking a lot about yourself and you want everyone else to be as excited and you feel like, oh, like the world should love this thing. Every teenager, and I had a professor in grad school say, we don't diagnose teenagers with any personality disorders because they would all have one.

36:16Because it's just an emotionally and relationally fraught time. I'm almost done with my second memoir. I sometimes joke about how I put the me in memoirs. So I get it. Okay, so how do you, you said there's a lengthy set of criteria for a narcissist. How does one spot a narcissist? To be honest, it can be quite hard because at first they don't present as pathological, but there's nine criteria. They have to be present since early adulthood. And a narcissist is narcissistic across time in a pervasive way in many different contexts of their life. So I always like to say, there's no way that your spouse is a narcissist just with you.

36:58They would be that way also at work and in their close friendships and in their family dynamic. People who have these traits present that way in all their relationships across contexts. It's pervasive. It's stable. It's an inflexible way of being in the world. Can you say just a little bit more about, use the term inflexible, but what are the other things that... The criteria? Yeah. Grandiose. They think very highly of themselves. They want a lot of admiration. They think everybody else should think very highly of them. Okay, check. They want special treatment. I got that one. I got that one too.

37:30Good. But don't we all? They feel like entitled to better treatment, to praise. They lack empathy for other people. And as a result, they will exploit people if it suits them. And they tend to go through a pattern of idolizing people, especially in new relationships of like, this is the most amazing person. You're wonderful. I want to do everything for you. And then when they feel hurt by you, which they inevitably will, they devalue you and treat you terribly. Okay, so I can imagine that I probably misuse this word. And I can see your case for it being a technical term that we should avoid because it does come with these nine criteria, some of which you just listed.

38:12I think when I use it, I mean like chronically, if not terminally self-centered and selfish. Yeah, which is colloquially how we use it. And I think that if we could separate out a clinical word and our casual use of the word, great, fine. But narcissism is so much more than selfishness. because it's actually somebody with very low self-esteem trying to compensate for that by thinking that they are better than everybody else. And that's different than selfishness and being self-focused. Putting yourself above others, exploiting and manipulating others, not feeling badly if you hurt other people is a step beyond or maybe many steps beyond being selfish.

38:56I mean, that abusive part, the exploitation, subjugation, that seems like very specific beyond the way most of us are using the word. Yes, absolutely. Yes. Although when people say narcissist, I think what they're saying is, they're self-focused. They don't feel bad enough for me or what they did to me. And they hurt my feelings. So then how should we think and talk about folks who do stuff like that? Who hurt our feelings? who seem like irreparably self-involved. Again, this is back to, if you come into my office and tell me the person you're seeing is so self-involved, they don't care about you, they only talk about themselves, what do you want me to do about this?

39:45If this is the way that they are and you've tried to get through to them and they're not listening to you because they don't care, your options are to see if you can find a way to have a relationship with them given who they are that works for you or to change your relationship or to leave it. Okay, so it just sounds like you're really practical. The point is not to diagnose a narcissist because you're not qualified to do that anyway. The point is to identify the behaviors that are problematic, see if you can find a modus vivendi, a way to live with each other, and if you can't, get the fuck out of there.

40:18Basically, yes. And like the point of diagnosis is to know what you're dealing with. But at the end of the day, you want that just so you can decide what to do. It doesn't help you to know whether they officially are a narcissist or not. If they're treating you in a way that does not feel good for you, does not work for you, your options are the same whether or not we can give them this disorder. Okay. So, but just to push back for a second, sometimes it can be like if somebody has, I don't know if narcissism technically qualifies as a personality disorder, does it? Yes. Okay. So if somebody does have a personality disorder, I'll throw out some terms that I also don't understand, like borderline personality or obsessive compulsive disorder.

40:56Can't it be a source of both clarity and compassion to have a diagnosis for them? It can, yes. And I think it can also be freeing. If you see this person in the context of, oh, this is because they have borderline, that they're acting this way. It's not because of me. I didn't do the things they're accusing me of. This is their trauma, their stuff. I think that can set you free. And it gives you the options again of what you want to do about it. I'm totally for an accurate diagnosis if it helps you understand the person that you're dealing with and to sort of see through the crazy making situation you've been with them.

41:29But too many people get stuck at that stage and don't go to the next part, which is, OK, so this is what I'm dealing with. What am I going to do about it? What do you do if somebody accuses you of being a narcissist? I'm sure that never happened to you. It has happened to me. So what do you do in those circumstances? this is hard but I ask people to once again take a breath don't react I ask people to think about has somebody else said this to you for all the disorders has somebody else mentioned that maybe you have OCD does somebody else think maybe you have borderline this is the first time you're hearing it or is evidence mounting that you should take a closer look at this part of your personality you can go get an assessment if you want from a therapist and if this is inaccurate again go back to why did the person feel so hurt that they would use this term?

42:18What happened? How selfish were you that they would call you a narcissist? Heal that wound and then talk about the use of the term. All right, let's talk about another overused term. And this is a term that people weaponize on themselves, I think. But here's the way you phrase it in the chapter title. Do they have obsessive compulsive disorder or are they just particular? OCD is, yeah, weaponized in both directions. I have found other terms that fall into that category too, but for this book, this is the only one. OCD is a complex and can be a very distressing disorder where you have obsessions and accompanying compulsions that cause distress.

42:59They are time consuming and they are out of your control. Everybody thinks they have OCD because they like the dishwasher arranged a certain way, or they want to line up their shoes in a certain order, or they hate when you put a glass down and there's a ring of water on the bottom. But that's a preference. That's a need for organization and cleanliness. That's normal. That's fine. We all have our things that we care about. That's not the same thing as OCD. Okay, so what to do about that? What's the advice here? I guess the advice is, don't pathologize somebody who might be particularly particular.

43:39Yes. But some of those people might have OCD. They might, but they probably don't. If they do, they know it before you do, probably. Because not only are they asking you to do very specific things, but typically they know they have obsessive thoughts that are causing them great distress that they are trying to alleviate through their compulsive behaviors or through controlling your behavior because it's linked to their obsessive thoughts. So you said before that this is like a term that can cut both ways. People can weaponize it against you, not by accusing you of having OCD, but by saying, well, I have OCD, even though I don't have a diagnosis.

44:19And therefore, you've got to do whatever crazy thing it is I'm asking you to do. Yeah. And a lot of these terms are about asserting autonomy in your relationship, right? You have OCD. I'm not doing that. That's crazy, right? I'm not going to comply with your request. I control my own behavior. No. Or in the reverse, I have OCD. You have to do what I'm saying. I'm so clinically unwell about this, right? Do what I ask is another way of control. And so if somebody does that, what do you do? I always go back to, and eventually you've got to talk about the use of the term, but there's something else underneath those moments of demand and disconnect.

44:55Like, why is this so important to you? Can you say it in a nicer way? Can we not frame it as your OCD? But like, it is helpful for you if I do this thing. And I'm not going to always do everything you ask because I'm my own person and I may not agree with what you're asking of me. We have to find compromise and middle ground.

45:17Coming up, Isabel talks about the difference between red flags and garden variety imperfections, the overuse of the word triggered, how to know if you are in an abusive relationship, how to focus on your own personal growth, and much more.

45:37Okay, let's go through a few more of these terms. Is it a red flag or are they just imperfect? I'll tell you. And I thought this book was going to have a more critical feedback of people disagreeing and being upset with it. So far, people have been totally on board except for this chapter. People do not like this chapter. Why? I'm taking away a term that people really want to have be broad, I think. I make a case that red flag is supposed to mean danger. Serious warning, right? fire, flood, run, very serious, very big deal. Red flags are indicators somebody's going to be abusive, that they are not going to be a safe person to be in a relationship with, that you should very cautiously proceed with if you proceed at all.

46:25But nowadays, red flag means any imperfection, any bad behavior, any sign somebody might have a personality trait that's not your favorite thing, right? The ick can be a red flag. And it makes it so hard to be dating, to be in any kind of relationship, to be an employee, to be a boss, because everybody has what people now call red flags. Right. So it's like maybe we just need a different term because what red flags really means in a clinical setting is something that's, as you said before, dangerous. And so we need a term for just shit we don't like. Yes. And I think there's an overzealous approach to finding red flags as soon as possible and to spot them, the earliest warning sign.

47:15But the problem with red flags is even like the pretty acute ones are best seen in hindsight or if there are many red flags pointing in the same direction. So it's not as if your boss sends you a really rude email and you know for sure that they are going to be a terrible boss. Maybe after seven pretty terrible emails, you have a good idea that they're going to be a terrible boss. So the problem here isn't just the imprecision of the language. It's that if these are the goggles through which you're viewing all of your relationships, it just leads to a kind of hypervigilance that reduces the likelihood of success.

47:52Yes, and I think we are living in a very hypervigilant relational world where people know so much about what to look out for and what they want to avoid that they spot it right away and are quick to make conclusions, even if they're not going to be accurate conclusions about that person, and are making it very hard to have relationships because people need a fair amount of leeway to make mistakes and to annoy you and to repair. And there's just less and less room for that now. Hmm. What's going on that we have this intolerance? Does it go back to the intolerance of discomfort? Is it that we live in a world that's increasingly divided and disconnected because of social media and therefore, you know, we just don't have the reps of the hard work of being a social animal?

48:39What do you think is going on here? I think it's both of those things. I think that we do not want to feel suffering and we have an easy way out, which is we can exit relationships. And then sometimes we're encouraged to, right, do like hard endings on family relationships. That has been a thing that's sort of being pulled back now. but you know you don't like someone you go on a first date with there's a hundred thousand people on an app waiting to talk to you so why go through one more red flag why put up with one more thing if you can just hop to the next person and find somebody better but I do blame social media for a lot of it because it's easy to have little snippets of information that make it feel like we can anticipate avoid or quickly address all the human suffering we have in relationships and I partly blame therapists for this.

49:30And I say that with some caution because I think it was all well-intentioned, but therapists have helped people be too vigilant in their relationships and too quick to pathologize. And therapy has exploded in a way I don't think people would have predicted, but now it's made everyone feel like they are an expert even though they're not. So in what ways should the therapy profession perhaps reform? I think we have to be much more careful when introducing a term to a client. It sounds like your partner might have these traits or tendencies. I have had many cases of therapists recommending to people that their partner is a clinical narcissist, is a sociopath, really heavy diagnoses that they shouldn't be recommending.

50:20So I think we have to be careful when introducing a term. And I think we have to also steer people away from just the words and helping them figure out more about patterns, the feelings, what their agency in that relationship, in that context. Whereas some therapists will really stick with, well, this explains it. This person is this way. They keep doing this thing. It's not your fault. You know, they're a bad person. They're toxic. But that's disempowering at the end of the day because the person sitting in the therapy room is the one who has to make the change. Are you now like not welcomed at the APA conferences?

50:57Did your colleagues find you, are they intolerant of you? Are you a walking red flag? So far, no, people are really open to it. I'm actually doing three conferences this year all about helping clinicians address therapy speak and their practice because so many therapists don't know what to do with it, don't know how to take these terms away from people in a way that doesn't break the therapeutic rapport. All right, here's another frequently used term, bipolar. Chapter 10 is, are they bipolar or did their mood just change? I think bipolar can be weaponized in both directions too to sort of explain I'm having a really big feeling and it doesn't really make sense, but I'm allowed to have it.

51:40But most often I hear people say that person is so bipolar, they acted in such an irrational way that I cannot comprehend. it must be this underlying mood episode explaining why they left me, why they're angry with me, why they're doing something that I don't understand. So what's a better lens to understand these kinds of mood swings? First of all, there might be a reason. They may have left you because they've been unhappy with you and they didn't tell you until it was too late for you to fix it. And sometimes people do You just have big feelings that for you come out of nowhere, but for them have been building.

52:18But second of all, sometimes people just have moods or emotion states with no known triggers. They don't know why, you don't know why, and you don't have to pathologize it. And bipolar is composed of mood episodes where it's not like one day of somebody being high energy. Right? Like for bipolar one, you need to have a manic episode. Mania stands out. People get hospitalized when they're manic. So that one's pretty easy to diagnose. But again, I think people miss that an episode is different than a change in mood. Yes. Although, so a change in mood is super common and often benign. And bipolar is much, much more intense than most people understand.

53:05And yet there's something in the middle. There can be people who are arguably, and I probably fall into this category occasionally, too moody, emotionally unintelligent, just yanked around by their emotions. So obviously, we don't want to label those people bipolar, but we might want to understand what's going on and how to deal with that. Yeah, I think it's a great point because, again, links back to the person's awareness of how they are, their own emotional internal world, and how they interact and affect the world around them. And some people just have low insight. They don't know how they feel.

53:43They don't know what they need. They barely know who they are. They don't see how they affect the people around them. They don't see their patterns. And whether or not they meet criteria for a diagnosis, they're just going to be a hard person to be in any kind of relationship with. You might have to set a boundary. You might have to set many boundaries. Okay, we're not going to hit all of these in our allotted time here, but let me go to borderline, because I actually know what that term means. I'll read to you the name of the chapter just so the listener knows what it is. The chapter is, are they borderline or do they just have strong feelings?

54:17Maybe just start by defining what borderline personality disorder is. This is so interesting because borderline is hot right now. It's up there with narcissists. People call men they don't like narcissists. People call women they don't like borderlines. So, borderline personality disorder, it's typically born from serious trauma where a person develops a very unstable sense of self and has significant difficulty maintaining stable, healthy relationships because there's a constant push and pull between wanting intense closeness, almost enmeshment, and then rejecting that person and pushing them away because they're terrified of that closeness.

54:58So there is a real fluctuation in that relationship. It's often accompanied by self-harm, by suicidal ideation or attempts, by recklessness, by risk-taking behaviors. And it can be very difficult to treat because it's not usually helped by medication alone, but it takes years of therapy to address the habits and patterns and symptoms. And so people who simply have strong feelings can be misdiagnosed by a layperson as borderline? I will tell you, I have been dating recently, and I have had no less than seven men tell me or have on their profiles. My recent ex slash, for one of them, all the women I've ever been with have had borderline.

55:51So I'm really wanting to make sure that anyone I date next doesn't have it. I'm sure that date goes well. They learn a lot from me. Is it a red flag where they say that? Absolutely, yes. For me especially. It's against my whole brand, Dan. But they say that because the women have had strong feelings. They have felt very hurt by them. They have broken up in a dramatic way that didn't make sense, right? They wanted a close relationship, but then did something to indicate they didn't want to be with them. And there's no way they can understand it besides saying that they're borderline. Right. So I guess in the past they would have just said a bitch.

56:33Yeah. Right. The real underlying thing here is just our reflexive need to label people. Yes. Put them in a bucket. To make ourselves feel better. Yeah. And to reduce the complexity of this animal. Yes. Our brains do that, right? As you know, we seek simple answers. We want schema to explain what's happening in our world. We cannot give nuance to everything, or we would have no capacity to function because there's too much data to take in, it's too much work. But I argue that in our close relationships, ones that matter are ones where we could gain self-reflection, we should give those nuance. All right, let's talk about a few more terms.

57:19There's a chapter on the words toxic, triggered, and trauma bonded. These get used a lot, and I actually am realizing that I used toxic earlier. So what do these terms actually mean, and how are we misusing them? toxic I'm not even mad about at this point toxic is a life of its own my only case for toxic is that it means something bad a dynamic that is unhealthy for you or a person that is not a good person for you you can't say toxic and think that people know what it means toxic to me doesn't mean abusive doesn't mean narcissistic it could mean somebody who's just the wrong person for you because they annoy you.

57:59So instead of using it as this catch-all, I encourage people to define it a little bit before they then use it. But I don't have a huge problem with toxic in part because it has no clinical roots, really. Got it. Okay. What about triggered? I have a hard time with this chapter because language does evolve, right? Like words take on new meaning. So I know I can't control that. It's my hope book, because it's about letting go of control of other people. Triggered was intended to me For somebody who has PTSD, a trigger is a cue that brings up their PTSD symptoms. So, right, it's somebody who has been at war, who comes home, and eight months later, a car backfires on their street, and it brings up flashbacks.

58:43They have a panic attack in response. That was supposed to be what a trigger meant. People have generalized it to mean, you did a thing that made me feel a bad feeling, which is fine. That word can change and mean that, but people will trigger you. You don't get to control how people act. Being a human means being triggered, going through the world and managing your emotional reaction to that. My beef with the term is, I mean, and I probably, if somebody put all of the transcripts of this show at an AI, would see that I probably used it. But my beef with the term, notwithstanding my hypocrisy, is it just speaks to our fragility.

59:22Life is filled with triggers. You're going to die. I mean, that can be pretty triggering. Yeah. So it really, it's kind of like the term safe space. I don't love it. I'm sure its original intent was very positive. But the way people are demanding safety in a world that it's just definitionally unsafe. And so we need to be preparing people to handle life's inevitable ups and downs or triggers. Yeah. I mean, spray it. You know, if a teacher asks you for something, calls on you in class when you weren't paying attention, that could be triggering. That could make you feel anxious and embarrassed. It could make you feel all sorts of things, but you don't get to skip that experience.

1:00:00And finally, trauma bonded. This is my personal most important one because I am so frustrated by how this word has been taken over. Trauma bond is Stockholm syndrome. it's when you and an abuser or a captor develop this very counterintuitive relationship where you the survivor want to like protect and defend the abuser and captor because you feel the sense of closeness and connection with them trauma bonded as people use it now is like we went through a really hard thing together so now we're bonded because of the trauma which is just a totally different thing. I see your balance here because you don't want to be like the get off my lawn lady, you know, just like policing everybody's language.

1:00:45And so some of these, the ones we've just gone through, may like inch up toward that, whereas the other ones are like are actually causing harm to you and others when you use them. Yeah, so there's definitely a spectrum too of like severity and how much I think using these words correctly matters. I will say it hasn't stopped people from using these words with me, whether in personal relationships or professionally. What I'll get now is like, they were gaslighting. I know, I know, probably not real gaslighting, but you know what I mean, gaslighting. Like, yeah, that's fine. Look, I can't tell you how many fucking 10 % jokes I get.

1:01:22So just get used to it. So you finish with some really practical stuff. And I do want to spend a few minutes on this. Chapter 14 is called Being a Human in Relationship is Hard. So here's some advice. Let's just walk through a few of these until we run out of time. One is about how to figure out if you're actually in an abusive relationship as opposed to like just using the term willy-nilly. So what do we look for? You look for patterns. You look to see if this behavior, this abuse cycle is happening repeatedly. You look to see if you feel isolated, if you feel scared, if you're losing sense of your own reality.

1:01:54and I encourage people to talk to a therapist, to talk to friends and family, to read about abuse and how it presents and to see if it resonates. And in relationships that are not abusive but, you know, difficult, which is all relationships if you're actually participating, there's a section here in about doing the work. It's LFA therapy term, I think. Some of the things you recommend are specificity, vulnerability, and commitment. Can you talk a little bit about each of those? Yeah, instead of jumping to a label of sort of being more clear on this is the thing that you did, this is how it felt to me, and I want to work through this with you, as opposed to, oh, you're so bipolar.

1:02:38Here it is again, right? Go fix that. But in a bigger picture, I would tell people, listen, decide if this relationship is important to you, if it's worth doing the work. Because if you're with somebody who does have a disorder, it can be a lot of work and it can be a steep hill and it can be a long time. So I think you need to decide how much you want to invest in this relationship. And if it is that important, then to then go forth and do that work of trying to change and improve things. And that's the commitment. Yes, if you feel the commitment. You mentioned this just now, and it also comes up in the book.

1:03:12You know, there may be cases where you are correctly suspecting that your partner qualifies for borderline or OCD or whatever. And while you don't want to be in the business of doing armchair diagnosis or weaponizing the term, you may want to encourage people to get help. What do you recommend if that's the case? I think that there is always room to offer observations and to recommend people take a look at something. it really matters how and when you do it. If it's in the middle of a fight, it's going to be harsh and it's going to be poorly received. If it is in a quiet moment where you're able to say, I'm worried about this.

1:03:53I have noticed this pattern. It seems to be getting in your way. It seems to be affecting us. Can you go talk to somebody about it? Can you go get assessed for it? Can we look at this together? It's going to go better. And it might not. You might have somebody who is offended, who is unwilling to consider it, somebody who has no insight and won't be able to understand even what you're saying to them, in which case that decision bounces back to you of what do you want to do with that relationship with that person. One of the things you emphasize toward the end of the book here is focusing on your own growth as like a good citizen of a relationship.

1:04:30Because that's all that we have control over, you know, and you always have the opportunity to gain your own insight and to focus on your agency and your own growth, no matter what the other person does. And I think if you become so focused on the other person's problems and how they need to change, you really miss out on your chance to look in the mirror and figure out how you can change in the context of that relationship. And I found that to the extent that I've done my work, one of the benefits is something that you call for in a robust way in the book and have I've done so throughout this conversation that the more I metaphorically speaking here, look in the mirror through meditation therapy or whatever and see how fucked up I am, the more grace I'm willing to give other people.

1:05:18Yeah, I think it helps you see that we are all doing our best and some people are doing their best and it's not enough for you and that's okay. Then you can make a choice to leave. But yeah, people are imperfect. They're messy. they're struggling, but we can all support each other in that process instead of pathologize each other. Two final questions. One, is there something that you were hoping to get to that we didn't? I don't think so. Awesome. Great. And then finally, can you just remind everybody of the name of the book and anything else you've made that we should know about? So the book is called They're Not Gaslighting You.

1:05:53Ditch the therapy speak and stop looking for red flags everywhere in every relationship. Up next is a book called You Don't Have ADHD, Stop Self-Diagnosing and Reclaim Your Mental Health. That'll come out sometime next year. So that'll be a similar topic, but for self-diagnosis. And then for any therapist, they can check out my Navigating Intimacy book all about couples and sex therapy. And website that we should know about, social media? You can find me at drisabelmorley.com or on Instagram at drisabelmorley. Amazing. Great job. Thank you for doing this. Really appreciate it. Thank you. No, thank you for having me on.

1:06:27I was telling everybody before that I read 10 % Happier like the week it came out. My whole practice talked about it. I've made like every patient read it. So it's personal honor to get to meet you. Thank you. I appreciate that. I think one of the biggest growth engines for my work has been therapists. That's so interesting. We are promoters. We're a good community for that kind of thing. Yeah, I appreciate you guys. All right. Well, thanks again. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

1:06:59Thanks again to Isabel. Great to talk to her. Don't forget there's a guided meditation that comes with this episode. It's all about how to handle difficult people. It comes from our teacher of the month, Christiana Wolf. You can get it if you sign up at danharris.com. You can also, once you sign up, access our weekly live meditation and Q &A sessions. We do those every Tuesday at 4 Eastern. Also, just a quick reminder that I've got that event on the 18th of November with Pete Holmes, the comedian and meditator, that you should sign up for that. There's a link in the show notes. Finally, thank you to everybody who worked so hard to make this show.

1:07:33Our producers are Tara Anderson and Eleanor Vasili. Our recording and engineering is handled by the great folks over at Pod People. Lauren Smith is our managing producer. Marissa Schneiderman is our senior producer. DJ Kashmir is our executive producer. And Nick Thorburn of the band Islands wrote our theme. Thank you.