The Narcissist Expert: How To Spot Them, Survive Them & Why They're Everywhere - Dr. Ramani

26:25How much of it do you think is dissociative?

26:28Dr. Michael Gervais:Never been asked that question. I've never had the thought. it's my biggest concern having worked with this population that some of this felt like the dissociation we see in complex trauma an absolute dissociation where they are so in this other zone because to feel what the what has become a transaction with their parent is so painful that to go fully into this other space that happened to be spun into this performance but at the end of the day it was dissociation you know the idea that they put on a new personality not a new personality I'm talking about lower not the not the not the fully fragmented identity dissociation but I'm saying lower on the spectrum of dissociation not quite us kind of like someone saying you're there you're there kind of thing but the the ability to again we know that people who are workaholics, that is a very clearly a form of dissociation, right?

27:29That you could go all into something that is relatively unemotional and that does become an offset to earlier traumatic injury.

27:36Dr. Michael Gervais:So disassociative identity disorders, not what you're talking about. I'm not talking about that. You are talking about like a trauma response. Yeah, I'm talking about trauma response. Exactly. Something that was happening, you know, not being seen, not being valued or some sort of trauma. And oftentimes we'll hear, we will hear people say, you kidding? The court was my only safe place. That's why I got so good. And I wouldn't necessarily go to dissociation or dissociative experience, but I would say a trauma response. Yes. Okay. And then I would say, um, this is going to be a little bit of a horseshoe number, let's say better than 80%.

28:16Dr. Michael Gervais:And I think I'm being generous that come from some of the professional leagues in, in the united states the the athletes come from very difficult yes environments i know call it maybe trauma producing environments adverse childhood environments yeah and so hiaces and then you kind of you blend that with oh this is a way i'm seen so there's two confluences that or there's a confluence of two variables that take place one is it's a great escape yes um it is an escape from a trauma experience or trauma traumatic home and it's also provides a great place to be seen so it's the snake that eats its tail type of experience i i don't think it raises to the level writ large for disassociation but it is a radical coping mechanism and i am on record saying that if you knew what i knew about the path to high performance you would not challenge and push your kids, you would support them.

29:19Dr. Michael Gervais:Correct. Right. That's right. You would see them and you would be part of, you know, their experience, but you would not be pushing them in this kind of wild way because the washout is radical. There's this thing called identity foreclosure. Interesting. And at a young age, I'm trying to figure out, am I rock and roll? Am I jazz? Am I country? Like, who am I? You know? And if you foreclose too early on just one genre of music, just one, one way of thinking about yourself, you foreclose on all the other potentialities. Yes. And why would we do that? Because of all of the benefits that the person is making at an uninformed young age.

29:55Dr. Michael Gervais:So I like the conversation about dissociative. I'm going to need to run that through my Tumblr a little bit more because you are absolutely correct that trauma is part of the ecosystem for many, not all. Not all. No, I agree. Yeah. And just because you have trauma doesn't mean that it's a dissociative component. No, no. But there's fragmentation and trauma. I mean, the two go hand in hand. Yes. Open that up for someone that doesn't. Basically, the true self that is a core element of the human experience. There's a true us with the preferences, values, beliefs, ways we go through the world, you know, and spiritually, cognitively, emotionally.

30:33That true self exists. Right. And in the best telling of the story, as a person goes through the development of self childhood into adolescence, in adulthood, the true self gets to emerge, right? Good luck with doing that in 2025. And actually, at any point in human history. Because what ends up happening is now we can have what I'd call not quite full on fragmentation, but definitely fault lines enough that could definitely push the snap, which is even a parent who's like, oh come on kid your old man's an accountant so why don't you be an accountant kind of thing but there's not the sense that if you became something else you were going to be rejected right the the parent who wants the kid to play football and you know is putting the games on and gets these three years old gets them the whole thing the pads and the helmet and the football and and then around the age of 14 the kid is much more interested in playing the trombone in the band and doesn't want to play football knows that the parent's being disappointed but everyone gets over it, we'll see some slight fragmentation there.

31:35But when there is trauma, when there's true disruptions of safety for a child, they the true self cannot emerge, it's too dangerous. The child has to that modifications have to happen to create safety. And that will come out through trauma responses, whether that's fight, flight, freeze, fawn, any of those kinds of responses may come up. But the child is now pulled off the track of the true self. Now the self is a survival self that modifies so they can attach. It's not even about love. It's about attachment. Attachment is survival. The fragmentation of the self is part of what happens as part of that trauma exposure.

32:13Dr. Michael Gervais:And another way we think about it is kids that come through disruptive families, let's just say, not necessarily traumatic, but they oftentimes will adopt a persona, the angel, the high performer, the clown, the disruptor, the, But, you know, the one that's getting in all the trouble, the rebel, you know, like it's not their true self. It's something that is working for them. It's working for them. Yeah. These adaptations ultimately either work or the child collapses. Yeah. You know, and that's a child. This is like a submit response. Why do you think? Well, we got to go back to the original narrative here.

32:50Dr. Michael Gervais:But why do you think 87 % or more of people in the professional rankings and, you know, elite sport in the U.S. at least when they retire are broke, are, you know, kind of a kind of a mess in the retirement phase? Why do you think that that is? Here's I have a few hypotheses about that. You know, to me, it's what I call the one trick pony hypothesis. Right. It's imagine you go to school and the only thing you learned was math. Right. And that's it. From day one. There's no reading. There's no writing. There's just math, math, math, math, math. And so by the time you're in high school, you're actually doing relatively high level math, but you can't write a sentence.

33:29You can't, you don't know what the capital of anything is. You couldn't even, you know, pick out Australia on a map, but my gosh, you can do math. Okay. And so if there is no math job, if whatever the world uses math differently, AI comes and takes, it comes for math, then what do you do you can't you know i think it's the part of it is the one trick pony of it all but i think at a deeper level it's the identity gets fully immersed in the activity identity and activity are not the same thing they're separate things a human being engages in activity but we are not the activity but for a person who takes on elite athletics they are the quarterback they are this is why i say the most dangerous phrase you know for athletes is

34:17Dr. Michael Gervais:I'm an athlete. I'm an athlete. Exactly. It's the most dangerous thing that they can do. So parents that, you know, when you introduce your son or daughter, whoever, like this is Johnny, he's a quarterback. This is Johnny. He's an athlete. No, no, no. It's just Johnny. Yeah. And then let Johnny, you know, talk about being Johnny. And so there is a, there's so much in that identity and that, and that, that the existence as an athlete, because it starts so young for children. It does shape identity. It's not like if I went to go become a ceramicist tomorrow, I'm never going to at any point in my life for the rest of my life, call myself a ceramicist.

34:52My identity is fully baked, cooked and on the shelf. So anything I take on now will not shape identity. Identity had to come from that because it came during the social developmental arc where personality and sense of self were developed.

35:07Dr. Michael Gervais:While we're on identity, what does your identity rest on my personal identity rest on my personal identity if i now i would say it rests on experience culture um the roles i take i'm a mother so i didn't have that role you know 25 25 years ago so the roles i hold in the world um and without a better way of saying this there was an inherent Romani-ness to me. And many of the things I experienced as an almost 60 year old woman now were exactly the same things I experienced as a five-year-old child. The five-year-old actually in some ways got it all along, but so many societal forces conspire to almost, again, that's the fragmentation to take that away.

35:54That's not really what you want. And so I certainly made choices in my life that weren't congruent with the true self that was already emerging at the age of five.

36:02Dr. Michael Gervais:Yeah. It's a beautiful proposition, which is the true self is there. It's there, always there. It's always there. One of our first principles here at Finding Mastery is that everything you need is already inside you. Yes. Meaning that all of the raw material is there. And part of our job is, you know, like kind of chiseling away at David, like it's already in there. We just got to see what the potentiality is and help support and challenge people towards that aim. But it's already in there. It's not some version of you later. Nope. You know, it's like if you're on, if you think, I do like the version model in this respect.

36:34Dr. Michael Gervais:Like, let's say you're on version eight of yourself. It's like, but version 10 is like the absolute you. It's not something you need to build towards. It's get closer to home. Correct, correct. And I think that as societal expectations start to fall by the wayside. This is why with age, you sometimes see people landing in this more authentic, true self space because the societal pressures have been lifted. There's no white picket fence pressure. There's no go become a parent. There's no get married. it's i mean that's it the gloves are off it's done and so now what's left is really who are you you you went through all the hurdles what's left there are still old fools there are still old fools and they're often the narcissist so there you go finding mastery is brought to you by our flagship mindset training course finding your best anytime you feel the pull to reset to zoom out to refocus and ask, am I moving toward the person I want to become?

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40:19The third is what I call sort of the grandiosity circumplex. And what I mean by that is sitting in grandiosity is the stuff like entitlement. I am special and extraordinary. The rules do not apply to me, but the hypocrisy is the rules definitely apply to you. So it's the, it's the fantasy. It's the fantasy of the perfect love story, the perfect home, the perfect job, the, the perfect life, right? And social media took that and put a megaphone on that because once upon a time, we didn't know what anyone's life looks like. Now we have this manufactured version of everyone's life we can peer into.

40:58But it's that all that grandiosity stuff comes together and entitlement, arrogance, all of that are manifestations of that grandiosity. Now, in some cases, the grandiosity looks almost delusional, but it's a key defining element of narcissism.

41:14Dr. Michael Gervais:So let's let's go to the origin story a little bit. But I mean, I know you're moving away from NPD as a disorder. There is a spectrum that you would say is fair, right? So there's some people that are low on the spectrum. They have some of these characteristics and some have a lot. I think the number is somewhere between like 2 % and 6 % in the U.S. Have NPD. NPD. If you open the spectrum up where it's problematic. 12%. 12%. And if you were to walk into the halls of a world-class football team or world-class basketball, what would you think is the coaches slash athlete mix? 20 to 25%. And if you were in a stadium, so you're not in the locker room, but you're in a stadium, what percentage of people are narcissists in the stadium?

42:05Dr. Michael Gervais:With the fans? Yeah, the fandom. 15%, 15 to 16%. Okay. and if you're walking um outside of the u.s anywhere does that do these numbers change that's the great question i'm and even some of them are spitballs like in the stadium the athletic one i know we're getting a little bit yeah oh you're confident that the 25 uh-huh i am confident i could even be hired i thought you were being conservative i am being conservative it could be as high as 30 percent yeah yeah i would say that around the world the numbers that 12 % number of enough narcissism to be noticeable. I would not be surprised if that number held globally.

42:48I do think that there may be cultures out there where cooperation and collaboration are valued, where emotional expression is not as pathologized. Maybe it's lower. I just can't, I've got to be frank with you. I'm not sure what that culture would be because I think pretty much all cultures that have any form of capitalistic vein running through them, the hierarchical build of that culture is just, it's pretty much that's going to allow narcissism to, it's going to make it an incentivized quality.

43:21Dr. Michael Gervais:Yeah. It's pro-social in a capitalistic society. You know, it's like be ambitious, get after it, go for it. And to do that, you got to feel like you're special. You got to feel, you know, there's, it's pro-social in sport and high performing environments to have some of these characteristics. And we know, I think it was 2015 at a university banger is that people that fell in the spectrum of narcissistic characteristics that facilitated higher performance. A hundred percent. I completely can, I completely see that. I mean, there's no two way there. Why wouldn't it? Okay. So speak to the parent that has, that wants to do the best for their child.

43:58Dr. Michael Gervais:What can parents do to support children that don't fall on the, on this spectrum, but really like are great citizens and great performers basically you're saying like i've got a kid who's a great performer we're going to let's use your athletics example to start with here kid who's got all the all the raw material to be the great athlete they're doing they're doing nice and they and they really like they like what they're doing and they're a good kid okay they play nice they you know they're collaborative with their peers and all of that i would say you want to you want to attune to that child you want to model empathy for that child you want to give your child room to breathe and what i mean by that is the parent who is too overzealously going in there and attempting to do the debrief with the kid as though it's some sort of post-game color coverage on the car ride home from practice exactly be present with all the other stuff don't do that identity foreclosure continue you you can't just grow apples in this orchard you've got to grow about 20 other species of stuff if you're going to keep this farm stand going you got to do the same with your kid so to have them talk to you about like how you know don't let it be about something else listen i had i had kids who weren't athletes i had kids who like were like performed on stage and musicals and stuff like that the temptation i'd have to fight and i didn't always succeed at it you know instead of asking about rehearsal or how's it coming with the show is like so tell me things like how's it in in the language i would grew up speaking what my parents spoke to me i should say it was the the translate the direct translation would be tell me tell me something and so that you know tell me tell me things what is your native tongue um delugu so it's a southern indian language but that was a i just saw my parents this weekend it's tell me things how do you say that um chapu chapu chapu means tell me things tell me things and then so that you know what i like about that open-ended is like it right away my son would be like well what do you want me to say yeah and but he can't say uh how was school fine yeah like you can't give the one word tell me things like what you know my wife says so she's cube and she says, um, she says any news about any news?

46:18Ah, I like that. Uh-huh.

46:19Dr. Michael Gervais:Yeah. And so it's like an all encompassing, you know, like, yeah. Okay. So what would, uh, let's go back to the car ride home. What would you ask? What would you guide our parent community to, to ask or do right after practice? Open-ended, you know, whatever the version of tell me things that would work with your kid and nothing, nothing at all. Want to hear about my day? Can I tell you a little bit about something I saw today? And don't make it about like that boss. Say the strangest thing happened to me today. I saw SpaceX launch and it looked like a giant jellyfish across the sky. Or I saw a tree fall across the street.

46:59And your kid might be looking at you quizzically, but there's a magic to this, which is you're not just that. Right. So now a conversation could come of this. Or we, my kids, when they were a little younger, but they were still performing, we did the whole high-low thing. Like, what's the best thing that happened today? What's the worst thing that happened today? You want to hear mine? So you're also trying to facilitate that reciprocity. You know, like, want to hear what the good thing I haven't, my bad thing that happened? And so you're trying to engage them on something more than the sports team who's going to be starting on Saturday.

47:35You know, what did coach say about that? You know, that thing we were practicing last week? Is that working? So, cause this is now the parent getting ego gratification from the child's performance. And that's really where it falls apart.

47:45Dr. Michael Gervais:Or actually quelling anxiety. Correct. That is this, is my child going to make it? Correct. Is my child going to make it? I think it's more of an anxious thing. Yeah. It can be both. Yeah, of course it can be both. Yeah, of course. You know what I like is like I pick my son up and I'm reading his energy. Energy is like, what does that really mean? It's like, I'm just catching a vibe for how he's walking into the car. and um i i feel like it's weird if i don't say anything so i say how was practice i don't watch practice how was practice and if he goes fine dad like oh i got the message if he goes uh it was really good i did that and i'm like oh there's there's there's a thing here and then if he does like it was okay and it's kind of like in the middle and he doesn't want to have a hard conversation or whatever i'll do one more click and i'll say um oh you know what your coaches have to say to about?

48:35Dr. Michael Gervais:And I will ask that question. I heard it in your narrative just really. And I'll ask that as one more thing to see if he wants to explore, you know, and then he'll say something like, if he goes there or not, if he doesn't, I'll say, how was school? You know, it's my first catch up with him. It's always, I get to school, but it's like, if you just, the kid's walking out of school and I'm talking about something else, it's weird. Yes. It feels like I'm meeting him. I'm greeting him with what he just did. Yes. But that's why something even more open-ended it is it's almost like tell me something tell me tell me things you know say it again in your native time chapu you know and so it's like you know like an older family member will sit down and say chapu and then it's just i know what they want they want to hear it's almost like they don't care i could talk about my kids i could talk about my car i could talk about my job it's sort of what do you got okay so now let's say you're in a relationship with a narcissist okay um how do you know if you're in a relationship with a narcissist or I'm going to be provocative here you're just kind of a mess yourself okay so you you raise an interesting question right I think that in people who are in narcissistic relationships will experience an interesting dichotomy they will say you know what's interesting I love my job I feel really competent at work I had such a good time with my friends last Saturday at that, at that, you know, girls dinner we had or whatever.

50:05But when I'm at home, I feel incompetent. I feel crazy. I feel like I, I am greedy or selfish or stupid. So they'll say there is, I do see this at many survivors is there's competence in other areas of their life. Like I have friends. I do. I like my work. I volunteer at my kid's school, but I get home to my spouse. And I, it is the one place where I literally feel like I've lost the plot. And so when a person's in a narcissistic relationship and they do have other supports, what we'll see is that that relationship is a place where a person feels a lot of psychological incompetence and even hurt, sadness, invalidation.

50:49People will say they lose their confidence as a result of the relationship. They think they're to blame for all the problems in the relationship. And for me as a therapist, the ringer for me is when a client comes in and start, especially the first three to five sessions for people who are in narcissistic relationships where I can see their healthy self, they will spend a lot of time in there saying, I'm so confused about what I'm doing wrong. Like we, I, I seem like, I feel like all I do is say the wrong thing. he's always mad at me I you know or he's cheating on me and I feel like I can't talk about it there's a lot of self like what am I doing wrong when the person comes in and they're just loading and reloading on my partner is a narcissist my partner's a piece of this my and all they're doing is it's can you believe how bad my partner is can you believe the terrible thing they did Can you believe?

51:45Can you believe when the entire focus is on the terribleness of the partner?

51:51Dr. Michael Gervais:I have to go digging a little deeper because that the analysis is not willing, because most people who are really going through narcissistic relationships, it tends to get turned inward. What's wrong with me? So because the response is, I'm sorry, I'm sorry. This is my fault. I'm to blame. Maybe I'm saying it wrong. Maybe this is my fault. Maybe they are wrong. Maybe I am this selfish because of what narcissistic people do. They always are turning it around. you're so selfish why are you so needy you always ask for so much so if the other person in the relationship is expressing a need a narcissistic partner will accuse that other partner of being demanding in essence and if that's something that someone's heard before in their life from a narcissistic parent or even someplace else it really can stick and hold true like you might say oh my gosh i am selfish you know i'd love for you to speak to two people one um start wherever you want, of course, but like one is the partner.

52:46Dr. Michael Gervais:Like let's speak right into the partner that has, has, they saw themselves in this conversation. They're like, Oh my God, my partner, I think is like, it is really confusing at home. And I'm a, I'm kind of overwhelmed. I'm a little scared. Like I don't feel good about myself, but in other places I, I feel like I'm pretty good. It's just like, Ooh, I'm walking on some eggshells and that. Okay. So that person, And then maybe you can also speak to somebody who is like, if I'm thinking about the spectrum, not the NPD, we know that they don't really change because they lack insight. But even anywhere on the NPD doesn't make it more or less severe.

53:24It's that most narcissistic people don't have a lot of self-reflection and insight.

53:29Dr. Michael Gervais:So slide way down the spectrum to somebody who sees some of the characteristics that you're describing. they are high performers and they're like whoa wait i hear my wife in this i hear my husband in this like i don't want to be that person but i do think i have some of these traits or or patterns can you speak to both these are the ones that i have hope for yeah so you're so again when you talk about the spectrum of narcissism think of it this way and and those remaining five traits by By the way, our things are on top of the three I've already shared. The fourth one is an excessive need for praise, admiration, and validation.

54:07Okay. And the last one is impulsivity, dysregulation, and poorly managed emotions, especially at times of frustration.

54:16Dr. Michael Gervais:For harmony, list all five. Okay. So it's the low empathy, the transactional, the sort of, let's call it the twisted empathy. I like that. Pathological, selfishness. the excessive need for admiration and validation the whole grandiosity circumplex and the impulsivity and poorly regulated emotion especially anger when basically they don't get their way yeah right okay those are the five you got to have all five every time whether it's mild or severe okay that's a really important defining characteristic is that if you only have three of no i'm that i'm not talking about narcissism with you so that's interesting because i put like if you've got three of them i put that on the spectrum but you're saying no not so much not so much because listen here's the thing all these five things are highly intercorrelated it's very hard to get you know without the five you're changing my model a little bit which i like because i've always done full npd spectrum of npd or spectrum and if you've got you don't full all five i always put as npd but if you had three of these no you're saying no no i'm not i'm saying No, absolutely no.

55:28NPD, it's a five out of nine. It's the stuff I'm talking about, right? But in order for something to be defined as a personality disorder, you've got the sort of the added piece that a licensed clinician has to look at. But this is what I'm doing. Right.

55:41Dr. Michael Gervais:Wait, but I'm saying if you don't have all five, you're not NPD. You're not a disorder. If you had three of those with a couple of the other lower characteristics ones, right? I think you're on the spectrum. But here's the thing with NPD those those nine things they boil down to these five you see what I'm saying there's an essence there's so like so you don't see a spectrum then I do see a spectrum and so the spectrum is mild to severe narcissism narcissism correct right okay so you don't have all five or you say you do have all five all five always comes every time so if you've got a person who is selfish entitled and needs to be the center of attention but they don't have that that that reactivity and anger or passive aggression silent treatment when they're frustrated and they don't have the um i mean it'd be hard to have this without but they tend to have relatively intact empathy here's where we start this is where we start getting into areas of privilege.

56:42Privilege can really muddy the waters. And what I always say that there's some people out there with so much money, their feet never touch the ground, right? They go from a car and someone opens the car door and they go into an impeccably clean house and the snack they want is waiting for them, which they don't have to clean up after. They don't do all this jujy, messy life stuff. Siddhartha. Right, right. Yes, it's Siddhartha, exactly. They don't wait in line at Trader Joe's. They're not worrying about childcare arrangements. They don't sit in traffic. they do not wait in airport lines none of this is their stuff their feet don't touch the ground folks like that are 100 used to the world running on their schedule and to their whims they want to go to the hamptons this weekend then within an hour someone's going to make sure they go to the hamptons when they get there the precise strawberries they want are going to be waiting for them and they love to hold court and tell stories okay three out of five yep i don't call that person a narcissist.

57:40I call that person maybe a little spoiled, maybe a little lucky. Maybe they were born to money. Maybe they made their money young. They're out of touch, but they're still in awareness they may have. They would not be cruel to a person who's a domestic worker in the, in the home. Do you see the difference? You've got to have all five. And I think when we get off of all five, we miss the essence of why this thing has to hang together and why so many people are overusing the word because that privileged person, they're not narcissistic. You know, people like that. I know people like that, you know, and I'm like, I think to myself, like, you know, I don't know that they get my life, but if I explain my life, they might say, that's really difficult.

58:19Like, and mean it, you know, and they're saying, is there a way I could support in some way? Like, even though they're so far away from it, they care about me. And so, and I sense that as a caring, it's not a, it's not contemptuous. It's not dismissive, nor is it cognitive. They just aren't in it.

58:35Dr. Michael Gervais:So what if you have four and you regulate your emotions pretty well? If you have four and you regulate your emotions pretty well, I would say. I love this conversation. I know we're not even to the relationship bit because this is what I see in elite performing environments. They have to regulate their emotions pretty well. They can be intolerant to the standard to other people, but it's facilitating growth. Let me ask you this. Do you think they're doing it in their close personal relationships at home with the partner, with the kids? Yeah, I do. You do? Yeah. So you think every. I think they manage their emotions there pretty well.

59:11In those spaces. Yeah. When they're frustrated, when they're disappointed, when the deal doesn't go through.

59:15Dr. Michael Gervais:Of course, I'm talking about some. Some. Yeah. Right. So the dysregulation when things don't come the way they want them to. Because they're not seen. They're not validated. Right. They're not validated. They didn't get their way. They're somebody thwarted their plan. whatever it may be and to remain regulated in the face of that i you're saying i don't think so no no that probably gives hope to a lot of people actually that yeah i was listening to this conversation like is it me is it me and they go regulating your emotion because you know i'm actually pretty chill the emotional regulation piece is such a it's so unsettling to the partners and family members because this person who's coming in your that that hypervigilance that eggshell walking, as it were.

1:00:00It's like carrying a live grenade for everyone in the family. Are they going to come home and blow up? What's going to set them off? Now, the key becomes, and sometimes this hypothesis doesn't get tested for a really long time. Is there a period of time that things are going so well for this person for such a five years, 10 years, 15 years, 20 years, their ideas keep launching, they have plenty of money in the bank, they're getting award after award, everyone's applauding them, you're the best, you're a genius, you're this. And the things that go wrong are the little glitches along the way but by and large everything is on that forward trajectory that is a very fortunate and well-supplied person they may be less likely but but the argument would make be in narcissism then that just moves the goalpost because now anything is going to set them up what do you mean my jet's not ready to go at 1205 it's going to be 1208 instead you could see that but i think that dysregulation piece it's a pretty classical part

1:00:57Dr. Michael Gervais:Yeah, very cool. Okay. So let's go into the partner stuff. Can you speak to somebody that is, let's go to, let's go to the partner, not to the, what I was saying, the hopeful narcissist spectrum person, not yet. Let's go to the partner. We know that they don't change because of insight. We know that if you bring them into therapy, they tend to, if the therapist is not tuned, woo the therapist. Yes. And all of a sudden now, let's use the bonus word, like the client feels gaslit even more. But there's a thing that's happening where now it's set back the person's sense of agency and strength because their clinician or their therapist is aligning with the narcissist.

1:01:39Dr. Michael Gervais:Okay. So speak, hope and applied practice to the person that's in a relationship with somebody who's narcissist. So when a person is in a relationship with someone who's narcissistic, the most common reactions and experiences we witness are self blame, self doubt, isolation, loneliness, rumination, regret, anxiety, depression, anger. and we also can see a lot of you know physiological stuff again the hypervigilance all of that um we can see uh apathy like well why bother attitude something called anhedonia there's really no pleasure out of the stuff that once was joyful and pleasurable in life and then we also see even things like poor self-care not eating as well not sleeping as well that's what tends to happen to people it's depressing chips okay it is depressing yeah and so it and what happens then is that the person in the relationship in a way is fading more and more and more.

1:02:42And they themselves wonder, like, maybe it is me because I'm the one who's sort of stopped taking care of myself and I'm kind of always a downer. But as they understand that the behavior in the relationship is unacceptable, and where it gets tricky is if the partner is very successful, they live in a beautiful home, they get to have lots of great experiences. They, all the cars and the kids get to go to the fancy schools and all the stuff, right? There is a sense of almost guilt. Well, I've got all the bells and whistles. Maybe this is it. Like maybe I'm holding out for too much. And there can be a real sense of shame and self-blame of I'm still complaining and I have all this stuff.

1:03:20So there's also that, it's a guilt. It's a guilt. And that's a guilt is a very common reaction in survivors in these relationships. The challenges though, and this is what makes you narcissistic relationships, such a unique space for the partners, a partner of somebody who's an addict, a partner of somebody living with a severe mental illness, a partner of somebody living with a dementia, a partner of someone living with a physical illness. There's a lot of empathy for that partner. We're like, wow, they're really having to walk a difficult path here of the ups and downs of their partner who's going through this hard thing.

1:03:54But the partner of someone who's narcissistic doesn't have that because by and large, the world sees the narcissistic partner as a titan, as a winner, as amazing, as helpful, as generous. They paid for this one to go get this. And they did that. And they picked up the check and they took everyone on a vacation. And they're charming and they're charismatic and they hold court at the table. And isn't this all grand? And so the partner, it's what I call sort of the dinner party effect. They're at the dinner party and everyone's laughing at their stories. And even the partner's like, okay, I was wrong.

1:04:29They're a good guy. And the minute the car door closes, it's criticism, it's anger. it's like, why did you make me look so bad? Did you really have to bring up that I worked with that other company once upon a time? Really? And the partner's thinking like, they didn't even think anything of it. So now the partner feels smaller and smaller and smaller. Over time, you'll see people in these narcissistic relationships really become silenced because they're afraid anything they say is going to get them into trouble. But the world is often seeing what seems like a really well put together person.

1:05:00Dr. Michael Gervais:So how do you help guide them? Stay or go. So the stay or go conversation, I tend to be agnostic to that. I say, I'm going to help you whether you stay or go because staying or going, there's so many elements there. I mean, one of the most crucial is is obviously the practical finances, minor children, other logistical stuff. Cultural relationships. Cultural is big. Yeah. Cultural is really big. It may not be permissible in a culture to to get divorced or you would lose a lot of social support or social status. You might lose your family of origin. You might lose your family of origin. You know, you may not want to do the whole family court fandango.

1:05:38There's all of that. Then there are what we call the trauma bonded pieces. These are things they feel real, but it's things like I have hope that they can change. I don't want this next person they're going to meet to get this better version of them that I that I created. Right. I'm like, no, no, no. It's just version 1.0 forever. So you really don't need to worry about this. So it's a there's all these other fears that come as a fear of being alone, like some of the standard existential fears. old fears of abandonment that come up from the idea of a relationship ending. When we talk about more severe narcissism, where it's more malignant, exploitative, coercive, people are also afraid what would happen if they did leave.

1:06:16It's a phenomenon called post-separation abuse. Meaning that - We could see stalking, smear campaigns, spreading of rumors, sharing of inappropriate information, sharing of confidences that shouldn't be broken, manipulating minor children, manipulating adult children um you know hassling people legally through family court and if the if the narcissistic partner is more better resourced they can really really do a number on someone so some people are also afraid of that so there's quote they're not really staying as much as they're avoiding

1:06:49Dr. Michael Gervais:that horrific outcome but one of my friends i'll just kind of do a parallel he said when we're talking about water he's a he's a nutrition specialist and he says look either you have a filter or you are the filter you know so you there's a corollary in how you described it's like you can stay but you become a filter for some toxins it's more so in other words it's this the staying is a slower burn in terms of healing there's there's a concept can you fully heal can i mean i guess it comes down to what what do we mean by healing i i you can if you stay can you flourish i think you can in very circumscribed ways yeah it's super it's a narrow path because yeah as i always tell people if you stay you can't share your good news with your narcissistic partner you can't share your bad news with your narcissistic partner so you kind of got to stick to the indifferent you're talking about the weather you're talking about the you know the who won the academy award you know you're talking about they're building a new restaurant in town A lot of people say, well, that's not really a relationship.

1:07:54I'm like, no, it's all your relationship ever really was. Now we've just lifted the conflict out of it. Talk about your, the deep model. That is a model. It's just a sort of quick acronym rubric for people to remember to not engage in these relationships, especially if they decide to stay or have ongoing contact. And the don't go deep means don't defend, don't engage, don't explain, and don't personalize. the mistake people make in narcissistic relationships is they engage as though the narcissistic person is listening with the whole mind right the narcissistic person is already is going to is listening only in a way that's self-serving so if you're defending yourself they're going to gaslight if you're explaining yourself they're going to gaslight and explain gaslighting and gaslighting is it is a form of emotional abuse where a person's reality memory perceptions experiences are denied and then the person is told that they are somehow lacking or there's something wrong with them gaslighting is not lying right so lying would be i never said that you never saw me there i've never talked to her that's lying okay gaslighting is I never said that, but you know what?

1:09:09You've become so paranoid since our second child was born. You know, you've become so paranoid since Charlie was born. And I really got to wonder, like, maybe this is some of your cuckoo coming back. That's what makes it gaslighting.

1:09:21Dr. Michael Gervais:So I thought that gaslighting also involved, what do you mean? You know, like you saw me holding hands with somebody. You didn't see me holding hands with somebody. That's the first part. You got to have the second part. You got to have the second part, which is like, are you okay? Are you okay? Like, what's up with you? So it's not like a blatant lie. You get weird around your period like this. Yeah. That's what makes it the gaslight. Keep going. What are some other subtle forms of gaslighting? Because you can be, you can gaslight people and not be a narcissist. You're, you're, you're, you're too sensitive is a form of gaslighting.

1:09:53Right. Because in saying that, what you're saying is there's something wrong with you. You misperceive situations, right? So we're talking and you have a reaction and I'm like, oh my God, you were just too sensitive. That's a gaslight.

1:10:07Dr. Michael Gervais:why are you so sensitive? Why are you so sensitive? Yeah. Boy, I can't say anything to you. I can't say anything. That's a gaslight. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. So I think I kind of had the term a little misconstrued here. A lot of people do. A lot of people do. Yeah. I thought it was a manipulation of someone's truth. No, no, no, no. A manipulation of a fact. It's a manipulation of truth, but also the doubling. In fact, Theo Dorpat, who was a psychiatrist who wrote about this a long time ago, he called it the double whammy. it's not just that manipulation of reality it's then the further manipulation of reality by dissembling the other person you're nuts yeah oh my goodness man psychology is complicated it's complicated but it's also quite simple in what right like in a way i hate to say it but destroying a person's psyche is a pretty straightforward process oh that i and narcissistic people have that wired yeah from that lens yes and you know the old adage like you got to tear them down to build them up.

1:11:02Dr. Michael Gervais:And I think it's really easy to tear someone down, but really hard to build someone back up. And you got to be very, very skilled if you're going to adopt that model for coaching or whatever. By the way, I think it's a terrible model. I personally think as a psychologist, I think it's a terrible model, especially trauma-informed. I'm not a fan. I am definitely not a fan. And I don't think there's a single piece of trauma literature that, you know, I think the way a trauma-informed model would be is that if someone is torn down, we can build them back up, but we should not intentionally set out to tear them down.

1:11:34If you think about Viktor Frankl, right? Viktor Frankl will be like, now kids do not go out seeking suffering on your own. It will find you. So don't go make a mess of your life to try to test this out.

1:11:46Dr. Michael Gervais:Oh God. I want to take a second here to tell you about a morning routine that I've been using for years. For me, it's a great way to switch on my mind, to ready myself to take on the day. So before I check my phone, my emails, market updates, or text threads, I choose how to start my morning. That's always in my control. That's always in your control too. This is the same morning mindset routine that some of the world's top performers across sport, business, and the arts are using. The best part, it only takes about 90 seconds to do. So just head over to findingmastery.com slash morning to download the audio guide for free.

1:12:24Dr. Michael Gervais:Again, head to findingmastery.com slash morning to get your morning mindset routine. We've referenced a number of times in the conversation, he, because there is a prevailing bit of research that there's more men with narcissism than women. Do you have a theory of why that is? I don't know why that is. Yeah. So just let me put sort of the qualifier in there. There are different forms of narcissism. Sort of the big three are grandiose, vulnerable, and malignant narcissism, right? There's some other subtypes, but we stick with the big three. Grandiose narcissism is that arrogant, charming, charismatic, look at me, I'm so great.

1:13:02I'm going to, I'm the king of everything. That's the grandiose narcissist. The malignant narcissist is sort of that dark tetrad, the sort of the overlap of psychopathy, narcissism, sadism, and Machiavellianism. Wow.

1:13:14Dr. Michael Gervais:Okay. And vulnerable narcissism. Vulnerable narcissism. This is the money shot because we don't talk about this enough. And Even the formulations on vulnerable narcissism, they've really only been discussed in earnest for about the past 20 years. Miller, Pincus, Ronning, Stamm. These are the researchers in this space. The most cunning of them all. Cunning and not cunning. The vulnerable narcissists are who end up in our offices. Because the vulnerable narcissistic folks are more likely, they don't present with the charm and the charisma and the dazzle. they actually are more often to present as failure to launch passive aggressive victimized aggrieved and disenfranchised and that's what makes them dangerous because they still have the entitlement the selfishness the dysregulation this is every internet troll this is a dangerous i actually think in some ways the vulnerable narcissists are every bit as dangerous as the malignant narcissists and since these subtypes can combine malignant vulnerable narcissists are the most dangerous people in the world.

1:14:17And I want to say one piece about gender and narcissism. In all forms of narcissism, men more often than women accept vulnerable narcissism. And that's equal across genders. So vulnerable narcissism equal men and women, but malignant and grandiose. I think girls are actually still to this day told to sort of dial it down a little bit in terms of, you know, the, you know, the, even like on the field, the kind of, if I can curse the shit talking and stuff like that. Girls are tend not to be socialized to do that as much, nor do girls tend to lean into behaviors like physical bullying and physical intimidation.

1:14:50That stuff is probably going to code more towards grandiose and malignant narcissism. Those are traits and qualities that are more tolerated in men. Whereas the vulnerable narcissism that that that patterning can is actually experienced in both men and women. And most clients I've worked with who've had narcissistic mothers almost almost without exception it's been a vulnerable narcissistic

1:15:11Dr. Michael Gervais:i wrote a white paper for a pro team that i was working with on how to i didn't want to call it borderline or narcissism i said how to handle difficult personalities and it was like describing what they are and then um uh ways to work with it oh my goodness i could have used your insights in that you know so there might be a consulting gig in here for the two of us to be able to do some fun there okay why more men than women so it's i think a lot of it is socialization i think a lot of it goes back to it's a mistake we're still making we still don't socialize emotional expression sufficiently in men and boys we still pathologize the expression of vulnerable emotion and men and boys that's got to go somewhere yeah right and so and it can create that sense of shame and if there's gonna do if there's one other than protecting all children from trauma if we did that we'd probably erase narcissism.

1:16:03But until we're not doing that on my watch, I wish we could, I'd be out of a job. All of us would be out of a job. But in the absence of that, creating many, many more experiences for boys, especially starting in middle school, to be more emotionally vulnerable. I think the little guys, they're able to do it. Like little boys can be emotionally vulnerable and available. You hit those hormones. And what we still have not figured out is how to bridge that gap into puberty where sexuality and emotions and hormones and all that are raging. And that we as a culture do not, I don't think any culture does it well, hold space for men and boys to be vulnerable without pathologizing them as weak.

1:16:46And without that vent, I do think that the grandiose and the malignant narcissism are more likely than to be expressed. The girls are allowed amongst peers with other adults to be able to express emotion. And I'm using a binary gender characterization because that's the research we've got.

1:17:01Dr. Michael Gervais:Very cool. I want to introduce you to, very cool, very scary, very cool how clearly you are. Cool and scary. That's all. I want to introduce you to Scott Barry Kaufman's work, Cognitive Psychologist, that just released a book on this. Good mind, good sound bit of research on victimhood. Yep. Any points of vulnerable narcissism as kind of the archetype of it. So, look, I could go on and on. This is great. Thank you. We have to do it again sometime. I really enjoyed all of this. So thank you for the clarity of thinking, the frameworks you're working from. And I loved your book. I love that you also dedicated it to your mom.

1:17:40Dr. Michael Gervais:If you had one to three books that you would hope people would read, what would they be? It would be Trauma and Repair by Judith Herman. That's a given. I would say Man's Search for Meaning by Viktor Frankl and Existence by Rollo May. Well done. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Brilliant. Thank you so much. It was so lovely. It's so such a fascinating conversation. I really appreciated this opportunity. Next time on Finding Mastery, we're joined by Sahil Bloom, investor, writer and creator of the Curiosity Chronicle. In this high energy conversation, Sahil shares the simple frameworks and mental models that helped him go from burnout and pressure to purpose and play.

1:18:22Dr. Michael Gervais:It's a fresh take on ambition, identity and redefining success. Join us on Wednesday, August 6th, 9am Pacific for this insightful conversation.

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1:19:32Dr. Michael Gervais:The door here at Finding Mastery is always open to those looking to explore the edges and the reaches of their potential so that they can help others do the same. So join our community, share your favorite episode with a friend, and let us know how we can continue to show up for you. Lastly, as a quick reminder, information in this podcast and from any material on the Finding Mastery website and social channels is for information purposes only. If you're looking for meaningful support, which we all need, one of the best things you can do is to talk to a licensed professional. So seek assistance from your healthcare providers.

1:20:08Dr. Michael Gervais:Again, a sincere thank you for listening. Until next episode, be well, think well, keep exploring.