Hey, it's your friend Mel and welcome to the Mel Robbins podcast. I'm so glad you're here with me today. It is such an honor to spend some time with you right now. And I just want to acknowledge you for choosing to listen to something that will help you create a better life. I think that's super cool and I love spending time with you. If you're a new listener to the Mel Robbins show, welcome to the Mel Robbins podcast family. I'm Mel Robbins. I'm on a mission to empower and inspire you with tools and the expert resources that you need to create a better life. And one thing that can really trip you up is having to deal with a difficult person. I mean, just think about what a pain in the rear end it is because all it does is take one person who's abrasive or mean or negative or has a short temper to ruin your day. I mean, don't even get me started about some of the jerks that are on planes these days. In fact, just a couple days ago, I was coming back from a trip with our son Oakley and this guy sitting behind us and a woman standing in the aisle broke out in a screaming match.

And the woman went and took a swing at the guy and she ended up hitting my son Oakley instead. Luckily, the woman not only missed the guy that she was swinging at, but she merely just grazed Oakley. And that's when Mama Bayer, Mel Robbins jumped up and was like, all right, that's enough, you two. Calm down. Enough of this. And boom, they did. Now, the thing about strangers being difficult is that, you know, when the fight is over and everybody calms down, it's easy to shake them off because it's a stranger and you're going to walk off the plane and you're never going to have to see that person again. But what if the difficult person is your mother or one of your kids or your boss or your ex? They're long gone, but you still have to see them all the time because you guys are co parenting your kids together. Oh, my God. Or the difficult person is your partner. I mean, cutting this person out of your life isn't an option. And when you walk off the plane, they're going to follow you. So the question is, how do you keep your mindset positive?

How do you keep your goals, your priorities, your happiness front and center and not letting a difficult person in your life rock you? Well, today you're going to learn from a renowned psychologist, professor, and bestselling author how to stay in your power and your purpose, no matter who you have to deal with in your life or what mood they happen to be in today. And boy, oh boy, are you going to love this. And all those difficult people, they have no idea what's about to hit them. Hey, it's Mel. And today our expert is going to give you and me permission to take a critical look at the people surrounding you. As much as I hate to admit this, you and I both know there's a lot of toxic behavior that we both have to deal with in our day to day life. Whether it's someone who's passive aggressive, or they give you the silent treatment, or they speak to you in a disrespectful tone of voice, or they're constantly erupting because they can't deal with their emotions, or someone who makes you feel like a doormat. Well, our expert today is going to teach you how to not only deal with these situations, but also how to heal from the damage that they can cause you.

So whether you're dealing with a friend whose behavior is toxic or you're reeling from the impact of a narcissistic ex, you're going to get the tools, tactics and decades of research from the world renowned expert and clinical psychologist, Doctor Ramani Deversala. The title of her newest bestselling book is it's not you. And she's also the host of the hit podcast navigating narcissism. Now, I absolutely love Doctor Romney, and I want to tell you a little bit about her and the impact that she's made on my life before we hop into the conversation. Now, I first met her years ago when she appeared as an expert on my daytime talk show. And, and she has taught me absolutely everything that I needed to know about narcissism. Before I met Doctor Ramani, I didn't know anything about the subject. I just knew that I had this person in my life who is extraordinarily difficult because they have a very narcissistic personality style. And what I've learned from Doctor Romney has not only helped me heal from this situation, it has helped me have extremely healthy boundaries with this person. And it has been night and day in this relationship ever since.

Here are some of the top three things that I have personally learned from Doctor Ramani that have helped me. Number one, narcissism is a type of personality that can be especially difficult to deal with because somebody with this personality really does believe that everything is about them. The second thing that I learned that helped me a lot is understanding that the person that's like this wasn't born this way. See, a narcissistic personality is developed because of childhood trauma or because of a parenting style where the parent makes the child believe that they are better than everybody else, that they are entitled, you know, people like this. And the third thing that I learned from her is that a narcissist will never, ever, ever, ever change because they don't want to. And that's kind of a hard thing to accept and it's why you need to focus on changing how you deal with them. And that's the single biggest takeaway that I have learned from Doctor Ramani, which is that for years I felt so much pain around difficult people because I thought I was doing something wrong. And I also, being a reasonable person, couldn't understand why would this person act this way?

Why wouldn't they change when they can see how much this hurts me when I'm asking them to do things. And it wasn't until she taught me that. Here I am hoping that a difficult person would change. That hope was actually keeping me from changing. Holy cow. Doctor Romney flipped the script on me. And she's going to do the same thing with you today. And she is here with the tools, decades of research and takeaways that have made her one of the leading experts on narcissism and difficult personalities on the planet. She is going to tell you exactly what you need to do when you're dealing with somebody that's very difficult. And do me a favor as you listen, will you please be generous in sharing this episode with people that you love. Anyone in your life that's dealing with a difficult person, they've been complaining to you about it or you're seeing it happen and it bothers you. Whether that's somebody at work or you think, think they're definitely dating a narcissist, send them this episode because it will not only give them the resources and expert counsel that they need, but it will wake them up to the reality of the situation that they're in.

And that is the single greatest gift that you could give them. All right, you ready? I know I am. So let's jump in. Doctor Ramani, thank you for hopping on a plane. Thank you for flying across country to be here with us in Boston. I am so excited to see you again.

It's so wonderful to see you every time.

So Doctor Romney, where I want to start is on the topic of your new book. It's not you. And the world needs this book because there's so much information out there that you can find about how to spot a narcissist, what narcissism is. But when you realize you're dealing with somebody who's narcissistic, whether it's your parent or, heaven forbid, somebody that you're in a relationship with, what you realize is there's almost no information to help you deal with a narcissist. Why is that?

Yeah, you know, it's funny you say that, because even when I think back in the making of the book, listen, we go online, it's almost like it's more sexy content to talk about the. Why? Why do they do this? Why do they do that? What's this? What are the five signs of identifying a narcissist? That's sort of the hot content, but the problem is, is that it keeps digging people into a hole. Once again, we're more fascinated by them than we are with not only how this is affecting us, but who are we? Because we had to hide ourselves in order to stay in these relationships. And this idea of the tale of the hunt is always told by the hunter, never the lion. Yes, it is that the hunter always gets to tell the story. And the story of narcissism, even in the annals of mental health, books about narcissism have always been about the narcissist. This new book, it's not about the narcissist this time. It's about healing, as I put it. It's the tale of the hunt told by the lion and not the hunter. It's time to talk about healing.

It's interesting that you use the word hunt. It feels very deliberate.

Yeah.

And so, as you're listening to Doctor Ramani in this conversation today, I would love for you to set the table more about this proverb of the hunter versus the lion so that the person listening can locate themselves inside of that dynamic.

I think the proverb goes so deep. Right. The tale of the hunt is always told by the hunter and never the lion. Is that there is a. There's. It can feel at the most extreme, like a very predatory relationship. Predatory in the sense of they're stealing your sense of self. They are making you exist for them. And it is such a seamless, quiet, gradual transition that when you finally look up and realize, whoa, I am entirely living in their psychological service. And to appease them, you're like, how the heck did this happen? Because I was actually a pretty autonomous person before I met this person. I knew who I was. I'm not even sure who I am. Anymore. That's what I mean by the hunt. They, in essence, are hunting your sense of self. They are taking it and using it in their service. And that's why that proverb had such meaning. And we always talk about, it's always the hunter that gets to regale everyone with their tail. Let me tell you how I did this, and let me tell you how I did that. And I'm so heroic, and I had to do this and this and this.

But we don't really talk about the experience of what it's like, even when we're strong like a lion, to be stalked and staked out and cornered. And despite all our strength, because they're using very different weapons than our claws and muscles and all the things we've got, too, because they're using something as focused as a gun, they will take us out. That's why.

I'm processing what you're saying and thinking about relationships in my own life, where I have someone in my life who has a narcissistic personality style. And I think there's a fundamental mistake that I'm sure everybody makes. I know I've made it. Which is presuming that everybody thinks likes you. Presuming that everybody loves like you do. Presuming that everybody has the same level of self awareness or intention. And so you can be going about your life thinking that the people in your life are other lions.

Correct.

And yet they are viewing you very differently.

That's right. That's exactly right.

I love that. You're also picking a proverb that represents us as a lion, because you're right. Lions are very strong. And the message in your book, loud and clear, it's not you. Is also that it is possible to recover and to heal 100%.

I mean, Mel, I can give you hundreds of stories, hundreds if not thousands of people who have. Once the lights went on, I always say the lights go on and the gas lights go off. They're like, oh, and then they get angry, and then there's a lot of grief. But they do take themselves back, because remember, you're playing the wrong ground game. When you're with a narcissist, you think they're going to notice you. You think they're going to be proud of you, you're looking for their approval. Well, once you toss all that stuff to the wayside and you're living in congruence with who you are, what matters to you, and learning who in your world are your supports, people you can support. Also, you have those reciprocal mutual relationships. The game entirely changes. I have had clients who I worked with for years, and then, you know, don't work with them anymore and they'll reach back on. I wrote the book, I made the film. I fell in love. Like there are act twos. In fact, I would say it's much more likely than not. It's a slow process. And when you're in the middle of the storm, you think it's never going to stop raining.

This book is really that weather forecast that I promise you it will. And even when you're in the middle of it, there's things you can do to get yourself to that sunny day to your true sense of self.

Well, I really relate to the title. It's not you. Because I think the most predominant thing that I've seen for myself in being in relationships with people with a narcissistic personality style, or in listening very closely to a friend or a family member who is in one, is that you do think it's you. You think you're the problem. Or at least that's the way that I thought that if only I were, you know, a better this or a better that, then this person would change. And so understanding that it's not you, that, to me, gives me a sense of hope that if it's not me, then maybe if I focus on me, I can heal from this.

That's exactly right. And I think that, too, that the mistake is maybe if I'm a better daughter, better partner, better mother, better worker, whatever. Better writer, whatever the better one wants to be. The error is thinking that it will change them. At best, what it might do is make you a better source of supply.

What do you mean by that?

I'm going to use the example a lot of people give me, okay? Because we talk a lot about partners. Let's talk about parents for a minute, because even adult children are very much in the thrall of their narcissistic parents. If only I did this. I visited them more. I called them more, I did this more. I did whatever it may be. Okay, then, because remember, you're on a grail quest that anyone who's had a narcissistic career never has. That grail quest started in childhood. That's what's so insidious about people who are still struggling with narcissistic parents when they're adults. So you're still showing up with the finger painted picture when you were four, saying, like, do you like my picture right now? We're doing it with jobs and books and titles and look at my new house and look at my new car and look at this baby I have.

And here's the grandchildren, right?

And they're still not breaking out of their sort of selfish haze, which we don't equate with parents, right? So what happens is that the child, the child of the narcissistic parent modifies and shapes and tries to become what the narcissistic parent wants. More quiet, more tidy, better tennis player, better grades, more helpful around the house. Sometimes they're even the parents therapist. They cheer the parent up. Parents not cheering them up, by the way, but they are like the parents life coach, like, you know everything. Well, that's how you became a better source of supply as a kid. And a person has to do this as a kid. As a child, the child has no choice but to accede and give in to what the narcissistic parent apparently wants and needs. Basically subjugate themselves to the narcissistic parent because it's the only way that child is going to get the absolute essential attachment needs met. That child needs a secure attachment. And when that's not happening, just because the parent is being a parent and the child has to modify themselves, they will modify themselves because the child doesn't the luxury of saying, oh, my parents a narcissist.

So nothing I'm going to do is going to work. They can't divorce the parent, so they've got to modify themselves. That builds up a muscle in the child and that muscle that gets built up in the child is that capacity to modify oneself to be what the other person needs to create an attachment. So not only does that become a bad precedent once you start dating, because then you are putty in the narcissistic person's hands, you're shaping yourself to suit them. You remain again in that way with a parent. You continue to say whatever the equivalent of the finger painted picture is in adulthood, and maybe I will show up more, but it's never enough. And if you did live next door to them, then they'll have contempt for you of why are you taking so much of my time? It's never enough. And so what the person's trying to do in any narcissistic relationship, including with a parent, is we think we're becoming better to change them. When we keep becoming better, we're just becoming better supply. We're giving them everything they want. And what the narcissistic person wants is that we anticipate their needs, read their minds, be what they want, never be a source of stress, prop them up, keep our needs and wants quiet, and then boom, you're the perfect source of supply.

If you're raised by a parent that's narcissistic and conditioned in that way, are you more susceptible to being in narcissistic relationships later in life?

You are. You definitely are. For no other reason that you've built this muscle up, that accommodation muscle, as I call it. Right? There's a flexibility a person needs to have and develop if they have a narcissistic parent. Otherwise they're going to develop pretty severe mental health issues, which does happen to a subset of folks. But by and large, what we see, survivors of narcissistic abuse, especially from childhood, are very flexible, very accommodating because they had to for survival reasons once upon a time. What I do not buy into is this idea that because a person has narcissistic parent or parents, that they're more attracted to narcissistic people. That's not the case. What they're more likely to get is stuck in that relationship. Right. Narcissistic people are attractive to everyone. Charm, charisma, shiny, interesting, curious, confident, rescuable, whatever we need them to be. They often are that thing. But once it starts getting darker and there's a lot of devaluation, the relationship becomes less healthy, healthier people may be able to muster up in themselves. Like, this does not feel good. Like, I don't like this. But the people who had the narcissistic parent are much more likely to say, well, this.

I know this game.

Right?

I know how to do that.

I know excuses for your parents.

Exactly. So you, the, the slide into the trauma bond is much, much more seamless. And it happens automatically because the, oh, I just have to be more. Got it. Of course, I have to earn love. That makes sense.

So as an expert on this topic and a practicing clinician, what are the signs that you have experienced narcissistic emotional.

Abuse, self blame, self doubt, confusion, anxiety, a sense of helplessness, frustration, powerlessness, problems with sleep, problems with concentration decrements or lack of self care of any kind. Feeling selfish if you do anything for yourself, being on edge, being hyper vigilant, always ready to fix feeling you need to be, you have to change yourself to please other people. A sense of loneliness, a sense of isolation, a sense that you're weird. That's just the shortlist.

Wow. And what is the first step? If you're listening to this and you're going, yep, narcissistic parents, or, yep, I survived a narcissistic spouse, or I'm with one, or I've been in a relationship with one, and you're like, I exhibit all those things, like what's the first step that somebody needs to take in order to start to heal from that kind of damage?

You got to see it for what it is. And so that takes us to the place of radical acceptance. Right? Radical acceptance is the awareness that this is not going to change. By this I mean their behavior, these dynamics, this relationship is not going to change, number one. Number two, part of radical acceptance is these things they do, these hurtful things. You radically accepting doesn't mean they're not going to hurt. When somebody invalidates you, that you believe you loved or are supposed to love, when they invalidate you, when they insult you, when they criticize you, when they shame you, it will hurt. So don't think that radical acceptance means that all of that goes away. Nor is radical acceptance a magic pill. It doesn't mean it's all going to get better. It's not that you're signing off on their behavior. It's not that you're agreeing with their behavior. It's that you're, you're leaning into the understanding that this is it, this is not going to change. And then the summit of radical acceptance is, this is not my fault, but I'm great, I'm glad when we can at least get the client to say, okay, this is not going to change.

Why? Because it takes away one of the biggest barriers to healing, which is hope.

Hold on, let me see if I understand what you're saying. Hoping that somebody that has a narcissistic personality style, hoping that they can change, that is the biggest barrier to you healing?

Yep.

Why?

Because now your psychological resources are still invested in the idea of them changing. So until we can get that off the table, you are going to still have way too much of you invested in something that's never going to happen, which means that there's not enough of you left to work on your healing, your process of individuation, your process of finally getting to live in yourself rather than in service to them. Does that make sense?

It makes a lot of sense because for decades, with a particular person in my life, I hoped that they would change.

Yes.

And I would twist myself in knots and show up differently and try a little bit harder and do this and do that and constantly think about it. And what was always there in the background was the hope that things could be different.

Correct.

And it wasn't until I met you three years ago or four years ago now. And you said, they are not changing, period. They're not even aware that they have this personality style. And they don't care.

They don't care.

And there is nothing that you can do to change this. And when you said that, it was very interesting. I could see it for what it was. It's almost like, you know, when somebody says about themselves, well, I just am in the way that I am. And people in my life have always said, well, that person, Mel, is just the way that they are. That's just who they are. I could never accept that. Because I wanted it to be different.

Correct.

And you're right. It was the hope that it could be better, the hope that this person would change, the hope that things could look different. That kept me trying so much. Even though I think deep down I knew that it wasn't going to make a difference.

Right.

That is a sad ass statement.

Yes, it is.

That hope that somebody else will change is what keeps us from healing.

Do. Would you agree with that, that once the hope got lifted for you, do you feel like your healing proceeded?

Yeah. Yeah. Once I understood the situation for what it was like, I was so enmeshed in the situation. Because it'd been going on for decades. That I just couldn't even see the situation that I was in. But when I started to understand more about narcissistic personality styles based on you and some work with my therapist. And I started seeing the behavior patterns. And I stopped making it so personal. And I extracted what I wanted and all my feelings and just saw it for what it is. When this happens, this person does this, like, you can start to predict it because you know it in terms of the patterns. Once I was able, as much as I didn't want to. And I think that's the other thing that we don't talk about a lot when it comes to narcissism, is that you can understand all that. But if you still, somewhere in the back of your mind, go, but I don't want it to be that way. You will forever be at the whim of that behavior.

And I wouldn't even say, it's so much, Mel, that I don't want it to be that way. Is that I believe it could be different. Your situation I'm hearing from you is you don't want it to be this way.

No, you don't.

The key, the lifting of the hope, the radical acceptance, is it can't be any other way.

That's painful. Because I do think that's probably why we do stay in these relationships, using.

People stay because they think it can change.

Well, you're the expert. Why do people stay? I mean, I can tell you why. I've been in this relationship for a.

Long time, but I think that that's part of it. But I think that even when hope gets lifted or taken out, radical acceptance comes. People still need to stay. And the reasons for that are often things like practical factors. Money, shelter, health insurance, family court, co parenting, minor children, not wanting to share custody with someone who's not up to it. But the courts don't care. It could be duty and obligation. It could be stigmas against divorce. Within a cultural system, there are so many other factors and the challenges, those factors are very real, even when they don't feel real, like duty and obligation are still perceptions and constructs, but they are very real, challenging because to eradicate the hope and that this is how it's going to be, and yet you always have to be in it. What happens then? And this is the hardest part. You say, what's step one? Radical acceptance. What's step two? And this is the worst part of this whole process, is grief. Because grief, when we think of the word grief, we think of someone who's died, right? Someone dies and we have grief. They're no longer in our life.

We can't talk to them in the same way. Where there is a loss, they're not part of our routines, in the same way that we think of grief as loss. Sometimes people will extend grief to breakup or like a divorce or something like that. But it matters here more than I've ever seen the word matter, because not only is there it's a loss, sometimes it's a loss of a relationship. Some people do walk away from these relationships. But what people lose when they give up the hope, when they go to radical acceptance, is they lose a narrative, they lose a sense of a future, they lose a sense of belonging. The hope is what was keeping this person going all these years. And that's why, even as a therapist, I don't just go in there and pull the hope out. The goal is to build a huge scaffold around the client before the hope gets lifted, so that then the person can sit in that. Because the grief is monumental. If done right, healing done right means a cascade of grief the likes of which you can't imagine, because it's a grief that never really goes away.

You don't get a second crack at childhood, you don't get another parent. A lot of these things don't get to happen again. And so you're having to live with them. These people have not died. Talk to anyone who's gone through a divorce from a narcissistic person who, until the end, will say, they're still, I'm still attracted to them. There's still a part of them I love. But this was not good for me. And I could see it, and I saw it wasn't going to change, and the hope was gone. And then that narcissistic person goes and meets someone new inside of the first week. That's grief.

You know, on the topic of hope and radical acceptance, I think there's a bunch of things that you hope for. You hope for a behavior change. You hope that there's something that you can do that will somehow make things better. You hope to feel loved.

Yep.

And you also hope, at times for an apology.

Mm hmm. Mm hmm. Let's talk about that. Because that apology, there's two things that really make the grief worse and narcissistic abuse. The first is the lack of closure. Closure is that moment when it's a deathbed confession. It's the I hurt you. It's the I should have treated you better. You deserve more. Whatever it was, some awareness that they did wrong by you, you're not going to get closure. Number one in narcissistic relationship. But the second piece, and this is what really, really harms survivors, is the lack of justice. It's not fair. These things feel incredibly unfair. The family continues to rally around the narcissistic person and uphold them and save the best seat for them at the wedding. The friends of you as a couple still stay friends with them, despite them cheating on you seven times, including with someone you knew. The workplace just moves the narcissistic emotional abuser to another office, and they get promoted. The narcissistic emotional abuser who left you finds a new person who's 30 years younger than you and gets engaged inside at six months. It doesn't feel fair. And if you look at Judith Harmon's work on her most recent book on trauma and healing, she really talks about how injustice is such an impediment to healing from trauma.

We can heal from trauma so much better if the. If the story around it feels just. I hate to say it, but if the narcissistic person fails, takes a tumble, gets a public humiliation, it makes healing so much easier.

I'm so happy you brought this up because it makes me think of somebody in my life who went through a divorce. Gosh, close to a decade ago, and she is still hung up on the ex. The ex was moving in a girlfriend to the family house, 20 years younger, almost immediately, lifelong friends now rallying around him. She, to this day, cannot get over it. And I have always looked at the situation and thought, like, this was ten years ago. You're not that weak of a human being. You understand it. You know that this spouse has a narcissistic personality style. Your kids know that this spouse is a narcissistic personality style. You know that nothing is going to change. And you just explain why she cannot let it go. She can't let it go because it doesn't feel there's no justice.

Because I would argue your friend is fully at radical acceptance. She knows what he's about. Nothing he does surprises her. Correct. But the peace and the cognitive dissonance created by them continually being rewarded and rewarded, that is a huge barrier to healing. And there's actually no sort of magic piece to that. I have said in the past, listen, the ultimate justice is that they still have to be themselves. But you know what? To them, if they're living large with their much younger spouse in the house and the money's coming in, they genuinely believe they've won. And because the other person in the relationship had a full complement of empathy and kindness and goodness, and they feel the wounds. The person who was harmed by the narcissist is hurt and carries that as a real thing. The narcissistic person just merely found new supply, which is all you were in the first place anyhow. And it feels awful. And there is no quick fix to that except to identify it as an injustice. It's not a. You need to get over it. Oh, come on. This, that and the other. It's. This is real, and it is.

And part of the radical acceptance process is how unfairly this narcissism thing plays out in the world at large. It's why I do what I do, because, frankly, I'm tired of watching them get away with it. And so people say, come on, Romani, you're not going to stop a bunch of tech billionaires and all that from. And their narcissistic selves from ruling the world. I said, that's never my goal. So I use the products that they create. Right? So. But I'll tell you what I'm trying to do. I'm trying to steer people away from relationships with them. They want to go out there and be the emperors of the universe. Great. Thank you for making my life a little bit more convenient. Please don't hurt other like, please stay away from them. They're not relationship material. They're make a fabulous app material and let's just keep them there, okay? Because they're not made for this. And so I think that it's really to keep people from getting in these relationships. But the injustice piece is one of the single greatest that hope and injustice holds people back. And it can really make the grief a stumbling place to which again, the loss of hope, the experience of grief, the injustice all fuel one of the major fallouts of narcissistic abuse, which is rumination.

It never fails. I always learn something from you. I'm so grateful that you're here. As you're listening to Doctor Ramani, aren't you grateful she's here too? I want to take a short break so we can hear a word from our sponsors. They are bringing us this incredible episode at zero cost. Don't you dare go anywhere. We'll be right back. Welcome back. I'm so glad you're here with me today. I'm your friend Mel and I'm here with Doctor Ramani Deversala. She is the world's leading expert and researcher on narcissism. We are talking about her brand new best selling book. It's not you. And we're talking about the new research in that book.

Let's talk a little bit about rumination because I think it's one of the most important things to understand about healing from narcissistic abuse. It relates to the friend you just talked about.

Absolutely.

Rumination is. Can't stop thinking. Can't stop thinking. Now here's where rumination gets interesting. One thing the research tells us, even from the times of Charles Darwin, we have argued that rumination has a function. Right? It does.

What is it?

The function of rumination is a solution. Think on something long enough and you'll come to the solution. Right. Okay. Oh, got it. And then you do the thing and the rumination prize and you feel better. The problem with narcissistic abuse is ruminate, ruminate, ruminate, ruminate. No solution. Ruminate, no solution. Ruminate, no solution. So where many other ruminators are getting to solutions, the narcissistically abused ruminator just keeps hitting the same wall which fuels powerlessness. And rumination without a solution is depression. Wow. So you see, what's happening is that that's why the survivors look, they look depressed when they come into a clinician's office. Rumination is a central part of the depression profile. In fact, Darwin and others have argued that all that rumination, it actually leads the person to almost turn inward and becomes part of the process of trying to find solutions in depression. But it gets the person stuck. Stuck. Stuck in the circle.

Right. I'm thinking about this person, and they have isolated themselves.

Exactly.

They are basically this once vibrant, like, amazing person is literally living a very, very small life. Is stuck in the thinking. The last time I saw this person, she was thinking about what's going to happen at her daughter's wedding when the ex brings a new girl. By the way, the daughter's not even engaged and may never get married, right?

Or may I?

Look, I'm saying you're exactly right, because they're spinning their wheels in isolation on a problem that has no solution.

So it becomes depression. So the tricky bit is rumination is a key part of almost every mental health issue. Anxiety, depression, you name it. But it holds a unique spot for survivors of narcissistic abuse because they're going through something that most people don't understand. Even a lot of therapists don't understand it, but certainly their friends. A lot of people are like, come on, get over it. Like, he's a terrible guy. You should be happy you're out of it. But they don't feel happy. Find someone you can talk about this about so many times until you actually let it out. Probably the. The best place to do that is therapy. I have clients. I mean, I think of some of my clients, and they'll over and over say, I feel like a loser. I'm telling you this again. I said, you think you're telling me the same story, but every time you tell it, you've actually put another piece of it down. I'm hearing the difference. You're not. And every time they tell the story, we're putting another piece of it down to the point where they finally release it. Friends aren't always the best place to do it, right?

Because friends are like, how am I sick of it?

I'm literally like, I've heard about this crap for ten years, and you're in therapy, and this is an issue. And it makes me profoundly sad to see that this ex has moved on and is very happy. Doesn't think about you at all, other than to complain about anytime, something with the kids. And you are living in a mental hole, right.

And is still living in service to the partner, so it's still not pulled themselves psychologically out. This is really about pulling out all the connections. You know how, like, when you take, like, you know, like, you take wallpaper or something off a wall, you leave all those sticky bits. You gotta get in there and get all those sticky bits off.

I wanna take a step back and talk a little bit about the definition of being a survivor of narcissistic abuse. How would you describe someone or what being a survivor of narcissistic abuse is?

So a survivor of narcissistic abuse is, in essence, a survivor of a narcissistic relationship. Right? They've experienced all the patterns we've already talked about. The devaluing, the minimization, the gaslighting, the manipulation, the domination, the betrayal, the bread crumbing, all that stuff like being minimized, devalued, all that that happens. Those are the behaviors. That's what narcissistic abuse is, by the way. It's the behaviors in the relationship. Being chronically exposed to that and not understanding what the hell is going on leads to a fallout in the person. The anxiety, the helplessness, the rumination, the regret, all that stuff. Okay. And so the person's experiencing all these negative experiences and don't want to keep feeling that way.

Yes.

To be a survivor of a narcissistic relationship or narcissistic abuse is to have all these sorts of negative emotional, physical, cognitive, even spiritual. People report a loss of faith, a loss of belief in the world, a loss of trust. All of those things are a byproduct of having gone through one of these relationships. And if a person is not taught what narcissism is, how it shows up in them, what was happening in the relationship, and above all else, being sort of coaxed into radical acceptance. These behaviors are never going to change. These patterns are never going to change. You can set a clock by this person. Years ago, Mel, I worked with a client who was a tough sell on this, and I did something very unorthodox as a therapist. The person would come in and say, I think that this is going to happen. I said, no, actually, I think this is what's going to go down. She said, there's no way that that's what's going to go on down. I said, you want to make a bet? And so at the time, I had an office that was on top of, like, a coffee shop, and it was a pain in the neck for me.

It was actually across the street, down across the street, and it's a very busy road, so it's hard to cross the street. So someone would bring me tea, would be the greatest thing ever. I said, I make you a bet, and if it goes down. The way I say it goes down. You buy me a tea and you bring it to your session. This is not how we're supposed to do therapy. I'm bored of psychology. So we did that. By the time I was done, she probably had brought me 60 cups of tea. I think only once did I get it wrong, and I had to get the coffee once. It was a bummer. I drove, but got it, 60 cups of tea.

So is that somebody who is so disconnected with reality, like, what the heck?

It was the hope. Here's where it got interesting. And I'll always, this is, to me, the more important part of it. Ended therapy and said, you know what? Thank you. Thank you for the fact that this entire therapeutic experience cost me hundreds more because of the tea. But she said it was your conviction. She's like, you already had the coaster out for the tea, like you were ready for that. Because I know she'd come in with the t sheepishly, she didn't tell me advance the tea would show up. I was like. And so she said, you were so sure. And that assuredness, that conviction, it showed me this had to be a pattern. You didn't have a crystal ball. You weren't a future reader, right? You knew this as a pattern over time. She said, I kind of knew it could be the other way. Like, it's almost like she said, by the 60th cup of tea, I got it right. I saw it, and then was better able to predict what was going to happen. So my point in sharing that is that we know this, but the other person needs some. They need a minute.

Radical acceptance isn't like, here's what narcissism is, and that's them. And look at all these things that happen. In fact, one of the techniques I talk about in the book is something I affectionately call the ick list. I say to the client, you need to make no moves in this relationship. Nothing has to change. But I need you to write it all down every time they do something. And if you're not writing it down, I'm writing it down in here, and I'm going to keep it. And over time, this list gets to the point where you're like, oh, this is a pattern. And seeing it in writing makes it more real.

What you said about hope is genius, because with this particular example that I've just shared with this friend of mine, I personally believe if I were to make a bet that she hopes they get back together.

Correct.

And so if this is resonating with you as you're listening. What I want to know, Doctor Ramani, is if you're holding out hope that that parent's going to change, if you're holding out hope that things could be different, if you're holding out hope that this person that is narcissistic in your life, that somehow something is going to be different, how do you start to dismantle this thing that you've been holding onto forever that keeps you completely enmeshed in this relationship and this freaking fantasy in your brain?

Part of it is the writing it down. I know it sounds like a strange thing to suggest, but there's something very different because euphoric recall is a very real phenomenon.

What is euphoric recall? What is that?

Euphoric recall is it's almost like a twist on what our minds usually don't do. But in narcissistic relationships, people cherry pick the good stuff. But we did have a really nice time in Miami ten years ago and they really did like, you know, we laughed so much at that tv show. Like they just, we, gosh, we, you know, our sex was actually really good. Like euphoric reclaim. Pick the good things. That's why writing it down and writing it down with people who watch the relationship and get the relationship, just getting it all down because there's times you're not going to be able to get it down. I've helped a lot of clients write these IC lists. I'm like, well, remember that time you told me this and like, and remember the time you told me that? And they keep like, oh, yes, I do. I'm so sorry. Yes, I get it. And so we pile it all up and you can't unsee it then, right? It's almost like looking at the 5000 transgressions of somebody like you're going to hire. Like, you do realize if you bring him back, these are all the things he did.

An HR person be like, yeah, no, no, we can't bring this person back. We can bring that. The more we have the data. That's one big piece to dismantling the hope. There's other things going to talk about this in the book is this idea of going into something I call going into the tiger's case. Okay, so when a client's like, no, no, no, no, it's going to be different. Remember, Mel, as a therapist, my job is never to be dogmatic and say, absolutely not. If you do, I'll say, okay, you know, I'm always going to hold space for the client to feel safe, to go try something and that there's no judgment. So say no. I think it's going to be different.

I'm like, okay, so I couldn't be a therapist. I'd be like, you stupid idiot. It is not going to be different. Like, I literally want to reach out and grab my friend and strangle some sense under her. I know that sounds like a very violent thing, but it breaks my heart.

I know, but this tiger's cage pieces. I say to them, okay, so cage cat. Now we're far enough from that cat. You're like, is that a cat or is that a tiger? There's only one way to find out. And they'll say, no, I want to find out which one it is. I'll say, go in the cage. Which means have the interaction, think it's going to be different. Tell them your good news and think they're going to be happy for you, or confront them on something, whatever it is. And it pains me as a therapist, because you know how it's going to go down, right? And they go in and invariably, like, if it was a tiger, what's a tiger going to do? It's going to, you know, tear off your arms and legs and tear your throat out. If it's a kitten. Well, you just got yourself a new little pet. Sometimes they go in and they have the difficult conversation. I'd say one in a thousand times. It's a little kitty. Like they misjudged the person more often. Not, I get this torn apart person and they're saying it's like a cup of tea, right?

You told me and I went in there and I say, but this is material, so let's break it down. Those kinds of almost real time analyzes of these things are how we dismantle the hope. I mean, it's almost like an addict in that way. Mel, how many times does it have to pile up before a person hits rock bottom?

Depends on the person. It's different.

Depends on the person.

Depends on the person.

I'm really trying to get the survivor to their rock bottom. Rock bottom is where hope goes away.

I love the ick list, and one of the reasons why I love this idea of taking and writing down in the physical world a list of all the things this person said or did or didn't do or whatever it was that gives you the gigantic ick is that it's in black and white.

Correct.

And I can see in my own life that when I think about another person who got into a relationship where there was a lot of love bombing and the person they were dating came on way too strong and huge red flag for me, watching obviously, where you're in the middle of it, you're enjoying the ride as the person that's getting love bomb. But then the devaluing started and the lying started and the discarding started and then the love bombing comes back. And I remember being in conversations with this person and they had zero recall of the devaluing, but you're only focusing on the good. Remember the time they disappeared for three days? Remember the time where they denied doing drugs and now you're learning they're selling them to everybody. Remember the time. Like I'm all of this stuff and I think having it in black and white is a really good strategy because I can even think about my own life dealing with somebody close to me with a narcissistic personality style and how often I'm like, yeah, but five years ago when this was going on, they were really great and they had a hard childhood.

And I want to keep coming back to the hope piece because I do see how hoping that something's going to change keeps you trapped.

Correct.

And what other strategies are there for somebody that is listening, sees themselves and is like, but I do hope they change and it's hard for somebody like me because you know, Doctor Romney, I'm like, but anybody can change.

Anyone can change. A narcissistic person won't change.

Oh, that's a big difference. Anybody can change. A narcissistic person won't. Ooh, that stings. And hoping that they will keeps you trapped.

Right. And I think that that can't won't distinction becomes important. But they're saying, you tell me they can't change. They can't change. They can't change. Maybe that's a languaging issue. I suppose anyone could, but they won't. And I guarantee you they won't.

You just have a way with words and a way of explaining things, Doctor Romani, that I so appreciate. So one of the things that I also read about in your new book is this twelve month cleanse. And I want to take a short break to hear a word from our sponsors. They allow me to bring this amazing information to you at zero cost. And when we return we are going to jump into more on how you heal, how you thrive. And she's going to cover this twelve month cleanse. Stay with us. Hey, it's your friend Mal. I'm so glad that you are still here. I'm here with Doctor Ramani Deversala and we are talking all things healing and thriving, being in a relationship with a narcissist. So, Doctor Romani, how can you address the kind of wounds that you have personally from surviving narcissistic abuse and still also, like, keep yourself from falling back into a relationship with somebody new that exhibits these behavior? Because I also read in your book that you're sort of more susceptible to this dynamic once you've been in it.

If you haven't learned about it. Right? See, that's the big if is like a lot of people might go unseeingly from narcissistic relationship to narcissistic relationship to narcissistic relationship. Because in all of this, they just think I'm just getting into bad relationships or I'm just meeting a lot of bad guys. I'm like, no, no, no, no. This is about narcissism. And narcissism isn't just about the personality of that person. It's really about the tactics that they employ in a relationship and why they're so appealing and then why they're so destabilizing. Right? It's both of those things happening. If anything, Mel, I have to tell you, people who have gone through narcissistic relationships, right? And then they're going back out there and considering dating again and all of that, they overcorrect. Now, here's one thing I.

What does that mean?

I'll tell you in a second. Let me, let me lay out some groundwork here, because people don't like the suggestion I'm about to make, and I'm aware they don't like it, and I don't care. I'm going to make it. I'm going to make it all the days of my life, which is what I call the twelve month cleanse. And the twelve month cleanse means nothing. No dating, no sex, no online dating, no flirty texting, nada, nothing. One year and people are like, are you out of your mind? I've been lonely for ten years in this marriage. I haven't even really been touched. They've been touching everyone else, just not me. I want to feel. Now. People say I was only with that narcissistic fool for six months. You're telling me six? I said no. If the relationship was under a year, then your cleanse needs to be for as long as the relationship lasted. But if it was, even if it was 30 years, 40 years, one year, one year off, why, you ask? Because he was like, what is that going to do? What we lose in these relationships is ourselves, our entire sense of self authenticity, who we are, what we're about, our values, our judgment, our everything, it's gone.

It's gone. Right. To build that back up, to figure out, do you actually like pepperoni on your pizza? Where do you want the thermostat set? What do you like to watch on tv? How many covers do you want in the blanket? That takes a year. And I'm going for the easy stuff, the pizza toppings and the tv shows. It's when you're feeling sad. Where do you want to take that? It's a year of figuring yourself out, which most people never do in their adult lives, by the way. And then you throw in their year of anniversary dates, your birthday without them, their birthday without them, holidays, summertime, whatever it is, because every one of those scripts needs to be rewritten over, and you can't do it if there's already someone else in there preying upon and playing upon your tendency to want to please, even if it's a healthy person. After that year, you've grown more accustomed to being with yourself because the reflexive play is, listen, there's nothing that feels better than a rebound, right? I'm going to quickly go in there and have someone send me. You're my queen. Nonsense. Tax. And I'm going to get over this.

No, you're not. Because to me, I understand that's a short term play and that's going to feel really good for a minute. It's like the hair of the dog. Right?

Right.

But what we need people to do is this is, to me, is a lifelong play. You need to be comfortable with yourself and every client I could get through that year. And initially, they looked at me incredulously and I said, listen, I am not the police. If you decide to go and have a relationship in these twelve months, the only thing I'm going to say is this is going to prolong this process. The ones who listened got to the other end of that year and said, thank you so much. They're like, now I am so much more stable. They're still hurting. They were still struggling, but what they didn't do was succumb. And what's happened is they're getting the most essential skill to heal from narcissistic abuse, and that's discernment. Discernment. Listen, think of it this way, Mel. When I look and see, I read online, I look how people live their lives, how careful are. I was like, I'm using this specially sourced tea from a mountaintop in Nepal where only virgin goats would ever go. To have sex for the first time. I'm like, you went through that much damn trouble to get those tea leaves and you are not paying attention to someone love bombing you.

Like, be as discerning in your relationships as you are about what you put in your mouth, what you put on your body, your gym, your workouts. Everyone's like, wellness. Wellness. This is where wellness begins, how you decide who comes into your life. That's discernment and that's the skill. You need a year off to start building that muscle.

I could not agree more. I could not agree more. Can we talk about this kind of healing process inside a family? Because let's just say that it's not somebody that has divorced you or you've broken up with them and you're kind of grappling with the, okay, I got to dismantle the hope, then I got to give up the fact that this just doesn't feel right. They've already moved on and now that person's going on the trip and that person is now friends with their friends. And you get through all of that, you recognize it's not going to change. You've spent your year, you've made your ick list. You get it. You kind of can move on now, right? What if it's family? What if it's family? And you are not going to cut the narcissistic family member out of your life, whether it's because that's just not the kind of parent you are. If it's your child or it's not kind of like daughter or son. You are if it's your parent and every year comes around and it is that person's birthday and it is the holiday time and that person is still in your life, how do you cope with the grief?

That's the word that you said. Grief is a huge part of this.

I'm glad you put it the way you did. Which is, how do we cope with the grief? Because there's no getting rid of the grief. Right. Every year when you, or every month or however often you have contact with this person, even every phone call, the disappointment is experienced anew, especially when it's a family member, because invariably these are people who've been around since you were a child. So the anticipation that this is the time they're going to care, this is the time they're going to be nice. It's a constant recalibration. That's the only way I can put it. Is that you, because what happens is there might be you have actually lovely people in your life, good friends, good partner. And then you go to this family that is so unkind. And then even that vacillation between those two spaces can actually, your friends can give you faith in human beings again. And then you go back to your family and all that faith goes away really fast. And so part of it is something is downright just preparation. In the book, it's called the prepare and release method, which is you've got to prepare for these encounters.

You can't go in cold. It's like you're stretching for a workout. You don't just say, well, I feel like working. I feel like running. Put on the sneakers in your business clothes. Go running down the street. Right? There's a process. You stretch out your muscles, you're going to cramp up. It's the same thing when you know you're going to see the narcissistic family member, whether you see them every day or once a month or once a year, which is you really sit down and say, this year is going to be no different. This time is going to be no different. They have absolutely no interest in what I have to say. They're going to make it all about them. And to many of my clients, in fact, one of my clients, she said it beautifully when she said she plays narcissist bingo, and the bingo is like invalidation. Ding, gaslight, ding, ding. And she said, it's all I can do to hold back when I get five of them in a row to not say bingo, you win and get yourself a present because it's all going to happen. So preparing yourself, you can almost turn it into a little bit of a chuckle, like, here we go.

And I have to. I definitely do a lot of narcissist bingo in family systems. And I do have to catch myself from smiling because then people think I'm smirking or I lost my mind. Like, why are you smiling right now? Mostly it's because I got bingo, and I bet myself a dairy queen on the way home that I won. But as much as I'm making light of it, the preparation for what this encounter is going to be like, right? Because it will hurt and you will be filled with grief because this person, a parent, was supposed to be a parent. And you recognize in that moment the things that still you struggle with, because that parent wasn't those things. Instead of being supportive, they were invalidating and on and on and on. Right. And what that means then is the other bookend to this preparation. You go through it, but being prepared while it won't eradicate the grief, it can sometimes modify. It can definitely bring it down a little bit and say, like, okay, that was what I expected it to be. Which means the other bookend, the release part, is you've got to give yourself downtime afterwards.

The best self care you can do is, after the conversation, not have a meeting booked right in there, or take a nap or take a shower or take a walk or whatever it is that you do to feel replenished again. These have to be intentional processes, and when you treat it like that, it puts the harsh glare on, like, yeah, this is not healthy. I, however, feel whatever, duty bound, obligation bound. There's other people in this family system I actually really care about. You have to keep plugging back into your intention, which is, why do I keep interacting with this person? And whatever your reason is, it's fine as long as your reason's not. Because this time I think it's going to be different.

Well, I love that distinction because you're basically just coming back to the very simple fact that the only option here is radical acceptance, which is this. This is the situation.

This is the situation.

There is no changing it. And I may hope it's going to change, but it's never going to change. And that's why I feel grief about this. You write about this in your new book, and I found it fascinating that when there is a narcissistic parent, there are typically roles that people tend to fall into in their family that kind of keep this dynamic propped up. Can you talk a little bit about that?

So anytime you have the more dysfunctional the family system, the more we get put into these concrete, codified roles, instead of having the flexibility of being able to be who we are so we're not stuck in a role in a narcissistic family system. There's two classical roles. One is the golden child. The golden child is the anointed heir apparent. The one who can kind of sort of do no wrong, but is sort of the hope of the family. In some families, that's a first. It's a son. It's the eldest son. Because of whatever cultural issues are. Sometimes it's the child that most physically resembles the parent. Sometimes it's the child that does the things that the parent wants. They succeed at the sport that the parent wants, or whatever it may be. Sometimes it's the kid that's just helpful. It might even be the kid that mixes mom's martini. Whatever it is, it's that kid who is the best source of supply. That's the golden child. Okay. And all other children will be compared against that child in any home. That's not a single sibling home. But if it's sometimes there's cousins and others that might be compared to that child.

The second role that we always see in a narcissistic family system is the scapegoat. This is the child that gets the venom of the narcissistic parent and is really that sort of more the punching bag. I'd say the golden child's the pacifier. The scapegoat is the punching bag. And this is the child who may not look the way the parent wants, behave the way the parent wants is not, doesn't do the things the way the parent wants them to, whatever it may be, may actually be mouthy, may call the parent out, may challenge the parent, may say, well, how come you're not treating us better? And that child will get the wrath of the narcissistic parent or parents. The scapegoat role is no joke. Anyone who's listening to this, who was a scapegoat as a child, will say, the wounds of that role stuck with them until adulthood. They never felt safe. And it's a horrific role because a scapegoat. A child will often see that other siblings and other people in the family system are being treated significantly better than them. It's not like everyone's being uniformly abused, that they are getting the worst of it.

And that idea that others are, that in real time, you can see that you're getting it worse than others, can really do a psychological number on a person. But the roles aren't just limited to those. Other roles include the rescuer, the rescuer sort of fixer, if you will. This is the kid who's always trying to make things right. They clean up after dinner. They make sure everything's running well. They kind of take away all the stressors that could set off the narcissistic parent. They're the one that almost feels anxiety while they hear the parents car come up, the driver, like, quick, quick, quick. We need to clean up. We need to clean up, you guys. Come on, come on, come on. It's a lot of that anxiety. Rescuers. They tend to be rescuers well into adulthood. Like, we got to make it better. We got to make it better. They tend to be appeasers. They tend to be those appeasers in the family system through adulthood. The peacekeepers are sort of the diplomats of the family. The rescuers are often doing things like, let's clean up the Peacekeeper, the diplomat. These are the people that are like, no, no, that's not what mom meant.

Mom didn't mean that. I think mom, you were trying to tell. You were trying to tell Billy that you. You kind of liked it, right? And they're constantly trying to get in there, like some really hapless un diplomat trying to make peace between countries who don't want it. And the Peacekeeper diplomat child is always on edge, like, watching for. So they never get to relax. They're always paying attention. Then there's the invisible child. Have a big enough narcissistic family system. This is a kid that literally gets forgotten. They may be very independent, they may be very quiet, but they're very forgotten. And oftentimes their interests aren't cultivated. Sometimes they're not even picked up from school. Like, we're talking about invisible.

And the final, I'm laughing because that's my husband.

And the final rule is something we either call the truth teller or the truth seer. It depends on how much they're doing. Telling the truth seer truth teller role can overlap with the scapegoat. But this is a very interesting role. This is the kid who gets it and sees it. Even as young as five or six, they will see a pattern. And when they're little, little, and they don't know to inhibit, they'll say, how come you said that? How come you did that mean thing to grandma and that narcissistic person? It's like the eye of Sauron. Lower their minds, they'll be like, what? And that kid can go scapegoat like that. Some truth seer kids don't say a word. They just watch all of this. And they're very aware, acutely aware. This is almost like a gifted feel to them in the sense of they're very aware of who the players are. It's so fascinating, though, because one thing we know about narcissistic people is they're very socially perceptive for how unempathic they are, for how selfish they are. They can read a room really well in the sense of how it affects them. So if they sense someone has their number, they're onto them.

So that truth seer kid, in a way, is kind of in a position of risk because the narcissistic person parent can almost feel that child's contempt. Like that child is almost saying, like, this isn't cool. And the kid may not even be saying it. It's a very subtle dynamic. But I've worked with a lot of survivors who will say, I knew this was a mess, and somehow my parent knew I knew and that really put me in their crosshairs.

Is it normal when somebody starts to wake up and see and accept the situation for what it is? Is anger part of this too?

Oh, heck yeah. Yeah, anger is great. Anger is my favorite emotion. Let me tell you why, please.

Because I also think a lot about the fact that if there is a parent thats narcissistic and your parents are still together, there is also a parent that didnt protect you from that person.

Thats right. Right. And thats where we start getting into the weeds. So why is anger so great for survivors? Because its immobilizing emotion. Its an activating emotion, right. Unlike sadness or anxiety that can create a heaviness or even an apathy, anger is a lets go emotion, right. But anger scares us. And we think of anger as being a narcissistic emotion. But in fact, the narcissistic people are rageful, not angry. Anger is great. And when something is unjust, anger is what we should feel. Like this is not okay. Right. And anger is a stage of grief. So anger and grief very much go together. So let's assume that you've got a narcissistic parent and a non narcissistic parent, right. Some people have two narcissistic parents. And all I can say is that, and I promise there's a special corner of heaven for them. But more often than not, it's a narcissistic parent and a non narcissistic parent. And this gets complicated because what many people will say is, I'm very aware of the suffering that my non narcissistic parent did endure. At times they were humiliated, they were embarrassed, they were criticized. The real agony is a sense of abandonment that the child feels by that non narcissistic parent thinking like you were the parent it was your job to keep safe.

And for an adult in that situation, it becomes a very complex set of emotions, whatever that case may be. Sometimes people will say, I get why they didn't fight back, and I get that they were going through their own thing. And then there's often a sense of guilt at being angry at the non narcissistic parent for not fighting harder for them, and then in a sense of anger for feeling abandoned by that person. So when you combine anger and guilt and empathy into a blender, it is one of the most difficult to swallow smoothies you are ever going to taste in your life.

What do you do? I may be seeking personal advice here when the narcissistic parent has died and now they are the golden person, and the way in which the narrative about that person is being told publicly is just so glowing and so wonderful. And you see the surviving parent waxing on and on and on about the narcissistic one, and you're sitting there going, that's not true.

Right. Right. So you. This is an interesting kind of conundrum, right? In some ways, when the narcissistic person is gone, systems are often now willing to sort of hold them up because I think everyone's collectively relieved. So they get to kind of maintain this false narrative of, you know, now I can talk about them glowingly and I get to look good. Which makes you wonder how much of that narcissism infected the entire system. Because you get to talk about the dead person like they're cool, but because they're dead and they're not going to be able to keep bothering you and you get to seem like a great grieving person, and you're sort of filling the grief role, as it were, of being the grieving widow or widower or whatever it may be. Now, different people will approach this differently. Some people will say, well, now that that person's gone, I'm going to speak my truth and I don't care. Others will feel as though maybe this isn't the time because this person is gone. It's going to be different in every system. But that complicated series of reactions after the death of a narcissistic person who had emotionally or otherwise harmed you is.

It's not an easy one. And a lot of people say, oh, now they're gone. This is going to be easy. Like, no, I mean, there's going to be some maybe pragmatic relief that you no longer need to deal with them and work around them. But now the rest of the system is going to not going to have the same kind of clean series of reactions you do. And so it gets messy. And I think that it's giving yourself space to have the complex grief that a narcissistic loss brings to be in therapy when people will say, do I confront the family? Family, it's back to the tiger's cage. Okay? What may happen is anytime you confront anyone in a narcissistic family system, and just because a narcissist is dead doesn't mean this is still not a narcissistic family system. The roles are still held. All the toxic patterns are in place. They don't just disappear with the narcissistic person.

Well, that's a huge point. That you think because now the relationship is over or the person is dead, all of the wreckage. No, now you're just dealing with it.

The homage to the narcissist, in many ways, is that the family system stays exactly the same.

Oh, that sucks.

It really sucks.

Well, because I'm also thinking about the example that I'm sure so many of you listening can relate to, which is you have children with a narcissist, the relationship ends. And you not only have to deal with that sort of sense of, this isn't fair. This person has moved on. Everybody's rallied around them. All is forgiven. I'm sitting here holding the bag. I, you know, whether it's the hope or I won't allow myself to grieve. But then your kids have their own relationship with this person.

That's right. That's right.

What are strategies that you can use when you are in a system that is still active? Whether it's because you share children with somebody or because you're part of a family system where there's been narcissism, narcissistic abuse, how do you protect yourself?

Part of it is the radical acceptance that the system is still the system. Right. That the narcissistic person, in a way, has sort of, if you will, infected the system in a way, and that those roles. Roles keep us comfortable. In a way, they keep us safe. That's why dysfunctional systems call for roles, because they create a sense of either safety or definition. I don't know that the scapegoat role keeps someone safe, but it's a very clear role. Right. So it's the radical acceptance that those things are going to persist, then there has to be, again, an intentional self exploration of how do I want the people who remain in the system to remain in my life. If you are co parenting and you have adult children with a narcissistic person with whom you're no longer in a relationship, don't ever gaslight your kids, but also don't proselytize them either.

What does that even mean?

It's not your job to convince your kids that their other parent is narcissistic. It's actually not. Okay. If they come to that awareness themselves, they can share it. You don't want to jump on it like, yeah, isn't he the worst? But, like, that's a lot to take in. Do you want to talk about it? This may not feel the safest place. Like, I hope you do get to explore it. You know, how can I be a support to you as you figure this out? Because it's not easy.

You know, though I would imagine in that scenario that if you're somebody who feels like this isn't just, and your adult kids come around and they finally come to you and say, mom, dad's a narcissist, you're right. Your first reaction is going to be finally, you know what I mean? Like you're going to say something that's not. You will, because that's the justice you're looking for.

Correct. It is the justice you're looking for. But you want to tread lightly because kids feel loyal to their parents, even their narcissistic parents, and they're testing the waters. Don't think they're coming in here to say you're comrades in arms. They're testing the waters. And if you're too enthusiastic, you may be viewed as a problem. But like, if they say, you know, mom, I'm so sorry we never made this easier for you, it is so clear. He is narcissistic. We went on this ski trip with him and his new girlfriend. Oh, my God. Then again, at the highest, highest level of functioning, you'd say, I mean, do you want to talk about it? Do you not? I understand if you don't feel comfortable about it, but it's a lot. I hear you. I get it by saying, I get it. That's really code for, yeah, and then I'm here. But you can have that justice within yourself, Mel. It doesn't have to be a justice parade.

Well, I just feel like this is something that's incredibly relatable, even though this is not, like, validated by a scientific study, you basically feel after decades of doing this, that one out of every five or so people display this narcissistic style of personality. So if I think about the fact that 50% of relationships are more in divorce, and I think about the number of people listening that are recognizing that they may have been married to somebody like this. Once you deal with your own radical acceptance and you give up hope that anything's going to change and you accept the situation for what it is, and you stop looking for justice, and you are in your own healing and you're using the tools in your new book, I would imagine that any parent listening would love to know the best way that they could accelerate the healing of their children from this. How do you show up both for yourself and for the kids that are being impacted by that parent?

So here's one thing to always remember, nobody walks away from a narcissistic parent unscathed. It's not possible no matter what. If a person has had a narcissistic parent, it will negatively affect you. Now, in the extreme, obviously, it'd be things like complex trauma. Some people with narcissistic parent become narcissistic themselves. We might see things like addiction in response to that. The vast majority of people who had narcissistic parents develop significant anxiety, anxiety, self doubt, social anxiety and all the stuff that goes with that, am I doing enough? Am I enough? That sort of thing. But we'll put that in the bucket of anxiety. So if you are co parenting in that situation, your kids will be anxious. That's a fact. Okay, that's number one. So let's start there. Number two is don't try to fix it. I think that the big mistake that we make with our kids is we try to solve problems, right? We are not their life coaches. We are not their efficiency coaches. We are their parents. And sometimes they're mad at us. They're mad at us for having found this person and having kids with them. And they're never going to be able to put it in that many words.

So there are times we will be these children's punching bags, right? We have different tolerances for that. Some behavior is acceptable, some is not. But it's to be that place where you kids, if they start talking about something, it's not how can we fix it? It's how are you feeling? And then you can say, how can I help? And it might be just to listen. You know, every kid's different in these situations. And Mel, in the most tragic telling of the story, sometimes your kids ally with the narcissistic parent. I know many people in the situation where they've lost at least one adult child. Narcissistic parents love bomb their kids when they're adults and when they come into young adulthood. Now the narcissistic person has made their own supply. It's pretty quite remarkable for them. And the one thing a narcissistic parent will often do, if they've got it, is use money. I'll pay your rent. I'll get your apartment. I'll get you a car. And depending on the kid, some kids don't fall for it, but some do. And they may feel a loyalty to that parent, they may feel sorry for that parent, but they also may be calculating themselves.

And if that other, if the narcissistic co parent is somebody who is willing to say terrible things about the other parent, then you might have lost this battle. And I think that's a very unique situation when people, because you might have multiple kids and some of your kids still have a relationship with you, and some of them have gone over to the narcissistic parent, but people only have one or two kids and they've all allied with that other parent. That is something that some people say they may not ever be able to fully grieve.

You said that the grieving part of this is the hardest part. So what are the tools that you can use to help yourself grieve when you are recovering from a narcissistic relationship?

Number one, recognize it as a loss. And in fact, the person going through this kind of losses, I think it's on the level of more complicated even than the loss of a death. So it's the giving yourself grief takes time. When we have a grief laden loss, like a death, we mourn. You know, we think of the tibetan 49 days, we think of sitting Shiva for loss. For people who observe the jewish faith, we think about the various ways it shows up in different cultures, in south asian culture, we can't touch each other in a certain period of time after there's been a loss in the family. You don't go to a temple, you don't share food together. So it's always going to be different. Right. But those rituals ground us in loss. There are time when we're allowed to press the stop button on the clock and attend to ourselves. We don't build that time in when it's this kind of grief. So a person has to take that for themselves and build in that kind of time.

You know, as I'm thinking about this, the grief has been really helpful as a concept for moving through a narcissistic relationship because it allows you to engage in radical acceptance, give up the hope that it's going to change and to accept it for what it is. And to me, being able to grieve that either your parent wasn't who you wanted or deserved, or your spouse wasn't who you wanted or deserves, to me, feels like a mentally healthy response to a situation like this versus the bashing of what's wrong with me? What's wrong with me? Which just makes you feel worse.

Correct.

But what happens when you get stuck in that kind of rumination of, why was I so stupid? Why didn't I see this before? Why didn't I move on earlier? Do you have tools for how you get over that?

That, in a strange way, could be a little bit. Bit easier is it's almost like somebody saying, well, why didn't I know the answer to this exam question? I'm like, well, because it was never taught to you, right? You never. It was never told. We don't teach this in high school. Who's going to teach you this, right? Your parents didn't teach you. High school didn't teach you, college didn't teach you. I mean, I guess now with the advent of things like YouTube and stuff, people are, you know, people might get it that way, but some people don't even know what it's called. So we're talking about a relatively recent phenomenon on that. People are understanding what this thing is, so how are you to know it if every single person around you is telling you, forgive them? They didn't mean it. This is who they are. They didn't mean it when they said it. That's what everyone around you is saying. And then the narcissistic person themselves is saying, I never said that. You're crazy. There's something wrong with you. You make a big deal out of everything. You're too sensitive. If those are the two sets of voices coming at you, how the hell would you have known what this was?

It's true. And I feel like a first class jerk now because I have been in situations where even though I've been the victim of narcissistic abuse, you didn't know. I've looked at other people, though. I've been like, what's wrong with you? Can't you see this? Why are you still worrying about it? So I apologize to those of you listening that I did that, too, because you're right. If you don't know, how are you going to know? But now you do. So let's talk about the grieving process for those of us that choose to stay in a family system or in a relationship with somebody who we are very clear has a narcissistic personality style, we have accepted it. We have given up hope. But how do we grieve? How do we protect ourselves? What are the tools that we need to be able to remain healthy and separate in a situation where we've accepted the reality?

I would guess about 50% of people in narcissistic, intimate relationships stay in them. So let's talk about the staying. First of all, is more common than the leaving, so keep that in mind. But then, so number one, people don't think this is grief because you're in it. It is grief. So treat it as such, because what's been taken from you, you've lost hope. You've lost the idea that there would be a someday better. You've. You recognize that your childhood was a mess. You recognize the lost potential within yourself. I think, to me, the real tragedy that I see with many clients who go through this is they say, had this been different, had I had a parent who saw me clearly, who actually stepped out of their selfish haze long enough to sort of see me, I would not be 45 and figuring stuff out in life for the first freaking time, that at 45, they feel behind all their peers. I wouldn't have been in three wrecked marriages. It's not that they're saying they were, and these people were taking responsibility. Like, I made the mess. I recognized that. But, my God, if I'd been given the right tools, it's like somebody who said, oh, I tried to build a house, and all I had was a glue gun and a stapler.

I'm like, yeah, no, there's this thing called a drill and all this other stuff. Like, you recognize that? Holy crap. There are all these tools that some people have, and I still try to make a horse race of it. Sadness. So I think that people are grieving the loss of themselves, really. If you know David Kessler's work, loss has to be gone through. There's no rushing this. What I love about David's work is he talks about the meaning and purpose. We derive meaning more than anything from the process of grief. And the same applies in narcissistic relationships, because I say this to every survivor of narcissistic relationships, my God, you are tougher than hell. So basically, everyone else was running a marathon on the flat ground, and they sent you on the wrong path, and they put this weird 400 pound backpack on you and said, oh, the marathon goes uphill, and you still finished the marathon. No, you didn't win or get a medal, but, my God, you finished. And that there's a toughness, a flexibility, a resilience, a discernment, a cleverness, a knowing that survivors of narcissistic abuse have unlike any clinical population I have ever worked with in my career.

They're fantastic. I say this as a survivor myself, and I have so much grief, Mel, over how late in the game and still struggle with. You've said some nice things to me today, and more often than not, I've put myself down and I made a joke about it, but I don't know that I'll ever get to a place where I'll ever fully value myself. Part of my journey of grief. Is recognizing that I'm never going to get there. And instead I say, every day I'm going to wake up and I'm going to fight the good fight, and I feel privileged to get to do what I do. But there are holes in me, and some days I grieve those holes, and some days I embrace those holes. I could not do what I do unless I had gone through this. That to me, feels like a gift from God. I was given this gift. I was given a voice that every generation of women before me and my family never got. Narcissism is endemic in patriarchal cultures. So I think to myself, you could have either sat there and felt bad for yourself or say you've been given an opportunity.

But my God, my heart. I didn't know the number of ways a heart could be broken, but there are way. You have no idea. Like, there's ways hearts can be broken that are diabolical. And I had experienced a lot of them, didn't know how to get into an adult relationship, and so. And I still show up into a lot of these narcissistic, narcissistic relationships. I am tired, and that's what a lot of survivors say. But what comes out of this grief is that some days are very hard. Many days are great. There are lots of dark nights of the soul. But I finished the marathon even though someone threw that backpack on my back and set me on the uphill track.

Well, here's what I want to tell you. That the moment in time that you learn this is the moment in time when you're ready to hear it and do censoring about it.

That's exactly right.

And as much as this is a very dark and heavy topic you have in your new book, it's not you. Practical tools, tremendous research, and a huge message of hope that, first of all, it's not you. You're not the problem. The second, that you practice radical acceptance and you accept it for what it is, and you allow yourself to grieve, which means you are finally giving yourself the validation that you deserve something else. I think there's not only a huge opportunity for what comes next for you, but I feel very hopeful that the louder that you get and the more people talk about this and share your work, the more opportunity there is for people to break the chains of this in their family systems and to do the work to heal from this kind of abuse, to recognize it when it is happening in your life, to protect yourself from it and to thrive.

No, I absolutely believe that. And that's what happens in the healing process is that the survivors of narcissistic abuse are transformed. You don't allow your sense of self to be stolen the way it had to be. This does not mean you cut yourself out from everyone in your life. It's that when, after you heal, as you heal, when you show back up into these spaces in your life, you show up knowing who you are. And through this process, as all of you will become truth seers and you'll navigate your life in a very different way.

Doctor Romani, on behalf of everybody, thank you. Thank you. Thank you for being here.

Thank you so much, Mel. Thank you.

You are extraordinary. I always learn something from you, and I feel hopeful and empowered and equipped to continue on my journey. And I want to make sure that I tell you that in case no one else tells you that I believe in you and I love you, and I believe in your ability to take the tools that you've just learned, heal yourself and create a better life. Let's do this. I always feel like Shay is directing, like, a 747 over there behind the door.

This kind of is a 745 control panel.

You know what I'm saying? Let me just get my hair up here. Cause it'll flop down. All right, you want to start? Okay. All right. Doctor Romany. Oh, no. Go. You take that.

Go on. What am I going to do? I felt like I had, like, stolen. I was, like, shoplifted, and I'm like, what do I do with this?

You do whatever you want. We're gonna wait, and it's no big deal. You take the natural with the world renowned expert in research, doctor Ramona Lee. Jesus. Let me go back up a minute. That I keep seeing the most in the. Hold on. Say that again. Wait, what am I doing? Oh. Oh, my God. Okay, you ready? Okay. Gotcha.

Okay, thank you. Thank you. I was laughing, too.

Oh, and one more thing. And no, this is not a blooper. This is the legal language. You know, what the lawyers write and what I need to read to you. This podcast is presented solely for educational and entertainment purposes. I'm just your friend. I am not a licensed therapist, and this podcast is not intended as a substitute for the advice of a physician, professional coach, psychotherapist, or other qualified professional. Got it? Good. I'll see you in the next episode. Stitcher.