EP. 230 — Revisiting Narcissism with Dr. Ramani Durvasula

Jameela: [00:00:00] Dr. Ramani, welcome to I Weigh. How are you?

Dr. Ramani: Thank you, Jameela. I’m great. Thank you. How are you doing?

Jameela: I’m really good. I’m so excited to talk to you. I have been, I’ve been thinking about you every day. No, but honestly, I’ve been, I’ve been watching your videos, watching your interviews, sending them to everyone I know, and your work has been so important to so many people. You have completely revolutionized the conversation around narcissism. And so it’s a huge honor to have you on the podcast.

Dr. Ramani: Well, that’s really kind and I appreciate it. Thank you. And I’m so glad you want to have this conversation because I think it’s important for people to hear it.

Jameela: A hundred percent. And I, I, you know, I, I, I’ve read a lot of your work around [00:01:00] how narcissism, like we are currently in a generation where narcissism is kind of being like willingly bred.

Dr. Ramani: Mm-Hmm.

Jameela: Now, you know, it’s something that we don’t consider even that toxic or that bad anymore. It’s kind of become so hyper normalized, uh, that we are contributing to the problem. Before we get into all of that, I just wanna ask you what is narcissism for someone who has no idea?

Dr. Ramani: So narcissism is a pattern, it’s a personality pattern, and it’s considered to be a rigid and maladaptive pattern, meaning that it’s not really good for anyone, and it’s, and rigid, meaning it’s not likely to change. But it’s a pattern characterized by a person who has generally low empathy, but it’s a little complicated, but we’ll just call it a lack of empathy, entitlement, grandiosity. These are people who are arrogant, who are constantly seeking validation. They are also, um, they’re not really capable of deep, intimate relationships. They view relationships as being for their [00:02:00] personal gain and not for, not at all for the enhancement of the other. They’re very egocentric and they’re also very sort of, they’re externally run. Meaning that, when they set a goal, they set a goal that they think the world would want them to do. Their self esteem is determined by how the world views them.

And at the core of the narcissistic person is an individual who has a deep, deep core sense of insecurity and inadequacy. And so all of that stuff, the grandiosity, the entitlement, it’s like a suit of armor around that, to protect that so that inadequacy doesn’t pop out so they can walk around looking like the king or the queen or something like that rather than the insecure person that they really feel that they’re sort of internal to them. But it’s happening at such an unconscious level. So all the posturing and preening and pretentiousness is really about protecting that core fragile interior.

Jameela: Mm, and we often hear about insecurity being the foundation of a lot of arrogance. I am, I really want to touch on the fact that, you know, I think when a lot of [00:03:00] people listen to this, they can identify a lot of these things in themselves, in others, you know, like a need for validation, etc, and I think that because so much of narcissism has become hyper normalized in our society, in our culture, it’s harder to spot who is an actual narcissist and who just seems a bit narcissistic. You and I touched on this briefly when we were chatting on the phone that you, you, you’re frustrated a little bit with the fact that people can so easily now be kind of pathologized as a narcissist just when they might be only an insecure person. I think this is the breeding of social media, meaning that we post a lot of pictures of ourselves that we have an, you know, enhanced kind of self obsession. There is a difference, correct, between self obsession and actual narcissism?

Dr. Ramani: Yeah, there is. I mean, I think that, first of all, you have to view narcissism as being on a continuum. At the mild, lighter end, that’s where you might see a little bit more of the egocentric self obsession and what I call sort of the Instagram narcissist. These are people who tend to be a little bit, I don’t know, emotionally immature, a little bit emotionally [00:04:00] stunted and maybe so egocentric that it impairs some of their empathy abilities, but it’s not the in your face, low empathy entitlement, kind of the cruelty we tend to see at the higher end of that narcissistic continuum where we see more of a malignant, narcissistic, exploitative, at times even dangerous person. People who are self obsessed, so people who like, like, like posting every meal they have and every other thought they have on social media and every picture they have. If that person is empathic, and they’re not entitled, and they’re not grandiose, and they’re able to regulate their emotions, they’re not narcissistic. They just sort of, I mean, again, self obsessed. They’re, they, they just like, like people liking them. But the other thing you’d look for is, let’s say a person is in these social media spaces, how do they react when they’re not getting the validation? So if they post their picture of their dinner and only three people like it, are they okay with that? When there’s [00:05:00] distress over not getting enough validation, not necessarily sure it’s narcissism, it could be other personality issues, but what we’re really looking is at that core of the lack of empathy, the entitlement, that sort of stuff.

Jameela: Where it’s a driving force. Right. In your life.

Dr. Ramani: Yeah, it’s a driving force. Yes. It’s very present in all of their interactions. Basically, narcissistic people are kind of jerky to everyone unless they need something from you.

Jameela: And when they do need something from you, there is a consistency in how, uh, incredibly confident and charismatic they seem to be. From everything I’ve read from you, like charisma is a big part of, well, how do you, can you be a narcissist if you’re not particularly charismatic?

Dr. Ramani: Absolutely. There are some narcissists, we call them vulnerable narcissists. Some people call them covert narcissists. But the vulnerable narcissists actually walk around kind of resentful, sullen, angry, full of grievances, very victimized, angry at the world, not so charismatic. It’s still narcissistic because they still have the

Jameela: That’s the saddest thing I’ve ever heard.

Dr. Ramani: But they’re also, they can sometimes be very dangerous. [00:06:00] They sort of sit there and brood and get angry. And if somebody even looks at them the wrong way, they might get into a fight or worse.

Jameela: Right, right, right. And we see maybe like a little bit of that in the kind of red pill incel movement, the sense of entitlement, the rage against the world. And I think that’s another thing that’s a misconception that I had for a really long time around narcissists is that they love themselves. They think that they are so fantastic. A lot of them can hate themselves. They’re still obsessed with themselves. Your self obsession. Is that correct?

Dr. Ramani: Yeah, no matter what

Jameela: Your self obsession can still be, like you’re still, you still think the world revolves around you even if you think you’re hard done by by the world.

Dr. Ramani: Correct.

Jameela: And if you think that you are ugly or you are invisible and you blame society standards etc etc all the kind of stuff that we see on on the kind of the darker side of reddit or 4chan.

Dr. Ramani: Correct. But it’s still, yeah, it’s still though, it’s very much “I’m the center of the universe. My victimization is the center of the universe. My pain is the center of the universe” with absolutely no capacity to have any awareness of what’s happening in someone else’s life. So it doesn’t matter, charisma, grandiosity, and even [00:07:00] with these vulnerable narcissists, these sort of, again, we’re calling these incel-y type, vulnerable narcissistic types, they’re still, um, they’re grandiose, but their grandiosity is, you know what? Nobody is smarter than me. I shouldn’t have to waste four years at university. It’s that thing. So they’re still grandiose. I’m the smartest. I’m, I’m too good to have to work a nine to five. So the grandiosity comes out in the sort of victimized way.

Jameela: And what you’re saying is that the kind of real narcissists, the, you know, the kind of other end of the spectrum of narcissism, it’s a mental health disorder, correct?

Dr. Ramani: Ah, so there’s, there’s the million dollar question. So there is a disorder called narcissistic personality disorder that appears in the DSM and something else called the International Classification of Diseases, or the ICD. This is how we diagnose people. The diagnosis sort of made its debut back in 1980 in the third edition of the DSM. And the challenge with narcissistic personality disorder is that, yeah, you have to have that laundry list of the lack of empathy, entitlement, all the other [00:08:00] stuff I was saying. But the person also has to be experiencing distress, meaning that they’re kind of uncomfortable the way a depressed person would feel a sense of distress, like, this doesn’t feel good, or they have to report having a sense of social or occupational impairment. So that person literally would have to roll up and say, “You know, I don’t have that much empathy. I’m kind of entitled and all this is causing trouble in my relationships. said no narcissist ever. You know, when they come into therapy, if they come into therapy, they’re complaining about how, ah, all my part, all my spouse does is complain or everybody’s treating me badly at work. Or I was fired from my job because my boss had it out for me, and I’m really upset about that. So they’re going to come in with a problem, but very rarely are they going to sit there saying, and I don’t have empathy and I’m entitled. The therapist has hard work of digging through that, so the prevalence of narcissistic personality disorder in the research studies is, depending on the study, anywhere from one to five percent. Some studies show rates of ten percent, but it’s a hard thing to measure because a lot of people don’t [00:09:00] cop to it. So I struggle with calling this a mental health disorder, because in which case it may be the one of a few mental health disorders, and they’re all personality disorders, that actually cause more harm to other people than it does to the narcissistic person themselves. That’s unusual.

Jameela: Yeah.

Dr. Ramani: So when we have someone come in, let’s say they come in and they feel like a victim and they feel life isn’t fair and they’re really sad and they’re like, I haven’t had a job in a year. One of our first hypotheses is probably going to be depression. And so the therapist in good faith will teach them, will treat them, they’ll usually, usually with therapy and depending on how severe the depression is, medication, within nine to 12 weeks, you’re going to see some improvement. And now you’re in there for 12 weeks, nothing’s happening. This person’s still like, life’s unfair. My life’s unfair. Why is my life so terrible? And you’re like, and you’re reading the depression book, like what am I doing wrong at those times when I’m, you know, if I’m overseeing someone’s work or giving them feedback, I’m like, have you started considering narcissism as an additional hypothesis? So what happens is you might lift the depression, but the [00:10:00] narcissism is still there as the, as the under underground of it. And that part’s not going to change.

Jameela: No, so you’re not, it’s not something that you are born with. It’s something that can happen as you’re kind of developing. Correct? Like as a sort of trauma, maybe you’re neglected as a child in some emotional way. There can be different things that cause this narcissism to breed. You’re not, no one’s ever born with it. Correct?

Dr. Ramani: Absolutely. No one’s born this way. I mean, the closest thing we’d have to what somebody would be born with is because this is a personality pattern is we look at something called temperament and temperament is sort of the biological inborn part of our personality. It creates, it can, it can create a biological vulnerability depending on the nature of a person’s personality. Some kids are born into this world just cheerful from day one. They’re easy to soothe, they smile easily, they regulate themselves well, they’re very, they’re very rewarding for the parent. And then there’s some kids with tough temperaments, they’re very difficult to soothe. As they get older, they’re, they often need a lot of attention, they [00:11:00] need a lot more handling, they need, um, they’re much more disruptive, they are, um, inattentive. Parents, not so, not so nice, they’re harder kids. Now, some kids, parents do a magnificent job even with the difficult temperament kids, but if a child is growing up in any kind of invalidating environment, it could be trauma, it could be abuse, it could be emotional abuse, it could be just neglect, all kinds of things. That kind of traumatizing environment, invalidating environment coming up against that sort of biological temperament, or maybe even that kind of difficult personality style. You look at Marsha Linehan’s work, she has a biosocial model of borderline personality, which I think applies to narcissistic. And what we see is that that mix likely between temperament and the nature of the negating, invalidating, potentially even traumatizing early environment can result in narcissistic personality. The challenge is, is that it gets hard to tease apart. Most people who survive early life trauma don’t develop narcissistic personalities, [00:12:00] right? Some do. So when we tell the story backwards, we can make sense of it. There’s also another variant of it. There are kids out there who are really overindulged, almost micromanaged. They never have to experience disappointment. They are somebody always sort of bubble wrapping them and maybe meeting all of their material needs or spoiling them or whatever it may be, but yet those kids aren’t sort of emotionally nurtured. The parents aren’t anywhere to be found. They’re well taken care of maybe by handlers, but there’s not the consistent caregiving presence of their parents, although they’re very indulged. That too can be a setup for narcissism, and a kid can learn these patterns watching a parent. They watch an entitled parent storming around, yelling at people, yelling at teachers, you know, just going through the world as a jerk. The child can model that behavior.

Jameela: And you say that it’s almost impossible to be able to completely change a narcissist and I was curious about that because it’s something that is developed not born with and so obviously they can maybe alter their behaviors and they can [00:13:00] control themselves and no one should lose all hope that they’ll live like a miserable malignant life but it is something that you kind of have to accept about someone who is a narcissist that you’re going to have to work around it. It’s never going to completely go away. So does that mean that because that during the childhood trauma, because I know this can happen in childhood trauma, does your brain become rewired? Is that why it can’t be undone?

Dr. Ramani: I think there’s a couple of reasons for the undoneness of it all, right? So the biology of personality is something we’re sort of slowly unpacking, right? Because how much of personality is behavior? And so what we can see with neuroimaging tools, like, you know, we’re still, obviously it’s getting better and better in terms of how we can look at things like impulsivity. And we can look at things like empathy. That’s sort of deconstructing all of this stuff, right? And so that probably, because I get older towards the end of my lifetime, I think they’re really going to be able to make some real strides on sort of the neuroimaging of these various personality styles, particularly narcissistic. Trauma does rewire a brain. We know that very well. And there’s all kinds [00:14:00] of theories around epigenetics and epigenetics have to do with how we have a gene that can sort of be turned on or off by what’s happening in the environment. So that’s why we know things like poverty or other deprivation and certainly trauma that they can turn those genes on or off and, and result usually in poorer outcomes around things like mental health. So can it be undone? Here’s the challenge, Jameela, if you have a personality style, that means you’re likely going to make more money. You’re more likely to be successful in dating. You’re more likely to get a leadership position. You’re going to want to change your personality?

Jameela: No.

Dr. Ramani: So, where’s the incentive? And their attitude is like, I said I’m sorry, okay? Can’t we let it go? Um, no, because this is the 27th time you’ve done this. So there’s little incentive for them, because why? The narcissistic person blames everybody else. This is your fault. This is my parent’s fault. This is my therapist’s fault. This is my boss’s fault. This is my employee’s fault. This is my partner’s fault. My kid’s fault. It’s everybody else’s fault. So with no capacity to take [00:15:00] responsibility, why would they change their behavior?

Jameela: So you’re saying it’s more because they’re, it’s like a social construct because they’re able to continue to climb the ladder of hierarchy. So it’s not that maybe they can’t be rewired, it’s that they’re likely to not be incentivized to.

Dr. Ramani: Anybody can be rewired. If we want to look at it that way, there are people who come back from horrific trauma. I think every human being

Jameela: Fascinating. That’s what EMDR is so great for.

Dr. Ramani: Yes, but you gotta wanna do the rewire. I’ll tell you this right now, there’s people out there with incredibly agreeable personalities. They’re empathic, they’re humble, they’re easygoing, they’re altruistic, they follow the rules. People like that are out there. I’d even call myself one of those people, okay?

Jameela: Mm hmm.

Dr. Ramani: I couldn’t change that. If tomorrow someone said, Ramani, I need you to go out there, I need you to be unempathic, entitled, antagonistic, and hostile, I’d be like, I can’t do this. I’m going to get sick if you make me do this. I could try it for half an hour, but then I’m going to throw up.

Jameela: There’s about two days on my period where I can probably do that. Just two days, just before my period, I reckon I could probably do that.

Dr. Ramani: Okay, [00:16:00] so

Jameela: If you don’t give me a donut, like it’s on. But yeah,

Dr. Ramani: Other than that,

Jameela: I know what you mean.

Dr. Ramani: But I couldn’t do it. So I’m and I think of people who have whatever personality styles they are. We don’t want an agreeable person to change, but I’ll tell you this. The research shows the agreeable people don’t make as much money either. So can, can you, can you turn a, a sweet little kitten into a tiger? I mean, one could argue in a pygmalion esque way, sure, maybe you can, but I would say I would, it’s never, I’d never take that bet. Just that, because we often think of like, how come we can’t make the narcissistic person nicer, right? Well, I’m going to ask you the question. How can’t we, we can’t make the agreeable person meaner because personality styles are really difficult to shift.

Jameela: Totally. And I think it kind of brings me on to another point, something that you’ve spoken about, which I think is really interesting is that, you know, a lot of the people that we see again, powerful people in leadership positions, a lot of those people have a lot of the traits that you are describing when it comes to narcissism. A lot of our world leaders, I’d say, apart [00:17:00] from Rihanna, I’d like to make sure that I exclude her from this narrative very clearly. She can do no wrong. But billionaires tend to be, in my experience of some of them, fucking malignant narcissist or narcissists and it takes a certain level of being okay. And this is across the board pretty much. I have never personally heard of a billionaire getting to a billion without exploiting someone.

Dr. Ramani: Correct.

Jameela: Without either turning a blind eye to maybe you, maybe you don’t know about it, but you fucking know about it at some level, you can’t possibly be thinking that you are generating all this profit. If you pay people fairly, if you give people fair working conditions, if you share the wealth somewhat in a way that feels more socialist and a bit more not complete socialist necessarily, but just in a way that is ethical, it’s highly unlikely you’ll get that kind of money, right?

Dr. Ramani: That’s right.

Jameela: And so it does take a certain lack of empathy and a need for power and a willingness to kind of conquer or destroy in order to get to that like really fucking arbitrary [00:18:00] pointless point. Like it just, it makes absolutely no sense to me. The amount of people that I meet in Los Angeles whose goal is to become a billionaire. I cannot, I just, I find it absolutely unfathomable like why anyone would even be interested in that. What do you do with that much money and what did you have to do? What are you going to have to do to make that much money? What are you willing to do?

Dr. Ramani: To talk about billionaires from the lens of money is the wrong angle, right? It’s not about the money. It’s about the power.

Jameela: Status. Yeah.

Dr. Ramani: Right. It’s about power, status, dominance, control. That’s what the narcissist is motivated for. Oh, no, they want money. No, my money is a means to the power, right? But it’s power, dominance, control, status. Those are the things that narcissistic people want. Money is the fastest way to get there. So the, the push to be a billionaire is all about locking in those four things.

Jameela: And also being on those lists, being recognized. It’s that certain like kind of like it’s that club that that billionaires club. It’s very small. It’s very exclusive. Everybody notices you in there. Everybody bows to you. No one’s going to say no to you. No one’s going to [00:19:00] question your behavior. It’s such an odd obsession now amongst people. It’s something that’s so casually spoken about, in spite of everything we know about the deep evils of capitalism. So do you feel that way about like, I mean, I think I’ve heard you say that you do, but world leaders?

Dr. Ramani: Absolutely. Absolutely. Leadership and narcissism are associated, right? But by and large, people who are narcissistic are more driven to want to be leaders. To have the power, to have the authority, to have the control, to get the validation. And other people just might say, okay, nice. Yeah, sure. I’m sure the leader makes more money, but I’d like to go home and spend time with my family. So for them that the, the sacrifices that would need to be made to make the leader, even if they’d make more money for them, that idea of somebody, for example, who’s more agreeable may actually want more of the balance in life. So there’s absolutely an association and the world has changed where there’s actually this, this kind of twisted level of dominance that’s almost revered in a leader at this point. And so we’re not valuing as much empathic leadership and everything. I mean, let’s face it, [00:20:00] a narcissistic leader makes for better, more interesting headlines. And that, that makes more money for the capitalist machine. An agreeable, empathic leader, not so sexy. You know, sort of like today they made some recent decisions and actually cared about social welfare. Okay? So then people like this is boring, but chaos and all that, that’s what your narcissistic leaders give you. They’re very self serving. And I hate to say it, but I do think that a lot of times, even in democratic countries, there’s a sort of, and this is the pro, I think the problem with the world right now, there is a sort of undisguised kind of admiration of people are narcissistic because they seem so shameless, so out there, so willing to speak their mind that people incorrectly conflate that with courage. When in fact, actually it’s madness and it’s really invalidating and sometimes even dehumanizing. But I think there’s way too many people like, “Ah, he speaks his mind. That’s why I like him.” Like speaks his mind? These are incredibly hurtful words. “I don’t care. I, I have the right to say what I want.” And that mentality these days, “I have the right to speak my mind. I have the right to say what I [00:21:00] want.” People do that. They so often don’t face consequences because the sheer number of enablers in the world. And that’s why this machine keeps running the way it is.

Jameela: You talk about the fact that we’re in this incre, like we’re breeding narcissism, and so what I guess I’m wondering is that, is that because these kids are then being exposed to what we do on social media and the people that they’re seeing and you know, positions of power?

Dr. Ramani: I don’t think we’re breeding narcissism. I think we’re rewarding narcissism.

Jameela: Right.

Dr. Ramani: There’s a difference.

Jameela: Yeah,

yeah, yeah.

Dr. Ramani: There’s a difference. Breeding. It means like people are literally intentionally, parents rolling up their sleeves and saying, how can I make my child narcissistic.

Jameela: No.

Dr. Ramani: You know, rewarding narcissism is what we’re doing. And so what might happen is you might have that 18, 19, 20 year old who’s coming through college or going to graduate school or coming into their career and wanting to succeed or make a lot of money. And then will recognize like, Ooh boy, in order to do this, I got actually stab more than a few people in the back. [00:22:00] Your more agreeable, more healthy people with more equanimity are probably going to drop out of the race. They’re going to say, “Yeah, no, I can’t, I can’t do this. I’m absolutely not. I can’t do this to other people. I couldn’t live with myself. I, I feel sick.” And they will probably then go on to do something that is not, you know, that, that is run in a way that feels more appropriate to them. So I think that the personality in some ways, chooses the career. And then the career kind of then, you know, does the, the dance with the, with the personality. But I, I think that it’s because we, we reward it. There might be some people like, no, no, no, I want to make a lot of money or I want to be this or I want to be that. And they’ll try it. And if it’s really a sort of a, the viper pit it is a lot of people say, if this is what I got to do, then yeah, no, I’m not, I’m not doing this. So if some of them may, for example, become academics, you might see some of that. Like they’ll say, okay, I can do my smarty stuff, but not in this kind of dog eat dog world. But I gotta tell you, as somebody who was an academic for over 20 years, it’s a pretty competitive, domination oriented space as well. So,

Jameela: [00:23:00] Yeah.

Dr. Ramani: It really depends.

Jameela: I mean, I’m in Hollywood, so we don’t really see much narcissism, so I can’t really relate. I’m really sorry. I just have no idea what you mean.

Dr. Ramani: I think that even to become really famous, the desire to be famous and hold that famous space is, it’s not a normal life. And so I think a lot of people would drop out of that, say, “I don’t want this. This is not interesting, or I don’t want to,” I mean, the things I have to do maybe to get ahead in this industry, it doesn’t, it’s not going to work for them, so you’ll see people kind of step away because it doesn’t suit their personality. But for a narcissistic person, being famous is the holy grail because it means validation 24/7. So it’s the best thing that could happen to them.

Jameela: I have to be on medication to tolerate it because it’s, it’s very odd, obviously, like comes with some amazing things. I wouldn’t be able to have a podcast and be able to talk to you if I hadn’t done it.

Dr. Ramani: Oh, well, thank you. I’d still talk to you anyhow, so, no matter what.

Jameela: I don’t know. It would have been a bit weird, an English teacher just knocking on your door. Um, but I, uh, yeah, I have to be, I have to be medicated for a lot of my career stuff and the rest of the time I [00:24:00] just stay in bed and, and hide, uh, but it’s, um, it’s very, very unnatural. It’s very odd. And I think it does draw in a lot of people who may be, again, it, I mean, highly rewards.

Dr. Ramani: Mm hmm.

Jameela: Talk about fucking rewarding where they’re not just being rewarded within their industry like perhaps within academia, but then if you actually make it the world rewards you.

Dr. Ramani: Right.

Jameela: The people who do the best are often the biggest fucking nightmares, so controlling to the teams of people around them, like have entire, they wield power over entire sets, you know, which are like 100 200 people. I um, I’ve dealt with a fair few and the gas lighting is extraordinary. I really can’t believe, like you really just can’t reason with a malignant narcissist. I know we’ve kind of covered them like all over the place, but just to be able to give people like a short sweet menu and you’re so fucking concise. It’s really intimidating, that I was wondering if we could just go, quickly just go through the main types of narcissists. So the classical [00:25:00] narcissist.

Dr. Ramani: The classical narcissist is the grandiose narcissist. That’s the charming, charismatic, pretentious, arrogant narcissist, needs to be the center of attention, very egocentric, all the usual unempathic, entitled bells and whistles. But as, their front game is very, very sort of charming, charismatic. They really get the attention in the room.

Jameela: Great. And then the covert.

Dr. Ramani: The covert / vulnerable narcissists. These are victimized, resentful, sullen, grievance riddled individuals who constantly feel like victims, can almost have a touch of paranoia to them. You know, they always feel like everyone’s got it in for them and they feel life has been uniquely unfair to them. A lot of vulnerable narcissists can even look quite socially anxious, which is in real contrast to those charismatic, slick, grandiose narcissists.

Jameela: Okay, malignant narcissist. This is the one that I think comes up the most when I put out to my audience, I was going to be chatting to you. This is the word that most kind of lit everyone up.

Dr. Ramani: So the malignant narcissists are probably the most severe, dangerous kinds of narcissists. [00:26:00] They are exploitative. They take advantage of other people. They play, you know, they, they take advantage of other people’s trust. They are a very, very controlling, they’ll often isolate people. They are, um, there’s this thing called the dark tetrad, which sorts of captures malignant narcissism. Obviously, the traditional elements of narcissism. Some of the elements of psychopathy, like being really callous, being really hostile, having almost very little remorse for doing bad things, um, feeling little guilt. Then there’s also, we see sadism. So this almost intentional, you know, um, affliction of cruelty on others. They’re very, very vindictive. You know, if somebody does them wrong, they will go out of their way. They can’t just let it go. They have to go out of their way to harm them. And we can, we’ll also see machiavellianism again, that willingness to take advantage of other people. And I throw paranoia in the mix there because, you know, they’re malignant narcissists constantly feel like someone’s out to get them, out to harm them, so they’re very [00:27:00] reactive. They think that, so they think like, what are you looking at? What do you want from me? But again, very hostile. And there’s a phenomenon called coercive control. We see it typically in intimate relationships where it’s an individual who uses menace and fear to control a partner, isolates them from the world, creates this constant sense of threat around, you know, minor children in the home or even animals in the home. They financially control a person, convince them to stop working, take away their sources of money. So the person has to go, go to them first, cuts off contact to other people. So you can see malignant narcissism is actually something we see more in for example, domestic abuse and violence cases, but it is actually quite terrifying. It can be quite dangerous.

Jameela: Yeah. I’ve, I’ve dated at least one of those, um, someone who’s,

Dr. Ramani: It’s dangerous.

Jameela: Yeah, someone’s really, really terrifying and a lot of hot and cold, a lot of love bombing, you know, which I know you speak about a lot, which I think is really interesting. And then withdrawing that love suddenly and after they’ve isolated you from everyone. So you have no one else to turn to, so therefore that cold [00:28:00] feels freezing.

Dr. Ramani: Yes.

Jameela: And so then you, you kind of, they kind of go concave and you like kind of pull towards them to try and get them back to get some of that warmth that they had seduced you with.

Dr. Ramani: Correct. And that, that phenomenon is called the trauma bond. That giving, taking, giving, taking, and then desperately wanting to be give again, given again, especially because you’re also isolated. This is the only game in town. You want it to go back to the good moments and much like a childhood with a parent who’s like that. And so that trauma bonded pattern, not always, but often can be something that a child had with their parent and then they recreate in an adult relationship.

Jameela: I mean, I still can’t really look in a mirror. Like, I have to look at my features individually in a little handheld mirror. I find it very difficult to look into a full mirror because of how much this person told me how ugly I was all the time and that no one else would want me and could never seem to understand the question, well, why do you want me then? Told me that all my friends hate me and they’re all tolerating me and that everyone was kind of doing that behind my sort of back, you know, and that I can’t trust anyone or this sort of stuff. I [00:29:00] think I was only in my early twenties, but it was really, really insane what I tolerated and yeah, I was a fairly bright kid, but it’s very, very easy to get sucked into this and not realize it’s happening because they are so amazing and making you think that the problem is you. There’s a lot of analyzing of you, of what’s wrong with you. How are we going to fix you?

Dr. Ramani: Yes. Yes, it’s always what’s wrong. Again, it’s always the shifting off onto others. And that’s a form of gaslighting. You know, when you’re, you know, it’s, it’s part of the gaslighting process, I should say, that you pathologize the other person. “What’s wrong with you? You seem, your memory seems off” or like, “Oh, what you, have you talked to your shrink lately?” So it creates the sense of maybe there’s something wrong with me, which then makes you a better sort of velcro surface for them to put their blame onto and that you’ll take it. You then start blaming yourself for everything that’s going wrong in the relationship.

Jameela: Oh yeah, I mean I’ve got family members who are definitely malignant narcissists, like one of whom was extremely abusive towards me and then later in life started sending me articles about false memory syndrome.

Dr. Ramani: [00:30:00] Oh goodness.

Jameela: Only to, thank God, four years later, copped to everything.

Dr. Ramani: Wow.

Jameela: But started to genuinely make me feel insane.

Dr. Ramani: Oh, absolutely. And that’s again, the gaslighting. That never happened. You know, you’re, you’re making that up. You’re, you’re just vindictive and, and really, well, it’s not even just that you, that never happened, but you’re also a bad person. You know, that’s the sort of the gaslighting.

Jameela: Or you’re crazy. You can’t trust yourself. You can’t trust your own instincts.

Dr. Ramani: Yep.

Jameela: It’s really terrifying.

Dr. Ramani: To me, it is the most cruel thing a person can do, it is incredibly emotionally abusive. And it is, you know, more people need to understand it, so when it’s happening to them, they can catch themselves and say, “That’s not true. Reality is this, and I’m holding on to that. The sky is blue. Don’t tell me it’s green.”

Jameela: So the vast majority of people who wrote in, and I know you get this question all day, every day, but how do you spot a narcissist within a relationship?

Dr. Ramani: So one of my answers to this is actually, I used to try to, okay, look for this, ask this, but you know what? Trust your body. I’m, I gotta tell you, our bodies are, our bodies are so [00:31:00] honest and feel things. And I honestly think our brain often gaslights our body like, “Oh, come on now. Give it a chance.” Your brain saying your body’s like, “Oh, I don’t like how this feels.” There’s something about when you’re in the presence of somebody who is antagonistic in any way, narcissistic in any way, we kind of feel it in our gut. Sometimes we feel the hairs on the back of our neck stand up a little bit, like we’re a little bit uncomfortable. Now, for people who have histories of narcissism in childhood, it can activate the sense we may be uncomfortable, but our sort of almost ingrained reaction is to say, I’m going to win this person over, just like you tried to win over the parent who was narcissistic as a child. Right? But we tend to feel it in our bodies. And a lot of people override that say, “Oh, I just have butterflies in my stomach.” I’m like, “Oh, I don’t know. If there were a nice person, I don’t think you’d feel butterflies. I think you’d feel relaxed and comfortable in your own skin.” That’s one thing.

Another thing I tell people to pay attention to is are they listening to you? You know, do, are they actually really paying attention to you? Now, this is a tricky standard, Jameela, because one thing that a lot of narcissistic people are good at is, [00:32:00] they’re sprinters. For the first three, four, five weeks of the relationship, they’ll lean in and say, “Tell me everything about you.” And they’re actually listening. And they ask you things like, what’s your greatest fear? They’re remembering all that because they’re going to use it to manipulate you later. Now they know your greatest fear. But they do tend to hijack conversations. They do tend to make everything about them. That’s definitely something to look, look at. Also look at how they talk about other people. Like if they’re slamming every ex partner, if they’re slamming all these other people, if they’re making fun of people in a restaurant, how can you believe they’re wearing that? Or can you imagine, look at how that person looks. Pay attention to that because if they’re doing that to you, they’re going to be doing it about you very soon.

Here’s an interesting one people don’t know to look at. Watch how they drive. There’s interesting research that shows that narcissistic people drive very quickly, they drive fast, they cut people off, they honk, they curse, why are you in my way? And if in one of your early enough dates with somebody or early enough interactions you get in a car and they’re driving like a real a hole, That’s actually [00:33:00] a good sign to get out because that a hole driving is actually quite conflated with sort of narcissistic personality styles. Um, watch how they

Jameela: It’s also very unsafe.

Dr. Ramani: Oh, yeah, it’s also very unsafe. Watch how they manage, um, frustration or disappointment. So if something doesn’t go the way they want, their reservation isn’t at the time, and you’re like, “Oh, no, cool. Look, there’s a little hot dog stand across the street. I just want to get to know you.” “No, this has to be right,” and like the whole evening is ruined by their tantruming about things not going, they feel like, “I come, I, do you know who I am? I eat here all the time.” Like that, that’s a problem also look at how sensitive they are to feedback or criticism. So let’s say you’re on an early date with them and I don’t know you know the place you’re going to and they take a parking spot and you say to them, “Hey you know what, like there’s a whole nother lot there that’s closer to the door,” and they’ll say, “What are you trying to say? You trying to tell me, tell me I don’t know how to drive a car. You tell me I don’t know how to park a car.” They give you that kind of pushback of like, or they get passive aggressive or sullen. That’s a bad sign too. Some of these signs show up pretty early when you get to know someone.

Jameela: Yeah. And I think [00:34:00] we overlook those because we’re love drunk or we’re attracted to someone.

Dr. Ramani: Or we’re nice. We’re nice.

Jameela: Yeah. We’re nice.

Dr. Ramani: We’re like, “Oh, they don’t mean it. They don’t mean it. Let’s be nice. Let’s give them a chance.” I’m like, “Oh,” if I had, you know, if I had a dollar for every person who got into a toxic relationship because of second chances, I’d be a very wealthy lady.

Jameela: Oh my God. Yeah. I mean, I did second, third, fourth, ninth, hundred chances. I just couldn’t seem to, I’m a tough cookie, but I just, I was totally sucked in, especially I think if you’re, I think if you experience that very young, you don’t even know that you’re maybe even, not to shame myself or anyone else, but maybe you’re going out looking for that because that feels familiar. But certainly if it does happen, even if you didn’t go looking for it, you’re so skilled at handling it that you maybe don’t even recognize what’s happening.

Dr. Ramani: Correct. I don’t think anybody’s looking for it. Like, I don’t think it’s an accident. Everyone’s like, “Hey, you know what? Tinder, looking for an abuser.” like, right? Swipe.

Jameela: No, but looking for maybe some of the treatment, you know, like you get treated badly. Maybe [00:35:00] there’s like certain elements of that treatment that feels familiar. And then that kind of tricks your brain into thinking, Oh, okay, I feel safe, but you’re not.

Dr. Ramani: Well, it’s also, that’s the trauma bond. It’s the familiarity, right? And so then it becomes not even looking for it, but like actually overlooking the people who are kind. So the person who has not worked through the trauma bonded cycles, when they’re on a date with somebody who’s kind, will say, kind of a yawn, or I sort of feel bored. And I’m like, “Give boredom a chance! Like, how about a second shot at boredom? Let’s try that, because I don’t know that this is boredom.” And it’s that idea of that trauma bonded kind of like, a cycle of, I’m going to work it through this time, that can often get people stuck in these sort of toxic relational cycles.

Jameela: Well, there’s also like two societal things that I think fuck us up really badly. One of them is the fact that fucking music and Hollywood really fucked us because they told us that we’re supposed to feel like we’re having a heart attack and we want to starve to death and you know, we, when we meet someone and it’s exciting, these things often are actually just anxiety. Which doesn’t necessarily mean you’re with someone dangerous or someone who’s bad [00:36:00] for you, but, you know, maybe that could be your own, like, personal anxiety, but I think I’ve noticed from looking back at my previous relationships, every time I felt like I was gonna sort of just shit myself, really, uh, with kind of, like, butterflies in my stomach and just felt so obsessed and consumed and like, you know, stopped talking to my friends and this, that, and the other, I was actually in the wrong relationship and my body was trying to say, “You don’t feel safe. This isn’t actually the thing that is most integral and like best for you.” And I almost wrote off the boy that I’m with now, I’ve been with for seven years or so because I yeah because I I just we both thought we were just friends who were shagging. You know, we, we didn’t, we didn’t think of it. We’re like, oh, this, like, this can’t be actually love because I don’t, you know, I don’t feel any of those things. But actually, we just felt immensely safe. And therefore, we dismissed the relationship for like ages, like nine months. We were just like, yeah, but we’re not in a relationship because we thought this can’t [00:37:00] be the thing that sustains you, whereas actually it’s been incredibly sustainable to love each other slowly and surely and kindly and carefully on our own pace. That is actually what can be sustained. You can’t ever sustain the heart attack and the emotions and the meatloaf songs. Not that anyone knows what I mean when I say meatloaf, I don’t mean the food, I mean the singer, right? But you know, so I feel like the romanticization of the panic and the anxiety and the drama, the mellow drama of love and how we’re always told, you know, look at the bad boy and she changes the bad boy and she turns him into the good guy. I’m speaking specifically around women because that’s most of what we see. I feel like that’s been extremely detrimental to my generation growing up and thinking, you can change him and like he’s the exciting one and the nice guy is just a bit dull.

Dr. Ramani: Well, we romanticize obsession. I mean, I think that that’s the problem. And that’s a really dangerous precedent because not only does it set up like you’re saying, if it’s not you staying up all night and not eating and, you know, you know, completely preoccupied, it’s not [00:38:00] love, but it also sets up something dangerous of people who are obsessive and maybe stocky and, and, um, intrusive and all of that. So this idea of romanticizing obsession, I think is a really problematic space. And this idea of slow love is a different game of like friendship, companionship. And when we think about it, people, there’s researchers like Dr. Pamela Regan and other people who study relationships who, you know, they talk about the cycle of love and that first bit of love, passionate love. Passionate love is that kind of it’s distractible. It’s all, you know, all consuming it, you know, we’re, we’re sort of swept away in some ways. We do isolate and all of that. The challenge with passionate love is that it’s not sustainable, right? It’s, it’s like, it’s like running all the air conditionings on high power. You know, at some point they’re going to burn out. Passionate love in a healthy relationship then transitions to something called companionate love. Companionate love is, is the long game. And companionate love is that mixture of intimacy, friendship, respect, growth orientation,

Jameela: Snacking.

Dr. Ramani: Snacking. Loving you, whether you put on the weight or not. It’s companionship. [00:39:00] That’s where the narcissists drop out. They’re not capable of the companionate love. They are rock stars at passionate love. Companionate love? Forget about it. Companionate love is what, that’s the person who’s going to wipe your ass when you’re 80 years old. Not the passionate love, narcissistic nonsense.

Jameela: They want the chaos because they thrive in the chaos and they can also keep you confused in the chaos. If there are still waters, it’s easier for you to maybe identify that something’s off. I also just want to quickly apologize for referring to James as a boy earlier because he’s a 33 grown man and it makes me sound like a pedo. Uh, so, uh, man.

Anyway, um, the other thing that you have touched on that feels extremely, uh, it really resonated with me is that there’s a kind of big culture of, you know, it’s a lovely culture, but it’s a culture of hopefulness and forgiveness that also means that we, especially women, but I think anyone of any gender can be full victim to this. I’ve certainly seen men that I know, um, in fact, a friend of mine was able to get out of his relationship [00:40:00] with a malignant narcissist because of your videos.

Dr. Ramani: Oh, thank you. I’m so glad.

Jameela: I sent him your videos and he was able to be freed and has recognized that his entire life has improved. So thank you for that.

Dr. Ramani: Thank you.

Jameela: But, but the kind of phenomenon or the culture of like hopefulness and forgiveness, can you explain how that’s been kind of detrimental to people feeling like they’re allowed to walk away?

Dr. Ramani: It’s huge. I mean, hope is what keeps narcissistic relationships going. And the hope is largely around the idea that they’re going to change, right? Which is a misplaced bet and it’s a fool’s errand. But I’ve known people that have hope keep them driving for 40 years. So it’s, it’s no joke with the hope. “Oh, it’s going to get better after the kids are grown. It’s going to get better when he gets a promotion. It’s going to get better when he retires.” It’s that hope is future faked hope, right? The forgiveness is even trickier. The entire canon of religion and everything is about forgiveness is divine. Forgiveness is great. Everything’s great with forgiveness. And there’s actually a really big body of literature that shows us forgiveness is great, I’d say, except where narcissism is concerned. I’m not a fan of forgiveness there because many times a person will [00:41:00] forgive the narcissist in some ways, say, “Look at me, I forgave them.” And then the narcissist just views that as permission, like, “Well, this is great. I can keep doing this stuff. And this person is going to keep forgiving me like, whoa, this is set up.” Right? This is great. Well, then the person who keeps forgiving them, they really start experiencing a betrayal trauma of having their trust betrayed. over and over and over again. And it really does a number on that forgiver, but we pressure people to forgive. Oh, you should forgive, to forgive is divine. Why are you holding it? As long as you hold this weight, you’re going to be dark. No, they’re not. They’ll forgive when they’re damn ready to forgive. We have got to stop pressuring people to forgive. And you know what? Some people never get to forgiveness and that’s okay. I tell all my survivors that I work with. I said, you know what? Well, here’s what I’m looking for for you. I want to get you to indifference. Forgive, don’t forgive, I don’t care. But I want you to indifference where you don’t care if the narcissist lives, you don’t care if they die, you don’t care if they win the lottery, you don’t care if they get married, you just don’t care. That’s healing to me. [00:42:00] I don’t care if you forgive them or not. And everybody pressures and shames survivors for not forgiving, and I think that’s a load of shit.

Jameela: Oh my god, I’m going to make that my ringtone. The amount of shit that I’ve gotten for the fact that I’m not a terribly forgiving person. I am for small things that I could see were just like a product of the, you know, the moment, but especially when it comes to abusive behavior or malignant, like premeditated abusive behavior and often that is committed by malignant narcissists, I just don’t do forgiveness. It just makes me ill. I just feel like I’m then doing all the work and it’s disingenuous for me, you know, and I really despise the culture around turn the other cheek. Be the bigger person, get on the higher horse. All of that to me just sounds like you, like it’s been that, that is a lie that has been created by abusers to somehow trick the abused into thinking that into feeling good about eating shit.

Dr. Ramani: Well, I think it’s also like, and it gets to be a tricky dance. I’ll say to people like, you can play the forgiveness game. You want to forgive them once, you [00:43:00] do you. However, if this person betrays your trust, then really it’s time, it’s time to cut the gravy train here, because I, as I do believe that in healthy relationships we all make mistakes, right? And if I believe that when I screw up, and I screw up all the time, and somebody forgives me, I feel as though they’ve given me the hope diamond. Like, I’m holding the most precious gift, like, that forever for the rest of my days, I will be mindful of not doing wrong, of attempting to communicate more clearly. Like, never committing that transgression again, because to do so would be to devalue this divine gift that this person has given me, right? And so that’s how forgiveness is supposed to work. Not we keep forgiving people, letting them transgress, and then letting again, that repeated betrayal trauma sense. It’s an awful feeling. But what we do is the survivors are already going through so much, they’re getting hurt by the narcissistic person and then we’re, we’re really doing a, we’re really doing them a disservice telling them they have to forgive. If people get there, then I say that’s great as long as it was an organic, [00:44:00] authentic process. But if you did this in response to people shaming you, hey, it’s not even an authentic process and they’re going to hurt you again, so that feels worse. At least if you don’t forgive them and they hurt you again, you’re gonna say, “Okay, this is just not a nice person.” But if you forgave them, a lot of people self blame and say, “I gave them permission to do that.”

Jameela: Yeah, a hundred percent.

Some of the questions that we got, a few people were asking why more men are inclined to show narcissistic traits than women. Do you even agree with that?

Dr. Ramani: So it’s tricky. So when we’re talking about those grandiose and malignant narcissists, it is. There are more men who are grandiose and malignant narcissists

Jameela: Because of socializing?

Dr. Ramani: And socializing and I’m using the gender binary, so I apologize for individuals who are non binary saying, where do I fall in this? We just don’t have the numbers on that. But it is a, we definitely see it’s something we see more in men. And I think a lot of it is [00:45:00] socialization. It’s, it’s how we shame emotion in boys and men. We don’t, we don’t give an outlet for that. I think we devalue empathy in men. We, a privilege is, is accorded to men. Um, so all of those things are going to, we talk about toxic masculinity, right? Toxic masculinity to me is just a cover word for narcissism because it manifests the same way. Now, when we talk about vulnerable narcissism, the more victimized, petulant, resentful,

Jameela: Covert, yeah.

Dr. Ramani: Covert, vulnerable model. Equal gender 50, it’s equal men and women. So there’s something about that grandiose presentation that’s definitely much more in the men, but the vulnerable presentations equal in men and women.

Jameela: Fascinating. And another thing a lot of people want to know is, can you stay with a narcissist?

Dr. Ramani: I’d say over half, I would say half, about half of people in relationships with narcissists do stay. So it’s not like you’re not in good company, right? But it’s a, people stay for reasons of minor children, money, religion, culture, fear, hope, [00:46:00] all of these things drive why people stay. So can you stay? Yeah, you can, can you? Yes. Is it going to be healthy? Probably not. Over the long term, it’ll take a toll on a person.

Jameela: Yeah, and also I can say from experience that confronting a narcissist and telling them that they’re a narcissist doesn’t work and it makes things really explosive and scary. It doesn’t, it’s not a wake up call. It can often lead to a really scary rage. I, I would now recommend, to be honest, even though it doesn’t really feel good because you don’t get to get it off your chest. I would recommend just, uh, not engaging. As soon as you work out you are around a narcissist with a narcissist, I would do your best to not try to fix or confront. I would just detach.

Dr. Ramani: Mm hmm. Yeah, well, I tell people that, you know, I have the, the Dr. Ramani’s rule of don’t go deep with the narcissist and that’s really, don’t defend yourself, don’t explain yourself, don’t engage and don’t personalize. And if you can do that with a narcissist, you’ll be good to go.

Jameela: Isn’t that fascinating? And so why? Why they don’t go deep? Just because they’ll fucking bamboozle you and turn it into a labyrinth.

Dr. Ramani: If [00:47:00] you defend yourself, they’re gonna word salad you, they’re gonna confuse you, they’re gonna gaslight you. It’s just gonna devolve into you ultimately getting raged at and insulted. Not good for you. The explaining yourself, once again, they’re not listening to you. They’re going to gaslight you. They’re going to twist your words. They’re going to use them against you. If you engage, it’s all pointless. And if you personalize, a lot of people say, well, what is it about me? I said, it’s not about you. You are interchangeable. Anybody sitting in your position is going to take this from them. You’re in the unfortunate position of being in this relationship, but anyone in that relationship. So they’re no, they’re not going to change for the next person. The next person is getting the same narcissistic person you were with. You know, they may just experience them differently because of their own history, but they’re still treating them badly.

Jameela: Someone’s asked, is it ever worth just appeasing a narcissist?

Dr. Ramani: Well, I think a lot of people do appease narcissists. The question is how long can you keep that game going? I’ve known people, Jameela, who’ve done it for a lifetime, you know, because it’s really the only path forward is to appease them. And appeasing

Jameela: Happens a lot in the workspace, I find, especially in my industry. It’s like, you just, you almost, I [00:48:00] almost feel like I haven’t thought this through so bear with, but I almost feel like some people utilize the fact that someone’s a narcissist, they’re going to go out of their way and do all the ruthless shit and if you just stay on their good side, then you will continue to benefit from the gravy boat, you know, that’s being acquired by the narcissist as long as you appease all of their, their wills and their, you know, their desires and you don’t ever cross them. You’re completely malleable to their needs, then you can benefit from all the shit that they acquire, all the power they acquire.

Dr. Ramani: Right, and appeasing really does, and if you do, if a person appeases for long enough, that’s enabling. Short term appeasing, what is sort of sprinting appeasing, I also call it fluffing, is this idea of like, I have got to survive in this job. Entertainment industry is a great example. I’ve got to get through this production. I’ve got to get through this episode. So I’m just going to appease this person so I can get my paycheck and go. But to have to do that for years, that’s enabling. And it’s not good for anybody.

Jameela: Yes, absolutely. It’s not good for your own soul. At some point, [00:49:00] you are just going to, you are going to break. And someone wrote in saying, “Am I selfish or self compassionate or a narcissist?” Which I think is, you know, kind of takes us all the way back to the beginning of this chat. But I do think that that’s something that could concern people because, you know, I, again, you and I, when we were talking on the phone, I was telling you that I feel frustrated when a lot of my friends just go like, “Oh, he was such a narc. He was such a narcissist.” Just because someone’s selfish, someone isn’t like being going out of their way to help them. Someone is self concerned. And I, that person just might be a bit of a dick and it’s hard to be able to differentiate.

Dr. Ramani: Yeah, it is. I mean, again, someone being a dick does not necessarily mean they’re being a narcissistic and we’re looking for that consistency across a wide variety of situations, relationships and that long, that list I gave you of the entitlement, lack of empathy, et cetera.

If a person is stopping to say, am I narcissistic? I’m already saying, I don’t know if you are because you’re self aware enough to question something and a person might say, I don’t know, a person may say, “You know what? [00:50:00] Like I often will put my family out of other people or something like that. And isn’t that selfish and does that make me narcissistic?” You know, I’d want to, I’d want to poke in there and say, do you have empathy for other people or, or are you, um, are you entitled? Do you believe you’re entitled to special treatment? By the time we’re done, what you recognize is the people who are walking around saying I’m narcissistic are in fact, people who are sort of, self monitoring themselves so closely that if they’re not on point all the time, they think they’re being narcissistic. And I’ve known many people in narcissistic relationships are accused of being narcissistic because they don’t give in to everything the narcissist wants. So the narcissist will say, “Well, you’re the narcissist and you’re,” and it’s because you’re not doing everything they want. And then some people will believe that.

Jameela: That is, and also, you get accused of being selfish if you don’t bend to their every single whim. Yeah, I definitely been on the receiving end of that and so have a few of my friends. Oh my goodness, so much food for thought. Thank you so much for breaking this down in a way that was so, it’s been so just easy to [00:51:00] understand, easy to identify. This work is so important and I think that the way in which you communicate is very empowering. And it doesn’t shame people who fall victim to this and you’re sort of in your own way not also not really shaming the person you’re explaining them, but it’s so kind of almost beyond their own control that there’s no point shaming them.

Dr. Ramani: I think it’s more in their control. I mean, I think the way I see it is, is that at any given time, unless a person is psychotic or has had some form of sort of central nervous system damage, anyone, every behavior we engage in is a choice. It’s always a choice.

Jameela: But you’re saying we can’t undo it, that’s all.

Dr. Ramani: You know, but I’m saying that if a person is choosing to be unempathic, if a person’s choosing to go and scream at a server in a restaurant or scream at a flight attendant or

Jameela: 100%.

Dr. Ramani: That’s a choice. And so they’re choosing to behave this way and I have a problem with that. My only hope for them is to say, listen, if you’re willing to do the work, put your head down, take accountability, take ownership, [00:52:00] do the deep dive, figuring out what’s in your backstory that made you like this. Then, then you’ll be the unicorn. You can be that unicorn who actually does the work and comes out the other side as a person who is narcissistic and says, “You know, from here on forward, I’m going to be mindful.” A lot of narcissistic folks who’ve actually done the therapeutic work will say, “You know what? This is too exhausting. I think other people are idiots. I think their feelings are stupid, but I don’t want to hurt them, so I’m going to cut off from all of them.” Okay.

Jameela: Right.

Dr. Ramani: That’s better than you hurting them.

Jameela: So even if they can’t get rid of it, they can kind of almost cognitive behavioral therapy or something their way to, they can micromanage themselves to at least cover up or suppress the parts that make life difficult for the people around them.

Dr. Ramani: If they, if they choose to. I, I, I’m going to tell you now, I’ve been doing this for a long time and I haven’t really seen someone get there. I mean, I’ve seen some shifts, I’ve seen some slight improvements sometimes. Sometimes age makes it worse. Sometimes age softens the rough edges, it really depends. You know, by and large, when a person gets older, they may not have access to as many people to hurt, if you will. But [00:53:00] I, I’ve not, I mean, again, I’m telling people what I observed, seen, read about. There’s just, there’s never been a single randomized clinical trial that has tested the utility of various psychotherapies in people of narcissistic personalities. We just don’t know. But talk to any therapists out there, They’ll say, yeah, there’s probably not much we can do.

Jameela: Yeah. This is kind of what I meant with the kind of like, Oh, just give up, just get away from them. Try to get away from them if you can.

Dr. Ramani: Yeah. It’s radical acceptance and realistic expectations. They’re not going to change. And if this is someone you can’t eliminate from your life, instead of driving yourself mad and exhausting yourself by trying to change it, you kind of have to shrug yourself. It’s sort of like, if you live in Seattle, it’s going to rain a lot. And if you’re surprised when it rains a lot, I’m like, yo, you live in Seattle. You know, so that it’s going to rain, like, accept that this is what this relationship is going to be. And if you’re stuck in such a situation for whatever it may, reason it may be, to encourage people. Cultivate other supports, cultivate friendships, have meaningful activities in your life. Like whatever you can do to enhance the rest of your life, you ain’t going to get that enhancement from the [00:54:00] narcissistic relationship.

Jameela: Yeah, and it’s very important to also do things that help you hold on to yourself because the fundamental objective of narcissists in particular that we’re close to, malignant narcissists is to force us to lose our identity because then we’re much more malleable to whatever they want us to be. So do everything in your power to hold on to the things that are just yours, that are your identity, that you can’t have taken away from you.

You’re a fascinating human and I hope we get to talk to you again sometime. Thank you for answering the questions from the listeners. Thank you for answering all of my questions and you’re the best. I will, I hope everyone watches all your videos and follows you online and reads your books because you are, again, as I said at the top, just such a needed voice. Thank you so much, Dr. Ramani.

Dr. Ramani: Thank you, Jameela. I appreciate you.

Jameela: Thank you so much for listening to this week’s episode. I Weigh [00:55:00] With Jameela Jamil is produced and researched by myself, Jameela Jamil, Erin Finnegan, Kimmie Gregory, and Amelia Chappelow. And the beautiful music that you are hearing now is made by my boyfriend, James Blake. And if you haven’t already, please rate, review, and subscribe to the show. It’s such a great way to show your support and helps me out massively. And lastly, at I Weigh, we would love to hear from you and share what you weigh at the end of this podcast. Please email us a voice recording, sharing what you weigh at iweighpodcast@gmail.com.