00:00:20.360We have a really great new podcast for your ears today.
00:00:24.520I love this one because I love Amanda Montel,
00:00:28.020And you guys know how much I love her. We have had her on the show a bunch of times. But since we had her on the show, since we had her on the show, her book hit the New York Times bestseller list. Yeah, it did. The Age of Magical Overthinking Notes on Modern Irrationality is a New York Times bestseller because Amanda is a badass. And now, and now, she has a brand new podcast for us.
00:00:54.800And we're going to drop a whole episode into our feed today as a treat.
00:00:59.340The pod is called Magical Overthinkers, and this is the very first episode.
00:01:04.780If you love it, you can find Magical Overthinkers on all of your podcast places,
00:01:09.380and you can follow them on the Instagram at Magical Overthinkers.
00:01:13.880Today's episode is about overthinking narcissism.
00:01:17.940Is it just us? Or does American culture have narcissism fever?
00:01:22.260According to Amanda, between 2004 and 2016, the volume of Google searches for the word
00:02:46.860Both the book and the show were inspired by the observation that from extreme celebrity worshippers to scammy TikTok therapists, there is just a lot of nonsense out there these days.
00:03:00.120As I mentioned, we're living in the so-called information age, but why does more information seem to cause the world to make less sense?
00:03:09.000If you identify as an overthinker, but also maybe a little bit delulu sometimes, or just someone who's always asking what the hell is wrong with people's brains these days, including and especially your own, my hope is for the show to dial down the noise in our brains a little bit, at least to a decibel level we can stand.
00:03:29.340Every other week on the Magical Overthinkers podcast, I'll focus on some buzzy subject many of us can't stop overthinking about, from narcissism to monogamy to nostalgia.
00:03:41.920Each episode will open with a mini audio essay of sorts, followed by an interview with a brilliant expert guest, from philosophers to psychologists to authors, where I'll ask them the sorts of unfiltered questions that only an overthinker would ask.
00:03:59.020And then I'll close out every episode with a simple but actionable tidbit of advice for how we overthinkers can get out of our heads this week.
00:04:08.720This podcast is basically a thought spiraler's guide to the zeitgeist's most curious and most anxiety provoking topics.
00:04:17.200It's a show for people who want to think less about the things that don't matter and more about the things that do.
00:04:23.380I guess when I think of what magical overthinking means, I think of the clash between the excess of information that we're confronted with every day and our natural human coping mechanisms and superstitions and decision-making strategies, which are not perfectly rational.
00:04:41.460I, like a lot of people in 21st century America, feel overwhelmed, burnt out on screens, and so isolated that I guess I've kind of lost trust in my own ability to make wise choices or judgments about a subject, which doesn't exactly inspire hope in other people's judgments either.
00:05:00.660The digital age seems to cause us to overthink and underthink all the wrong things.
00:05:05.580For example, why do I feel 100% confident diagnosing my ex with narcissistic personality disorder?
00:05:14.360But overanalyzing some irrelevant Instagram comment will keep me up at night for weeks on end.
00:05:20.760I don't know if anyone else can relate to this, but sometimes when a thought spiral is living proverbially rent-free in my head,
00:05:28.480I will overanalyze it to death, Google it to death, as if the act of typing my feelings and
00:05:35.020irrational thoughts to a robot will make them go away. Or as if coming up with the perfect
00:05:40.780synthesis of logic or explanation will help me control the situation. It's totally Delulu.
00:05:47.400Because overthinking about a subject has literally never helped anyone think about that subject less.
00:05:52.380You know, like how doing a whole bunch of cocaine never made anyone want to do less cocaine? It's
00:05:58.000just not how this behavior works. The only times I've ever really been able to release a thought
00:06:03.240spiral was after I got the chance to talk about it with an expert much wiser and better informed
00:06:09.120than me about the topic. Connecting with scholars and having real human conversations with them
00:06:14.420always helps me feel closure and even instills in me a sense of hope that allows me to let go
00:06:21.040of that particular strain of overthinking. That's the journey I hope to take us all on today.
00:06:26.180This show is here to make some sense of the senseless, to help us quiet the cacophony in our minds for a while, or even hear a melody in it.
00:06:36.300On to today's topic, overthinking about narcissism.
00:06:41.220I actually vividly remember the first time I heard the word narcissism.
00:06:45.980It was in Disney's Hercules, you know, that cartoon movie.
00:06:50.280There was some funny bit that I remember seeing as a kid where the god Narcissus was obsessed with his own reflection.
00:06:57.560Fabulous party. You know, I haven't seen this much love in a room since Narcissus discovered himself.
00:07:02.560It was funny. I didn't really understand it.
00:07:05.520But as I got older, that really informed my perception of what a narcissist was.
00:07:10.300Some attention-seeking, braggadocious blowhard who was obsessed with their own reflection and everybody knew it.
00:07:17.840Fortunately, growing up, I don't think I ever really met anyone quite like that.
00:07:22.880Then by the time I was in my late 20s and was really developing an interest in psychology, mental health, the word had gotten so trendy.
00:07:32.080According to Google's Ngram viewer, which tracks a word's popularity in written texts over time,
00:07:38.540narcissism has been escalating in usage every single year and has yet to reach its peak.
00:07:43.800Google Trends reflected that the volume of searches for the word narcissist had grown exponentially between the years 2004 and 2016.
00:09:29.660Terms like validating feelings or even more diagnostic terminology like trauma and anxiety.
00:09:36.480But this mainstreaming is also a double-edged sword.
00:09:39.640On one hand, it's amazing that we're now talking about how the end of the world makes us feel.
00:09:43.460But on the other hand, some people are using what sound like helpful mental health diagnoses,
00:09:49.380but are actually sometimes just self-misdiagnoses from TikTok, as excuses to mistreat others.
00:09:56.540And that really put me off therapy speak altogether.
00:09:59.220So when I would hear people throwing around terms like narcissism, I would think that's not real.
00:10:04.760Or if it is real, it's not even helpful.
00:10:06.660Then I started writing this chapter of my book that talks about overconfidence bias.
00:10:11.460And as I was doing my research for that chapter, I came across this really fascinating article in the publication Scientific American titled What is Narcissism?
00:10:20.420Science Confronts a Widely Misunderstood Phenomenon by Diana Kwan.
00:10:24.360And this article completely disrupted that misconception I'd had of narcissism as this cartoonish self-obsession that is now being tossed around as a meaningless pseudo-diagnosis.
00:10:36.820This article said that narcissism can actually be a lot subtler than that.
00:10:41.140The article said, quote, although most people are familiar with the grandiose version of narcissism as displayed by an arrogant and pompous person who craves attention, the god, narcissists, and Hercules, the disorder also comes in a vulnerable or covert form where individuals suffer from internal distress and fluctuations in self-esteem, unquote.
00:11:03.340The thing that these seeming opposites have in common is an extreme preoccupation with the self.
00:11:09.040It just shows up differently depending on the person.
00:11:30.320Not in a lot of people in my life, by any means, that would be suspicious, but I can sure think of a few examples.
00:11:37.880Like, say, that former college friend of my partner's who was so funny and the life of the party, but terrified everyone around him and would use stories of his tough upbringing as an excuse for the most bone-chilling, selfish behavior.
00:11:53.200Or my friend's sibling, who uses access to her niece as currency to manipulate the family.
00:12:00.220Or that old colleague who had such a fluent seeming hold on therapy language and was always
00:12:06.100talking about boundaries and, oh, I'm an empath, meanwhile keeping everyone around them in a state
00:12:12.520of self-questioning. Until the first person to break the silence helped everyone else understand
00:12:16.760that the common denominator in us all feeling like we had to walk on eggshells all the time
00:12:22.040was this very person who was always talking about how they were so emotionally intelligent.
00:12:26.100I then became absolutely obsessed with learning more about what narcissism really was.
00:12:32.880Not only because it was personally validating, but also because human personalities are so interesting,
00:12:39.080especially these days when there are so many weird influences shaping us, like social media.
00:12:45.900Lord knows, as soon as I started Googling narcissism, developing an interest in narcissism,
00:12:51.400my algorithm figured me out and Instagram started serving me a deluge of reels and quote grams
00:12:59.100talking about narcissism. I remember there was one posted by the narcissism expert, Dr. Ramani
00:13:04.840Durvasala, who was talking about narcissism math. Everybody shout out an example in the comments of
00:13:10.680your experience of narcissism math. And I couldn't help myself. I was like, oh my God, narcissism
00:13:16.380math is that thing when you go to confront someone about their behavior. And then by the end of the
00:13:20.860conversation, you end up being the one apologizing for that same thing. Post, post, post. And all
00:13:26.340these likes flooded in and everyone was like, that's so true. And then I got to feel good about
00:13:30.260myself for clocking narcissism math. And then I was like, wait, no, hold on a second. Am I really
00:13:37.020learning about narcissism in a way that's helpful to me? Or are these algorithms just serving me
00:13:43.180what I want to hear? These sort of reductive nuggets of wisdom about the topic that I'm now
00:13:49.160internalizing as absolutist ground truth, as if I'm some sort of therapist now, I thought, wait,
00:13:55.980am I now becoming one of those annoying people who can't stop talking about narcissism and other
00:14:01.680people's narcissism? At a point, is this even a productive exercise or has it gone too far?
00:14:07.160Should I just go back to writing off this term since half the research I've come across says
00:14:12.400these people almost never seek treatment for or remedy their behaviors anyway? God, now I'm so
00:14:17.860hyper-focused on diagnosing other people's narcissism, does that make me some kind of
00:14:22.760narcissist? Or is that the cycle of overthinking that narcissists want to keep you in? This is
00:14:29.140the kind of thought spiral I entered and could not find my way out of. The only true solution
00:14:36.120I could think of to put this overthinking to bed was to go to the source, Dr. Rahmani Dervasala,
00:14:42.140the high priestess of narcissism. Dr. Rahmani is a licensed clinical psychologist in Los Angeles
00:14:49.080who has made understanding narcissism her life's work. She's the host of the incredible podcast
00:14:54.640Navigating Narcissism and is the author of several books, including her most recent,
00:14:59.520the New York Times bestseller, It's Not You. I got the chance to interview Dr. Rahmani about
00:15:04.340her expertise, bringing to her not the most poised questions, not the most sensible ones,
00:15:10.480but the ones that I hoped would finally help me navigate my way out of this thought spiral.
00:16:12.060Every day, every, especially now, as you can imagine.
00:16:15.100And, you know, I mean, it's like I'm such a preparer that I've already prepared for what it's going to be like for me when that doesn't happen.
00:16:21.400And like I literally my staff is like quickly creating my depression days like I'm on it.
00:16:31.880I completely relate to the idea of you prepare, you prepare, you prepare endlessly, and then it just makes you more attached to an outcome that really doesn't have anything to do with your self-worth, but we're living under toxic productivity culture, so how could it not?
00:16:49.660Anyone who's ever put a great deal of effort into a project that they thought at the beginning maybe didn't mean that much to them, but by the end they're like, oh my god, this is entirely who I am, can relate.
00:16:58.680All right. So we're here overthinking about narcissism. I just, oh man, my personal journey
00:17:05.660with this word and this concept has been pretty dramatic. My first question on the topic at hand
00:17:10.960for you is just why has this word blown up so much recently? Is narcissism actually more common due
00:17:17.840to factors like social media's role in encouraging us all to be more self-focused and attention
00:17:22.700seeking? Or are we just more aware of narcissism thanks to the increase in mental health discourse
00:17:28.160or both i think there's there's greater awareness certainly and i think what social media has done
00:17:33.360is taken an existing issue that's already always been there and it's amplified it so i'm not
00:17:37.500certainly going to sit here and say social media has increased narcissism narcissism is a social
00:17:41.300and emotional developmental phenomenon that plays out through childhood and adolescence and since a
00:17:45.560four-year-old child is not playing with social media this is not what's doing it now could it
00:17:49.900be that the child is getting a message of overvaluation based on doing cute things and
00:17:54.160very much recognizes if I do the cute thing for the camera, because my parents want to get likes,
00:17:58.660I mean, we're waiting for those chickens to come home to roost, basically, to see what that data
00:18:02.060looks like, because we're not even at pretty much 20 full years, I think, on social media,
00:18:06.280and it was a meaningful phenomenon. So I think that the word is out there more because I mean,
00:18:10.740there were things that happened in world politics, and I'm not even just going to say American
00:18:13.760politics, world politics in the last 15 years, where we've seen this sort of rise in authoritarian
00:18:18.960leadership, and authoritarian leaders are all narcissistic. So I think that the term people
00:18:23.400trying to understand how can people behave like this. And I do think that there has been an opening
00:18:27.680of a conversation that this level of selfishness in a relationship is not okay. And some people
00:18:32.600would view this as anti-patriarchy work. It really depends on what angle you're coming at,
00:18:36.260because it's really the sense of the permission we give to some people to destabilize, dominate,
00:18:41.100overpower people. That to me falls under a lot of sorts of movements in this world. So I think
00:18:46.100that now that we're seeing that it's happening, a word that often is being referred to big things
00:18:50.260applies to smaller relationships, just individual relationships. But I think this has always been
00:18:55.280a theme in relationships. You know, when you read the essays and everything on unhappy marriages
00:18:59.780over time, I think a lot of them were probably narcissistic relationships. There was just simply
00:19:04.260no vocabulary. And there was a sense of grudging acceptance that this is sort of the lot,
00:19:08.700particularly of women to be in these relationships. Wow, that's fascinating. Yeah, I do think we
00:19:14.940over credit social media with a lot of cultural despair and I hadn't really considered the role
00:19:20.860of these very prominent authoritarian political narcissists in granting us cultural permission
00:19:27.960to kind of follow suit and then of course yeah the the language is right there to help us describe
00:19:33.920those things so I always thought that narcissists were like outwardly obsessed with themselves
00:19:39.800very clearly selfish, that they never expressed anything even resembling empathy. On that note,
00:19:47.100can you list some of the most common myths about narcissism?
00:19:51.580So the most common myths, some of them are include that narcissistic people are always men.
00:19:55.600Not true. I mean, enough people have narcissistic mothers to know that it's not just limited
00:20:00.220to men, that it's just simply selfishness, bragging or arrogance. Those are certainly
00:20:04.880elements of narcissism, but that's not all of it. It's a lot more nuanced, takes in a lot more
00:20:08.920territory around entitlement and that variable empathy and the incapacity for deep sustained
00:20:14.620intimate relationships and then there's lots of behaviors we see in it so it's not just that
00:20:18.780simple a thing there's also the myth that they can't help it they just can't help themselves but
00:20:23.620enough people have seen narcissistic people who are able to be absolutely charming with the ceo
00:20:29.120on the golf course and then come right home and scream at their partner or their kids in a really
00:20:33.420cruel way they can be super attentive to their bosses oh isn't it your little daughter's birthday
00:20:38.520today but then be contemptuous in their family if attention is being given to their own children so
00:20:43.280that ability to go on off means that they know what good behavior looks like and they turn it
00:20:47.160on for people that they value so this isn't just them you know not having any control over all of
00:20:52.120this and that narcissistic people that this is a disease that can be treated and so that it's just
00:20:56.840a matter of getting these folks into therapy and everything will be fine there's little evidence to
00:21:00.540show that there's any therapy out there that can really significantly shift personality the best
00:21:05.140we can hope to do shift their behaviors but if they don't think there's anything wrong with their
00:21:08.160behaviors, that's going to be a really tough buy-in. Oh, that is the ultimate trouble with
00:21:12.940this disorder condition sequence of symptoms. We'll get into it. But yeah, this is something
00:21:17.740that I can't stop overthinking about personally is like, if you have depression, ostensibly you're
00:21:22.840motivated to want to cure it as soon as you recognize it or heal it in some way. And that
00:21:28.480doesn't seem to apply to narcissism, but we'll get there. But before we do, I do want to talk
00:21:33.740about some of the causes of narcissism there's so much discussion of like nature versus nurture
00:21:38.960so can you talk about the idea of narcissists being born versus made well they're made it's
00:21:45.320definitely nurture this is again like a social and emotional developmental phenomenon which is
00:21:49.440how personality is shaped we are born with what we are called what's called a temperament the
00:21:53.940temperament is almost like a biological aspect of personality it's why babies some babies are
00:21:58.020super easy to soothe and are smiley and some babies are just a real handful and it's just
00:22:02.980hard for anyone to soothe them or manage them. And they just sort of seem unhappy from the day
00:22:06.920they're born kind of thing. They're often more behaviorally difficult and challenging for the
00:22:11.020adults in their midst. We call that the more difficult temperaments become sort of a biological
00:22:15.260vulnerability. Temperament. Now, if that biological vulnerability, that so-called temperament,
00:22:20.200comes up against an invalidating environment, for example, one in which there's adversity,
00:22:25.200trauma, neglect, emotional abuse, chaos, you know, other adversities, like that combination
00:22:31.540can set someone up more likely to develop a personality style that could be considered to
00:22:36.600be more antagonistic or narcissistic. But we also know that narcissistic people can be developed out
00:22:41.960of being told that they're too special and more wonderful than anyone else and more special than
00:22:46.280anyone else. They often have parents who are themselves quite entitled and really raise their
00:22:51.680children. These children often don't learn to regulate their emotions. They really are sort of
00:22:55.900indoctrinated to believe that they are more special. And the parents are often quite available
00:23:00.320materially or to cheer them on when they're doing the things that the parent wants, but they're often
00:23:04.540not there to emotionally nurture these children. Again, teach them how to self-soothe, all of that.
00:23:09.680Now, the thing I want to say is that even though this is, it's nurture and it's made,
00:23:13.420not all children who come up in these pathways are going to become narcissistic. In fact,
00:23:17.600the vast majority don't. Most children who grow up under conditions of adversity,
00:23:21.560depending on how severe it is, some may develop complex trauma, some may develop anxiety disorders,
00:23:27.140Some may just simply have, you know, decrements and self-esteem that dog them for a lifetime,
00:23:30.880but that's where we tend to see that go.
00:23:32.780And even those kids that are overindulged, most of them don't go on to become narcissistic.
00:23:36.640Some may feel a sense of shame, you know, that they're not living up to the so-called
00:23:39.960specialness that their parents sort of set them up for.
00:23:42.540Some may simply gravitate out of that in some way, not sort of by the parental hype, but
00:23:47.460neither of these pathways are, if you will, a guarantee.
00:23:50.660So while it is shaped by early environment, it's why we could see in one family, and you
00:23:54.900see that there's multiple siblings that one sibling's narcissistic and the rest aren't,
00:23:59.900but they were raised under relatively similar conditions.
00:24:49.520Most of their scientific research also suggests vulnerable narcissism might be the better name for that. The vulnerable narcissism, to some degree, maybe some of the malignant narcissism may come out of these kinds of origins, because really what's happening is that the child's developing sense of self is shut down, shut down, shut down.
00:25:04.920So then the child develops a series of grandiose defenses to sort of maintain a healthier version of themselves, a more desirable version of themselves.
00:25:12.320Those grandiose defenses persist into adulthood.
00:25:14.940So the trauma breaks the kid down and the child is still trying to survive in the world.
00:25:18.760So the grandiose defenses that become a protection once they're still hanging around in adulthood are not good for them.
00:25:24.360Right. So there are certain people who maybe are what we might call like, dare I say, a spoiled brat who then grow up to be adult narcissists.
00:25:32.560And then there are people who kind of grow out of it.
00:25:34.440so like what can help you grow out of it well that's the challenge is that you know it's very
00:25:40.840rare for a 22 year old narcissist to show up in therapy right it's very rare for a 22 year old
00:25:46.120to show up in therapy so a 22 year old you know who is bragging about their lives and thinking
00:25:51.360i'm all that and i'm so great and is you know living their life online and looking for admiration
00:25:56.020and looking for likes and you know wanting to drive in a fast car whatever wanting to show
00:26:00.380off themselves. That's not someone who's likely to show up in therapy. If anything, the odds on
00:26:05.320favorite of why you might see that 22 year old narcissistic person in therapy, it might be
00:26:09.720addiction or something like that. Some other co-occurring issue. Addiction is a great example
00:26:14.260because they may be trying to regulate these emotions that may be sort of all over the map
00:26:18.160for them. But the problem is most addiction medicine or treatment centers, they don't pick
00:26:22.680up on it. They pick up on the addiction, the addiction, the addiction, the addiction,
00:26:26.040but the narcissism is often underlying it and can make treatment a lot more difficult,
00:26:29.820but they aren't going to get into therapy. So like what could change it would be doing that
00:26:33.520work early on. But otherwise what might happen is as they come up through adolescence and through
00:26:37.580early adulthood, many narcissistic people either will be very almost Machiavellian with their
00:26:42.460parents. They'll figure out which parent has the money and they will form their alliance with them
00:26:46.320and be what they want to be. Or they will be very manipulative with their parents and so manipulative
00:26:51.180that they're getting money from their parents or their parents are always cutting them slack or
00:26:54.380the parents are letting them live rent free forever, but also sort of wreak havoc in the
00:26:57.940household you know they're not responsible and they don't make them take responsibility and so
00:27:02.120that almost continues the dynamic that was established in childhood so that can happen
00:27:06.840too and the parents are getting more and more frustrated but they don't know what to do and
00:27:09.900they've only been doing it this one way and so that can also be sort of what kind of gets it
00:27:14.060stuck but you know it's it would be great if you could intervene with people like in their early
00:27:18.10020s but personality is still shaping out that time like a lot of teenagers are grandiose a lot
00:27:23.260of teenagers are sort of all over the map a lot of teenagers emotions are very labile and again
00:27:28.360very chaotic and as they grow out of that and they kind of as the jello mold sets into something more
00:27:33.420solid then we see a more stable adult but that's around the time we can figure out whether or not
00:27:38.160this person is just behaving like an adolescent or whether they're behaving like a true narcissistic
00:27:42.020person wow so this sends me invariably down the thought spiral of like did narcissists exist in
00:27:50.900the hunter-gatherer period. That is my Roman empire, proverbially. Did we have such personality
00:27:56.860disorders before modernity? Yeah, I would guess so. I would actually guess that you had him more
00:28:01.420in the hunters than in the gatherers. If you look in the work of Robert Sapolsky, who is a
00:28:06.160neuroscientist who's on the faculty at Stanford, has written brilliant books, and I think one of
00:28:09.800the great, great thinkers of our time. His most recent, well, his second most recent book, he has
00:28:13.940a very recent book on free will. The one right before that is called Behave. It was really about
00:28:17.780sort of why we behave badly. And, you know, I'm kind of giving the sort of the very CliffsNotes
00:28:21.840version of it here in the very summarized version. But he would argue that, first of all,
00:28:25.320we're not a nice species. We were meaner to each other throughout history than we are now,
00:28:28.960believe it or not. So we're more, I think, psychologically mean, but I think from a
00:28:32.400physical aggression, willing to enslave people, willing to dehumanize people and torture people,
00:28:38.420that definitely was our root. So, you know, club people in the head, human beings are not nice.
00:28:43.060Totally, totally. I think about this all the time, because there's one theme in my most recent book where I address this idea of declinism or this, you know, fallacious perception that life and society are only getting progressively worse and worse and worse and worse, even if only certain things like climate change might be getting worse. But no, I think you're totally right. We forget that like people mistreated each other worse, you know, 20,000 years ago.
00:29:05.420So the argument he would make is like, for example, the hunters, they're putting all their resource into getting one thing, right? Those hunters then started becoming herders. And that's when people started getting really mean. Because you can't steal a field, but you can steal a cow or a goat. And so now this sense of one person had more goats, like a gathering agrarian economy requires more cooperation, whereas a hunting or a herding doesn't.
00:29:33.900And if you can even sort of see even some of our current world conflicts, the way they've sort of spread out from were people more agrarian or were they more sort of hunter herder kind of thing.
00:29:42.680And so the way that one person could have more and then they would have more control because they have control over the most important thing, which was food.
00:29:50.420And so I know it's always been a thing.
00:29:52.480The history books are only written about narcissistic people because they're the only people who would have made history.
00:29:57.540So we're not reading about the kindly empathic baker or the really sweet woman who raised her children well.
00:30:03.580We're not reading about them. We are reading about the narcissistic warriors, the narcissistic leaders, the narcissistic explorers, the narcissistic colonizers.
00:30:12.720All of these are the people that are our history books. So that's already the bias in terms of what we read about.
00:30:17.900These were the people who were garnering all that attention, needed all that attention at that time.
00:30:22.540So I think we've always had narcissism. And if you even look at sort of, you know, when the early Greek and Roman physicians were back and talking about bodily humors and all that stuff, some of their writing really did imply that there was a selfishness type. And they were already coming up on that. There were some people who just were more about themselves. Look at how the Roman emperors conducted themselves. It was narcissism and psychopathy all around.
00:30:45.720So I think that we have to remember it's always been around.
00:30:48.440And in fact, yes, the economics of a culture of a civilization might have dictated whether
00:30:53.320narcissism, frankly, was a more adaptive quality in that particular situation, at least
00:30:58.040economically, you know, and because lifespans were shorter, we really weren't thinking about
00:31:02.380this idea of a long term sustained relationship.
00:31:19.700I mean, it's hard not to notice that there aren't quite as many women in the history books.
00:31:24.700And so that brings me to the question of how narcissism shows up differently depending on gender.
00:31:29.200Well, so what we know is that grandiose, again, I'm going to be using the binary for now because that is how the research has been done.
00:31:34.680So obviously, as time goes on and we have, you know, some more clear understanding of gender identity, we'll have hopefully research that captures that.
00:31:40.960But this is how the research has been done.
00:31:42.420And so the grandiose narcissism is more common in men. Malignant narcissism appears to be more
00:31:48.300common in men, but vulnerable narcissism, the more resentful, sullen, passive aggressive kind
00:31:54.320of narcissism that's equal across genders. And so it may part of this may be a socialization effect
00:31:59.640that women are not socialized to be sort of walking around and engaging in trash talk and0.99
00:32:04.620pridefulness and all of that. So that may not be selected for, but that kind of victimized approach1.00
00:32:10.980that might be more socialized for. And so when that narcissism presents in women, it does tend0.84
00:32:15.080to present more that way. I mean, we also can't exclude social influences, right? So I have no0.85
00:32:20.700doubt that there were many narcissistic women throughout history, but there were not the0.99
00:32:24.740abilities for that woman to get into positions where she would be able to make history into1.00
00:32:29.500leadership. She didn't have the same stage, but those narcissistic women have always been there.1.00
00:32:33.240And I've no doubt, like when we read about women rulers, you hear about the 15, 1600s,0.92
00:32:37.440Queen Elizabeth, she was probably deeply narcissistic. And so we definitely hear about0.51
00:32:41.900women rulers who might have come along and they don't sound like very nice people. My guess is0.99
00:32:46.340they were narcissistic as well. Oh, God. You want to impress them on a first date,
00:32:51.420but also play it cool. So what do you do? I'm Rufy Thorpe, and I wrote and read a real love
00:32:58.160story about a hinged couple that navigated exactly that. Listen to the free audiobook now.
00:33:03.400This is a question that I also I can't stop pondering if you can even answer it. What does it feel like to be a narcissist? I'm desperate to have some kind of model because in their bodies and minds, I can't imagine it's very comfortable. How does that show up?
00:42:50.040And I'm telling you, there's people out there who are called NPD that are less severe with their narcissism than people who are narcissistic.
00:43:13.580Yeah, I think we really just want to understand ourselves and figure out what's causing us discomfort or emotional pain.
00:43:20.940But this brings me to my next question, and I just have a few more, and then we're going to do a little lightning round.
00:43:25.840I cited a study in my new book that talks about how increased science literacy doesn't actually make a person better at identifying real facts,
00:43:34.060but instead just makes a person better equipped to use science to defend their existing beliefs.
00:43:38.400It's a scary notion. But on that note, now that the word narcissist and NPD, God forbid, and therapy speak in general are so diffuse, do you think narcissists can more easily weaponize mental health jargon to get in front of the narrative and continue harming others?
00:43:53.100They do it all the time. And what this does is they can, they will weaponize it.
00:43:56.660I've heard everything from people alleging, despite having tremendous social skill and
00:44:01.420social processing skill, weaponizing everything from I'm neurodivergent to I'm on the spectrum
00:49:02.980Then that leaves this little group who says, yeah, I'm those things. And, oh, I've hurt people. And I didn't want to hurt people. And that was never what I was setting out to do. And I can see how I've hurt whomever they've hurt in their lives and say, I want to stop. And they will go into therapy. These are more often the people who have adversity in their backstory, too. These are people who might have had the histories of trauma and neglect and all that.
00:49:27.660and they get into therapy, particularly good trauma informed therapy, and you might be able
00:49:31.700to move the needle a little bit. It may be that there's too much water under the bridge and the
00:49:36.180people they've already hurt, but they might be able to rally a little. It's a slow burn. I mean,
00:49:40.240it's probably lifelong work. It's not like I'm going to go into therapy for a year and I'll be
00:49:43.960better. It's lifelong work because those same triggers, the same lack of frustration, tolerance
00:49:48.520and all of that, they may pop right back. And that's a very small group who not only are aware,
00:49:53.140yep, these are my patterns. And then, yep, these are causing problems for other people. And third,
00:49:57.020that means i want to address them because i don't want to hurt people that one two three is a pretty
00:50:02.160rare combo and it usually happens when a narcissistic person has hit what we could
00:50:06.160consider sort of proverbial rock bottom they've lost significant relationships they've become
00:50:11.560estranged from relationships that matter to them they've been caught in a very public scandal and
00:50:15.820even then even then many narcissistic people even at that juncture of the road especially the public
00:50:21.400scandal one might get into therapy not to genuinely get better but for optics
00:50:25.480oh devastating but good to know ultimately okay now we're going to get into a lightning round
00:50:35.080where I had my magical overthinkers club community submit a series of yes or no questions there are
00:50:41.86020 of them here I wrote 20 of them down but there were over 100 so I'm just going to read them and
00:50:46.580you will simply no matter how badly you might want to expand I'm just going to ask you to say
00:50:50.880yes or no. First question, is clinical avoid-them-all-costs narcissism really that common?
00:50:57.200No. Do narcissists ever recognize it in themselves? Yes. Are all actors and politicians
00:51:03.020inherently a little narcissistic? I feel like you have to be. All, no, most, yes. Do narcissists get
00:51:09.540caught up in the cycle of their own lies? Like, are they trapped too? Yes. Are there any non-abusive
00:51:14.700narcissists? Yes. The hesitation says so much. Is perceived narcissism in men often just the
00:51:24.280patriarchy at work? Yes-ish. Yes-ish. Can narcissists easily detect other narcissists?
00:51:34.420Maybe. Can they have low self-esteem? Yes. Yeah. That big facial expression with the yes,
00:51:40.000by the way. Do you think the word narcissism gets thrown around in excess like gaslight and
00:51:45.300triggered incorrectly overused? Do you think people too often use the word narcissist as
00:51:50.060an excuse to cut people out of their life instead of just working on their relationships?
00:51:53.860Sometimes. Isn't narcissism just a perception of someone's personality and not an empirical fact?
00:51:59.620Well, now we're getting into epistemic reasoning. So I'm going to say maybe.
00:52:03.740Can a narcissist truly ever change? Depends.
00:52:06.400Is it worth trying to reason your way to why narcissists do things?