Most Replayed Moment: How to Know If You're Being Gaslit by a Narcissist And What to Do About It: Dr Ramani Durvasula

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00:29You spend time even today dealing with patients who are the victim of a narcissistic relationship or the victim of a narcissist.

00:39Every week. I mean, it is probably one of the, if not the most gratifying part of my week. I'm a big believer that if you're a mental health practitioner, you practice mental health. So that's a privilege to be able to be in that room and to work with clients.

01:03It would be so easy when you're dealing at a macro level—large populations, going on YouTube, writing books—to get distanced from what is happening to individual people's lives. One of the tricky bits with research is we study populations, we study samples, right? We study hundreds of people.

01:21What happens in the room is something very different. You start to recognize, A, how badly these relationships harm people, their schemas of the world, their schemas of themselves, and B, how much potential for intervention there is with these clients through very simple approaches around education about narcissism, validation of their experience, breaking through self-blame, and teaching them to trust themselves.

01:41So how many patients do you think you've seen that have been victims of narcissists?

01:47Hundreds. Really. And I even use the word survivor. I hate to call them victims because I don't even think they're that passive. I mean, I think that they just weren't... no one ever taught anyone this.

01:58I'll give you the example. When people are in a relationship with somebody who's living with addiction, it's very clear what they're dealing with. You have a person, they're using a substance that's altering them, that's altering their behavior, that's taking them away from who they are.

02:18People in relationships with addicts will say, "I'm in two relationships. I'm in a relationship with a sober person, and I'm in a relationship with somebody who's using or intoxicated or denying or defending their use." Two people. And it breaks the people in those relationships, and we're willing to call it that.

02:40The experience people have in narcissistic relationships in a way is no different, with the added bit though, that at least with addiction, people can say, "I see what the behavior is. I see what the issue is. Addiction is a disease, and we know it's treatable." Narcissism? Not so much.

02:59And on top of that, the narcissistic person has this very well-developed, very successful behavioral repertoire. They can go out in the world and they're able to be charming and charismatic and confident and smart and the center of attention and running companies.

03:14Behind closed doors, they psychologically eviscerate the people they're with—spouses, partners, family members, close friends, maybe people who are below them in an organization. People where they can kind of get away with it. So the people they're harming, the world thinks this person's fantastic.

03:26At least a person who's in a relationship with an addict, people say, "Okay, I get it. They're using. This is hard." But for the folks in narcissistic relationships, a lot of people say, "Aren't you lucky that you married to that guy?" And the person's like, "Oh my gosh, are these people out of their mind?" So what do they do? They blame themselves.

03:32Okay. What is narcissism? Because I've heard the word used so often, but I couldn't tell you the definition of it. I feel like I'd butcher the definition of what it is.

03:46So I'm almost curious to ask you. Before I almost contaminate you with what my definition is, what's your working definition? What's your working model of what narcissism is?

03:57Delusions of grandeur. Someone who thinks they're super important and that they are better than everybody else. Arrogance. And they're cruel.

04:06Okay. All right. So I would give you probably like a C-plus, B-minus if you're a student in my class. I cut students a lot of slack back in the day, so I'll give you a C-plus, B-minus. Because you're in the neighborhood. The grandiosity, the arrogance, the meanness. But that to me is even more so a manifestation of the traits.

04:29Like the grandiosity, the arrogance, they have variable empathy and typically have low empathy. They're deeply entitled. They truly think they're more special than everyone else and that the rules should apply to them very differently.

04:46They have an excessive need for admiration and validation. They're very superficial. They don't really have the capacity for deep, sustained, intimate relationships. They're very much referential to the world outside of them to set goals. They don't have a good internal sense of what matters to me, what do I want to do.

05:07They just want to do what they do, again, to get that admiration and validation. There's a shallowness, a real emotional shallowness to narcissism. Those are the patterns and traits we see. They're very self-centered, very preoccupied with themselves—the good parts of themselves, the bad parts of themselves.

05:22It's very rare for them to lift their heads up and genuinely notice the experience of another person. That's what narcissism is. How does it show up? It shows up as devaluation, dismissiveness, manipulation, gaslighting.

05:41They get angry very quickly, especially when they're frustrated or disappointed, and that can show up as overt rage or overt anger—yelling, screaming, or even violence. That can show up as passive aggression, withholding, and withdrawing. They are prone to betrayal; they lie, they cheat.

05:58They make promises about the future they never keep, but they do that to keep people around so they won't leave them. So it's part of a larger manipulation. They will dominate people. They have to get the last word. They will shift blame onto other people. They will rarely take responsibility for their misdeeds, even when they're clearly caught in them. And if they do, they'll still blame the other person. They're very neglectful and careless in relationships. That is narcissism.

06:19How can you tell the difference between someone having a bad day, an asshole, and a narcissist? Because some of those things there, I thought, "On a bad day, I might do that." You know, the whole collection together? No. But on a bad day when I haven't slept, I might blame someone or whatever else. What's the distinction?

06:40When a person has a bad day—and we all have bad days—and on those bad days, we might look... if the only tape someone had of us was of that day, ooh, right? But here is the piece.

06:55When people are not narcissistic and they have bad days, they will take accountability, they will make amends, and they will change their behavior and say, "I'm not doing this again. This is not okay." Why wasn't it okay? Because it was none of those people's fault you didn't get enough sleep.

07:11And whether that means we reach deeper to be as kind as we can to the people... in some cases, especially if it's people we know or we see again... you may not know the random person at the gym, but if it's someone we know or work with, we step out of ourselves to say, "The way I conducted myself yesterday wasn't okay, and I'm really sorry about that."

07:27So they're having that experience of you taking accountability. That's where I know we're not dealing with a narcissistic person. We're dealing with a bad day. And a bad day is just that: a day. It's not every day.

07:41With a narcissistic person, many days—I'm not going to say all, but many days—are characterized by these machinations, these manipulations, and these invalidations. The person in a relationship with a narcissistic person feels like they're constantly on their back foot, that they can't be themselves, they can't express a need, they can't express a want, they can't even express a feeling for fear of it being shut down.

08:02So there's your non-narcissistic person. What about an asshole? I do think assholery and narcissism are pretty... we use the terms interchangeably. I think though, that here's my asshole belief—and since this is something the construct validation on "asshole" is probably still needing to be done—I think assholes tend to be pretty consistently assholes.

08:31Whereas narcissistic people can really... they have a much wider behavioral repertoire to be absolutely charming. This is a person who can be absolutely charming on the golf course with the CEO of their company. Like charming, nice, warm, remembering the ages of their kids and asking about the wife and remembering that their grandmother is sick and all this stuff.

08:52And then get home, forget it was his anniversary, scream at their partner, "Why does the house look like this? Why do I have to put up with this? Make those damn kids shut up!" But they were Mr. "I remembered that your little girl's birthday is February 6th" when they were on the golf course. That is not assholery. That's narcissism.

09:13Can you cure narcissism in your opinion?

09:16No, I don't. Because I think that would imply changing a personality, which I don't think we can do.

09:24Is there any evidence? Have you ever seen in your 20 years of working with narcissists and their survivors any sign of a narcissist becoming a non-narcissist?

09:35I've not seen them become a non-narcissist. I've seen them make micro-changes because I measure and monitor and make my notes in therapy. So I'll see, "Interesting. They're no longer trying to mess with coming in 10 minutes later and asking me to keep them for the whole hour." They are honoring the therapeutic frame. They're paying the bill when they decided not to show up at the last minute.

09:56I see tiny tweaks. I'll see people who'll come in and say, "I screamed at my girlfriend again last night, and that wasn't cool." So I'm like, "Whoa, that's insight!" Like, I'll run with it. But here's the rub. These micro-changes—and they are micro-changes, but they are changes and they're in the right direction—that much water under the bridge for the family members and partners and other people that have been harmed, they're saying, "You want me to stay in this relationship because this dude remembered to say thank you once this week? I think not."

10:28To me, the "thank you" is progress. To the people in their lives who've been harmed, that one "thank you" is not going to be enough.

10:31I heard this word "gaslighting" again. It's a word I've heard a lot, but I'm not necessarily really clear on what the definition of gaslighting is. But from reading your work, I hear that narcissists gaslight people a lot.

10:45A lot. Right. So gaslighting at its simplest is a power play. It's a form of emotional abuse and it's a tactic. Gaslighting is predicated on a relationship that's ostensibly characterized by trust. So that's why strangers can't gaslight you in the same way as an intimate partner, a trusted colleague, a family member, even a person with expertise like an attorney or a physician could gaslight you because there's a presumption of trust.

11:09So you're going to listen to the gaslighter. Initially, what the gaslighter will do is they will doubt the gaslighted person's perceptions, experiences, memories, even reality. "That never happened. I never said that. You're making that up. We never went there."

11:27So now this person's a little confused because their reality says, "Yeah, we did. Yeah, we did." So initially, a person will fight back against a gaslighter. They'll say, "We absolutely went there. Do you want me to show you the pictures on my phone?" Then we go to the next step of gaslighting.

11:44The gaslighter doesn't want to see the pictures on your phone. They just want to overpower you. This isn't about evidence. This is about them overpowering you. So you'll say, "Look, here's the pictures on my phone," and then the gaslighter won't say, "Well, you're right, we did go there."

11:58Instead, they'll say, "Oh my gosh, you are the most petty human being I've ever met. Is this what it is? You're just going to go through your phone to find the pictures to prove something to me? Is that what this relationship is? I don't know that I want to even be in a relationship like this."

12:13Now this poor person who's being gaslighted is thinking, "I just showed them the pictures to prove a point, and now I'm the bad one." And so they trust this person. So they think, "Maybe I am doing something bad. Maybe I am being petty."

12:26But gaslighting doesn't happen once. It happens over and over and over again. It's an indoctrination process that leaves the gaslighted person utterly confused, completely out of their mind, doubting themselves. And they start to believe the critiques.

12:43The gaslighter will tell them things like, "You're crazy. You're stupid. You don't remember things right. Maybe you have dementia. Do you think you should be in therapy? You might need to be on medication." By the time the gaslighter's done with someone, they have lost all sense of... they don't trust themselves at all.

12:58And so if they don't leave the relationship—and some people don't—they are then sort of in this form of servitude with the narcissistic person or gaslighting person, almost relying on them to lead them through reality. So it's almost like utter submission at that point that the gaslighter gets to dictate reality.

13:17And then over time, there's this tactic that narcissistic and other abusive people use called DARVO. DARVO stands for deny, attack, reverse victim and offender. It's a construct that was developed by Dr. Jennifer Freyd. Deny, attack, reverse victim and offender.

13:39So what the narcissistic person will, in a very cruelly skillful way, do is if the person, the gaslighted person, ever attempts to push back on something that the narcissist has done, like, "You said you were going to be home by 9:00 last night. You didn't get home until 1:00 in the morning."

14:01The narcissistic person will deny it. "That's not true. I didn't get home at 9:00, but I didn't come home at 1:00 in the morning." But again, like, what is your problem? What do you do? You read the ADT guide all day to see what time I come in the door?

14:14And you know what? I can't believe that this is my life. I work so hard to keep us in this fabulous house. I work so hard so you can stay home, and I'm the bad guy? I can't even believe that this is an issue. You put me through so much."

14:29Reverse victim and offender. He was out until 1:00 in the morning and he knows it, but now he's shut down the conversation. It is an insidious dynamic because done enough, you literally strip another person of their reality, and that is unacceptable to me. That's absolute abuse.

14:48Do you see this a lot?

14:49All the time. All the time. It is the dynamic that once it had a name to it... when the word is used right... most people use this word wrong. That whole process I described is gaslighting. When the word is used correctly, it's powerful.

15:06It captures a unique interpersonal dynamic that really eats people from the inside out. I see it all the time by family members, by partners, in the workplace. You name it. And it really messes people up because they feel like they've lost their minds and they feel like they can't trust themselves. And I think that's a terrible thing to do to someone.

15:26What should you do if you're being gaslit?

15:29When you know what it is and someone starts to gaslight you, they literally deny your reality, right? You have to take a step back and say, "That's not what happened," but you don't say it to them. The importance with gaslighting is you don't engage with the gaslighter.

15:46You now know you're being gaslit, which means the other person in that interaction has the capacity to gaslight you. So what that means is, from your side, you need to shut it down. And that means no longer engaging.

16:01You cannot keep engaging with them because they're going to pull you down further and further. It's almost like they're going to pull you down into being drowned or pull you into the quicksand. So when they start gaslighting, "I never said that," one playback could be, "We're having a different experience then," and leave it at that.

16:17Don't go down that slippery slope.

16:19Don't go down the slope. Don't show them the text message. Don't pull out the email. Don't try to prove them wrong. Don't engage with them. It's funny you're asking me this because I was recently gaslit in a relatively recent professional situation.

16:36And I'm thinking, "Not me." Like, I don't know much, but I know this. But they did. I was. And I got very upset. And in this particular situation, it was actually... I understand why I got... think of it as a corporate structure that was gaslighting me.

16:53So sometimes very nice people who work in corporate systems gaslight because they're trying to prop up the narcissism of the corporation, but they're decent human beings. And it was very clear to me. I've seen that happen. But in this particular case, I was being gaslit. I got upset, though, knowing all I know, knowing all the tactics.

17:11It's very dehumanizing to have your reality completely doubted. And so I did feel a sense of upset, but I confronted the person. I said, "This is gaslighting and it's not okay, and I know you're better than this." And they happened to be. This was a lucky case where the gaslighter was not narcissistic.

17:29So we came to a conclusion. But when I've been gaslit by narcissistic people, I just disengage and I file it away and say, "This person is capable of this. There's really not much juice here. I don't think this can only go so deep."

17:50The Diary of a CEO is brought to you by Progressive Insurance. Do you ever think about switching insurance companies to see if you can save some cash? Progressive makes it easy. Just drop in some details about yourself and see if you're eligible to save money when you bundle your home and auto policies.

18:06The process only takes minutes, and it could mean hundreds more in your pocket. Visit progressive.com after this episode to see if you could save. Progressive Casualty Insurance Company and affiliates. Potential savings will vary, not available in all states.

18:20The Diary of a CEO is brought to you by Progressive Insurance. Do you ever think about switching insurance companies to see if you can save some cash? Progressive makes it easy. Just drop in some details about yourself and see if you're eligible to save money when you bundle your home and auto policies.

18:36The process only takes minutes, and it could mean hundreds more in your pocket. Visit progressive.com after this episode to see if you could save. Progressive Casualty Insurance Company and affiliates. Potential savings will vary, not available in all states.