Ramani Durvasula (on narcissism)

This episode focuses on understanding and dealing with narcissism, featuring insights from Dr. Ramani Durvasula, a clinical psychologist and author specializing in this area.

1. Narcissism varies widely; it can be grandiose or vulnerable, with each type affecting relationships differently.
2. The development of narcissistic traits often stems from childhood experiences and parental influence.
3. Relationships with narcissists can be highly challenging and often lead to psychological distress for the non-narcissistic partner.
4. It's crucial for individuals to recognize the signs of narcissism to protect their mental health and well-being.
5. Dr. Durvasula stresses the importance of setting boundaries and understanding the limitations of changing a narcissist's behavior.

1. Understanding Narcissism

Dr. Durvasula explains the fundamentals of narcissistic personality disorder, differentiating between its various forms. She discusses how these traits manifest in relationships. Dr. Ramani Durvasula: "Narcissism can range from being highly destructive to somewhat annoying, depending on its severity."

2. Causes of Narcissism

This chapter focuses on the root causes of narcissism, including familial dynamics and childhood experiences. Dr. Ramani Durvasula: "Often, narcissistic behavior stems from a combination of genetic predisposition and environmental factors."

3. Dealing with Narcissists

Practical advice for managing relationships with narcissists, emphasizing the importance of boundaries and realistic expectations. Dr. Ramani Durvasula: "It's crucial to set firm boundaries with narcissists to protect your mental health."

4. Personal Stories

Real-life examples of how narcissism can impact personal relationships and mental health. Dr. Ramani Durvasula: "These stories illustrate the deep emotional impact that narcissists can have on their partners."

5. Strategies for Self-Protection

Strategies for safeguarding oneself from the detrimental effects of a relationship with a narcissist. Dr. Ramani Durvasula: "Awareness and self-care are key to dealing with narcissistic individuals effectively."

1. Educate Yourself: Learn about the traits of narcissistic personality disorder to better identify and understand the behaviors of narcissists.
2. Set Boundaries: Establish clear boundaries to protect your emotional and mental health.
3. Seek Support: Engage in therapy or support groups to deal with the impacts of a narcissistic relationship.
4. Avoid Personalization: Understand that the narcissist's behavior is about their deficits, not your worth.
5. Plan for Safety: In abusive or highly toxic situations, plan an exit strategy that ensures your safety and well-being.

Ramani Durvasula (It’s Not You: Identifying and Healing from Narcissistic People) is a clinical psychologist and author. Ramani joins the Armchair Expert to discuss why it’s so difficult to study narcissism, why she thinks it’s good for therapists to be in therapy too, and the dark tetrad of personality. Ramani and Dax talk about why people often stay in narcissistic relationships, why people develop a sense of entitlement, and what treatments are available to correct it. Ramani explains how past actions can often predict future behavior, how social groups are affected by narcissistic people, and the signs of narcissism.

People

Dr. Ramani Durvasula

Companies

None

Books

"It's Not You: Identifying and Healing from Narcissistic Relationships" by Dr. Ramani Durvasula

Guest Name(s):

Dr. Ramani Durvasula

Content Warnings:

None

Dax Shepard
Welcome, welcome. Welcome to armchair expert. Experts on expert, I'm Dan Rather. I'm joined by Monica Padman. There's a Dan Rather documentary on the marketplace.

Have you seen it? No, have you? I didn't watch it yet, but I watched the little trailer for it on the streaming platform. I forget which one it's on currently, but he's got his own doc. Wow.

Monica Padman
And do you feel really connected? Well, I feel like I was first in. I've been trying to get him in at the peak of the zeitgeist for a while now. That's right. The footage in the trailer is him, like, getting physically assaulted at one of these political conventions back in the day.

He's been around for so long. He has. And it's a good reminder the craziness has been happening the whole ride. Yeah, this is. This has been a shit show from the jump.

You're right. Okay. Today we have Doctor Ramani Darvasala. Doctor Ramani is a clinical psychologist and best selling author. This will interest everybody.

Dax Shepard
She specializes in narcissism. She has a book out now that is so fascinating called it's not you. Identifying and healing from narcissistic people. And once again, this was one of these episodes with an expert where we found out, pretty significant chunk of the population, many millions of people, lots of people suffering from narcissism and or in relationships with narcissists. And one of those weird ones where most are undiagnosed because there's no reason to go get diagnosed unless you think you have a problem.

Monica Padman
An inherent and narcissism is that you don't think you have a problem. So it's interesting. Yeah. Another pop word I've been saying a lot. Non falsifiable claim.

Dax Shepard
That's another. Wow. It's kind of non falsifiable. That's the Easter egg for the fact check. Yes, I admit to my words, I've been overindexing in ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding.

But anyways, I think for people who love the sociopathy episode, this is in keeping. And I think everyone will be listening, going, hmm, am I? Hopefully you are thinking that. Cause I think it's a pretty good indicator that you might not be. Yeah.

Please enjoy doctor Ramani Darvasala. We are supported by Squarespace. Guys, we have a Squarespace website that. It's just gorgeous. That wabi wab, you built that yourself using all the templates?

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Plus, you can kickstart or update written content on any website, product description or email. With Squarespace AI, head to squarespace.com for a free trial and save 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain with the code Dax. Okay, when did paying someone back become social media? What do you mean? Well, let's just say I'm a weirdo and I want to be messy and see what you're up to, like who you're hanging with.

I can just stalk your pay app and find out what you're doing. I knew you did that. No, I did not do that. I don't do that. I use Apple cash.

It's built into your iPhone, easy and secure. You can send and receive money right in messages and keep it between friends and then use that money any place Apple Pay is accepted. Did you just pay me a dollar on Apple cash? Monica, please keep it in the chat services are provided by green Dot bank member FDIC. Terms apply.

He's an objector.

He's an object.

I would love to bring you up to speed on something that just happened to us recently as we enter into this discussion of narcissism. Because there were some go to's you felt very free to use haphazardly. You want to describe someone as basically amoral, you'd go, oh, they're a sociopath. And then we recently interviewed a diagnosed sociopath. You know about this, Patrick?

Ramani Durvasula
Here's the thing. I'm never gonna touch the third rail of castigating a guest, but I'm not loving sociopathy's moment in the sun, I'll tell you that. Let's hear it. Great. Well, because.

Dax Shepard
And I said it in the interview, which is, man, is there nothing we can really throw under the bus anymore? And on some level, I agree. And you'll tell us how this is formed, but certainly people are born, and I really can't be upset or terribly judgmental. Like, if you're born on the spectrum, you're born on the spectrum. If you're born with sociopathy, that's something you're born with, right?

Ramani Durvasula
That's different than narcissism? Yes. Okay, great. I found myself like, wow, now I gotta have compassion for sociopathy. You don't have to have compassion for something, but that's nutty, right?

That's like, a psychopath? Yeah. Harvey Weinstein, Bernie Madoff. Do you have to have compassion? According to whom?

Dax Shepard
Well, I guess. How do we define compassion? Understanding. Here's what I would aspire to have is a kind of a lack of judgment. I wasn't born with sociopathy, so I don't know what it's like.

No one chose it. How about that? No one went to the grocery store. I think I'll pick sociopathy or I want to be on this spectrum or that spectrum. So in that there's no fault.

I can only be so judgmental of it. Doesn't mean I don't safeguard myself from people. That's the key. It's the safeguarding. Even with a narcissistic person, you're gonna say, this person didn't choose this.

Ramani Durvasula
It's a social developmental phenomenon. The way they were parented, the circumstances of their life, some piece of biological temperament, biological vulnerability, all comes together, gets mixed up. And now you have this narcissistic person who's very interpersonally harmful, who's very systemically harmful. No two ways about it. Now, my positioning has always been, I am not a fan of mistreat this person.

If someone's narcissistic in your life, don't be deliberately cruel to them. It's never good for any of us to be deliberately cruel to anyone. But this will never be a healthy relationship. Right. It's not gonna get better.

Never gonna get better, and it is never gonna feel psychologically safe. But what gets tricky is a lot of people can't get out of these relationships, so they're getting harmed on the daily, and they're not inherently mean people, and they just don't know what to do. Yeah. And then I'll be curious to find out if it also then develops this cycle that I experienced in childhood, which is an abusive guy in the house. That's horrific and traumatic.

Dax Shepard
But then the winning you back over part, the please forgive me, accept me back into this group that is then heightened. So you get into this cycle. That's exactly right. Of highs and lows. And you kind of get addicted to this weird cycle.

Ramani Durvasula
It's partly addiction, but it's also what we call the trauma bonding. Right. The narcissistic relationship, by definition, is one where every, every day is not bad. People will say, we have fun watching tv together, or we have great sex together, or they know a lot about wine, and we have fun when we have a few drinks. There's these things.

Or they'll say, you know, my mother was terrible but, my gosh, I have these really unique memories with her trying on her clothes or baking something with her, whatever it may be. So there'll be these narrow sprinklings. It's like a slot machine. You put the money in and why do we keep going to casinos? Why do people keep going to play these machines?

It's intermittent reinforcement, right? And intermittent reinforcement is the stickiest version of reinforcement there is, because if I knew that every 10th time I was going to do something, I'd get $10, okay? But that wouldn't release dopamine. But the hope for a jackpot, every so often, you put in the buck and $5 comes. Ooh, that's kind of exciting.

You forget then, conveniently, that I just put $10 in and nothing came out. Right. And we don't walk away from the machine because the jackpot always hangs out there as this tantalization. And that, in a narcissistic relationship is this idea that maybe if we just get past this, maybe if we just do this, maybe if I try this, you know, you watch people playing a slot machine. They're praying, they're switching machines, dancing, and they're doing all they can to see if I can get lucky, but they don't want to walk away from their machine, especially if they've been on it for a few hours.

Why don't people want to walk away from slot machines? Because they think that the odds will eventually tilt in their favor. And let's take that a step deeper. Not only do they think it's going to work in their favor, if they walk away, then what? They wasted all that time, money?

Go one deeper. I like this. I feel like I'm in class. Hmm. Worse than okay.

I don't want to walk away from this machine. It would have made all of that a waste. I lost. I lost. Keep going.

You would acknowledge one last. This is exciting. I'm a piece of shit, but the world revolves around me somehow. I don't know how this works. What happens?

What happens? Shame. What are you. Oh, you got a guess. Someone else gets.

Dax Shepard
Oh, someone else. He got it. Good job. Good job. He gets a star.

Ramani Durvasula
I'm not a star. Someone else might sit down. Someone else is going to come up to the machine and get your reward. They're going to get your. I did all this work.

I did all these things. I made them better. And now someone else is gonna get this. Oh, hell, no. Reap the reward.

My job is to say, there's no better version. This machine doesn't pay right, right. I've heard that from a lot of people. Like, I did all this work and I fixed them. You didn't.

You're leaving it. Or the narcissistic person leaves you and you think it's, oh, well, they cheated on me with this next person, and now they're going on to live their best life. There's no best life for them. It's really kind of hollow. Not so nice life for them.

Dax Shepard
I think what I'd love to first start with is I have my explanations for why I was drawn to what I was drawn to, and I guess I'm most curious right out of the gates, why you were pulled. To study, first psychology, and then more specifically, narcissism. Psychology might have been my one indian girl rebellion. Because, you know, when we're raised, you're younger than me, but in my generation, your options were doctor, doctor, doctor, maybe engineer. So my big rebellion is like, I'm gonna get a PhD and not an MD.

Ramani Durvasula
I'll show you. Mom and dad. You're crazy, right? Where'd you grow up in, can I ask? I grew up in Connecticut.

Dax Shepard
Were you in an area that had other indian folks? I'm about as old a native born indian as you're gonna find, because the Immigration and Naturalization act didn't kick until 65. So whatever Indians that were coming in before that, you're the first one that went on limited student visas and stuff like that. My dad came in probably the mid to late fifties. Range marriage, the whole nine yards.

Ramani Durvasula
So I'm as old as you're gonna find. I'm 58, maybe. There's probably a 59 or a 60 out there. There's a different wave of punjabi immigration that came in, like, in northern California. They were doing stuff on the railroads there.

You will see from that immigration group people born in the states who are older than me, but at 58, I'm old. You were born here? Mm hmm. My mom's in her sixties. She was born in India, and she came when she was six.

Right. And so in that way, I was the only brown kid in small New England town. There was very much a sense of otherness. Well, also, let's just add, even as a hillbilly, you can feel out of sorts in Connecticut. It's very waspy.

Dax Shepard
I mean, it's the whitest of the white. It says, like, apex whiteness. Yes, it was apex whiteness. And definitely multicultural was not a word people used in the 1970s. No.

Ramani Durvasula
Right. So people didn't want you to play with their kids, and they could impress my name. And so the aesthetic was white. White or white. So you never felt attractive.

That was a profound developmental kind of thing. We didn't fit in the town. People would vandalize our house. And did you feel like no boy was ever gonna like you? I felt hideous and was kind of told that as much.

Didn't go to the prom, like, all the things tails. Look at you two babes. You two babes. I was like, it makes me happy, though, to see the power of younger indian women. It's everywhere.

But I had, listen, it's not that. Far from the tree. Unfortunately, it is. Unfortunately. And I still have daughters who are mixed race, who struggle with that sense of, like, oh, no one's gonna fit in because my elder daughter resembles me.

She probably about your skin tone. Lucky her. Well, you're very cautious. The university I went to, they had a very special. You could do this integrated study where you would bring together film, literature, psychology.

I'm like, well, that sounds cool. So my rebellion. No, I went to University of Rochester for a year. Okay. I stayed on the east coast.

I've stayed there only a year. I ended up finishing my degree at UConn, which was such a blessing because the University of Connecticut had one of the strongest psych departments in the country. And it's like, as an undergrad, you don't even know the genius you're in the midst of. And that was Uconn. In fact, I'm their commencement speaker on Sunday.

Dax Shepard
Oh, my gosh. Talk about full circle. Yeah. I hope you cry like I did. I can't even believe they asked.

Ramani Durvasula
You know, I'm still, like, in a state of shock that they asked. It's such an honor. But that was where my interest got piqued. It's sort of the why I struggled my whole life. Why do people do the things they do?

And then I went to UCLA. Sorry, did you have a parent whose behavior was inexplicable to you? Yes, but that was not what was driving me. I think I really sort of felt, why do I feel so odd, so out of place, so out of sorts? Did you think you might feel safer if you truly understood how people thought?

Absolutely. And so when I finally got to UCLA, I worked in New York City for three years doing HIV research, actually. Oh, no kidding. In that sort of the psychosocial. And it was a really extraordinary and painful time to do this work because there were no meds yet, so people get HIV and die.

And so the privilege, this little research, tiny person, because I was so junior to work in this huge study in New York city, which ended up becoming sort of the turning point for me because it got me introduced to the area of HIV, which would be a research focus for me for years. Oh, really? And then at that time, we were focusing on injection drug users and women who got HIV at that time either got it through sex work or injection drug use. And so it was a whole different game. And then I came to UCLA and I got my PhD.

Dax Shepard
This is neither here nor there, but now that you've done all this work in this, I think this might interest you. I'm in a. Several of the gay dudes in my meeting while Covid was happening pointed out to me, they're like, we already did this. Yes. To be intimate is to potentially die.

The way they reacted to it was just interesting. It was observable, and they actually vocalized it, which was really cool. Gay men went through it times a million because of the bias and the stigma and the fear and the unwillingness to do anything about it. They deserved it. Devalued.

Ramani Durvasula
Exactly. So that's part of what drew me to it, because it was the othering. HIV was such an othering state. So I think anything that involved othering, I was drawn to. You become a champion for all underdogs.

Dax Shepard
Monica has this, too. Sometimes she thinks certain underdogs are underdogs, but maybe they're not. But yes, they still are. I don't know who you're talking about, but I'm sure. I'm sure they are.

Monica Padman
Yeah. Obsession with justice. A little bit, yes. And then I did a postdoc at UCLA. Then I took an academic position, and it was there where the narcissism thing got hit for me the first time I had student research assistants that were going to labs and hospitals around the city.

Ramani Durvasula
They'd come back, we'd meet one day, one of them came back and they looked like they'd been through war. And I said, what's the deal? Like, you kind of come back very demoralized from these sites. What's going on? And they said, it's just like this.

One or two patients, and they come in, they're terrible. They're abusive to me, they're abusive to the nurses, they're abusive to the doctors. And I'm listening to them, I'm like, this is interesting. They're describing people who sound quite narcissistic, entitled, selfish, no empathy. Everything's about them really dysregulated.

Dax Shepard
And for context, at that time, this. Is what 2001 okay. And in 2001, the understanding and the studying of narcissism, out of ten was what? How much did we know at that point? We were probably at a five or a six.

Ramani Durvasula
I still think we're only at a seven or an eight. Okay. Okay. We were most of the way there for where we're at today, I think. When I say most of the way there, the psychoanalysts have been writing about it forever.

If you go back late, late 18 hundreds, we saw the first mentions of it. Auto rank. What was that, 1912? Freud then writes on narcissism. It's a bedrock that nobody pays attention to.

It's a bedrock that no one studies because it kind of makes you feel helpless. It doesn't feel good to be the doctor, if you will, who takes on the incurable condition. Well, of course, it appealed to you because you were taking on HIV when there was no cure. Well, I was trying to understand what would make people more vulnerable to HIV. And was it possible that these people who are angry and acting out, were they more likely to behave more irresponsibly sexually or around substance use?

Those are the things I was interested in. But interestingly, what I did come to find out is the narcissistic people actually did wear condoms and did protect themselves. They did use substances. I mean, addiction and narcissism are highly overlapping. Do they overindex, or is it the country average?

I think they over index. And I think that part of that is, one would argue either the substance user is trying to manage the negative emotions of the narcissism. They're also great for self aggrandizement. I was gonna say, either you're a stimulant user who's using it to get the pump up, or you're using alcohol, weed, opiates to manage the negative emotionality. So it really depends.

And I've worked with substance users using so many different substances that were narcissistic. The backstory had a lot to do with how that would show up, but that's how I got into it. And then at the same time, I had a private practice, and people kept coming in with the same story about their marriage. It was always about these very antagonistic, unempathic, entitled, manipulative, gaslighting, cruel partners. But who, to the world seemed like well put together, successful.

And so that actually led to my first book in 2016, because I actually kept writing the same notes to my clients to give them. I'm like, I might as well get paid for this. Also. You just grab anyone's notes. And so, yeah, it just went to two, three, four.

Dax Shepard
Let me guess. He denied he had any wrongdoing, and you've never heard an apology from him. That's right. Perfect. We'll break that down for all of it.

Ramani Durvasula
So that's what led to that book. Ironically, people say, was this your origin story? It wasn't until I was deep into doing this research and I was in therapy. I've been in therapy for a long time, and I thank goodness for that. Through lying in my life.

Dax Shepard
Well, can I just add, ironically, a lot of therapists aren't in therapy, and. That'S not cool because we have to carry away too much pain to not address this. Right, right, right. You know what I'm saying? The stuff I hear because you understand it doesn't mean you're above it.

Ramani Durvasula
Hell to the no. I have a nervous system, and that nervous system is getting activated by what I hear in the room. And if I'm going to be present and not triggered in that room, I better have a place to work on it. So my therapist years into it. She's like, I was wondering how long it was gonna take you to get to this.

And I was like, bitch, why didn't you tell me? That's a side note we should talk. About, but nobody talks about it. In the field of mental health, I'm still a bit of a renegade in a pariah for doing what I do, really. And I'm willing to take that on because this is not meant to be grandiose.

I think just this conversation on narcissism has helped millions of people who are saying, I no longer feel crazy. This is one of the rare positive outcomes of social media, is I think it's getting amplified because so many people are finally addressing it. We kind of blew past the therapist said, okay, when were you gonna get to this? So I imagine what you discovered is that you. I'd been through it in family relationships.

I'd been through in intimate relationships. I'd been through it in friendships. I'd been through it in workplaces. And they all harmed me. But they were often turning points.

Like, I ended up leaving careers. I thought I was gonna stay in. Cause it got to be too toxic. I thought there was something really, really wrong with me. And I sort of integrated that into my sense of self.

And so once you lifted the lid off of it, and I said, oh, now I see it clearly. That was it. Yeah. Cause I would have to assume you yourself have been a victim. But to be so passionate and driven to expose it.

Dax Shepard
Let's start with how would we define a narcissist right out of the gates? Like, what would be the clinical? Is there DSM criteria? One thing I always tell folks is the way I want to have the conversation about narcissism is not diagnostic. It's a personality style.

Ramani Durvasula
You've got a personality. You've got a personality. I've got a personality. And they were shaped by the experiences we've had in our lives. We had a biological temperament, and that came up against all the experiences we've had, and that now results in our adult personality.

Personalities are kind of who we are. They're like a psychological fingerprint. The healthier the personality, meaning the more prosocial, the more flexible, the more amenable it is to a little bit of change. An agreeable person could learn to set better boundaries because they'd be open to that change. But it's not going to be easy for them because they're agreeable and they want to be warm and connected.

I'm giving you this backstory only because I want people to understand what I mean by the word personality. People have kind of gotten too caught up in this idea of narcissistic personality disorder. I hate the diagnosis. It's not helping. It's muddied, this conversation.

Dax Shepard
What is that doing that has a negative outcome? The vast majority of people who are narcissistic have not been in a clinician's office. You have a great explanation of this in the book, right? They're not suffering. The tricky part here is that when we hear somebody has NPD, we assume that it's more severe in them.

Ramani Durvasula
Frankly, I've met walking out in the wild, narcissistic folks who've never seen the inside of a shrinks office, who are the most severe narcissistic people I've ever seen. And the people walking around with the NPD diagnosis just happened to be in therapy. And so they probably. It's almost evidence that they're low on the spine. Maybe it's not as bad.

So narcissism, the personality style, is characterized by entitlement, low invariable empathy, selfishness, egocentricity, sort of self centeredness, an excessive need for validation and admiration, superficial kind of vapid quality, difficulty with intimacy, closeness. They really view relationships as benefiting only them. There's no care for the other person. There is a need for control, power, domination. I just want to point out that I bet people are listening the same way I'm listening where you say one and I go, ooh, everyone's doing it.

Dax Shepard
And then you say, another one. I go, ooh. And then you say, another one. I go, ugh. And then you say another one.

Monica Padman
I go, oh, is it narcissist that we're thinking of ourselves? Some dude, I think, put out a TikTok video recently, something I've been saying for a while, but he did it really cutely. And he's like, if you think you're narcissistic, then you're not. And frankly, a lot of people who've been in narcissistic relationships, they're the ones who walk around wondering if they are the narcissistic. That makes sense.

Ramani Durvasula
So the grandiosity, the low empathy, the entitlement, the need for admiration and validation. Cause I have that one. We don't need to highlight every single one. I just wanna own mine. They don't tolerate frustration or disappointment well, so they'll rage.

That's the stuff of narcissism. Now. It's on a continuum. So the mild side is your annoying, immature Instagram narcissist, who, at 55, is still wondering if they got a lot of likes on their sunset cocktails picture. That's gonna be tough to hear for a lot of folks.

And the thing is, they're gonna getting upset. They're not getting likes. It's one thing you want to do that. I love. When people post their happy cocktail pictures.

I'm like, good for you. But when they're angry, I can't believe people don't think I'm the clueless or. Monitoring who didn't like those, who didn't like that. What were you doing that you couldn't? But that's still in the milestone.

Dax Shepard
I heard that come out of people's minds. I'm like, well, you're monitoring newswoman. Someone who didn't like my thing. Oh, God, they'll go, and look who liked. And I'm like, oh, my God, that.

Ramani Durvasula
Sounds dark for a grown person. I'll cut grace until 25. That prefrontal's done. Exactly. And at the far end, though, we're talking about malignant narcissism, which in the book, as I put it, malignant narcissism is sort of the last stop on the train before psychopathy station.

And we veer into something a lot darker. Cause that's what's confusing for the layperson, is, like, so much of it seems to overlap with psychopathy or sociopathy. It does. At the severe end. At the severe end, it's more manipulative.

More exploitative. You see more isolation. You see more coercive dynamics. It's just an unsafe relationship. Sadism, maybe when you talk about sadism, you take me to the dark tetrad, and the dark tetrad is where we see the overlap of psychopathy, machiavellianism, narcissism, and sadism.

Okay, this is horrifying. I would like to add the fifth piece of paranoia, because these are folks that are very suspicious and really thin skinned. So they're really provocable. They're like, what are you looking at? And then they'll get into a scrap or a scrape or a fight with them, and you're like, literally, you're looking at something behind them.

Or they'll pull on the tiniest thread and assume you're criticizing them and become very vindictive people. You have to walk at church shells. Yeah. Of it to be the dark pentagon. Is that when you have five sides?

Dax Shepard
Yeah. Yeah, I guess it feels satanic. But at that level, what we're acknowledging is all this stuff does overlap. That's the inherent flaw with the DSM, is it tries to break off and compartmentalize, but it's like a lot of this stuff's just a big stew of shit, arbitrarily dropping a landmark here and there. Well, that's why we talk about the p factor.

Ramani Durvasula
And the p factor is where sort of all psychopathology comes together, and we really separate out psychotic versus non psychotic. And it's much broader strokes than you would think. Okay, now, what cause were we to believe the statistic brought in by our sociopath guests, 5% for sociopathy. That's higher than I would think. A colleague of mine just gathered data in what's called a general population sample.

So. Meaning we literally dipped our ladle into not college students, nothing like that. And we were pulling back numbers closer to 10% of narcissism, not sociopathy. Great. So that's quite high.

Dax Shepard
But again, spectrum. On the spectrum. In that case, that would be narcissism at a level that would be enough for a partner to notice it. Okay, well, this is a later question, but you just said it, so I'm gonna ask now. No, I'm gonna save it.

Monica Padman
Part one. Well, you haven't the part on the spectrum that you're talking about. The social media cocktail picture, like, feels a little bit, to me, more self absorbed. Is there a difference between self absorbed. To be at the mild side of narcissism?

Ramani Durvasula
It's not just the self absorbed. You have to be entitled to. Right. The entitlement is sort of the one ring that rules them all. Entitlement is what cuts universally across all types of narcissism.

I'm more special than you. I deserve better treatment than you. And the rules apply to you and not me. So there's an inherent hypocrisy there. And this specialness, that's the grandiosity.

I am more special. Why am I waiting in this line? Wait a minute. What's happening here? Every time you're in an airport, there's a person who bounds right to the top of a line.

That's got 200 people in it. Right? What are you doing? That's entitlement. So you have to have that low empathy, that entitlement, and the selfishness.

If somebody is just all about, why don't people like my pictures? That's not narcissism. It's the sense of they're being a little bit snippy with the waiter and they have twice, and everyone liking my pictures. And they're the friend where you listen to them talk every day for 3 hours a day for a month about their breakup, but when you call them two months later for a problem, they don't have time for you. Right.

That's what you're talking about. How do people become narcissists? So it's a social developmental phenomenon, just like most personality styles. So the strongest argument would be that there's some form of biological vulnerability, and that's what we call temperament. Anyone who's a parent, you're a parent, you said, right.

You have more than one child, two. So you saw already at a very baby age, they had different personalities. Same with mine. Very shocking temperaments. Yeah.

Because you're like, same house, same parents, same everything, and yet temperamentally, how you soothe them, all of that. Well, that temperament gets shaped by the environment around it. So what we know is that narcissistic people, and I'm simplifying it a bit, but there's sort of two primary pathways. One is the pathway of what I call a pathway of adversity. These are kids who had that difficult temperament, difficult to soothe, lots of attention seeking, couldn't self regulate, very externalizing.

Take that temperament and you combine it with adversity, like trauma, neglect, abuse, attachment fails, chaos in the home, devaluation, emotional abuse. That's one formula for narcissism. Now the second pathway is more new research. It's folks in the Netherlands doing this research. I think some folks in the United States now, and they still have a little ways to go.

But what they're picking out is that people who tell their child that they're more special than any other child. Oh, so all parents. No, my own. And I didn't. No, mine didn't.

I was gonna say, hell, no. Like, why aren't you doing that? Where's the age? You're so careless? It's not that you're telling your child they're special.

It's that you're saying that you're more special than the others, and these rules don't apply to you. I'm going to talk to the coach, I'm going to talk to the teacher. And the child is really, given this sense of, you're better, you're more special. And then that starts becoming the seed that's shaping up. They're being overvalued.

They don't learn to regulate their negative emotions. They assume someone's going to fix their stuff. That's going to be probably more the birthplace of. Of grandiose narcissism. These narcissistic folks, the people who came through that adversity channel, you're going to tend to see more of the vulnerable narcissism, which is a more sullen, passive aggressive, victimized, resentful narcissism, or you're going to see the malignant narcissist.

Those mean isolating, coercive narcissists. That's where we tend to see that. So there are subtypes of narcissism. It's on a continuum, so it's not one flavor. Right.

Dax Shepard
And then is there any treatment to correct? We interviewed Phil Stutz. He said what shocked me. He said, you can treat it, but it takes like seven years, and the person has to be crazy willing, which you just don't see much. I don't disagree with you.

Is it treatable? When you say treatable, what does treatable mean? What's the end game? That you would have a set of tools you're applying that would prevent you from repeating this pattern you put partners through? I don't think that.

You don't think that's an option. The reason I'm saying that is that some people say, well, what are you basing that on, that kind of sea change? To be fully aware of the other, to regulate yourself, to be fully present with them, attuned to them. That is a take it down to the studs makeover. That's a lot.

Ramani Durvasula
I was giving you the example before of a person with an agreeable personality. Right. It's a more flexible, changeable personality. But you know what you couldn't do with that agreeable person. You wouldn't be able to turn them into someone cold, entitled and cruel.

If I can't do that with the agreeable person, why would I be able to turn around the narcissistic person? And I might argue again, simply because this was my experience, if you are forced to go to aa because your life's in danger, you can make some pretty radical changes. But again, I think short of your life being in danger, these kind of. Massive changes, they don't think of themselves as really hard costing, though. But here's where I'm going, right?

Dax Shepard
I'm saying, like, your narcissism would rarely threaten your existence. Yeah, but you wake up one day, fourth wife has left, none of your kids are speaking to you, your business has crumbled, so your life has actually crumbled. But does the narcissist recognize, because here's my understanding, I gotta give you one anecdote. The bottom line is, a therapist explained to me, someone I was dealing with, and they had met them too, was a narcissist. And they said to me very clearly, you need to understand the rules of a narcissist.

You will never hear them say, I'm sorry. Right. So you have to get your expectations correct about how this is gonna go. They will never say they're sorry. And when you say you're sorry, even though you don't need to, they're going to become the victim in this situation and they're gonna really indulge in that.

And hopefully on the other side of that, we're gonna get them to agree to this one boundary. So my question is, if a narcissist can never see their own fault in something, would they ever, even, even if the obvious landscape around them was in ruin? I don't know that they would do what an alcoholic would do, which is go like, well, I'm clearly the source. Of all this record here. It's never going to be reflexive.

Ramani Durvasula
And you bring up an interesting issue, which is the issue of twelve step, something I speak about a lot, because I talk a lot about addiction and narcissism. A lot of the folks I speak with are using twelve step models in their treatment centers. And this is the big question, because I'm sure you're aware of the term the dry drunk. To me, the dry drunk is a narcissist. This is a person where they're sober, but they're unimpassable.

They just took away the medicine, they're selfish. So they're all the stuff, the addictive character, the step six stuff, but they're not using. And I've worked with enough families where family member goes to treatment, four to six weeks. Family member comes back. Now, family member sober, but family member is still a dick.

And the family a drunken horse thief. Sober is still a horse thief, they say, right. The family's devastated. And in fact, sober, they're a little bit more mean. They don't have their medicine.

So the dry drunk element, when I was reading the big book, I'm like, this is a narcissist. And this is one of the interesting debates in the field, is could twelve step be just as useful a program for narcissism treatment as any? Because so much when you think about the core to me of twelve step as a psychologist is humility. It's taking responsibility. It's understanding that you are not all powerful, that we are all just nothing more than ordinary human beings, and that ordinariness is what brings narcissistic people to their knees.

Dax Shepard
Terminal uniqueness is terminal. Exactly. And so if you could get people to commit to the program. Now, I've had mixed success. I've had some clients, narcissistic, who have been in recovery for years, who are very committed to working their program.

Ramani Durvasula
But that narcissism still persisted. It still pushes through it, their sponsors, everything. They're very committed. My favorite step of the twelve, the one, if I got to only have learned one of them, it would have been the fourth step in that I learned an actionable process through which I could discover my own culpability in every situation I've been in and through that, illuminate my fears that are driving all of this behavior. So they couldn't do that.

Right. So step four is such an important step when we're dealing with narcissism, because that unwillingness to take responsibility, which is really all anyone in relationships with them want, own it. Sometimes if a narcissistic person would own it, people who love them wouldn't even necessarily expect them to change it, but they don't own it. So the other person feels crazy. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Your point about treatment? I've had clients where worked with them for years, and I don't disagree with Stutz's characterization of seven years. I'm seven years twice a week. Great therapist and motivated. So that's a lot of unicorny stuff coming together.

Right? But I've worked with clients where we did the work. They came in every week deeply motivated, intelligent, engaged. I wouldn't put up with their b's. And at the end, I remember one guy came in, and he's like, so I'm clear after this, about two years, what you're telling me is healthy in a relationship is that I have to listen to them.

I have to listen to their emotions. I have to do things they want to do that sometimes I don't want to do. Compromise. I said, yeah, that's pretty much the punchline after two years, and this incredibly smart guy, too, and he never missed sessions like, I want to take next week off. I'll come back in two.

Come back in two. He had filed for divorce and broken up with his mistress. And he's like, I'm not going to do that. And he said, this feelings thing, I can't listen to this crying. It's nonsense to me.

And he said, but sex matters. And so he gives someone, he's like, I pay her every two weeks. It's consistent. She leaves at 02:00 a.m. does what I want.

That's the closeness I need. He was incredibly successful. He had a life full of friends, experiences. He had made a ton of money. He was at a stage of his life where he didn't have to work.

He had a very rich, full life. Ironically, though, other people had known of him, and the word had gotten back to me that he was back to the same old patterns. With women, it doesn't change, you know, as much as even when a person has a revelation, relationships for narcissistic people are a place where they regulate themselves. They get their admiration. They get something called narcissistic supply.

That's what they get in the relationships. Either narcissistic people are always relationship jumping, or they're angry at people for not getting into relationships with them. Right. Because they're entitled to a great relationship. Stay tuned for more armchair expert, if you dare.

Dax Shepard
We are supported by squarespace. Guys, we have a squarespace website that. It's just gorgeous. That wabi wab, you built that yourself using all the templates? Yeah, I sure did.

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Listen, there's a saying. Good things come to those who wait, but only the things left by those who hustle. Which basically means that sometimes it's better to push for what you want. Oh, this makes me think of the Motogpu race last weekend because my man Marquez went for a pass on the last lap. Three turns left.

Impossible. Dived up the inside, went for it in one glory. It was spectacular. Which basically means that sometimes it's better to push for what you want. I do a good deal of pushing for what I want.

Of course, I'm always trying to stay on the right side of being pushy, but I go for it. Yeah, you have to. Yeah. No one's gonna knock on your door and give you what you think you deserve. If you want the best people for your company, the same applies.

Thankfully, Ziprecruiter can help put the hustle in your hiring. And even better, you can try it free right now@ziprecruiter.com. dax, they use smart technology to find top talent for your role. Right away. I'm talking like, immediately after you post a job, Ziprecruiter's matching technology will go to work and start sending you qualified people.

So let Ziprecruiter give you the hiring hustle you need. See why four out of five employers who post on Ziprecruiter get a quality candidate within the first day. Just go to ziprecruiter.com dax to try it for free again. That's ziprecruiter.com, dax. Ziprecruiter, the smartest way to hire.

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We are supported by Betterhelp. Listen, I understand that sometimes you want to keep things to yourself, process your emotions in your own time, but if you keep everything bottled up, it can have some serious consequences. I have therapy on Saturday. I'm really looking forward to it. I had therapy this morning.

Monica Padman
Yeah, you did. Yeah. And it put me in the greatest mood. We had a long, big day, and I just felt much better for having. You work not to out you.

You were a little grumpy going in. I was. I was. I was. Debes.

Ramani Durvasula
Robin. I received some texts. Yeah, I was locked out of my therapy setting, which is this attic. But then you felt much better after. I felt much better, and I even made some apologies.

Dax Shepard
Talking things out. Can be so helpful. And if you want a safe space for that conversation, I recommend therapy. Check out betterhelp. If you've been thinking of trying therapy, it's entirely online, convenient, and flexible.

It's also easy to get started. Just fill out a brief questionnaire to get matched with a licensed therapist. You can even switch therapists at any time for any reason for no additional charge. Get it off your chest with betterhelp. Visit betterhelp.com dax today to get 10% off your first month.

That's betterhelph h dash e dash p.com dax.

Okay, what is the impact, and is there a predictable impact and pattern for children of narcissists? So the most common thing that's going to happen when a person has one or occasionally two? Yeah, because that's going to be a follow up question. Can two narcissists be in a relationship. Let'S say, with one narcissistic parent?

Ramani Durvasula
For now, when a child has a narcissistic parent, the most likely outcome is they're going to be a very anxious, self doubting, drops in self worth. Grown up, you often feel like you're not enough. These are people who might be prone to perfectionism. How can I be better? How can I do more?

Dax Shepard
Cause you gotta regulate mom or dad. It's a reversal. You have to make mom or dad feel good. You can't have needs. You can't have wants.

Ramani Durvasula
You can't have emotions. If you do, you're shamed. How could you do this to me? I do so much for you. So it's very much a reversal situation.

Dax Shepard
Okay, this is interesting. I'll just drop this anecdote on you. I know someone who's dad was a narcissist. No question about it. And I noticed when we're together, she tries to regulate me.

Ramani Durvasula
How so? I can feel her monitoring my mood a lot and offering me kind of some unsolicited compliments and stuff. And I think because I am charismatic and a little grandiose and stuff, it makes sense to me that I'm kind of reminding her of her dad. And I can see the panic and anxiety. Like I'm someone that needs to be regulated and I got to be monitored a lot.

Dax Shepard
And I can feel it. Assuming that what your friend or this person in your life is, let's say. I got all that right. Okay. Let's say you got all that right.

Ramani Durvasula
But assuming what she's doing is not conscious. Like, if she'd say, you know what's funny? When I'm around you, Dax? I just do this. That's something we call the fawn response, and the Fawn response is a sympathetic nervous system response.

That's not unusual for people who have had a narcissistic parent to engage in. It's not only just a form of regulation. What I'd argue for your friend is that it's how she keeps herself safe. It's a survival mechanism. It's safe.

Dax Shepard
Right. I'm exhibiting these familiar character qualities, and she's waiting for the shoe to drop, I think. Yeah, exactly. And I want to say to her, like, hey, you know, the shoe never drops. I never kind of fly off the handle or do any of this stuff.

You could breathe easy. She's trying to feel safe around you, so she's doing what she did with dad. She's complimenting you. And that is how she can feel more in her body when she's with you. Because if she doesn't, then I don't know what her fear is.

Ramani Durvasula
Everyone has different fears depending on what their origin story was, but that's what's happening there. But one thing I want to make clear is that the Fawn response is involuntary. We often think of fawning as an active state. I'm gonna compliment that person so they like me. Mm mm.

A lot of people think it's voluntary because that feels manipulative. Oh, not at all. I see someone panicked. It's exactly what I fight flight. Yes, exactly.

Fight, flight. Fawn. Freeze. Yeah. It doesn't feel manipulative.

Dax Shepard
It just feels exhausting to her. But I think just that awareness and that it doesn't need to be this, but also patience with it because it takes a minute. I have a friend actually writing a book on the fawn response. So we talk about it a lot. It's really misunderstood and under addressed, but I think when people start to understand it and it doesn't go away, sympathetic nervous system responses are actually really great.

Ramani Durvasula
Cause they're designed. Our body's keeping us safe, so we can't just say, oh, I'm not gonna fawn around Dax anymore. It's more to be kind to herself when she does. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Not fault herself and self flagellate.

Dax Shepard
I would imagine people who had a parent who was narcissistic did they disproportionately find themselves in relationships with narcissists? A lot of people have this framework of, if I had a narcissistic parent, then I'm a magnet for this, or I'm choosing these people. We choose narcissistic people are charming, charismatic, confident, compelling, attractive, successful. Like, who doesn't go for that person? Right?

Ramani Durvasula
So there's that piece of it. The narcissistic people are also not going around sniffing for the person with the broken leg. Like the lion with the broken gazelle. The narcissistic person is looking for people who are good sources, supply. So that could be someone who's successful, attractive, helpful, whatever is their supply.

That's what they're looking. And what I've heard as well is adding to their own facade. They're an extension of their accomplishments and achievements. If you're tall, if you're rich, if you drive a great car, if you're right from the right family. What happens is when a person is a narcissistic parent, it's not that they're more likely to get into these relationships.

They're more likely to get stuck in these relationships. Cause even as the red flags start popping up because it's so familiar, well. I would imagine, too, that they're going to be easier for that person to extend because they know the playbook like someone else would have to learn it. Why is he in a bad mood? Oh, I find if I tell him he looks handsome, that, you know, they already came with the instruction manual.

That's right. Because what also happens is pretty early on, there's gaslighting and stuff happening when any of us are gaslighted. In most cases, the first few times we push back to like, yo, that's not what happened. I didn't say that. But then the narcissistic gaslighter is so skilled.

And again, especially if you had a narcissistic parent and there's any of that self doubt inside of you, they're so skilled at playing on that vulnerability. And now you are doubting yourself. Now, that doesn't happen once or twice. It happens many, many times. The narcissistic relationship is death by a thousand cuts.

Dax Shepard
That's a chapter of your book. Thank you. Dextended homework. He sure did. I'm very proud.

I'm a high functioning narcissist. Well, we're getting there. You could describe yourself as charismatic. I was always like, I'm gonna sit back a little bit. So that vulnerability is you're more willing to fall for their subjugation.

Ramani Durvasula
That's really what it is. And get sucked into it. It goes from love bombing to subjugation. And you don't clock that transitional moment. Right.

Dax Shepard
Did you happen to watch couples therapy? Some. It's a little bit of a busman's holiday. I was like, I can't. What's a busman's holiday?

Ramani Durvasula
A busman's holiday is when the busman went on a bus to go on his vacation. Because it's her life. It's hard to. It's like listening to podcasts. Even though I do like succession, though.

I did love succession, I love succession. I watched succession was like the motherlode of narcissism. So like that kind of show, I'll watch because it's fiction, but when it's real people's lives, it's just too much. Well, that's what I was gonna say. And again, I'm not in a position to have labeled one of the participants as a narcissist, but what appeared to be one to me and to watch the dynamic, what this man was putting this woman through, I was thinking, boy, if I was a therapist, I could handle it one on one.

Dax Shepard
I could sit and talk to a narcissist all day long. But it'd be very hard for me to watch it all unfolding and not call it out immediately. I'm curious. Cause I didn't watch the show. What did the therapist do?

You know what was happening? What you could see the magic of what was happening. We gotta be very careful we're not seeing the specific person. Cause I don't wanna get sued by this person. But what Orna was great at was letting the wife know the reality you just told me is the reality.

And you could see that's great, that when she had a comrade in the. Room, makes all the difference and wasn't. Being overpowered by that. So I think maybe her focus, which was probably smart, because there's nothing to do with this guy. So I'm just gonna let her know that her reality.

Ramani Durvasula
Right. She's ungaslighting her. Yeah. The role of the therapist is to ungaslight the gaslighted client. And it only takes one person.

Sometimes it only takes one time. I felt like the woman in the couple was there to get that. That's what she needed. She needed someone to just see her that was not wrapped up in this bad dynamic. But for anyone that might feel the shame, I would imagine some of the shame about being in one of these relationships is similar to that of having been conned, where this is a very underreported crime because you feel stupid all the time.

Dax Shepard
And so what I observed is, man, you got to be real quick to outmaneuver this narcissist. This gentleman was fast, the way he could be caught dead to nuts and then just buy himself enough time. It was fascinating to watch. And then the counter moves. Yeah.

Monica Padman
Cuz he would say things that I was like, I guess that does kind of make sense, but I know that's wrong. You yourself as the viewer are like getting gaslit by him. They're clearly good at it. That's why they can do it, right? Well, it works.

Ramani Durvasula
At the end of the day, we are rats in a maneuver for the narcissistic person. Their central motivation in intimate relationship is power, domination and control. Nothing else. It's not affiliation, it's not love, it's not connection. It is power.

So they're playing a ground game that's designed to get them power, which means destabilizing the other person. Okay, now, can two narcissists be in. A reality all the time? It happens all the time. So how do they coexist?

These are incredibly volatile religions. It's like all of reality tv is predicated on two narcissistic people getting together. There's a lot of jealousy, there's a lot of criticism, there's loud arguments, there is breakup makeup cycles that go on over and over and over again. So it happens all the time. You just kind of hope they don't reproduce.

I'm like, good for all of you. Let's put you all together. Do you have kids? Yeah. Now what would be interesting is I assume they have to somehow assume the other role at times for it to function.

Dax Shepard
So they are probably a narcissist at one point, but then they are also serving the other role. That's required to a point. But I think actually it just stays volatile. I remember working with a couple like this, and he was 20 years older than her, so there's already a power difference. He had a lot more money than her, but she knew how to get him off.

Ramani Durvasula
And so that was her, if you will, power. But he definitely was the more powered person because he held the money and she was in it for the money. I hate to stereotype, but I feel like it would over index in these couples where it's like a super rich older man and then a super bombshell. She's using him. He's using her.

Exactly. It's parasitic. It's like a remora on the symbiotically parasitic. Symbiotically parasitic. But ultimately, I guess, good for them.

Monica Padman
No, I mean, I'd rather them pair up than one of them pair up with a nice guy. It tends not to last. I was speaking with someone recently where they had had an affair with someone, and then they got into a committed relationship with that someone, and they were shocked when that person cheated on them. I'm like, past behavior predicts future behavior. There's a lot of exceptionalism here.

Ramani Durvasula
I will be the exception in this narcissistic relationship. Sure. There's no such thing. Is it equally distributed through the genders? It depends on the type of narcissism.

So it's grandiose and malignant narcissism. It's more men kind of a male thing. Vulnerable narcissism again, that more sullen, socially anxious, resentful, sad, victimized. Equal gender distribution. Okay.

Dax Shepard
And are there occupations that overindex? Yeah, CEO's in high corporate positions, entertainment, athletics. Well, there's a lot of money and. Power in all of these finance, politicians. And then from there, any occupation that is high status, high pay, and hard to get tech has a lot of narcissism.

Ramani Durvasula
So these are high return, high status, risk taking, any job that has those characteristics. I could imagine a narcissist coming about later in life. This is why I say this. He's not. But we were with Bill Gates for a solid week in India, and we're watching him move through the world, and he does bend the whole reality around him.

Dax Shepard
It's not his fault. It's his fault. No. Everyone has bend to him and he's. Not asking for it.

It's just like there is a force field. You know what I'm saying? I know. Exactly. So then the reality becomes, now I'm gonna be very fucking clear.

He's not at all. But I was watching it, thinking, how does he not become one? Because everyone around him is putting their best foot forward. You bring up something interesting. I actually wrote about it in my second book.

Ramani Durvasula
The one we're talking about today is my third book on narcissism, my second book on narcissism. I get into this topic, and it's when we get into ideas, privilege and entitlement. So to your point, this idea of, can something develop over a life? His feet don't touch the ground. The doors are opened, jets are waiting.

He's not going through TSA pre check. The military's following us through the airport. Nothing he doesn't do. He doesn't do stuff like regular people. He doesn't wait in line.

He's not strong. So that can result in a. The only word that fits here is supercilious. I've never met the man, so I don't know. But I've been in the presence of people who have that kind of feet, never touched the ground.

There's a remoteness to them. There is a. Can't quite get in there with them. I was worried for him because he actually is a really beautiful, sweet man. And I thought, this feels very isolating.

Dax Shepard
Everyone's too aware of your presence when you're around. You never get a down moment like I'd imagine the queen of England might have had down. But you walk through the world in a very certain way. I'm guessing, though, I don't know, because I've met people like this. I haven't met him also, I've been.

Around a million movie stars, and I myself have some fame I have to police. I'll say this to my wife. She's a very wonderful, optimistic person and believes the best in everyone. And we'll walk into Starbucks and the person will, like, bend over backwards to get a thing, and she'll go, that person was so nice. And I'll be like, well, and we're on tv.

We can't necessarily assume that person is that. I try to be aware of it because it just becomes reality. And so if you're not constantly remembering. My point about this whole idea, the privileged entitlement feet not touching the ground folk is, are they checking in with themselves and how are they treating those more vulnerable around them? So how are they treating household staff?

Ramani Durvasula
How are they treating people on a set? Let me just say, my wife couldn't be nicer to everybody. No one thinks she's a narcissist. No, no, no, not at all. She's not.

Dax Shepard
But she has such a benevolent view of everybody. She also misses that we do get special treatment sometimes and it kind of blows over her head. But that's just because she really trusts and believes everyone. It's kind of a beautiful quality. Yeah, it's a beautiful quality, but it's a trick.

But I have to tell my kids. Like I pointed out to my kids, hey, we got in because of this thing, and that's not how it works. And just so you know, like, this is this abstract thing that we got lucky, you know? Right. So it's the awareness of that, but it's how dismissive someone might be because they have that power in the world.

Ramani Durvasula
I don't know that they're necessarily narcissistic. I'd imagine if somebody had, like a bazillion trillion dollars, people must always be hitting them up for money. Exactly. All the time. So there has to be something that you ultimately must create a little bit of a cage around you because it's exhausting.

Dax Shepard
And I think people make you other. Yeah. What I think I've observed was some people I've known go through the ride where they just go to the top of the mountain. I think I have observed, if they're not on top of it, it does affect. I'm not gonna say that it makes them a narcissist, but I just think if you're not really on top of it, and I don't even fault them, it's just like the whole world changed around them.

Ramani Durvasula
But they have a responsibility because they don't have to deal with the stuff all the rest of us have to. So with that, the one tax that should be on them is look alive. Yeah. Here's the problem. Because everyone else is struggling.

Monica Padman
Yeah, exactly. Okay. So what's important about it's not you, is I'm asking you to just explain in great detail what the narcissist is. But this isn't just a manual about narcissism. This is to help people that find themselves in relationships with narcissists.

Dax Shepard
So let's talk about death by a thousand cuts. What is the pattern of the relationship that people might recognize? What's tricky is, especially when we're talking about intimate relationships, these relationships can start like a fairy tale. Attention, great experiences. Good night, my queen.

Ramani Durvasula
How is my princess this morning? You know, like, it's all that kind of stuff. It's a lot of attention within whatever means someone has. It might be reservation at that impossible restaurant or a picnic on the beach. It's gifts.

It's little scavenger hunts sometimes it's that gamesmanship of you. Have a great day. It's a good night, queen. And then crickets for three days. Now, they're already playing the slot machine early in the relationship because they know three days later when they drop that message in, the other person's like, whoo.

They're flooded with that relief, and now you're buying in. That's actually how addiction works. Is that taking away that bad feeling? Reward is not how people become addicted. It's taking away icky feelings is how people become addicted.

And so you're so relieved, and you're like, I want to be the cool girl. I don't want to tell them that I didn't like that they didn't text me. And so now you get caught in their subjugated system quickly. This love bombing phase can last anywhere from six weeks to six months, usually not much longer. Than that, because I don't think the narcissistic person is going to play that game.

And once they feel confident that they kind of got you, whether it's I love you, whether it's you move in, then they start pulling back. And I always say, you know, for a while, it feels like 99% great and only 1% bad. Then it's 90% good, 10% bad. 80. 2070, 30.

At those numbers, you feel. Feel like that's just a relationship. It's settling in pains. I did want to flag that because I do have some concern that we're also talking about overlap of just falling in love with a non narcissist. Well, wait till you hear the rest of this trajectory.

Dax Shepard
Okay. Okay. So 70 30, people are still saying, like, this is life. Everyone's putting their best foot forward at the beginning. At 50 50, it starts becoming a problem, because half the time it's good, but half the time, it's gaslighting and manipulation and being lied to.

Ramani Durvasula
And narcissistic relationships. The consistent core of all of them is about betrayal. Not necessarily lying, cheating, betrayal, but just you're not being attuned, not being mindful, not being aware. Then it becomes 40% good, 60% bad, 30 70. Now, when you're at 1090, 10% good, 90% bad.

As soon as we get under that 50 50 point, that's when we get into this trauma bonding, where the person in the relationship is justifying it, trying to make sense of it, blaming themselves. I'm trying to be perfect for this person and thinking it's me. Maybe if I lose weight, maybe if I make more money. And so they keep digging themselves into a deeper and deeper hole, more and more and more confused. Why is nothing working?

Because nothing is going to work. That's sort of the lifespan. So what happens is when. And many people don't end their narcissistic relationships, but when they do, it's often the catalyst to. That wasn't even the big, I caught you in bed with my best friend.

It's. They gaslit them in front of a boss. It was one more thing. And, like, I can't. Or they get into therapy, and the therapist is like, yeah, no, this is not okay.

Dax Shepard
Yeah. Oh, man. Yeah, it's intense. It's intense. It seems like a pretty well worn strategy for the narcissist to isolate the person from outside people.

A, is that a pattern? And b, is that a conscious move on the narcissist part? The more severe the narcissism, the more I think awareness there is of the isolation. Yeah. You hear about this boyfriend, it's like, I don't want you hanging out with your friends, or, I don't like your friends, and I don't like this person.

Ramani Durvasula
I don't like your mom. No, man. Okay. I guess you take all your exes. Off social media, and I wonder how.

Dax Shepard
Aware they even are that they're doing that. Because obviously the threat to them is that they will run one of these ideas by a trusted friend and discover they are being gaslit. But the narcissistic person's not seeing the threat that specifically you're isolating your supply. And other people are competition. It is support if it's a couple.

Ramani Durvasula
And their best friend's always like, oh, come on, don't say that to her. She's so great. That narcissistic partner's like, I don't need her to have her agent in the room. Out. Okay.

Dax Shepard
What is the fallout of this relationship? It's bad. People in these relationships are confused. They're anxious, they feel helpless and powerless. They ruminate all the time.

Ramani Durvasula
Like, could I have said that differently? Like, what was happening? So you get very distracted. People are very hyper vigilant. They're on edge.

I gotta say it the right way. Did I say it the right way? Let me make sure the house is clean. Let me not mention that people are lonely, they're isolated. They feel like nobody gets it.

They feel like they look foolish. There's a lot of shame. How did I let it get this bad? People have trouble with sleep. Some people get physically ill.

Dax Shepard
I was gonna say. I'm thinking of the cortisol and the adrenaline. A lot of autoimmune. Yeah. A lot of immune, I imagine.

Okay, so if someone does recognize that they are in a relationship like this, you have a prescriptive course of action, one of them being radical acceptance. So what is radical acceptance and how does someone embrace it? In its most simple term, it's aware of this, is it? It's not going to change and have realistic expectations for what this relationship is moving forward. Stop taking responsibility for their behavior and nothing you do or say is going to change their behavior.

Ramani Durvasula
That's it. It's that simple and it's that complicated. It's funny how similar that is to dealing with an addict. Very similar, as you'd imagine. I get called all the time with people who are dealing with someone they love in their addiction.

Dax Shepard
And I'm like, you're not gonna like this. You gotta throw them to the wolves. That's how this works. They have to have consequences. They gotta get abandoned.

They gotta get to a low point. That's how it is. That becomes a slightly different conversation than this person you love who a lot of people in the world think they're cool and great because, remember, the narcissistic person is great at public appearances. But once they're in a car with you or once they're closed inside a space with you, they'll go off. So you will be in at a dinner party with them, and you're having a great time.

Ramani Durvasula
You're even thinking, oh, I've read this relationship wrong. Everybody loves him. I know. And then you're in the car on the way home, and it's like. And you're like, did anyone see that?

Monica Padman
No one didn't. Nobody saw it. So they just think you're with a great guy. I am realizing when you describe that there is only one person I think I dated that wasn't actual narcissist. And I do remember when I wanted to break up with them, I was conscious of the fact that everyone else liked them and that I was losing something everyone wanted.

Dax Shepard
Ugh. Yep. I mean, it was a pretty powerful force, to be honest. It's also a self doubting force. How could everybody be right about this person?

Ramani Durvasula
I'm the only one who doesn't see it. Have you ever heard of Solomon Ash's research? Basically, in that psychological research, think about eight people in a circle, right? And two people in the circle were in the know. They were Confederates.

All right? Everyone else, just students. They were given a piece of paper with three lines. Clearly, one was longer than the other, right? And they had to pick the longest line.

And then the people in the study were like, obviously, line B is longer. Line B is. And then they'd get to the first confederate, would be like, line a. You'd start to see people changing their judgments. Yeah, this is kind of halo effect, too, or something.

Halo effect. But it's also just that social contagion effect. And all that happens. We're very affected, and we all have some level of suggestibility, but there is this sense, especially when it's human beings, and especially after you've been through this relationship for a while and you're indoctrinated and you're already full of self doubt when you're thinking everybody likes them. I don't.

It's gotta be me. Well, also, there's something deeply primitive from an anthropological lens, which is, we are a social primate obsessed with status. So when we are linked to something with high status for all of time until now, that was our road to high status, which increased our survival and the survival of our children. So you're really breaking a very primitive instinct to turn your back on status. And we're hominid species, but we obviously broke off, and we are a status oriented species.

But even the way status works, also, if you take it back anthropologically, and you know this better than I, you studied it, is we also see differences in terms of were they hurting cultures, were they hunting cultures? Oh, yeah, yeah. Farming cultures. All of that would even change how status would even evolve in those kinds of communities. Have you interviewed Robert Sapolsky?

Dax Shepard
Yeah. And he talked about his baboon research. Oh, yeah, right. So I taught that study every semester. I taught from the beginning of my career to when I retired.

Tell me your favorite part. Cause I have a very favorite in that one troop of baboons that the alphas all got killed by eating the meat. Okay. So they ate the tainted meat in the safari park. They all died leaving an alpha list troop.

Ramani Durvasula
And Sapolsky watched very carefully. And what did he do? Kept measuring cortisol levels. And what did he find? They went through the roof.

They all dropped. Oh, they dropped. They dropped. You remove the alpha and the stress went away. Cooperative grooming remained between the non alpha males and the females.

The health of the troop improved. Think of it institutionally. You work in a job where there's a bunch of narcissistic people, and then the narcissistic person left, and the cohesion and the harmony was palpably felt. Well, it's just like when an abusive person moves, then the relief, but also grief. The challenge is it's so complicated that sometimes you sort of still feel in it.

And so the radical acceptance, you would think like, okay, now I get it. No, there's a greatness I've lost. I thought I was going to be in a happy marriage. I thought there was something that could be done. I thought I came from a normal family of origin.

So all the dreams come crumbling in. And now you realize that this marriage will never be happy, or I may have to get a divorce. And now my kids are growing up in two separate homes. People will say, I don't miss the narcissist. What I miss was the life I thought I was going to have.

That's a lot of. Yeah, you gotta mourn that. And you do. Some people say I should be happy they're gone. I said, no, you shouldn't, because you had invested a narrative and you in it, so grieve it.

It is a loss. And we call it ambiguous grief because a lot of people don't identify it as such, but grieve it. And then when you come through that grief, giving it the time and space, now we can do the big work, which is the discernment, the awareness, the disengagement, because not everyone can leave. I'd say all of us have at least one narcissistic relationship we cannot get out of. It's a family member, it's a colleague.

It's just someone we just can't get out of the relationship. We still have to interact with them. That's where radical acceptance makes a big difference, because I always tell folks I know radical acceptance is working when you're no longer surprised by their bad behavior. Interesting. Yeah, because if you have a parent that has it, that's the hand you were dealt.

Dax Shepard
And so you're deciding whether your kids are going to meet their grandparents or not, and so you're highly incentivized to maintain some version of a relationship. Interesting. So you think of those people just had radical acceptance over the reality of the dynamic. It would have impact. Stop reacting.

Ramani Durvasula
But it's also stop being surprised if you have a narcissistic person in your life you're still in contact with. Never share good news with them. Never share bad news with them. Stick to the weather. Stick to.

There's an eclipse. Stick to. Topanga Canyon's closed. I'll tell you one part of that equation that benefits the oppressed, in my personal experience with it, is this very, very tasty habit we have of self righteous indignation. So there is a.

Dax Shepard
A great deal of pleasure when you observe the narcissist be narcissistic and you call it out amongst each other, and there is this kind of moral superiority that falls in, that, in its own way, can get a tiny bit addictive. We get to go into the bedroom at night and be like, oh, my God, you see this? And then I recognize we're getting a little bit of a bump out of this. We also enjoy the righteous indignation. I'm going to pull it away from you as a bump, Dex.

Ramani Durvasula
I'm going to say it's an intimacy. It's a shared experience that you could have with each other in a workplace. It's actually some really interesting literature that shows, in the face of a toxic boss, the cohesion that can happen. Like, can you believe this can actually lead to innovation and the better mental health in those people. I think this happens on sports teams, too.

I agree. Yeah. Like, it bonds the team against the community. Well, it's also two people are then validating each other's experience. Like, not one person isn't crazy.

Monica Padman
It's. We can see this is not healthy. That's true. I just know to police myself when I'm enjoying something a lot, or I'm like, I'm really enjoying it. Like, calling up every detail we love telling the stories of, but it's also being animal's behavior.

Ramani Durvasula
Yeah, I don't disagree with you. And I think where it gets challenging is if the status quo doesn't shift in any case, where there's a narcissistic person and people are sort of talking to each other, and if you will, creating greater alliance around that. That's all good as long as it doesn't keep in a static, toxic thing going. But if it's someone who might pop, like, let's say it's a consultant that jumps into an organization from time to time, and everyone's like, here we go. And then you all chuckle about it, but it beats the heck out of going home and staring at the ceiling at 03:00 a.m.

and saying, I can't believe this person said this. And to your point, Monica, there's this attunement and intimacy empathy. You know, shared ickiness can actually bring people together when you're sort of able. And it un gaslights people, too, because you feel like, I did see that correctly. How can someone become narcissist resistant?

Know what it is and know that it won't change, so that when you're in the face of it, you're like, oh, I see this. And we often feel this in our body. We often feel something about this person is making the hairs on the back of my neck stand up. Most people say, yeah, no, I wasn't thrilled with them, but I thought I was being judgmental by thinking them. Your body always tells the truth.

Your mind gaslights your body, but your body's usually on point. So trust that experience, number one. Number two, you need good social support. You need people around you, even if it's just one person who will say, whoa, that was messed up. And you're like, really?

I thought so, too, but I wasn't sure that one interchange can save a person to say, okay, I am not crazy. And you might learn to slowly trust your judgment. And I know a lot of people talk blah, blah about meaning and purpose. In this case, where it matters is you need. You need something that gets you out of bed in the morning.

That has nothing to do with the narcissist. It could be work. It could be a creative pursuit. Do kids help? Sometimes kids can help a lot as you start observing the narcissist do it to the children.

Dax Shepard
Because I find people can be more protective of their children than they can themselves. They're more protective. But the key becomes there's a radical acceptance around. A narcissistic co parent is only going to participate in parenting in a way that works for them, that aggrandizes them, that regulates them, that satisfies them, that fits with their schedule. So I think a lot of times people get frustrated because they're saying, I'm doing everything.

Ramani Durvasula
And the radical acceptance piece, what I've worked with so many people in the situation, I say, and you're always going to do everything and you're going to actually make it more messed up for your kids. If you keep getting into the argument about why they're not helping with this, they're not doing it. If one day he's feeling it and decides to take the kids to the water park, just take it as the gift it is instead of trying to get this person to get up and do the breakfast thing with them because they're not going to consistently. Yeah, that sounds spectacular. Stay tuned for more armchair expert, if you dare.

Dax Shepard
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okay, so learning the fine art of discernment. Are there really obvious things people can look for right out of the gates? Is it too nuanced to actually give something quite prescriptive? I would imagine a narcissist that's good is smart enough to, on a first date, ask you about yourself. Whether they're listening or not.

They must have a playbook to some degree to dodge detection at the beginning. What are some telltale signs? Couple things. One is, are they interrupting you a lot? Is the conversation just sort of have that jagged edge of you feel like they're interrupting you or they're not really listening to you, or they're distracted.

Ramani Durvasula
They're looking at their phone a lot. It just sort of feels like they're not present or they're just sort of rude. Number two, watch how they direct narcissistic people. The research is very clear on that. They are bad, scary drivers.

If I was in a car, I'm like, no, I can tell you this person's narcissist. Oh, God. There's at least a dozen published research articles. Really? You mean bad?

Check your mind fast. They come up behind someone quickly. The zig zig zig zig, zig through the lanes. There's a lot of entitlement. There's a lot of entitled drive.

Dax Shepard
I exhibit that. Okay, you gotta stop Jack. But he did not want me to be on the freeway and not know who you are and say narcissist, they will. Okay, but then this is where you start parsing everything out, right? Because, yes, on paper, that's not good for you.

No, it's not a good look. But also, you grew up, you race cars and you grew up in Detroit. Let me ask you this. Someone's in the car with you. Yeah.

Ramani Durvasula
And they're like, hey, hey, hey, could you slow down? I'm a little anxious every trip. I'm with my wife. Okay, and what do you say to her? I drive.

So there's the test. If you said, oh, my gosh, grow the hell up. What is wrong with stop being a baby? That would be the narcissist. Okay, there we go.

So, yeah, I'm just barely get into their car with them. But other things that you might see in the beginning is how do they take feedback? You might even give them the most innocuous feedback, like, hey, the theater's over there, we could park here. What do you think? I don't know how to park.

Damn car. Now they do park in the wrong place. And you're walking this long way, and now they realize they're wrong. And they're like, oh, I know. Yes.

You're the genius who knows where's the parked the car and I'm the idiot. And you're like, oh, wow, okay, that's a lot. You're a know it all. They're a victim. One woman had told me how she had been dating a guys early and he had worn, I don't know what it was.

Like a jacket or something like that was blue and he had blue eyes. And she said, I love that you're wearing that jacket again. And I love how it brings out your eyes. And he's like, what are you trying to tell me that I only have one jacket? I have a whole closet full of clothes.

So she was like, oh, my gosh. And so run away that car. Kind of sensitivity to feedback. Sensitivity to criticism of any kind, or even just sort of pointing something out. You might see that kind of early on.

You might see how they treat people in any kind of a service profession of La Parker. Are they either inappropriately flirty or are they rude, entitled? What do you mean my table's not ready kind of stuff. Those would be some of the ringers that I would say that we often see that sort of dysregulation the entitlement, making fun of someone who's struggling, kind of getting off on humiliation. That's an early sign.

Dax Shepard
Okay, did you have any fear? Because let's just back out of narcissism for 1 second. Most people leave a relationship and they can list you all ten things the other person was doing wrong. That's very common. You break up.

Why'd you guys break up? She did X, Y, and Z. He did X, Y, and Z. Then they have ten relationships and same thing. They had that, and there's never what they did.

Are you at all fearful that because that might be a little bit of a predisposition of us, that we might be arming people to quickly assess someone as a narcissist and just hop out of relationships and never explore what's going on with them? I don't, because the vast majority of people, first of all, these signs I'm giving you, whether it's the driving fast or being sensitive about the blue sweater, are embedded in all these other things that feel dazzling. So in all that dazzle, the one little argument in the parking lot. Now you go into the best concert ever, and you have a great time. You've even forgotten about the parking lot.

Ramani Durvasula
I think that actually, most people will never attune to the icky stuff that happens in the beginning. That's number one. We're a social species. We are an attachment oriented species. We want to be with other people.

So when a person finds someone they're attracted to, drawn to, and enjoying their time with, they're much more likely to stick around for more abuse than they are to leave at the sign of red flags. That's another thing that we know, unless somebody really has been burned in these relationships before. And what's very interesting is that, modally, when a person's been through a narcissistic relationship, even as they're going through a breakup, as a therapist, I'll tell you what I hear in the room is, I'm so confused, doc. I hope I did the right thing. I was upside down, like, he cheated on me, but it's still a lot of self blame.

More of what I hear in that room is not, he did this. He did this. He did this. It's. Is this me?

It's not you. That's why the book's called. It's not you. It's like, what's wrong with me? What did I do wrong?

Maybe I didn't try hard enough. Narcissistic relationships pull for much more of a strong thread of self doubt. By people who are not narcissistic in those relationships. Yeah. Now, quick question.

Dax Shepard
You're listening to this. How does someone, I guess we've laid out a bunch of them, but how do you know if you yourself are a narcissist? It's very promising if you're actually asking yourself that. Question number one. Number two, are you present with other people?

Ramani Durvasula
Do you listen to them when they have problems? How do you feel about other people's emotions? Do you truly believe you are entitled to special treatment? I think what we have is there's one group of people who are never going to ask themselves those questions. They're not listening to this episode.

They're not interested. Let's take them out. Okay. You have a group of people who are not at all narcissistic, but we're told they were narcissistic or selfish in the course of a narcissistic relationship. And those poor folks.

I'm saying it's not you. Then you've got this group in the middle. That is an interesting group that might have some of those unicorny features of. Yep. Now that I look back at my divorce, there's a little bit of taking accountability going over what's happened, saying, I've been told this by other people.

I've noticed that I've burned a few bridges. You might have some people who are doing that, to which I'd say, get thee to a therapist's office and talk it out and talk about what's happening for you. Now, narcissistic people are 60% more likely to drop out of therapy, and they tend to drop out when the heat gets turned on, when the work becomes more vulnerable, when it becomes more emotional. They can gaslight the therapist. Well, they can often gaslight the therapist if they're not really experienced.

But the other thing is when the therapist puts their feet to the fire and doesn't want to just engage in storytelling, because a lot of narcissistic people will come into therapy and just tell stories. It's an audience. And when you try to push them to feeling, they'll often sort of brush off the therapist contemptuously. If you push too hard, they won't come back. Yeah, I had a moment when I was making an argument that I wasn't a narcissist.

Dax Shepard
This is what happened. I was driving to work, and I, weirdly, as narcissistic, tell the story. But here we go. I was driving to work, and I was kind of just like, going through my checklist. I have a great fear of being a narcissist, I'm not sure why.

Well, a. I exhibit some of these behaviors, but I went to work, and we're in a scene rehearsing, and one of the actors, she is complaining about her daughter. And this is going on and on. It's taking up all this time. And I just had this one moment where I was like, okay, well, here's something that I think is unique to a narcissist, which is, I don't like my dialogue either, but I recognize no one likes their dialogue.

I don't think I uniquely have bad dialogue. And the rest of the script's brilliant. She thought everyone else's dialogue was really against specialness. Yeah, special. Like she was being uniquely punished.

Ramani Durvasula
She was victimized by this. Yeah. And I was like, I might be thinking I'm being put upon, but I recognize everyone else is being put upon the exact same way. It was, like, helpful. I was like, okay, well, don't do that.

Yeah, but it's that perspective taking. And there might be times in an airport and you're waiting and there's a weather delay, and they change the airplane, and you're in a different seat, and you might feel like, I can't believe I'm being punished with this middle seat. And a narcissistic person would be throwing the fuss of the century. But a healthier person would say, okay, number one, if the other plane was broken, thank goodness they changed it out. Number two, can't control the weather.

Dax Shepard
This sucks for everyone here. So that capacity to take perspective in that way is all the difference in the world. Listen, every one of us has a moment where we've behaved in an entitled way. We snapped at a receptionist. We rushed a friend off the phone.

Ramani Durvasula
We were selfish, and we chose what we wanted to do, and it might have hurt someone. What a healthy person does in contrast to a narcissistic person is a healthy person will register that feel uncomfortable and attempt to make amends very quickly in a meaningful way. Call the friend and say, I am so sorry. I did not listen to you. And I'm not even a city here, and give you the litany of excuses.

You deserve better. I hurt you. I'm sorry. That kind of an apology is reparative, and relationships move forward from that. A narcissistic person would blame you.

How could you ask me this when you know I'm so busy? And it's all about projection of blame, and that's a whole different experience for the other person. Man. So if 10% of the country is narcissist. That's 30 million people.

Dax Shepard
That means 30 million other people are in a relationship. I mean, whatever. Not everyone. More than 30 million. Are you only in one relationship?

Good point. No, I'm in multiple relationships. You have dozens of people work with that are your friends, that your family members. So every person probably has a little world around them of 30 to 50 people. When you start doing that math, that's a lot of people.

Ramani Durvasula
I would imagine all of us are affected. Yeah. Fascinating. Well, this is such a riveting topic. I'm really glad that you've studied it so much and have so much to share with us.

Dax Shepard
I think everyone should check out. It's not you. Identifying and healing from narcissistic people. Also, you have a podcast I did navigating narcissism. The episodes are still out there.

You may do other seasons. This whole new thing with Fireside, Mark Cuban's new company, starting a network on there. It's much more interactive, so you can go check that out. I think that's going to be huge. Again.

I really feel a swell of awareness. Around so much awareness. But you know what it is? This isn't about being able to say, can I pin someone as a narcissist? That's not interesting to me.

Ramani Durvasula
It's about giving people permission to recognize when something that's happening in a relationship feels unhealthy or unsafe. Giving themselves permission to call it out to themselves, not to the other person. And also letting people know, again, it's not you. I can't tell you how much human potential we've lost because people have been shamed for who they are. Because the narcissistic person wants to hold power.

I'm actually not even that interested in the narcissistic folks. Right? They've got enough attention. I don't care about the people who are in these relationships. I want to let people know there's always room for an act too.

Dax Shepard
Oh, last question. Is it advisable? Is it someone's right, if they are concerned and love someone that they feel like is in one of these relationships, to call that out, not call it. Out, because if the person's not ready to hear it, they're going to defend. It's a bit like what we see in substance use, right?

Ramani Durvasula
If you push that on, that person can say, I'm not drinking too much. They don't have a problem. Right? So what you want to do is might see a narcissistic person, talk to them out at dinner, take their friend inside, say, hey, I wanted to touch base. Are you okay?

I saw that and I don't know, that felt disrespectful to me, but I just wanted to make sure you're okay. Your friend might even say, no, no, it's nothing. But then you've planted a seed. I promise you that seed's going to take flight. Okay, great advice.

Dax Shepard
I wouldn't know how to do that. I'd be like, hey, dude, she's a narcissist. A little bit more of a soft touch. A little bit more of a soft. Yeah.

Get the fuck out of here. You need a ride? You need me to bring the truck over and move everything out? Doctor Ramani, thank you so much for coming. This was really, really fun.

Ramani Durvasula
Thank you so much for having me. One part company, one part scary. We gotta know. We gotta know the stuff. Thank you so much.

Dax Shepard
I hope everyone checks out. It's not you. Be well.

Ramani Durvasula
Stay tuned for the fact check. It's running party Zach.

Dax Shepard
Okay, I'm gonna start by saying I'm disappointed. Why? From the description of your face until now, your face. Oh, yeah. I almost wanna read what you wrote because I had the highest expectations.

Monica Padman
Okay. All right. Let me just find out.

Dax Shepard
Okay. I sent a text to Rob and. Dax yesterday warning us that your face would be. Let's see.

Hey, team. I got a herbal peel at my witch yesterday, and it takes multiple days. In the first part of that, all the pigmentation comes to the surface of your face. So just prepping you both that my face is going to look absolutely hideous and crazy tomorrow. I'll bring Zofran so everyone doesn't gag.

And you said this is like, someone spattered random dark purple paint on my face, smeared it all around, and then did it one more time. One more time. Yeah. So I was looking forward to, like, some purple spatterings as promised. Okay, well, yesterday was worse looking than today, which big gains last night.

Monica Padman
Well, it feels a little scary. Cause it's supposed to get worse before it gets perfect, right? Yeah. So when you text us, that must have been at the nadir of the experience, like, the worst. And you thought me it was gonna keep getting worse.

Well, no, because it hasn't even started peeling yet, so. Yes, but the pigment part. The pigment part I was most excited. About the pigment, like, peeling up scene. Right.

Dax Shepard
I've never seen someone's pigment completely change. Yeah, it looked very splotchy. Dark purple spots. Okay, what is the process? What happened?

What is the treatment you got? What does it do? It's like a chemical peel, but not chemical. It was herbal. So she put all this stuff on, and then.

Monica Padman
And also, by the way, it's only on one part of my face. What do you mean she only did one part of my face? We didn't do my full face. Tell me why. Because that is the part of my face that has the most, like, scarring or hyperpigmentation.

The other parts don't really have it, so no need. So no need. Don't fix what's not broke. Exactly. Okay.

So she put some goop and it's herbal. Yeah, had, like, Ginger. Had all this stuff. Okay. Was it.

You know, I don't ask her in your questions, you know? Yeah, yeah. First it has all these herbs, and she, like, rubs it all over. I'm, like, picturing twigs and leaves and, like. Was it a chutney?

Yeah, I think it was. Okay, where's it happening? Where? In, like, a dark cave or what? No, at my witch's office.

She has a fancy office in Beverly Hills, and she smashes that all around. Right. For a. And what's the feeling like when it's covering your face? That part.

Dax Shepard
Any pain? It hurts a little. It does. Okay. But nothing crazy.

Monica Padman
But then she's putting other stuff on it, and I don't know what that is, but I think it's, like, acids and all kinds of stuff. Okay. And it hurts really bad. Then it really takes off. Yeah.

Like, as she's doing it, she's, like, gonna feel like glass is cutting you. Oh, wow. Shards. And it did feel like that. Did you scream at all?

I didn't, but I did for a second have to, like, breathe deep, center. Yourself, and before you lost control of your bowels, because herbal. I just want to remind everyone, like, poison ivy's still herbal. Oh, for sure. Like, just because something's herbal doesn't mean it can't be, like, terribly harmful to your skin, right?

Yeah, I don't think it's harmful because she knows what she's doing. Oh, yeah, yeah. I'm just saying, like, um. But it can harm making it relative to acid. Like, well, it's not acid was like, well, I'd rather have acid peel than a poison ivy.

True. Yeah. So she puts acids on. I don't know what acids after the chutney. Exactly.

And then. That's kind of it. How long was the treatment? 35 minutes. 30 minutes.

Dax Shepard
30. 35 minutes. Yeah. And when you left, was your face on fire? Did it feel like it was on fire?

Monica Padman
It hurt. I looked crazy, right? Immediately. You look crazy. Very, like, so red.

Ramani Durvasula
Oh. And at first it was all white. Whoa. What? How come white salts and stuff.

Dax Shepard
Okay. And were you allowed to put, like, any ice packs on it or anything? Nope. No, you gotta just. Absolutely not.

You gotta live through the pain. Oh, wow. How long did it last? All day. That was Saturday.

Monica Padman
This was Saturday. And I had a lunch plan. I had to cancel it. Sure. Cause I could not be in public.

Dax Shepard
We probably couldn't even move your mouth to eat. We've been in searing pain along the creases. Well, it was just embarrassing. And that. It was one of those moments where you remember some people might recognize you.

Uh huh. Yeah. And you look insane. You look crazy. So.

Monica Padman
So I decided that I was gonna cancel all my plans for the day I went home and I started 6ft under. Oh, wow. Blast from the past. Had you ever seen it? No.

Dax Shepard
Great show, right? So good. I'm loving it. I watched eight episodes. Wonderful young Peter Krause.

Monica Padman
I know. And I wanted to tell you, it's so funny to see him then. He's so good in it. And his character on that show is Crosby on paranoid. Yes.

Ramani Durvasula
Yeah. He would tell me that all the time. Cause I was working with him before I had seen 6ft under. I then fell in love with him and then went and watched 6ft under. And he said, you know, sometimes I'm envious of your role.

Dax Shepard
Cause I used to have it, and it's really fun to be the good times. Yeah, it was definitely. I was like, oh, these two are brothers. This character in this show is actually Crosby's brother. Right, right, right.

It's fun to see that range of people. Right. Cause, like, Peter and I could do an entirely different thing, and it would be a totally different dynamic. It did make me. Peter, if you're listening, I'll do it.

Monica Padman
It did make me think when I was watching him, because he's so good and so believable, and then he's so good in parenthood in such a different way. But he's also, like, sexy and 6ft under, which is fun. So sexy. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Peter, you're so sexy and 6ft under.

Dax Shepard
It should have been called sex feet under. Oh, my God. It's just weird, though, because, I mean, I guess it just shows how good of an actor he is. But it does make you think, like, who is he? Because when.

Monica Padman
When I watched Parenthood, I definitely thought, oh, he must be like that. But, like, yeah, I almost said Peter Braverman. No, Adam Braverman. Yeah. A little more straight laced.

Dax Shepard
No, not at all. No, he's not straight laced at all. So it was just so fun to see that connection. It was a very fun day because I just watched tv all day. Like, you had a cold.

Monica Padman
Yeah. Like, I had relegated the day to just, like, be a tv day. And because of it, I was in a very kind of rascally mood a little bit. I was kind of in a fantasy world that day, which was fun. I like giving myself that once a year.

Dax Shepard
Yeah. Do what I kind of shouldn't do. Which is like, live in fantasy. Yeah. So what, were you living somewhere with Peter in this fantasy?

Ramani Durvasula
No. Uh, I mean, lots, lots of fantasies were tons of fantasies scrolling through the day, and I just wasn't living presently at all, you know? And I liked it. Yeah, it's your direction. It is my drug, and I let myself have it for the day.

Dax Shepard
Now, does it come with any hangover on Sunday? No. Great. Unless it would have. If I couldn't snap out, that probably would have been bad.

But you woke up and you were back to present day. I felt fine. It was sunny out. But there's no way you can be outside, right? Well.

Or can you? Did she give you any aftercare instructions? She typed out some instructions, but we didn't read them. Or she made me read them out loud. Oh, wow.

Monica Padman
But they're just. They're written in which. Yeah, it's in a language I don't understand. A bunch of symbols. No, it just says kind of normal stuff, but she just wants me to be checking it.

She's gonna tell me what to do. Now, how many times does she pitched you this treatment? Have you said no to this treatment in the past and then said yes? No. That was the first time.

Dax Shepard
She just hit you with that out of the blue? She was like, I'm going to do this. Okay, I think there's what we got to do now. Yeah. Yeah.

We don't really shock the system, basically. Cause my skin is not in very good shape. She tries like this. It's not extreme, but it's more extreme than what we do normally. And normally she does all these acids, but she calls it a peel.

Monica Padman
No peel. Right. So my skin needed a little something extra. Okay. But as I was leaving, there was an indian lady in the waiting room.

And my witch was like, oh, Monica, this is blah, blah, blah. She's had a lot of peels. Oh, she outed her. And then I was like, my first one. And you, were you feeling insecure because your face was a flame?

Of course. Yeah. Now, do you stereotype. Mmm. Like, remember when Sanjay was in here and it turned out you both didn't have coffee for the first time until after 30 years old, which I think is so interesting.

Interesting, yeah. And I said, it's hard for me not to assume, oh, I guess Indians don't drink coffee till late in life. Right. So when you. If you bump into an indian at the derm and they, oh, she's had a million things.

Dax Shepard
Do you think, like, oh, this. Us Indians must deal with skin issues. Skin issues here in La. Oh, no. Do you draw conclusions interacting with another indian that's got the same story as you?

Oh, are you inclined to guess that that's a common story? I think in certain circumstances, yeah. And then others. No, no, I didn't think that this time. I wasn't like, ugh, us Indians have all these skin problems.

Monica Padman
I just thought, oh, her skin looks really nice. This is probably gonna be good for me. Like, my skin is probably similar to that person's skin type. And so if it's working on that, like, if I see a white person who's had, like, a laser treatment. Yeah.

And they've had a laser treatment, they might be like, this is so good, you should definitely do it. But my skin is different from their skin. Right. You're inclined to not take their advice. I just can't trust whities.

No, no. I just know that it's different. So I can only take that to heart so much. But this woman has the same skin as me. So then it felt like, oh, this is gonna be good.

Dax Shepard
I did it as recently as yesterday. Say it. So I noticed, like, molly can stay in the sauna indefinitely. She could probably do 3 hours in there. Her discomfort seems to be lowest other than yours.

And she's half ecuadorian. Yes. And of course, people live on tropical climates. They have a different setup. And so I literally just yesterday, I was like, yeah, Monica and Mali, they have tropical background.

That's probably got to be part of it. I assume it is, yeah. Now, if you're an indian that's very sensitive to high heat, please hit me in the comments and say, oh, yeah, or ecuadorian, let us know. And if you see some, like, blonde, some towheads with translucent skin chilling in the snow in a t shirt, which I can do. Yeah, I'm sure if I were you, I'd go like, these fucking white people, man.

They can really tolerate some cold, which makes sense. We've been living at a northern California climate for so long, I think what. You'Re saying makes sense. I just. It's not where my brain goes.

Right. I don't. Yeah, you're not. Well, so I feel bad, because I do. I do do it a lot with people, but I'm really categorical and I'm really obsessed with patterns.

And I don't think that you're as obsessed with patterns as I am. Or are you? I'm very obsessed with psychological patterns. Okay. But I wouldn't say I pay much attention to racial patterns or, like, historic male female patterns.

Monica Padman
I care less about gender patterns. Yeah. I'm constantly, like, if I'm with my guys who ride at the motorcycle track and I'm, like, listening to this banter and I'm, like, picking up things that are different from the banter in my actory friends thing. Yeah. And then I'm with some other subject set of people I like to hang out with.

Dax Shepard
I'm, like, really conscious of all these different patterns that they have and how they were drawn to each other, and I just can't help but see it or be aware of it. Yeah. I mean, that's an anthropological thing, I'm. Sure a lens like you go to. I was at monster jam this week.

Monica Padman
Oh, yeah? How was it? So fun. Of course. It means the greatest show ever.

Dax Shepard
There's fucking pyrotechnics. There's destruction. There's horsepower galore. It was the world finals. There were so many trucks.

There's also one truck that's the zombie. And they play thriller. And the zombie thing has arms on it, like, zombie arms. And everyone has to go like this. I'm making the thriller.

The famous Michael Jackson movies. Arms back and forth. Yes. And the entire arena does it. I know.

Monica Padman
That's so fun. It's so funny. Cause it's so stupid. No one looks cool doing this. And so to watch everyone just play along.

Dax Shepard
Yeah. Yeah. I really like it. But again, I imagine the people who are going to the philharmonic, they're not those people, right? For the most part, probably not.

Probably not gonna do the zombie arms well. But then. And maybe this is why I don't think of life that way. Maybe because I've crossed so many of those boundaries. Like, that zombie arm thing reminds me of in college at Georgia games in the fourth quarter, the beginning of the fourth quarter, everyone does this whole, like, motion.

Oh, you're kind of. You're holding, like, four hands up, four fingers. Like, it's so stupid. Yeah, of course. But.

Monica Padman
Yeah, but everyone does it, and you're all doing it together. It puts you. What's funny? Though, about the zombie arms is like, I'm watching it and I'm like, ooh. And I go like, oh, I'd be so embarrassed doing that.

Dax Shepard
I'm gonna do it. Cause everyone's doing it and it makes you feel fun. It does. But, like, it actually reverses into yourself. And you're now having fun because you're doing something so stupid.

That is inexplicable. Also, it does make you feel like you're a part of the tribe. Like you are included in something. And so there's an absurdity to her doing it to this truck. So it's almost like, actually no one's taking it seriously and yet everyone's abiding by.

That's like, there's some magic to it. I agree. Yeah. But I did that and do that. But then I would also go to the philharmonic.

Yeah. So I guess it's harder for me. Cause I bounce around a bit. Yeah. And so it's not as interesting to me to, like, do harsh categories because I think I quickly feel like.

Monica Padman
But, like, not really because I can't even fully relate to that. And I think anyone that would join any one of the cultures would change. I'm just identifying the pattern within each subculture culture. Like, what are the things that cue each other into the fact that we're an in group. Yeah.

Dax Shepard
Is very fascinating. Definitely. Yeah. Yeah. And there's certain things at the track and then there's certain things in f one.

And there's certain things. I was up getting interviewed and then grand marshaling, so I had to scream at the top of my lungs, Los Angeles, this is monster Jam world finals. And I made a commitment to myself before I said started. I'm gonna go to eleven. Wow.

I'm gonna look right in the camera. Did you practice? No. Cause I knew I would be so embarrassed by what I was doing that it would be one. Leave it all on the core.

Yes. And I fucking went nuts. I was at peak volume there. Video. There has to be.

Yes. It plays live on YouTube and then it's on tv. Some delayed thereafter. But what was fun is now, as much as I say that there's this shared culture, I can't even guess who's gonna be there. So I start getting texts from people.

Once I kick it off. Grand Marshall's make yourself known. Nate tuck's like, holy shit, we're here. Oh, my God. The boys just saw Uncle Dax almost popping a vein, screaming to get excited for monster trucks.

And then my old agent, he's there with his boys. Yeah. So it was really fun. And then I guess the thing I wanted to say is that Charlie ate. We were there for a while.

We got there at five. We did not leave until 939 40. And Charlie ate for 100% of the time he was there. Wow. It just never stopped.

Monica Padman
What did he eat? What was he. Every single thing. Chicken wings, chicken tenders, hot dogs, hamburgers. Smart corn.

Dax Shepard
Yeah. Smart popcorn. Fritos, a couple brownies. Then back a salad. He would eat.

And that would take whatever he'd make a plate. He'd eat that for about 30 minutes, and he'd get up, and then he'd return with another plate and then another. And it just never stopped. And I had eaten a lot myself, but what he did was epic. I felt like he was in a competition with somebody, but we didn't know who.

And then in the box next to us, John Legend. Oh, my God. I'm not guessing. He's there at the monster trail. Right.

But anyone with a little kid, you might find yourself in monster jam interest, because the little ones love monster jam. You know, the adults do, too, once you go, Alba was in our box. Cool. Yep. It was a real.

Throw a dart at a board. Who's gonna be there? You'd picture all the rednecks like me would be there. Well, I guess like Channing Tatum sort of defying what you just said. I know.

I am. I know, I know, I know. But we're. But let's be honest, harmonic, when you're talking about John Legend. Okay, we have a cliffhanger.

Monica Padman
Did you cry on Friday? You did. The ancestor. Okay. So.

Yep. I don't know how much to say because it'll air and I don't want to ruin anything of their show. I get that. But I did not cry. Okay.

Dax Shepard
I laughed so uproariously for such a long period of it because. And I can't wait for this to air. Yeah. There's so many more stories about the Honchals, and I thought, there's no way there's more. I have all the newspaper clippings.

Multiple murders, multiple jailbreaks, multiple riots, robberies, kidnappings. Yeah. Oh, no. There was still a couple major doozies that they had found. And then I guess I just found out that side of the family is, like, one of the first in on Kentucky.

Like, they were in Kentucky since, like, 1740 or something. Crazy. And then same with Michigan. Like, one of my relatives is the oldest existing settler of Monroe, Michigan. Oh, cool.

You know what's so weird is I've already said. And I told him and warned him, I don't feel any connection. And even while I was hearing a lot of the stuff, I'm like, yeah, those sound like people in a history book or something. But I did find myself getting a bizarre amount of pride knowing that we've been in Michigan forever. That's lovely.

Yeah. Like, I love Michigan, and I love that we've been set up there since way before it was a state. Yeah. That's cool. When you're talking, it's remarkable.

Monica Padman
It's putting you to sleep a little bit. No, it's not putting me to sleep, but it is reminding me that my brain does not register time. Like, when you say 1740, I black out when you say that. I don't know what that means, really. Well, I want to give you a couple of markers I use to make it relevant.

Okay. I go, 1492, we got here. Sail the ocean blue. Is that the same Columbus? Sail the ocean.

Dax Shepard
Okay. Yeah, 1492, we got here early, 16 hundreds. Mayflower. Okay, that's helpful. The enlightenment.

I got kind of preoccupied with this. He wanted me to move on. But my french relatives that left France, my paternal grandfather's side, they left in the 16 hundreds. And I was like, oh, wow. That was during the enlightenment.

Enlightenment. Okay. Like, if you think of. There's, like, some. You only have to remember, like, four or five of them.

There's some huge compartments of history, which is, like, 1300. You get the Renaissance in Italy, and that's you get Galileo. We start figuring out. We revolve around the sun. It's a humongous, you know, advancement, huge leap forward in what we understand.

And then in France, you get the enlightenment in the 16 hundreds. And you have Rene Descartes, and you have the first atheists, and you have science and Newton and all this. So, yeah, those are huge. Those ones, I remember. And then, of course, 1776, we declare our independence.

Monica Padman
Right? So whenever you're finding out someone got here in 1740, you're, like, bonkers. They came here when it was british and the revolutionary war hadn't happened yet. Yeah, that's true. Okay, cool, cool.

Dax Shepard
Yeah. The honchos owned slaves. Surprise. As we knew. Yeah, that was.

But the people in Michigan never did. Oh, wow. The majority of the family didn't. That's good. Only one.

Only one threat. That's pretty good. So. But it was fun. He's so sweet.

Monica Padman
Yeah. By the way, he's very much like us. He's an irreverent motherfucker. He is so rascally and playful. Like, the way he's talking to his crew and he clearly has a great relationship with everybody.

Yeah. And he's like, he's a provocative, rascally guy. Yeah. So, yeah, we had a really good time. And he had ordered lunch from somewhere.

Dax Shepard
And I said, skip, we are like eight blocks from the best pastrami in North America. Langers. So I talked him in to get a corned beef and pastrami platter, which he got, and I got. That was a highlight of the day for sure. And.

And that knocked him right on his ass. He was floored with how good it was. So I felt pretty cool that I had hit him with a legendary historic. That is cool. But it was totally fun.

And he's lovely. I went to a children's play on Friday. You saw Lily's. I saw Winter Lily's play. She was Wednesday.

Monica Padman
Yes. She was Wednesday in the Addams family at a private school here in Los Angeles. That's like very artsy. And it was so good. It was so good.

Dax Shepard
Kristen said the production Valley was off the charts. It was like watching a real Broadway play. Yeah, it's incredible. But also, just seeing these kids just really give it their all and they're really good. They're very talented.

Monica Padman
Was so life affirming and heartwarming. It was just lovely. And it made me so happy to see all these. Was it at their school, children? Yeah.

Dax Shepard
Okay. Just seeing these kids being so confident and playing with comedic timing. Yeah, it was sweet. And you know what's great is she sat there unanimously all thought Saturday shows show was the best by far. They thought Friday show was a disaster.

Monica Padman
Damn it. And that's what I went. But I know the mind of a performer. Yeah, exactly. Because that's what Eric was saying.

Dax Shepard
He's like, do you think that there's really any difference between these shows? Like they're all certain of what one was great and bad. And I said, yeah, it'd be interesting if like a. I could watch the show and objectively say whether it was good or worse. I mean, it would be like 1%, which to them, I'm sure.

Monica Padman
I'm sure. Friday was just, I mean, there was like, there was a couple sound, like, there was a couple sound tech issues. Yeah, a couple tech issues. But like, come on, barely. Not like when you go see a play at my kids school, it's just one tech issue after another.

But that, yeah, that's so fun in a different. It is kind. Well, they gotta really be thinking on their toes. Yeah, they do it trains you gives you a different skill set. Yeah.

Dax Shepard
When you're going to the public school.

Monica Padman
But yeah. Anyways, so that was. That was very sweet. Oh, quick update. Yeah.

Dax Shepard
Oh. In classic me. And you were. You were the victim of one of my underestimations of a task, which is I thought I could paint the fence around the property in a day. Sure.

And what, it ended up taking us like seven, eight days. Yeah, yeah, yeah. A long, long time. Well, similarly, I'm like, now that I played pickleball one time in life, I'm like, I gotta convert my driveway to a pickleball court. Yes.

So that was Thursday. I was like, okay, I'm doing this. It involved, like, moving my little portable car ports to a different area, cleaning out a whole area, getting the bus all the way up against the fence. And then I'm like, okay, now I gotta power wash the driveway so that when I put the tape down for the lines, it sticks. It's not dirty.

Monica Padman
Yeah. I might be able to do this in 1 hour for sure. Power wash. Rip right through, through this. Five uninterrupted hours of power washing.

Dax Shepard
Never stopped for 5 hours. My lower back. Oh, I did an honest day's work, and that wasn't even the point. But it just occurred to me because I was in so much pain that I was like, yeah, that's an honest day work. I almost need to go to the doctor.

But yes, it was. It turned out to be way bigger project than I thought. But I did get the tape down, and we did play for the first time as a family Saturday morning. And lincoln's obsessed, which I love. And she's good.

You can play. You can actually play with her. Yeah. And now I'm debating whether or not I go all the way and paint the pavement. It's really hard to know if this is something we're gonna like for a week or for the rest of our lives.

Cause I think once that paint goes down, that's that, like, sport court paint. Maybe you give it a minute. I would give it a minute. I wish there was, like some kind of halfway step you could take, like, paint that you knew would wear off. And it's also.

Monica Padman
Cause it's right in front of your house. It is. Yes. It'd be a full. And we got a net that's got wheels on it, so we can just roll it in, roll it out.

I like what it's looking like now. Yeah. It would be really nice, though, right? If it was also painted? It would be really nice.

When you're playing when you're playing, probably. But also, it's a big swing. The funny thing is, is I learned no lesson with the power washing. Cause I'm telling you, I know I could have that court painted. Oh, my God.

Dax Shepard
In 2 hours for sure. I've already thought it through. I get all my buckets of paint lined up and my trays and my rollers. Definitely be able to knock that out in 2 hours. All right.

Chris is like, you're gonna have to hire someone to come do that if you're gonna do that. And I'm like, absolutely not. I know I can do it in an hour. Why would I have someone do it? Can you undo it?

Monica Padman
Can you paint over it regular? Well, I would have to then power wash it with a really strong power washer to get that paint off. Okay. Yeah. Okay.

Dax Shepard
Yeah. It's a pretty permanent. It's a tattoo. I'd be putting a tattoo. Oh, my God.

Monica Padman
You need to wait. Can't do that. You literally just did it. We've only had one weekend with it. Yeah.

And you. You just got the house to, like, where you guys have wanted it to be. The workers are just about to leave. Yeah. And just wait.

Dax Shepard
Okay. I know it's hard to wait. I mean, there's 100% the attic to me, which is like, I did it once and it was so fun. For 2 hours. I'm like, I want to do this now all the time.

Monica Padman
I know. Yeah. And you might. You might. I did get some great shoes.

Dax Shepard
I'm happy I made that decision. That's fun. I really, really want to learn. It's right there. But you have to teach me.

Yeah. So easy. Okay. Teach you in 1 second. I would love.

You'll be paddling around. I bet once you play, you'll be like, yeah, you gotta paint this. This is how I could get you on my side, probably. Maybe. Well, does Kristen not want.

No, Kristen's more rash than I am. Weirdly. Weirdly, our dynamic. I have to pump the breaks on her. She also will be like, yeah, let's do this whole thing.

Yeah. You guys are carried away. Kind of similar in that way. Yeah, we kind of like gas and matches when it's like, let's do this crazy thing. Yeah.

Yeah. It's really turned into a sports complex. I know. With the volleyball court and now the pickleball court. Volleyball is easier to be rid of.

Monica Padman
It's just a net. Yeah. And the grass is the grass. Yeah. So we need an ice rink in the winter.

Dax Shepard
I think that's next hockey over the pool? No. Maybe. No. I got a bunch of driveway I can use.

That's all the cobble. I turn that into an ice rink. You didn't even go. Classic basketball court, which have been easy. That's coming because.

Monica Padman
Oh, it is. Yeah. That's no sweat, because Lincoln has showed just a tiny bit of interest in that. So of course, I'm gonna have to. Put up a basketball.

Dax Shepard
Basketball. But that's nothing. I put one up in my old house. Yeah, that was also a thing. I was like, on to half hour, dig this hole, mix this cement, put this pole in.

And again, it was like, the sun's going down. I'm, like, trying to level the pole. You know what? It's a blessing about it. It is a blessing, because if you were more like me, it just won't happen.

I wouldn't tackle any of this stuff. Yeah, sometimes you win, sometimes you lose. Does Lincoln use her pavilion? Never that I know of. Maybe.

Monica Padman
Oh, my God. That one doesn't bum me up because it's really the lesson we're always trying to live by, which is like, it was all about the process. I know. I don't really give a fuck if she uses it or not. Like, her and I, building that thing was one of my great.

Of course. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's not about. And we'll convert it into a weed smoking shack when they're teenagers, I guess. Speaking of process, I had therapy on.

On Saturday, not the end of our session. She was imploring me to do more present awareness exercises. So I'm gonna start doing. Did she teach you some or did she refer you to any resources? More like, I need to probably start meditating.

Dax Shepard
Breathing stuff, maybe? Yeah. Gratitude list. More meditation. It's just like, instead of, like, future and past, like, living in those.

Monica Padman
Those areas. So reminder that all I have is the second that's gone, now I have this that's gone. So it's just being here. And so meditation's great for that. So I'm going to start doing that.

I might start reading some Buddha stuff. Okay. She was talking. Well, a lot of people in the comments ask, what's the book I'm reading? I don't have the author's name memorized, but the book is called what the Buddha taught.

Dax Shepard
Okay, Wolfa Rahula, I assume you did a good job, but I can't know for sure. Well, there's no way to know. Well, we've been getting a suspicious amount of signals. We've had, like, four experts in a row that their whole scientific thing really ended up being Buddhism, and they acknowledged as much. And Camila Cabello.

Yeah, she was saying it, but then the memory expert and James Doty. Yep. And then I sat next to a guy at this dinner at this conference I went to last week, and he teaches at Madison. Same thing. Neuroscientists obsessed with Buddhism.

Monica Padman
Oh, cool. Anyway, okay, this is for Doctor Ramani. Narcissism. Very interesting. So interesting.

Dax Shepard
Yes, very. So the addiction and narcissism connection. Link. Connection, whatever. There's a article, medical news today.

Monica Padman
Okay. Both grandiose narcissism and vulnerable narcissism show a strong link to substance use disorders. A 2019 article in frontiers in psychiatry looks at the relationship between the problematic use of substances and narcissism, concluding that self esteem plays a major role. Both fluctuating self esteem and low self esteem can lead to the use of alcohol, drugs, or other addictive behaviors as a method of validation, which is important to people with narcissism. The authors of the article also note that grandiose narcissism is a factor in several other forms of addiction, such as social media use, smartphone use, compulsive shopping, gambling, compulsive work, working.

There are widely accepted parallel traits between people with narcissistic tendencies and those who abuse drugs, including the ability to see the consequences of actions known as invulnerability, a lack of empathy, feelings of superiority, problems with fluctuating or low self esteem, defensive behaviors to deflect scrutiny. Okay, so. Oh, a few different people have pointed out in the comments that my new favorite word is over in indexing. And so. And I've been very forthcoming at admitting that in the comments.

Dax Shepard
But in case you're not on the comments and you've been thinking, I just want to acknowledge. Yes. Yeah, I am. Over indexing is my favorite word. You're over indexing on saying over indexing, so.

Just owning it. A thousand percent. I use it probably too much, but I will say it weirdly comes up so much on this show, we're talking about things where people have a. Here's why I love it. It's so much more efficient than disproportionate outcome.

And then you got to specify whether it's high or low. I agree. I think it's fine. Okay. I mean, it's fine, but it is.

The word I have been obsessed with using for the last few months. Yeah, we also circle in it. We all do this where we circle in and out of words. Yeah, I know, but I. What's weird is I can't imagine letting go of over indexing.

Like, I would have to have a different job. What's my word? What is your word? What do I say? Do you know?

Monica Padman
I don't. I'm not aware. Beta or Meinhoff. Frequency. La ding ding ding.

I mean, these aren't really vocab words. Say sim a lot. Another word I use with enormous frequency is counterintuitive. I feel like I use the word counterintuitive way more than your average person. Yeah, I know.

I have them. Juxtaposition. Maybe a little bit. Oh, see, I didn't even know. I don't even know that either.

Dax Shepard
Did you just make that up? No, I do say it. I do. But I don't realize I'm saying it more than others. But maybe I am.

I haven't said juxtaposition in years, I don't think. Yeah, it takes a, it takes an outside. When's the last time you said counterintuitive? A little bit. Say it.

It a little bit betrays what you're interested in. Like, I'm interested in things that are counterintuitive and I'm interested in things that over or under index. Things that stick out. Yeah. To help with my categorical.

Monica Padman
I'm interested in juxtapositions. Yes, I am. And mixed messages it is. I'm gonna think on yours and see. If I can maybe come up as I'm talking.

Dax Shepard
Yeah. And I'll just pay attention more. I'll look for it a little more. Okay. Let's see if we can't figure out what one you're using a lot.

But I don't think there's one that jumps out like mine. Over indexing. I mean, that thing is. I'll use that three, four times in one episode sometimes. Yeah.

Monica Padman
I try to cut. Yeah, I bet there's probably more. You say incongruous. Incongruous. Yeah.

I don't say that one because we have a friend who says it's incongruous. Right. And I don't know which one is right. There's debate. I just don't say that one.

Dax Shepard
I actually think the majority think it's incongruous. I don't like that. You know what else you say a lot. Tell me. Scatty wampus.

Yeah. That's intentional, though. Well, I love, I love that. But it's not really. It's cattywampus.

And scatty wampus sounds a lot more fun. It sounds way more fun. I learned that word from a sketch in the groundlings. Oh, some girl had written that in a sketch. And I thought that was the best.

It was the first time I ever heard it. Yeah. I think it's a southern saying. Maybe something like, catty wampus caddy wampus sounds so much better. Yeah, it does.

Monica Padman
Okay, so the Sapolsky research. I mean, there's so much Sapolsky research about the baboons. But the one she was talking about is very interesting. I had not heard of it. I would say that I was going to push back in that whole moment.

Dax Shepard
And I appealed to the better angels of my nature. And I just let it lie because, yes, cortisol levels dip. But that's not to say that that's the ideal scenario for a trooper of baboons. Cause they would be murdered by another troop. They need their alpha.

It kind of insinuated that the problem is alphas in those troops. And also I wanted to point out, which I didn't, that the gamma males slice the throat of the beta males the second they're tranquilizered. So, yeah, everyone lower on the hierarchies, acting just as scumbaggy. There is an article in New York Times, and if baboons can do it, why not us? The bad news is that you might have to first knock out all the most aggressive males to get there.

Yeah. In a world, whether you're not competing with other troops or predators, it's great. It works great. Right. But we just.

We're not in that world yet. Humans are. Humans don't need aggressive males. Yeah, there's a lot. It makes me want to read a lot more about his work.

Monica Padman
Sapolsky, the baboon work. Ah. Uh huh. Look into that. Read about that.

Dax Shepard
Read up on that. There's another one about baboon studies. Shows benefits for nice guys who finish second. Because alphas are notoriously more depressed. Yeah.

They have a miserable existence. Yeah. Okay, that's it. That's it. Oh, no.

Monica Padman
One thing. I only feel the need to bring this up because I just had my own experience with it. Cause you were talking about how you worked with a person who was a narcissist. Yeah. And for you, it was.

You liked. I liked seeing it because it showed you that you weren't. Yeah. Or that minimally, I didn't have that characteristic. Cause hers was very evident.

But I learned this kind of from you, that that's sort of a trap. That's like an addiction trap. Right? Like, well, I'm not as bad as that guy. So I'm fine.

I did that the other day. Someone was talking about a shopping thing. A shopping addiction. Yeah. And I was like, well, I don't know, then I definitely am fine.

Cause I don't do that. Right. But then I was like, ugh, you're not supposed to do that. Well, right. I think where I think that's most evident is when people are trying to decide if they're an addict or not and they just look at someone worse.

Dax Shepard
And the example I always give is there was that HBO doc about addiction, and there was a guy who was buying crack, then melting crack and shooting it. Yes. And I'm like, well, great, as long as that guy exists, everyone else can go like, well, I'm not melting down crack and shooting in intravenously, but I'll say, to be a little more specific, it's not that I felt superior to her, but you're right. I was like. I was trying to come up with what my definition of narcissism is.

And then when there was this one aspect on display which is like, it's only happening to you, that specific thing I felt liberated by, I'm like, yeah. I don't ever think I'm the only one freezing when it's cold outside or the only one that's got shitty lines on a show. The only one. Totally, you know? Yeah.

So I certainly think about myself all day long. I think about what I need and what can make me more comfortable or happier. Yeah. And so I start worrying. This feels like a lot of time thinking about myself.

Monica Padman
Yeah. Is this normal or is there. But it's also not connected to what you just said. But it is the shopping. What was the shopping thing you heard that you were like, oh, yeah, I don't do that.

Oh, she. This woman. But just buy stuff and like, has stuff shipped and stuff, but she doesn't open the boxes. Oh my God. It's like, it's just to buy.

Ramani Durvasula
Yeah. Did she return? You know, return? Probably not. She was.

Dax Shepard
She must be rich, right? Or she's probably in debt. I think that's how a lot of shopping addictions, like, come to the surface. I want to interview Elton John on his. He's been very open about having a shopping addiction.

Cuz like that you couldn't make more money than Elton John. And he was one point, I think, bankrupted himself just from buying. Buying stuff. Yeah, yeah. We should talk to him.

Monica Padman
Cautionary tale. I would love armchair anonymous. Yeah. Say just an armchair anonymous episode. Oh, that's a good shopping addiction prompt or kleptomania?

Yeah. Narcolepsy. No.

Dax Shepard
Kleptomania and shopping addiction. I'd like to hear. I'd like that craziest. What if I wrote in, add it to the list? Yeah, that's a good one.

But I will say that our guest, who was very knowledgeable, and I really enjoyed talking to her, I think she took a really hard line against this, and I just. It wasn't necessarily in keeping with my position on it. Well, I do think there are other people on planet Earth, and I just wanted to say there was some, I don't know, palpable hatred towards these folks. Well, they can be extremely destructive. They can, absolutely.

But I'm just not ready necessarily to go like. Like, oh, they're evil and karma. They're not. But I have compassion for the end of the day, they don't have relationships. They don't have actual relationships.

They don't know what that feels like, to evaluate how much love they've given and feel that wave of purpose. So actually, well, they might. They might think they are, like, that's the thing. Convince themselves that they are giving love. Well, I think per her definition, the ones I've heard, they're only.

The score they're keeping is how much approval of validation and adornment are they receiving? They're unlike, their main objective is to receive and take as much. And so I don't think they're in the process of sacrificing and providing and. Dedicating well, unless the sacrifice is very grandiose, because that's part of it, too, because it's a self aggrandizement. Like, I.

What they can't do is make someone flourish and then have the pride in having helped someone flourish that they're completely not, they have no access to, they can't experience on planet Earth. And that might be the sweetest joy of being on planet Earth. Yeah, it's sad. And they don't have that. And so I feel bad that they don't.

Monica Padman
I agree with you. But I also think her goal is to protect the people in the relationships, which is why she's coming at it with that perspective. She really wants people in relationships with narcissists to know reality. And I said it in the episode, but I do have some fear that people are just going to label everyone they're not having a successful relationship is being narcissist and not look at themselves. So I'm a little.

Yeah, I agree. That's a fear I have. Yeah. Anyway, anyways, very fascinating. Such an interesting topic.

And that's that. All right. Love you, love.

Dax Shepard
Love you, love.