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

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Steven Bartlett (0:30)

Do you spend time even today dealing with patients who are the victim of a narcissistic relationship or the victim of a narcissist?

Ramani Durvasula (0:40)

Every week, every week. I mean, it's probably one of the, if not the most gratifying part of my week. I'm a big believer that if you're a mental health practitioner, you practice mental health. So that's a privilege to be able to be in that room and to work with clients. But it would be so easy when you're dealing at a macro level, large populations going on YouTube, writing books, to get distanced from what is happening to individual people's lives. One of the tricky bits with research is we study populations. We study samples, right? We study hundreds of people. What happens in the room is something very different. And you start to recognize, A, how badly these relationships harm people, their schemas of the world, their schemas of themselves.

And B, how much potential for intervention there is with these clients through very, very simple approaches around education about narcissism, validation of their experience, breaking through self-blame and teaching them to trust themselves.

Steven Bartlett (1:37)

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

Ramani Durvasula (1:43)

I mean hundreds, hundreds really. And I even use the word survivor. I hate to call them victims because I don't even think they're that passive. I mean, I think that they just weren't... No one ever taught anyone this, right?

I'll give you the example. When people are in a relationship with somebody who's living with addiction, it's very clear what they're dealing with, right? You have a person, they're using a substance that's altering them, that's altering their behavior, that's taking them away from who they are in person. People in relationships with addicts will say, I'm in two relationships. I'm in a relationship with a sober person and I'm in a relationship with somebody who's using or intoxicated or denying or defending their use, right? Two people. And it breaks the people in those relationships. And we're willing to call it that. The experience people have in narcissistic relationships in a way is no different. With the added bit though, at least with addiction, people can say, I see what the behavior is. I see what the issue is. Addiction is a disease and we know it's treatable. Narcissism, not so much. And on top of that, the narcissistic person has this very well developed, very successful behavioral repertoire. They can go out in the world and they're able to be charming and charismatic and confident and smart and the center of attention and running companies. And behind closed doors, they psychologically eviscerate the people they're with, spouses, partners, family members, close friends, maybe people who are below them in an organization, people where they can kind of get away with it. So the people they're harming, the world thinks this person is fantastic. At least the person who's in a relationship with an addict, people say, okay, I get it. They're using. This is hard. But for the folks in narcissistic relationships, a lot of people say, aren't you lucky that you're married to that guy? And the person's like, oh my gosh, are these people out of their mind? Like, so what do they do? They blame themselves.

Steven Bartlett (3:31)

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

Ramani Durvasula (3:45)

So I'm almost curious to ask you, what just before I almost contaminate you with what my definition is, what's your working definition? What's your working model of what narcissism is?

Steven Bartlett (3:58)

Delusions of grandeur, someone that thinks they're like super important and that they are better than everybody else, arrogance and they're cruel.

Ramani Durvasula (4:06)

Okay. All right. So I would give you probably like a C plus, B minus if you're a student in my class. I mean, I cut students a lot of slack back in the day. So I'll give you a C plus, B minus. Because you're in the neighborhood, right? The grandiosity, the arrogance, the meanness, but that to me is even more sort of a manifestation of the traits, like the grandiosity, the arrogance. They have variable empathy and typically have low empathy. They're deeply entitled. They truly think they're more special than everyone else and that the rules should apply to them very differently. They have a excessive need for admiration and validation. They're very superficial. They don't really have the capacity for deep, sustained, intimate relationships. They're very much referential to the world outside of them to set goals. They don't have a good internal sense of what matters to me, what do I want to do. They just want to do what they do, again, to get that admiration and validation. There's a shallowness, a real emotional shallowness to narcissism. Those are the patterns and traits. We sort of see they're very, very self-centered, very preoccupied with themselves. The good parts of themselves, the bad parts of themselves, it's very rare for them to sort of lift their heads up and genuinely notice the experience of another person. That's what narcissism is. How does it show up? It shows up as devaluation, dismissiveness, manipulation, gaslighting. They get angry very quickly, especially when they're frustrated or disappointed, and that can show up as overt rage or overt anger, yelling, screaming, or even violence. That can show up as passive aggression, withholding, and withdrawing.