Doctor Ramani Says What?

[00:00:00]Narcissistic relationships are joy stealers and joy killers.

[00:00:06]Remember the architecture of a narcissistic relationship is that the narcissistic people have to be in charge of reality.

[00:00:19]They are the ones who have to hold all the power.

[00:00:22]And the balance in the relationship is kept as far as the narcissistic person is concerned as long as the other person in the relationship fully gives up on their true selves, silences themselves, and becomes what the narcissistic person wants. Then the relationship feels safe.

[00:00:39]>> Okay.

[00:00:40]>> [snorts] >> That's Dr. Ramani talking about how narcissistic relationships steal joy.

[00:00:45]And if you think about it from a systems point of view, it makes sense.

[00:00:53]If you can, for example, imagine that you are a cluster B predatory type of person and you're in a relationship with somebody, the things that make them happy, the things that make them light up with joy take them away from you. They take them away from their from your palace, your evil castle, the evil construct, the matrix that you've created. Their joy, their passion, their happiness, anything that makes them feel alive, anything that makes them feel good, anything that lights them up is then a threat to you.

[00:01:34]And as Dr. Ramani just said there, there is a kind of covert contract in play that you must not be.

[00:01:46]You may not be.

[00:01:48]And the keyword that she used is safety.

[00:01:53]Safety.

[00:01:54]Through the narcissistically abusive relationship, you will learn that your beingness is dangerous. You will learn that the things that make you joyful are dangerous. The only safe place to hide within a pathological narcissistically abusive relationship is effectively in self-erasure.

[00:02:19]They demand, not request, not politely, and never overtly, they demand that you erase yourself. And what is the truest, most spontaneous expression of your authentic self? Beyond all the the clinical terminology and you know, I'm a bit I'm a bit wordy and I'm a bit uh cerebral.

[00:02:45]Um probably it's a coping mechanism.

[00:02:47]It's probably something that I learned in my childhood because everything that was in below the neck, that's in the body, that's in the heart, that's in the feeling, was dangerous for me and out of control, so I can go up here and kind of intellectualize and dissociate. Okay, that's cool. So, we have loads of words and concepts and systems and models and that's useful.

[00:03:12]It's good.

[00:03:14]But you can't trick joy.

[00:03:16]I can't talk you into joy.

[00:03:18]I can't model you into joy. There are things in this life that light you up, that give you joy, that you're passionate about.

[00:03:31]And they I don't want to start talking in spiritual terms, but let's be woo-adjacent for a second. Let's be spiritual-adjacent for a second.

[00:03:42]When we're talking about the authentic self, remember psychology, it comes from the word psyche, which really primarily meant soul as a you know an ancient Greek concept of the soul the spirit the mind the flickering bright flaming essence of a human being the source of light the source of internal light where is it expressed?

[00:04:08]And that which gives you joy. Well, you may be a intellectual type and intellectual things may give you joy.

[00:04:13]That's cool. If that's you your intellectual pursuits that give you joy the intellectual pursuit isn't the threat. The joy is the threat. The joy.

[00:04:26]You may be more somatic. You may want to dance. You may want to run. You may want to play. You may want to do yoga go to gym. You may be more social. Whatever it is creative music acting. Whatever it is.

[00:04:39]It's a threat.

[00:04:41]It's a threat.

[00:04:42]I cannot this is where I'll say something that's spiritually adjacent.

[00:04:46]Be patient with me.

[00:04:47]Cuz psyche meant soul.

[00:04:50]If it lights you up and you're in contact with your true self your authentic self. Maybe your spirit. Maybe your soul.

[00:05:01]Maybe your soul or maybe your spirit only shows up when you're joyous and that's the threat is the light.

[00:05:08]And I have to do all I can to darken that to turn that down and to keep you imprisoned because the more joyful you are the more authentic you are and when you're joyful and when you're in your authentic self remember our friend Darren McGee he was saying about the Carl Rogers model. There's the authentic self that you're [snorts] born with and then there's the adapted self and we all have that. You have to learn how to live inside of your culture learn language perform rituals conform to some degree and so you adapt. So we all have that.

[00:05:47]But inside of the narcissistically abusive relationship, the pathological relationship, there's the authentic self. Well, we have no interest in that. In fact, that's dangerous to the relationship, so it must be smothered.

[00:05:59]And then we have your adapted self, which you already have. That's the thing that I'm going to target.

[00:06:05]You're already adapted, and you're already doing things that do not spontaneously come from your psyche, from your authentic self, from your soul.

[00:06:15]That's the part of you I need. I need to adapt you even further, and I need to project a new adapted self onto you to idealize you.

[00:06:28]Idealization isn't it's easy to misunderstand. We could understand it as being like, "Oh my god, I just think you're amazing." Well, as a narcissist, I never really get contact with you.

[00:06:42]My reality testing is very, very poor, and quite frankly, I'm not interested in you.

[00:06:48]I'm interested in you in terms of what you do for me.

[00:06:53]I never know you. Sorry to be so brutal, maybe for people who are just coming out their relationship.

[00:07:00]I never know you, and I'm not interested in knowing you, not really.

[00:07:05]Uh Heinz Kohut, uh K O H U T, he called this um self object. He took the two words self and object, put them together. So I'm internalizing you as an object that is of You become me. I fuse with you. I I It's really creepy sci-fi horror movie stuff.

[00:07:28]I I absorb you, and you become an extension of me. And then once I have you internalized in in the narcissistic goo, now you perform a function for me that I can't perform myself.

[00:07:43]Maybe as an admirer, maybe as a lover, maybe if it's in a working relationship as a as as an effectively like some kind of a modern slave. In a friendship as um I don't treat you as a friend, I treat you as an acolyte. Inside of the romantic relationship, I treat you as you know a follower inside of a cult of one where me and my false self is the thing to be worshipped.

[00:08:11]So, are you being idealized?

[00:08:14]No.

[00:08:15]Cuz I can't contact you.

[00:08:18]I don't do vulnerability. I have no contact with my authentic self soul.

[00:08:24]I'm never really truly joyful.

[00:08:27]I can't be.

[00:08:28]In that sense, we'll we'll stay woo adjacent for a moment.

[00:08:33]I'm our contact. I'm like an Archon.

[00:08:37]I can copy beautifully. I'm a craftsman and I can build worlds of fantasy for you to live inside of that I trap you inside of.

[00:08:48]But I don't have spontaneity because I don't have vulnerability. And because I don't have vulnerability in me, I can't see your authentic self.

[00:08:57]I don't believe there is an authentic self. I'm I'm so atrophied. I don't use my my spiritual eyes, my real eyes anymore for years and so I don't see the the other person as spirit. I don't see them as soul. I don't see them as independent.

[00:09:17]I did an interview recently with Lisa Bilyeu uh for Women of Impact and that interview will be out soon. And as she was into we went for 2 hours. It was really good fun. I really enjoyed spending time with her.

[00:09:29]And I told a story that I've told in uh therapeutic context and uh during the interview you can see I start to do like a weird sort of stutter stutter cry as I'm telling the story, but it's a dry cry. It's really strange. It's weird for me. It felt like a skip in a record. And the story is this.

[00:09:51]With an ex of mine, I went to see some big loud colorful stupid movie like The Avengers or Transformers.

[00:10:01]And what's on screen is like giant robots smashing Manhattan to pieces. And I don't know who's who. I don't know the good guys or the bad guys. It's really loud. I'm getting old.

[00:10:15]>> [laughter] >> It's too noisy in here.

[00:10:17]It's too noisy. It's too loud. And I don't know who's who.

[00:10:22]The reason why I'm telling you that is because what was on screen was just a noisy uh modern entertainment slop mess.

[00:10:32]My ex who you know, inside of the relationship um did did did not treat me in a very very kind way was sobbing.

[00:10:44]Body shaking sobbing. That's how I knew I was looking at the screen and I could feel the seat move. And I turned and I looked at her and she was sobbing and crying and shaking.

[00:10:55]And I said to her, "Oh my god Oh my god, are you okay? Do you want to go?" And she said, "No, no, no, I'm okay. I'm okay. We can we can stay."

[00:11:01]I said, "Are you sure? I think we should go." She said, "No, no, no, no, I'd I'd rather I'd rather just stay."

[00:11:06]So we stayed.

[00:11:08]And I was thinking, "Where's she getting the emotion from? Like what empathic is she having empathy with the giant robots? Is she having empathy with the aliens that are trying to tear Manhattan apart?" Like I I was uh confused.

[00:11:22]And so I said to her afterwards, "What what happened?" And she said, "I was watching the film and I became aware of you next to me."

[00:11:30]And I was like, "Okay. Well, it was it's 2 and 1/2 hour long of a movie. I was there for the 2 hours, but all right, I'm not going to split hairs.

[00:11:37]Keep telling me your story. I became aware of you sitting next to me, and I suddenly became aware of you as a different person, as your own person, as having your own She didn't say sovereignty. She wouldn't use that language. Of being your own self, of having agency.

[00:11:59]And I've never seen you like that before."

[00:12:01]And I was like, "Okay, I think in my head I was thinking, I think you're describing basic human empathy."

[00:12:08]But she had a moment where she realized me as a human with my own life, my own my own flame, my own spirit, my own potential for joy and suffering and pain and desires and hopes and dreams and my own trajectory.

[00:12:27]And she said, "I've never I've never experienced that before." And I was thinking, "Oh, this is great. Maybe it's some kind of a breakthrough." It lasted about well, it lasted that evening and then it was it was gone. It it disappeared. And I told this story, as you'll see in the Lisa video interview, and I started to cry.

[00:12:47]And I think it was um the sadness of realizing how utterly wretched uh life is for people with narcissistic personality disorder.

[00:13:01]They do terrible things, and you should do all you can to protect yourself. And you mustn't fuse and blend with their narrative of who they are. They don't need a boyfriend. They don't need a girlfriend. They don't need a wife. They don't need a husband. They need a therapist.

[00:13:19]You can't do it.

[00:13:20]I'm really good at this. I can't do it.

[00:13:23]It's not the right context. You can't do it inside of a friendship. You can't do it inside of a family relationship. You damn sure can't do it inside of a romantic relationship. You can't do it.

[00:13:35]But then from that I I was thinking as I'm doing the interview with with Lisa Bilyeu how awful how awful to not be able to see people as people and how joyless. How joyless to never be able to look at somebody experience joy and empathically feel joy for them.

[00:14:01]You like it's atrophied. It's a kind of a blindness. I never used my eyes. I never opened them since I was very young. I'm now a 32-year-old woman. I'm now a 32-year-old man. You take You go There you go. You can see now. No, they can't.

[00:14:19]They can't. They'll be blind. They'll be effectively blind.

[00:14:22]Because they've not learned how to see.

[00:14:25]But for one moment she saw a separate person.

[00:14:29]Your joy back to the Dr. Ramani video your joy is indivisible from your authentic self.

[00:14:40]That which makes you joyous is a representation of who you truly are. Not the adapted self to your culture, to your family, to your environment, and definitely not the adapted self that adapted to the pathology of that relationship.

[00:14:56]If you're interested in this type of concept and you're looking to recover fully from a narcissistically abusive relationship we have a cohort coming up. It's a 30-day intensive. It's called the reality reset where we'll be looking at techniques to help you grow in your strengths and skills. There's two major pillars to it that allow you to fully and completely move on after a narcissistically abusive relationship, and hopefully, reclaim your joy.

[00:15:27]Ladies and gents, thank you very much for your time and for your attention. I look forward to speaking to you again very soon. Thank you.