It’s Not You: Identifying and Healing from Narcissistic People with Dr. Ramani Durvasula

Dr. Ramani Durvasula, author of It’s Not You: Identifying and Healing from Narcissistic People, shares her insights into narcissism, how narcissistic abuse survivors can heal and get support, and how to care for yourself when writing and promoting a book on tough topics. 

Ramani Durvasula, Ph.D. is a licensed clinical psychologist in California, the founder and CEO of LUNA Education, Training and Consulting, and professor emerita of psychology at California State University Los Angeles. She is the New York Times bestselling author of It’s Not You: Identifying and Healing from Narcissistic People. She is also the author of multiple other books including Don’t You Know Who I Am: How to Stay Sane in the Era of Narcissism, Entitlement and Incivility and Should I Stay or Should I Go: Surviving a Relationship with a Narcissist. She has lectured and trained therapists around the world on working with clients experiencing narcissistic abuse and has developed a 36-hour virtual training and certification program to train clinicians on how to use an Antagonism-Informed approach with clients experiencing narcissistic relationships. She hosts a popular YouTube channel with over 1.6 million subscribers, hosted the critically acclaimed podcast Navigating Narcissism, and is a featured expert on the digital media platform MedCircle. For more on Dr. Ramani, please check out the links below!

Resources:

Dr. Ramani’s Healing Program

Healing from Gaslighting Course

Course on Narcissistic Abuse for Therapists

Dr. Ramani Network

Episode Highlights

6:11 How Narcissism Affects You

11:47 Narcissism versus Antagonistic Behavior

16:21 Radical Acceptance and the Problem of Toxic Hope

28:00 The Disengagement Continuum

33:00 Disenfranchised Grief

38:00 Breaking Through Cognitive Dissonance

43:00 Healing and Getting Support

51:46 Dr. Ramani’s Best Writing Advice

Connect with Dr. Ramani

Website

YouTube: @DoctorRamani

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Transcript

Writing Your Resilience Podcast Transcript for

It’s Not You: Healing from Narcissistic Abuse with Dr. Ramani Druvasula

I discovered Dr. Ramani Durvasula through Ingrid Clayton, and soon fell in love with her YouTube channel and the spot-on advice she gave during her Ask Dr. Ramani videos. Then I learned about her class on gaslighting and signed up for it in support of the launch for her New York Times bestselling book It’s Not You: Identifying and Healing from Narcissistic People. Dr. Ramani is a licensed clinical psychologist in Los Angeles, CA, Professor Emerita of Psychology at CSULA, and the Founder of LUNA ETC, a company focused on educating individuals, clinicians and businesses/institutions on the impact of narcissistic personality styles. To learn about her other books and many accomplishments, please see the show notes. 

During this episode, Dr. Ramani and I took a deep dive into what narcissism is, how narcissistic abuse impacts not just our emotions, but the stories we tell about ourselves, and how you can set boundaries and heal. Before we get to our conversation, I have a few questions for you. What do you really know about narcissism, antagonistic behavior, and gaslighting? If you’ve been a victim of narcissistic abuse, how do you think this experience has impacted you? What work have you done to heal? What’s left to do? I hope you’ll ponder these questions as you listen along. Now, let’s get to my interview with Dr. Ramani. 

Lisa [0:00]
 Dr. Ramani, welcome to the Writing Your Resilience podcast. I am overjoyed to have you on the show.

Dr. Ramani [0:04]
 Thank you so much for having me. I really appreciate it.

Lisa [0:07]
 So I'm going to hold up your book for those who are watching. And I also see you have your nice little graphic right on your microphone.

Dr. Ramani [0:17]
 I do. I do, lest anyone forget. Perfect marketing advice.

Lisa [0:21]
 So if you listen to this podcast, I want you to go to YouTube, so you can see this, because if you are planning to publish a book, which many of my listeners are, there are some nice placements in your setting. We have that and then your book is in the background. 

Dr. Ramani [0:37]
 You know, it's funny, the mic flag was something that I don't even know where—I think I was on someone's podcast and we were probably 30 podcasts in at this point, like 30 or 40 in, and I said to my team, why didn't we think about this? And so, they quickly ordered them, like they said, it's not too late. I can't sit here and tell you this was a concerted, organized kind of scheme. It was sort of like I kept watching what people were doing and I thought, oh, better throw the book in the background. Let's try the mic flag. I don’t have it today. I often have a water bottle that's even got the graphic on. I just forgot it in my house. But those little things, right? In fact, in our last week of Instagram lives, right before the week-one sales closed, I would wear a sweatshirt that had the name of the book. 

Lisa [1:22]
 I love it. A friend of mine, Laura Cathcart Robins, who's on this season, she has the water bottle. And then she had a tote bag. So, I saw her at AWP, which is the Association of Writers and Writing Programs Conference, which is a very big conference, and I knew she was going to be there. So, I'm looking around, and then I see the bag and I'm like, ah, there she is. 

Dr. Ramani [1:42]
 Yeah. And we have a striking color scheme. The cover pops. So, it becomes sort of identifiable. One thing we're doing as a part of our promotion was doing a lot of raffles and part of the raffles are T-shirts and sweatshirts with the book cover on it. So, you know, getting them into other people's hands, too.

Lisa [2:02]
 I love it. Well, let's take a deep dive into your book. So, I want to begin by giving you an opportunity to just tell us what you'd like us to know about It's Not You.

Dr. Ramani [2:12]
 It's Not You, as I sort of made clear in the beginning of the book, is the story of the hunted, told by the lion instead of the hunter, right? The old proverb goes, that the story of the hunt always glorifies the hunter and never the lion. There are many, many, many, many books about narcissism out there. I've written a few of them. And there's a lot of academic books about narcissism. There's virtually nothing, I mean, there's a handful of, maybe a dozen books or so, more and more every day, written about the experience of the survivor in the relationship and then what can be done. Because we weigh so heavily on what the Narcissist is, we're gripped by it, right? It's the same reason we watch true crime podcasts. We're gripped by people who can behave in unethical ways and without empathy, and in this entitled way. It's a fascination because it's not how most people go through the world. So again, that's why we watch shows like Succession and all of that, because it's people who just kind of walk through the world and break things and don't care. So, we're fascinated by that. But even as I went through the editorial process with the book, it's very natural for me to write about narcissism. And then when I gave them the first draft, they said, go back. There's some good stuff here. Go back again, we need this to be more survivor-centric, and I was so glad for the direction, because it's so easy to write the other book. And I think one of the challenges is that healing is a challenging space. There's no quick checklist, right? There are no five things to do, four things, there's no three quick ways to heal from narcissistic relationships. This is a deep dive. , the book is really about not just what narcissism is, briefly enough, so if somebody's a newbie, they're like, okay, I've got this to ground myself, but what these relationships do to us, and then how we get stuck, how we get unstuck, how we heal, and most importantly, how we individuate and sort of give permission to our autonomous selves to shine and recognize that it will often be quite uncomfortable for us. 

Lisa [4:13]
 You just gave me an amazing answer as to what your book is about. I just want to go over some of the things that I really loved about this book, because I'm a person who has been affected by narcissism. I came from a narcissistic family system. So, there was a lot of imprinting, and I've done a ton of work, and I see this work as rewiring your system. I mean, that's how I interpret it. Because when you come from these backgrounds, some of these ways of being are so unconscious. What I love about this book is that you describe the experience of a person who has gone through narcissistic abuse so well. So, we have the family roles that people could play. You talk about the gifts that people have, like empathy, that can be turned against you and turned into a risk factor. You have so many great, clear definitions for words that show up all over the place—gaslighting, for instance—in your book, and you offer a framework for understanding what happened to you, and what you can do about it. I mean, I loved all the writing exercises, and no, there are no five steps to clearly get over this. But you give us so many tools in this book that it feels like this wonderful therapeutic framework that people can use, and how to really think about that storytelling process, which is something that I work with as a trauma-informed writing coach. So, I'm constantly working with people with really tough stories. Many of them have experienced narcissism in their lives, often in childhood. So, learning how to unpack this in a way that puts the focus on you and reframes your story is so important. So, you work not just as a writer, I mean, you've written several books, but you're a clinician. Can you help us understand how narcissism impacts us, like thinking about your clients and all the work that you've done?

Dr. Ramani [6:16]
 There's so many ways it impacts us that I'm pausing to answer because obviously, the most profound impact is on the individual, right? The individual impact. And I think, traditionally, this literature and how it's talked about in public spaces and in a lot of books is in the intimate relational space, right? It's the having a narcissistic spouse or partner or co-parenting with a narcissistic person because it's often there that it's the most vexing, and in the sense it’s adults who are picking up self-help books, not kids. And so, we pick up the book to try to make sense of a relationship that's not making sense. And where we have options. There are, for many people, not all, but for many people, the option of do I stay or leave this relationship, and so on and so forth. But it happens in the parental relationship. And I'd argue that's probably where we see the most profound impacts of narcissism is on a narcissistic parent towards a child. It really sets the course for a life because it impacts how a person's nervous system is wired. It impacts the sympathetic nervous system’s reactivity, it impacts how people make attachments, how they perceive attachments, safety behaviors in relationships. That's all impacted by narcissistic parents. But I think we sometimes give short shrift to other very significant narcissistic relationships, like other extended family members, including grandparents, aunts, uncles, and siblings are a big one. Friendships, because friendships are often very central relationships in our lives. And I've worked with countless clients on narcissistic friendships and the harms that those have done to them. In fact, in some ways, we might let our guard down in a different way in a narcissistic friendship because it doesn't have the bells and whistles of an intimate relationship. That can really come back and hurt us profoundly. Narcissism in the workplace. Just today, I was working on some of our YouTube content, and doing some workplace content. So, workplace narcissistic relationships, again, can be profoundly impactful. And then there are what I call the scattered relationships, neighbors, member of a church group, people we may run into in different places where it may not be as psychologically impactful, certainly at the level of our nervous system, but it can certainly trigger us. And it can also certainly make those experiences, which could be otherwise quite pleasant, very miserable. But then it's not as simple as the individual relationships. Then there are systems. It's not about a narcissistic parent, it's about a narcissistic family system. Narcissistic family systems often close ranks and protect the narcissistic abuser, not the person being harmed, because the person being harmed is questioning the status quo and the power structures in a family system, which threatens to dismantle it more than telling the person being abused to be quiet. So, since people in family systems tend to be invested in status quo, many times those systems can do harm by denying the experience of people within those systems. Narcissistic workplaces. So, it's not as simple as a narcissistic boss. But that kind of toxicity sort of scatters itself throughout how that organization is run, and sort of becomes the prevailing culture or ethos of that workplace. Then we can take that lens one bit wider, and then we see entire narcissistic systems, court systems. Family courts, a great example of that. We see justice systems that behave like this. We see it again in hospital and healthcare systems that are unimpacted, entitled, dismissive. They're willing to pathologize the person being harmed. Then we have the biggest issue of all, which is society, and society's incentivizing narcissism right now. I will never ever stop being struck by how often we give narcissistic people a free pass, a second chance, then another one, and we keep doing that. When we keep doing that, people in their individual relationships are saying, well, the world gave that person a second chance, so I should give them a second chance too? The world should not have given that person a second chance. So no, I wouldn’t recommend it in your life. But many people in individual relationships, watching the injustices of the world, often perpetrated by narcissistic individuals, are chronically feeling this replaying in their bodies all the time. So even if you get out of all your narcissistic relationships, looking at the news could be enough to make you feel like, does this ever go away? We're really surrounded by it right now. And like I said, our structures and systems really incentivize it. 

Lisa [10:29]
 I see that. I try to avoid the news a lot of times because there's so much going on in that space. And what I find is that when you're in a narcissistic relationship, often, your experience of reality is dismissed. Or you're told that it's not your experience of reality. So then when you see out in the world, you're looking at something, and you're going like, hey, wait a minute, what is this? And then the world is conspiring to say no, that's not necessarily what's happening? Yeah, it can, it can be so crazy-making, and it can really silence you and make you feel like you don't have a good sense of what's going on in the world. One of the things I really like about this book is that you lay all these things out so clearly, and you talk about this in terms of narcissism, but you also talk about it in terms of antagonistic behavior. When I read that, I had this visceral reaction, because that hits differently inside me. What I like about it is that it allows you to see behavior, rather than always having to attach it to a person. I think that, to me, it seemed like a great choice. Can you tell us a little bit about why you made that choice and why you wanted to include that vocabulary in your book?

Dr. Ramani [11:45]
This word, "narcissism," has taken on a life of its own, and it's often considered sort of a dirty word. Because of that, people take umbrage at the use of the word "narcissism." It feels like an attack on a person. It's really a description of a personality style and may not be a nice personality style, but I can guarantee you if they're narcissistic, they're probably making more money than you. So, they're doing okay. But the fact is, it's not considered a nice word. Now, I thought that because that sometimes freezes the conversation right there. Where I'd get a lot of the pushback in this space was when I'd be talking to clinicians, therapists, counselors, that kind of thing. And I thought, okay, then let me use the language of the field. So, narcissism is under a big umbrella called antagonism. Antagonism is a trait, and you know, I couldn't get into the minutiae of that in a book for the public, but antagonism is a trait, and it cuts across other personality styles, not just narcissism, psychopathy being an example. And it's all about hostility, manipulativeness, exploitativeness, arrogance, entitlement, all that stuff falls under antagonism. But when we hear the word antagonism, we really hear things like conflict and behaviors that put a person at odds with other people. These are people who are oppositional, who want to pick a fight, right? So, I wanted to make it about the behavior, because a lot of people struggle in their healing where they feel as though they're being disloyal or that they are mean themselves for saying, "I want nothing to do with her. She's narcissistic." That feels dismissive, and understandably so. But if we could sort of teach people to focus on behaviors that are not acceptable or not healthy in a relationship, like manipulative behavior, like someone taking advantage of you, like putting the lens on that and making it about the behavior, then a person can say, "You know, I love my mom, I do. They're my mom. And they did some right things by me. But this is a person who has never had a problem being passive-aggressive, doing the digs, like, this has happened consistently. And as a result, this relationship is not healthy, these behaviors are not healthy." It allows a person to have a more holistic view of the narcissistic person in their life by focusing on behaviors. And I think for some people, it allows them to have one more degree of separation, where they could give themselves permission to say, "Yeah, no, this is not actually good for me. And I'm not being dismissive, but I do have to be different with this person." Because the one thing I do also come back to is antagonism, narcissism, most personalities, they don't change that much. There's a relative rigidity to them. The more maladaptive the style, the more rigid it is. The more mentally healthy the personality, the healthier a person is, the more flexible they are, so they can adapt and accommodate. But narcissism is a great example of something that's like cement. It doesn't really budge. And so, it's not amenable to change. I'd say one of the big pivot points of the book is radical acceptance around this: these behaviors aren't going to change. I really tried to stay away, and I'm sure I made the mistake a few times in the book, from saying they are not going to change, but rather to say their behavior is not going to change. I think it's a meaningful distinction, because when you say someone's not going to change, we experience as defeatist. We experience it as dismissive. When we say behavior is not going to change again, it almost puts us in a position to make very different kinds of choices and different ways of interacting with them. If somebody tells you a restaurant is very loud, right? They don't say this is a bad restaurant, but rather they say this restaurant is really loud. You might say, "okay, I don't hear well. So, this may not be my place." But it doesn't feel as much of an indictment. I know, that's a sillier example. But sometimes when we move down the stakes of an example, suddenly, it makes a little more sense. So, you could say, "My sister is very antagonistic. My sister's behavior is very manipulative and very invalidating." Then a person can then say, "And so I'm going to have to make different choices in how I interact with my sister," rather than "my sister is never going to change." That often feels like we don't have as much decision or freedom. And that's why I use that framing.

Lisa [15:56]
I love how you're talking about this, because when I hear those words, I start thinking about how I'm going to respond differently. So, it's very empowering language to think about behavior, because it gives you a sense of choice. You talked about radical acceptance, which was one of the things that I want to talk about with you, and what I'm calling toxic hope. It’s this idea that hope gets you in the biggest trouble and oh, my goodness, when I think back on my life, because I think when you grow up in a narcissistic family system, it does set you up to be attracted to other narcissists. There was a point in my time, I'm just going to be honest with you, I felt like I was wearing toxic hope perfume. And I was just being like, "come on, everybody, if you've got narcissism come into my world, because I will see the best in you. And I will take whatever hurt you have, and I will imagine that I can fix it. And I will imagine that you will fix it too. Because I've gone to therapy. I've worked hard. I take responsibility for my emotions. So of course, you're going to do it, you just need the right environment."

Dr. Ramani [17:08]
I love that you put it that way, because I just often call it hope, right? I mean, in the sense that it is why people get stuck. It's the thing that as a clinician, I must be very careful when I go in there and sort of—it’s almost like a scaffold, or it's like a game of Jenga, really, I don't want to move the wrong piece or the whole thing's going to tumble down. But it's allowing enough evidence to accumulate. So, a person comes to their own level of awareness. But I mean, listen, it's when the hope goes, and that's a big part of radical acceptance. Really, radical acceptance is an erasure of the hope of the thing you wanted, which was, this person was going to start showing up as a fully formed, respectful, empathic, kind, attuned person. That's never going to happen. Now, what I can replace that with now that you know the limits of this relationship, because I think that people think, frankly, that if you don't have hope, and you're going all the way from zero to 60, then it means your relationship is over. A very, very big important part of the positioning of It’s Not You is that you don't have to leave the relationship. Keep in mind, this is not a book about people who are in relationships with physically abusive people. Obviously, that’s a different conversation. These are emotionally abusive, emotionally toxic, emotionally unhealthy relationships. But because people think that if I identify it, it means I have to leave, they often keep themselves in the darkness and just never identify it. I'm saying you can identify it, and you can still interact with this relationship, but you got to identify it. Because if you don't, it's going to take a greater toll. And the identifying it doesn't mean that all hope is gone. It means that this is never going to be what you thought it would be. But it doesn't mean you stop going to the family reunions, but it does mean you may go to the family reunion and stay in a different hotel. You may only go to the family reunion for a day. You may go to the family reunion with a very, very clear plan that I want to talk to this cousin, those two aunts, and that person, and you put your focus there, and you really cut the narcissistic person or people a wide berth, and you don't engage with them and you don't take the bait as much as you can. You go in with your eyes wide open, and not with the sort of reckless abandon of a child who wants it to be different this year. We are adults, but our child minds are often activated by these relationships. That's what radical acceptance does. It takes the hope of the fantasy away of what we wanted, but in its place becomes a realistic awareness. And for some people, they'll say, "Well, I don't want that. And I'm leaving because this is not worth it. This isn't worth it for me." And that's a perfectly fine choice too. But it's to understand that it is a choice, that there's not one singular way to proceed.

Lisa [19:49]
Another thing I really like about your book is that you offer that choice and then you offer strategies people can use if they're going to stay. You know, if you're going to stay, here are the obstacles you might face, here are some ways that you can engage with this person and keep yourself safe or try to have good emotional boundaries. You have all these things that you do in this book. I also took your course on healing from gaslighting, which I thought was amazing. It was excellent. I really love that class. And I've told other people about it as well. So, we'll put this in the show notes, because I think it's so good. If you're listening, or you're watching, go check that out, because you're going to learn so much. I have to say that when I was watching this, and I've done a lot of work on myself to get to this point, when I think about radical acceptance, it's accepting life on life's terms, which often means accepting people are not going to change their behavior, like unless they experience some level of pain that is well beyond you. And even then, who knows? When I was listening to some of those episodes, it was like a punch to the chest, because I just got in touch with this profound grief that I had around that acceptance. I think everyone who's experienced narcissism has their own triggers. In the past, if you told me about the sad parts of your life, and then you said something "oh, I'm not a person who feels very deeply," or "You know, I'm just not good at communicating," or "I don't do relationships," or "I don't do certain things that seem like they could change." In the past, this part of my brain would be calculating all the ways that I would be able to support you and help you or create the right conditions. What I've learned to say, in my head, I don't necessarily say this out loud to the person, is, "I believe you." When you tell me something that is, you know, I don't want to use the word defect, because I think that's too simplistic. But if you tell me about a struggle you're not willing to work on, I will believe you. You know, I will believe you, if you tell me you're emotionally distant, I will believe you. 

 Dr. Ramani [22:12]

One of the challenges, though, and here's where this becomes difficult. It would be easier if they did say, "I'm not going to work on this, and I'm not emotionally deep." For many narcissistic people, they misperceive how empathic they are. They often think they’re very deep and see themselves as very empathic and wonderful people. So, if people really were saying to you, "I can't go deep," like they were owning it, then it almost would be a little bit easier. But that's not what's happening. We're having to sift through all this confusing stuff of a person saying, "I'm such a great person. I'm so empathic, I'm always there for you." And you feel like you've walked through the looking glass. You're like, "What?" And you're confused. And again, especially if you had a narcissistic parent, it can create that sense of self-doubt as your first go-to, thinking maybe you're reading this wrong because you don't think they're like that. But you are getting this.

But I think that's why looking at the behavior is so important, even more than what they say about themselves. Because they might say, "I'm so helpful. I'm so good. I'm such a good listener." Saying to them, "No, you're not," is pointless because you're going to get into a meaningless gaslit argument. So, you've got to clock the behavior. When it's problematic, we must be willing to call problem or abusive behavior, abusive what it is, and keep it that simple. And people say, "But then..." No, we're looking at this behavior for what it is. I understand there might be a backstory, and I understand there might have been other things going on. There's always going to be an explanation. So, you've got to ask yourself, is that context enough for you to keep enduring this bad behavior repeatedly? Because behavior is never going to stop.

And I think that's the tension of healthy human beings attempting to contextualize other people's behavior. We do try to say, "Well, they might have had a bad day at work, or their mom is sick, or their dad did yell at them when they were a kid." All true. But it also leaves the idea that it's almost like we're history-less then, so we don't have a whole backstory that came into this well, and we're managing to keep it together. So that balancing act of saying, "Yeah, no, this isn't okay," and then making decisions on how you're going to interact is really, again, a core element of this book. It's almost, in that way, that simple, like, "This is all this person can do." And so, then you may not even personalize it as much. You use the word grief. These relationships bring up pretty much constant grief because, especially when it's a parent, and you don't get a second chance at that, we wanted this to be something more and it never will be. And we're reminded of it if we interact with them. We wanted the idea that we'd enter into a lifelong marriage or relationship with someone, and we're beginning to see this is not someone I want to grow old with. In fact, it probably wouldn't be a good idea for that to happen. And so that brings grief because we had an investment in something. And we're having to let it go.

So, we're not just letting go of a person. I think most people say, the idea of letting go of the narcissist, man, I mean, there's trauma bonding, there's all these other dynamics in place, which can make it feel physiologically hard. But from a practical standpoint, a lot of people will be able to acknowledge and say, "Yeah, my life would probably be better with them out of it." But then you're grieving what you wanted life to be: one partner for a long period of time, growing old with someone, having a close-knit family system that was a soft place to land. Very normal, simple things to want.[LE1] 

Lisa [25:43]

Yeah, and you're going to face that grief whether you stay, or you go.

Dr. Ramani [25:48]

That's exactly right. You're going to face it either way. This is where radical acceptance becomes tricky, because radical acceptance isn't, I think a lot of people hear it as, "Radical acceptance means I'm giving in." Radical acceptance almost means assent and agreement. Like if I radically accept you, it means I'm assuming you're agreeing. It means you're perceiving it through the lens of, "This is not going to change." It's almost like if you have windows in your house that face east and you don't want to be woken up by the sun, you have to radically accept, like, that’s the direction your windows face. You put up blackout shades, or you're going to have to let it go because we're not changing where the sun rises, you know, or take out your windows. So, you know, it's really understanding that this is what it is.

And I think that that's a tough one because I think a lot of the rhetoric, especially in the West, is anyone can change if they put their mind to it. And I guess at some level, that argument could be made about a narcissistic person, but they don't think there's anything wrong, right? So, if somebody told me to change something and I don't think it's an issue, there's going to be very, very little motivation to do this. So sure, it's a philosophical possibility. Can anyone change? I would imagine, to some degree, yes. But I don't think I'm ever playing for the NBA, though. I understand what my limits are. So, I think that there are limits there. And in most cases, most narcissistic people are never going to commit to the level of not only therapeutic work but day-to-day, hour-to-hour, minute-to-minute work of being mindful and present without contempt. I just haven't seen it happen.

Lisa [27:24]

I haven't seen it happen either. One of the things you say in terms of radical acceptance, is look at the behavior. And that makes me think of something that my grandpa said, "Listen to what people say. Look at what they do." And that's the thing you have to believe. And so sometimes when I'm thinking about radical acceptance, I look at their behavior. And I'll think, I believe this, you know, I believe this behavior because that is communicating a message. And often that message is much stronger than the words that are coming out of their mouth. And so, when I say I believe this, my next step is, okay, is it okay or not okay for me? Because I don't have to make it okay or not okay for them. I don't have to change them. I just must decide, is it okay or not okay for me, and then what am I going to do next?

I think your book really validated that for me. And it validated the importance of having good boundaries in relationships. If things are not going to change and the capacity for more hurt and more harm is there, even if you're going to be in a relationship, you must decide how deep you're going to go, which I also know is one of your acronyms. But yeah, you have to decide. And it's okay to decide to stay but also to say, you know, this relationship is not serving me, and I'm either going to pull back far, or I'm going to estrange myself or cut this relationship off. But that doesn't mean it's going to solve all your problems by any means.

Dr. Ramani [29:00]

No, it's not. Disengagement is on a continuum, from you're in the relationship, and you're just not taking the bait, not having the same conversations, to you're spending less time with them, to you're fully leaving. So, I think viewing disengagement on a continuum can... because it's all disengagement, right? The most extreme form of disengagement is no contact. But a lot of folks are sort of in what we call a gray rock, yellow rock, kind of firewalled space with them, where we're being very discerning and careful about how we share about ourselves. And, you know, it's so interesting because I still quote-unquote make the mistakes even though when I know someone in my midst is narcissistic, I might be caught in the joy of a moment, share the good news, and it gets shut down. I know for me, this is because this is what I do for a living, when narcissistic people keep doing the narcissistic things, while there is a moment of grief, there's also a moment of like, "Ooh, thank God. Everything I wrote was right. It's all there." It's a bit of reassurance. But I have to say, we do sometimes let our guards down, because we see a human being in front of us, and we think we can be with them like another human being. And that's where for us, it's a certain mindfulness. We have to say, "okay, I'm going into this room where this is how it usually goes down, so I have to be careful to not share this."

And this is why building up social support is such an important part of healing because you need what I call gaslight-free zones. You need places where you will be seen, and you will be heard, and you will be validated, and you will not be made to feel like you're crazy. A point I make in my work and sort of hint at in the book is this idea of the broken heart of the narcissistic relationship being one thing, but broken hearts heal, they really do. The thing that does such great harm in the narcissistic relationship is being made to feel crazy. I think that's the true harm. Because we carry that with us longer. We doubt ourselves in so many ways for such a long time. But it's figuring out where you fall on that disengagement continuum and making decisions accordingly.

And for some people, they may be in a narcissistic long-term relationship or marriage, saying, "I am not having joint custody with this person. That's what family court's is going to do. So, I'm going to disengage as much as I can." And then as soon as I know that, I'll be able to... the kids will be in a better place either in later adolescence or they're 18. That's when people will file and then they're done. You know what I'm saying? So, the disengagement's almost like a slider on a panel, like you're just sliding it over more and more as time goes on. For some people, they disengage, and then a new rock bottom happens. Someone says something hurtful to your child, or they do something really harmful, and then you're like, "Okay, I'm done." So, I've seen that happen. This is why seeing it clearly is so important. Because when you see it clearly, and these things come up, instead of being surprised by them, you're like, "Okay, this is getting worse. And this has now crossed the line I can't tolerate." So, everyone has that line. Then the disengagement conversation might become quite different.

Lisa [32:04]

Yeah, I love that idea of the slider. And that's another thing about your book that's so great. You have all these metaphors: the gray rock, the yellow rock, the firewall. And it makes it concrete. When you're thinking about disengagement, each time you disengage, you're going to experience a certain kind of grief. And you may also have pressures around you, especially depending on the system you're around, to make nice, forgive in that emotionally bypassing kind of way, all these things. And if you've divorced yourself from yourself, you know, divorced yourself from your feelings, divorced yourself from your bodily sensations, your sympathetic nervous system, that's another thing you talk about. It can be so easy to get sucked back in, to make nice and having a fawn response by trying to please that person and see things through their eyes. When you set up these boundaries a piece of this grief can be disenfranchised grief, because other people are not going to see it. They're not going to understand it, and they may not even validate your right to be sad about this. Can you talk about disenfranchised grief and how this shows up in these relationships? 

Dr. Ramani [33:19]

So disenfranchised grief, ambiguous grief, you know, all these unrecognized forms of grief. We usually annex the term grief to only be used when somebody dies, right? That's the only sort of validated form of loss where somebody is allowed to take the time and have the emotional reactions associated with grief. Loss is loss. People going through divorce are experiencing loss and grief. People going through a job loss are going through loss and grief. People whose house burns down are going through loss and grief. People who move away from a home, even if they're downsizing and it was a home they lived in for 40 years, are going through loss and grief. And when it is in those forms, it is disenfranchised by the world. How do we franchise grief? We allow time for it. Your mom died; you can take two weeks off from work. We understand you need to travel for a funeral, or you take the time you need. It's given permission then. But when a person is going through the grief of recognizing that this relationship is harmful and it will never be the thing they wanted, that is not going to be recognized as grief. In fact, I've had it happen for many clients who might use the languaging we're using in therapy and say, "I'm going through grief," and the other person will say, "How can you be going through grief? You're still married, the person is still there." So, the only way you could be going through grief is maybe if you split up and definitely if they died. And that leaves people once again feeling almost gaslighted by the world as though their emotions don't have validity.

And then, to your point, as you said, there's a real tendency to numb and sort of dissociate from these negative feelings. Dr. Jennifer Freyd's work on betrayal blindness and betrayal trauma is very powerful because what she says is that our human need to maintain connection and attachment almost supersedes everything else. And what that means is anything that's a threat to attachment, you better believe our nervous system is going to figure out a way to sort it away because we need to keep the attachment. In the most profound way, it would be a child who's being abused. That child is not going to be able to construct the narrative of "this is a harmful, abusive person," because then they can't form an attachment to an essential caregiver. And so that child will then experience this thing called betrayal blindness, which isn’t really dissociation per se, but it is because the memory is there in association.

I always tell folks, when you move into a house, a new apartment, you find this closet, and there's a closet with those crazy high shelves, and you're like, "Oh, that's a great place to store stuff." The next time you see that stuff is when you move out of that place, right? Out of the way, you’re never going to use that place regularly, or you'll forget the stuff is there. I think that's what betrayal blindness is like. Dr. Freyd uses this beautiful metaphor of washing away because even in that moment, we're like, "Nope, this does not integrate." It's a form of cognitive dissonance and attachment. What happens though, is the betrayal blindness sounds like, "Well, that's a nice plan, then I can stay in this relationship and not think about it." But that's not how it works. All that schmutz piles up and you start feeling sicker and sicker. People will develop autoimmune issues, dermatologic issues, migraine headaches, muscle tension, RA, everything you can imagine, because they're holding this in their bodies. It is literally a betrayal of self, and it catches up with mental health issues. Many times, we're not even able to meaningfully connect it.

As people become more and more aware of narcissism and what it is, some of that betrayal blindness gets dislodged and a person can be made to see the situation more wholly. Again, it's almost impossible for a child, but in a lot of folks in narcissistic relationships, they are what I call overregulated. They don't express emotions in a strong way anymore because they've been shamed about their emotions. "You're being ridiculous, you're too sensitive, you're too dramatic." So, you see these very overregulated, accommodating people who are in narcissistic relationships. A lot of folks have the fawn response in these relationships. The fawn response brings on a lot of shame, because people feel complicit in the relationship. So, it's messy.

This is why trauma-informed work becomes so crucial with survivors of narcissistic relationships. I really think it's almost like a two-part process. Not only are we educating people about the relationship, we're explaining to them how their body and mind participated in this relationship, because they didn't know what it was. As you get the education, you can start understanding that these responses you shamed yourself for, are just your sympathetic nervous system trying to keep you safe, but it does it in kind of messed up ways. I always say it's like an overzealous bodyguard. I'm like, "Slow down, bodyguard, that's okay." It's like a really sensitive home security system. But it's understanding that all it's trying to do is keep you safe. Instead of feeling shame about it, we can actually reach within ourselves and almost talk to it and do that part’s work. Say, "I understand, I understand how you're trying to protect me, but I'm okay. I’ve got this and if I fail at this, nothing bad's going to happen." We must talk ourselves through that.

There’re no five steps to this. This is a long process of somatic work, cognitive work, behavioral work, emotional work, and spiritual work. It's a lot of work. We must commit to it every day by committing to ourselves and giving ourselves permission for some level of individuation and autonomy. It will never feel comfortable. I think some of us will go to our graves wishing that the narcissistic people would approve of us. I always talk to clients who say, "Am I a horrible person because I think this of my mother?" And I say, "You're seeing a situation clearly. I'm missing the horrible part of this." But people feel it's a betrayal of the narcissistic person to see them clearly.

Lisa [39:22]

Yeah, that’s true. I've seen that in other people I've worked with, I know that I have felt that myself. And you know, a couple of things in your book that I really enjoyed was one when you talked about the fawn response. You talk about it in terms of it not being a choice. This is a response that's happening in your nervous system. And I felt my whole body go, "Ah, yes, there it is." I've been talking to clients I work with, as I've been recommending your book, saying, "You need to read this part. You need to understand how this works." Because when people understand these things, it helps them feel more empowered. It makes the process okay because one of the hardest things you have to do is learn to live with cognitive dissonance. You love this person, and this person is manipulative, and this person puts you down, and you have good days, and you have horrible days. And it's all of it together. And that is such tough work.

Dr. Ramani [40:22]

It's tough work. And there's an exercise in the book I have called the multiple truths exercise. We live in a world right now where our news media will not allow us to say multiple things can be true. It's all about one thing being true, and it's black and white. The multiple truths exercise is, when you write it down, just like you said, we can break through cognitive dissonance and give ourselves permission to say, more than one thing is true here. So, I literally will have a client take out a piece of paper, we'll do it together. I'll give you an example of some things that clients have said:

"I have a mother. My mother was very controlling. My mother was very intrusive. I wish I never had to talk to her again. I am sad that this is how my mother is. I feel guilty that I feel this way. I love my mother. I dislike my mother."

It becomes a sort of stream of consciousness. And then when the client sits down and looks at the list, first, they'll say, "No wonder I'm having such a hard time," which in a way is sort of a place of grace for yourself. Like, of course, this makes sense why this is so difficult because we can get lost in, "Your mom's bad because she's intrusive and narcissistic." It can't be that because it's not that simple. When a person tries to paint themselves into that corner, it feels not only disingenuous, it feels inauthentic. But when they can hold space for, "I love this person, and this person isn't good for me," and they can use the word "and" and not the word, "but" they can start putting together a series of sentences that can help them say, "Okay, this is why it's complicated. This is why it hurts. This is how it's always been. And I'm going to have to find a way to interact with this person that accounts for all of this happening at the same time." Holding space for those multiple truths is an important way to loosen up some of that cognitive dissonance.

The problem with being in a state of cognitive dissonance is not wanting that sense of internal tension, right? It does mean that to be in a narcissistic relationship, there's always going to be a state of tension. That's by definition what the relationship is. No one wants to feel tense. But the alternative is to be in denial and lie to ourselves about what this is.

Lisa [42:46]

Yeah. And because this is such hard work, one of the things that you mention multiple times in your book is the importance of finding a support group for people who have experienced narcissistic abuse. So, here's my question to you: where do we find these?

Dr. Ramani [43:03]
Yeah, so this is tricky because, you know, I have spoken to some... I have a healing program for people who are experiencing narcissistic abuse. It's a monthly program, people get a workshop and Q&A. There's a community platform—an online platform—where people offer a lot of support to each other. So, I think for many people, this happens online because it can sometimes be hard to create it in real life. Zoom has been a real saving grace because people can come together from all kinds of places. I've been shocked at the sheer number of book clubs that have come up around the country in just a few weeks around my book. And people are letting these turn into de facto support groups. Put it out there. You never know what could come of that. 

And then there are some existing support groups out there. I would say go to them, vet them, see how they feel. But I always tell folks, because sometimes support groups are only peer-led. This is where you have to trust your body, because I have heard some uncomfortable stories of things that have happened in the support groups. And I'll say, this is the time you exert your autonomy, and you get out. That's the key piece. I have spoken to some that are very, very well run, some not so well run, but I think some people might want to take the lead on trying to start some of these. Experiment. Try it out. You know, it's interesting. I had a conversation with someone the other day on a podcast interview and they were asking about the utility of Al-Anon. Yeah, for people who have narcissistic family members. It's an interesting approach because addiction and narcissism have so many shared features. So, when people are sharing the emotional experiences they're having when they are having to manage relationships with addicted family members, it is a very common circumstance. I think people who have family members who are both narcissistic and living with addiction, those are often a great fit, but for people who have only family members who are narcissistic, but not living with addiction it can be complicated because many people are using the addiction frame in there. 

I'm very, very, very careful, though, to caution folks who are in narcissistic relationships, who immediately want to jump to the conclusion that they're codependent. I'm like, slow down sister. Because that word carries with it a different kind of dance happening in codependency than there is... I mean, are there some people who have codependent qualities and are in narcissistic relationships? Absolutely. But I don't think it's the vast majority. And I think that is an incorrect characterization. Some people find a lot of solace in the codependency literature, which is great. But I also think that some people wear the mantle of being a codependent and say, "This is how I'm going to the world," and it's an identity. And I'm like, no, the narcissistic relationship is a subjugated relationship. And once you get all the tentacles off you, there's still a self in there. We're just going to have to get that self unclogged from all the weeds, and then let it kind of grow on its own. 

Lisa[46:01]
When you are thinking about it in terms of codependence, then there's a piece that is antithetical to what your book is about. It's that no, it's not you. These behaviors exist, and they're not going to change. Part of your job is to recognize it, accept it, and then decide what you want to do. What I can say, from my own understanding of 12-Step programs and experience of that, there are some things that I think are ingredients that can work really well for groups. There is a structure that people can follow that doesn't depend on one person, especially for peer-led groups. In 12-step programs, it is a spiritual structure, and that does not work for everyone. And I say that right away, but I think having some sort of structural framework for how we're going to work through problems, that's more like the traditions. Here's how we're going to operate as a group, here's how I'm going to think through the problem-solving process in relation to it. I think those aspects of it can be really helpful. And the concept of sponsorship, or partnership, or people that you can use as support. And then, talking authentically, I think those ingredients are really helpful.

But I agree with you that if someone is just in a narcissistic relationship and there's not an addiction component to it, it may not necessarily serve you. You may get some benefit. If there's nothing, if it's like nothing or this, that might be better than nothing. But is it going to give you everything you need to truly heal and buffer yourself and shield yourself from future issues with narcissism, which of course, you can never shield against all of it. But by getting better at recognizing it, or having a space where you can go, you know, yeah, I engaged. And here's how it went. And here's how I engaged in the pattern again, and being able to unpack that with other people who also understand that language and what's going on can be really helpful.

Dr. Ramani [48:11]
Again, the simplest thing in the world is just knowing you're not alone with something. And when somebody just is sharing, "Yep, this happened, this happened," because otherwise, the isolation and the loneliness that comes from how distorted and contorted... because remember, the narcissistic people are often very valued in the world. Their employer might like them. They might have friends; they might have family members that like them. And so, you do feel very confused. It's not like everyone's like, "oh, you're with a terrible person," and then you sort of feel supported by the world because they recognize that. If everyone is sort of extolling the virtues of the narcissistic person, you feel even more lonely and isolated. So, hearing other people who are going through this... and some people feel foolish if they've sort of been pulled in by the gaslighting. Maybe I'll feel foolish, and I couldn't see it, then you realize we all see the gaslighting of the self and recognizing that it's not you that had something unacceptable wrong with your behavior. It's really what they did. But it's key to constantly come back to you are not responsible for their behavior. And I think a lot of folks in narcissistic relationships say, "Well, I did this, so maybe that brought out that," and this is where I really take umbrage with the field of mental health. Many therapists will say "Well, what led up to them saying that?" I don't care what led up to them saying that. They said that, and that wasn't okay. Let's just stop there. And whatever led to that, it doesn't matter. But they're now putting the onus on the other person. "Well, maybe if you didn't say that." Right, put the hot spotlight where it belongs. That was not okay. Let's just start there. Yes, over time, we could try to contextualize, especially when my clients say, "I'm not leaving," I'm like, okay. Given that these kinds of screaming drags are what are so difficult here, let's sort of figure out what the whole sequence is here. So, we can figure out what we can do to get you to a better place of safety. But it's never, "Let's figure out what you said to set them off." Exactly. That makes it sound as though you're complicit. That's the big error the field of mental health has been and continues to make. In this realm, we must be able to call that behavior a problem behavior.

Lisa [50:23]
Absolutely. And I think naming it for what it is, is so important. And then also, what I love is that you're helping people see what the pattern is, you know, the pattern of communication, or the pattern of behavior, and figuring out how you can recognize it early and figure out what choice you're going to make to disengage from the pattern, because that's the part you can control. It's either okay or not okay, and you have to really be able to understand what that is. And I agree, I think support groups are a way to do that. So, I'm going to ask for some of the information about the support group you have. Also, I encourage those of you who are listening, who get this book, to connect with other people who also have it, so you can begin to talk about these things, and have a common language for how we can support each other and help each other heal. So, I have a few just lightning round questions. I also want to say congratulations on having your book on The New York Times bestseller list. That’s so good, and so deserved. What is your best piece of writing advice? It could be something someone has said to you or something that’s a go-to when you’re writing your books.

Dr. Ramani [51:41]
You figure out what time of day your mind is the sharpest. And you completely cordon off that time of day when you're working on something big, whether it's a short story or a book or whatever. For me, it's morning. So, when I wrote this book, because I had other responsibilities, so many times weekends, for years, I cleared out weekends. But I know I'm at my best in the morning. And I'm best in the morning when I have a shower. So, I'd get up, I'd have a shower, I'd have my tea, and I'd go. And so then when I needed a little bit of head clearing, I would do something that would have me move around, clean the house, whatever, you know, feed the hummingbirds. But everything would put me in motion and then sit down. And I know for me somewhere around four or five o'clock, my capacity to do that kind of work fades substantially. So, then it could be emails and the other stuff that's a little bit more procedural. So that's how I would construct my day. But I think for everyone, there's a time of day when you're your sharpest. And it's not always morning. Some people, it's late at night. You need to figure out what that time is. And that's where I would say, at least I know if I start in the morning, I am going to be able to get a good couple of hours out of this no matter what. When something was on the table for me to write, and it was important, I wrote it well, and that would take precedence over everything else. And then everything else would come out, even if it was only one or two hours, I would grab the best one or two hours of the day and devote that to writing.

But I'd also say one other thing about writing. And this is where, you know, my editor's support mattered. I tell people this book was written three times, literally three times. And the first time I wrote it as a scientist and a scholar. I thought it was a solid book. And the editor is like, "This is so smart. And I'm learning so much. And no, absolutely not." And so, she's like, "You need to go back." And so, the second time I wrote it, I wrote it as a clinician. And that was definitely not as smarty-smart, and it was definitely not so third person. But she still said, "I'm not feeling it." And the third time I wrote it from my heart. And so, the science was in there, the clinician was in there. But this time it was... you know, she really said it to me. She's like, "Someone is sitting across from you, and they are struggling. This is not how you're going to talk to them." And so, she then pushed me and that was hard. That was hard. It was more vulnerable. But it helped to have an editor push me in that way. Don't get me wrong, I was not happy with that. I'm like, I've given you two books. And now I'm going to give you a third? And the third is what you're reading. It's where the human being wrote the book and it goes, it flies. I was trained as a researcher and an academic, I wrote as a clinician. So, the two things I've been trained to do for the bulk of my adult life, I was being told for the first time, you've got to write this as a human being. Yeah, and so much scientific writing doesn't feel like it's written by a human being. And so, it was a whole new evolution for me. I'm glad I did it, because I think it's why people are being affected by it. So that editorial support matters a lot, even if you're mad at the editor.

 Lisa [54:40]

Yes, it does. And you are not the first person who has come on and said, I thought I wrote a brilliant book, and then I gave it to either beta readers or my editor and they went, uh-uh.  And so, being willing to hear what people have to say is so important because they're not saying it to hurt you if they're not a narcissist, right? If they’re not engaging in antagonistic behavior, then they're not. But you have to be able to take that in. And sometimes people start writing from the heart, and then they have to get that head version going, where you're looking at research, you're looking at other things. But sometimes you start with the ideas and the research, and then you have to bring the heart in and being able to do both is so important. Well, this is not your first book rodeo, right? You've written other books that have been successful, and I've been watching you launch this book, and I want to tell people, you know, beyond learning what you have to say about narcissism, I think people need to follow you just to see all the incredible things you've done to launch your book and to get it out into the world. It's truly a masterclass. I mean, it's all the things I would tell someone to do. You've got a class. You've done so many Instagram lives, and you have this great Instagram, and you've done all these podcasts, and you have all the stuff that you do. How are you nurturing your resilience and caring for yourself, especially during this intense time of your book launch?

Dr. Ramani [56:09]

I'm not, and I'm going to own that. This is the hardest thing I've ever done in my life. I will not regret it. We wanted to get one book over this sort of cultural indicator of this best-selling list. But I know I could never do this again. I'm telling you, this is not for the faint of heart. We talked to anyone we could who would be willing to have a conversation with us and answer our questions, honestly, who's had a bestselling book in this kind of contiguous space? We asked them what they did. We studied what people did, we went to the Instagrams of people who had bestselling books, and we rolled the Instagram way back to when they released their book, and we looked at what they did. And then we said, unless we're philosophically not aligned with a podcast, we don't care if 100 people listen to it, or 50 million people listen, we're going to go on any podcast that asks. We pitched a lot of podcasts, a lot said no. But I'm not taking care of myself. And I will have to be honest with you, I don't know how I would have found the time to, and this was one of those choice points. My biggest form of self-care above all else is sleep. I'm kind of a zealot about sleep. And so, I'm not someone who stayed up to one in the morning working. Somewhere around nine o'clock, I always say the carnival shuts down. I'm very clear about my nighttime routine, and I crawl into bed, and I will either read or there's little games I like to play on my phone, these things bring me down. And that's very important to me. I will say if I were to say there was a form of self-care, I would sleep as much as I could. But it was very, very difficult. And I think a lot of writers think you’ve got to launch it this way. It's so much work, and I was very lucky, I had a small team. We didn't hire a publicist, because I didn't have a lot of money. I mean, I had a team of three that always works with me. And they shifted all their focus to this. None of them had expertise in book publicity, either. So, there's something to be said about grit, hustle, and heart. And I don't think you can hire that, like just pay someone. You better have the people around that believe in your book. But I think I didn't have the money. A publicist was going to cost me 20 to $50,000 that I did not have. And so, we had to figure this one out. And I want people to know that because we did do this on our own, we did not have a team of folks around us, we didn't have big tech support, what you see is sort of what we are. A friend of mine helped me build this in a room in a house. And that's that. But we were also lucky. We had an incredibly, incredibly engaged community. Nobody is supporting this community. They're just sort of being told, don't say they're narcissistic. There's a community that's been shamed, and we're like, I want to speak to them. That's what this is about. And so as much as we could, and we tried to incentivize it. I put almost hundreds of hours into building out courses and interview series, giveaways that would be for free, to incentivize people to buy the book and almost have a much more holistic experience of it. So, there was a bunch of extra work. And I think some people say, are you kidding me? I have to go develop all this stuff? Well, we did. It seemed to have worked, but it’s hard to pick out the one thread of what happened. But I also want to say to folks, don't get lost in thinking there's one magical viral thing that will happen. Everyone wants the Oprah effect or something like that. I have no doubt if she puts her sticker on your book, it's going to do well, but I don't know that that's how the world works. I think it's you do 1000 little things, and they all come together, and you remain engaged and that's really what it's about. But I think waiting for the one viral moment which I think a lot of people hope for. I'm like, don't go there. You're giving too much power to a person who probably won't take notice of you. Take control of your destiny and do it. But I am going to take a vacation in July. It'll be the first vacation I've taken in years. 

Lisa [1:00:06]

For those of you who are listening, I am clapping right now, because you have so earned it. And here's what I love about this. One, you're so honest, and you're saying, "I haven't figured this out, and it was really hard. And I am not taking care of myself to the level that I would like to at this point." And that is real. And so many authors go through what I call the gauntlet, right? There are so many things to do. And what I can say is that you did all the research, you understood who your audience was, and here's my experience. As a person who was watching this happen and participating on the sidelines, I felt like I was part of a community. I felt like I was part of something. And to me, I think that's one of the reasons why this book has been so successful. It's even—I mean, yes, I feel like when I'm reading your book, you are talking to me, you know, and I feel like you're talking to me, not at me, right? Not as a clinician or a smart person. You're like, "Hey, come on, come into my world. Let me join with you. Let me help you." And that was important. And then, you know, all these things you've done with your class, with the Instagram lives, with the messages, it's like, "Hey, something else is happening, folks. Come on, be a part of it." And that made me want to cheer you on.

Dr. Ramani [1:01:24]

Thank you. Thank you so much. Yeah, that's it. The Instagram lives and things like that don't come naturally to me, so I just tried to roll with it. I care about it. But we could have done all this, and we also may not have gotten the success because, again, like I said, we're not well-resourced. We were in no position to bulk buy books—we had none of those resources. I sort of leveraged my money a bit so that I could put this much into it, and then when that's gone, we've done all we could. And so—but it was speaking to a community. I've been through this, and I wish when I was going through this, there had been a community. So, it's a privilege to create that with others. And then they became their own force to be reckoned with. That's—I viewed the success of this book as, yes, I had the opportunity to write it, which was amazing, but the book got lifted on the shoulders of thousands of people. And that's how this happened. And so, I see this as a very shared success with everyone who cared about this issue enough to get it out there, pick it up, and have the courage to read it.

Lisa [1:02:21]

Well, I am so glad that you took this on and that you wrote it. And I want everyone to read your book, because it is so important. What is the best way for people to find you, buy your book, and connect with you?

Dr. Ramani [1:02:33]

So, you can buy my book anywhere they sell books. We had a minute—the book did really well, so some booksellers ran out, but everyone's got it back in stock, including some of the sellers like Target and Walmart, which I know some people sometimes will go run errands and want to find the book there. Barnes & Noble or any bookseller you can think of pretty much will have it or will order it. Your local bookstore will, your local library, you can ask them to order it. And so, if that's an easier way for you to get it, that's also an option. But you can buy it anywhere. I think actually right now, Amazon's running a sale at 30% off, so you can even get it at a discount. And to find me, you can go to my website, which is drramani.com. You can see everything we're doing. I have daily YouTube videos that come out every day, usually sort of my reflection of that day, some, you know, videos I've researched, whatever. So that happens every day. We have a healing program for people who are going through narcissistic abuse. It's a monthly program, new content every month. There's a workshop every month, there's a Q&A every month, there is a guided meditation. There's the existing community platform. So, it's a place for people to come together but also have this programming given to them. And there's like at least 12 to 15 journal prompts a month on that topic. So, you get a lot there too. And so, we have all these different ways, and there'll be more as time goes on. If you're a therapist and you want to know more about how to work with clients experiencing narcissistic abuse, I developed a 36-hour program that culminates in a certification on working with clients with narcissistic abuse. You can go to the website of pesi.com. I did it in partnership with them, and you could order the course there, and they often run specials, and you can get it at quite a discounted price. 

Lisa [1:04:07]

That is a lot. And if anyone missed it, it'll appear in the show notes. So don't worry, you will be able to find these things. And here's some things I'm going to say. One, buy the book. Two, review the book. And review it on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, on Goodreads, anywhere you can. And ask for it at your library, even if you've already bought a copy of the book, because then someone else who may not be able to afford it but needs it can get access. So do those three things for Dr. Ramani and for every other author.

Dr. Ramani [1:04:40]

Yes, it's a great thing to do. There are other things you can do to get this book out in the world. I've even told folks, if you have a local domestic violence program, that you can buy a few copies. I'm doing that in LA, donating it to programs. So, buy a few copies and donate them, you know, if that's something that feels right to you. But ask your library because I agree, even if you already have it, libraries will get an audiobook license so that multiple people can borrow it. So, there are ways within your community to ensure people are getting it.

Lisa [1:05:13]

Well, Dr. Ramani, thank you so much for taking the time to meet with me and to be on the podcast. I am so grateful, and I am so excited to tell other people about your book.

Dr. Ramani [1:05:23]

Thank you so much. I really appreciate this conversation.

 [LE1]Possible quote here.