Episode 2237: Vanessa Resier on Narcissistic Abuse - the disease that captures the spirit of our toxic times

If there’s a disease that captures the toxic spirit of our times, it’s what the therapist, Vanessa Resier, in her new book, calls Narcissistic Abuse. Even the language of this disease - Gaslighting. Love bombing. Hoovering. Triangulating - has become part of the dictionary of life in the 2020’s. Narcissism and narcissists seem to be everywhere these days. In fact, as Resier told me (see full transcript below), all domestic abuse - from outright violence to subtle manipulation - is a form of narcissistic abuse. But if that’s true, I asked her, then what, exactly, isn’t narcissism?

Vanessa M. Reiser is a licensed clinical social worker (LCSW), licensed in New York, New Jersey, Massachusetts, and Florida. She is a psychotherapist and the founder of Tell a Therapist, LLC as well as the founder of the nonprofit, Tell a Therapist, INC. Vanessa holds a bachelor’s degree in political science from SUNY Empire State college and a Master of Social Work (MSM) from the University of Southern California. Vanessa specializes in narcissistic personality disorder, and her practice focuses on treating victims and survivors of cults, narcissists, domestic violence, and narcissistic abuse. Her insights are both personal and professional, giving her a unique lens into this insidious form of domestic abuse. Vanessa is a long-distance runner and two-time Ironman who is best known for running the state of New York (285 miles in 11 days) in a wedding dress to raise awareness for narcissistic abuse.

Named as one of the "100 most connected men" by GQ magazine, Andrew Keen is amongst the world's best known broadcasters and commentators. In addition to presenting KEEN ON, he is the host of the long-running How To Fix Democracy show. He is also the author of four prescient books about digital technology: CULT OF THE AMATEUR, DIGITAL VERTIGO, THE INTERNET IS NOT THE ANSWER and HOW TO FIX THE FUTURE. Andrew lives in San Francisco, is married to Cassandra Knight, Google's VP of Litigation & Discovery, and has two grown children.

TRANSCRIPT

Andrew Keen: Hello, everybody. Long-time viewers and listeners to the show know that I have a particular interest in words. Certain words acquire fashion, and I'm always curious why. One word that seems to be particularly popular these days, gets thrown around a lot, both clinically and out of the psychotherapist's office, is the word “narcissist.” There's a new book out this week. It's called Narcissistic Abuse. It's by my guest, Vanessa M. Reiser. She is a clinical social worker, a psychotherapist based in central New Jersey. And she's joining us. Vanessa, congratulations on the new book. This word narcissist. You're all too familiar with it, of course, everyone throws it around. Do you think it's particularly fashionable these days, or is that my imagination?

Vanessa Reiser: I think it is definitely a word that is misunderstood. So, to your point, I think people use it in a way or in a regard that is not totally accurate. So, somebody who has narcissistic personality disorder. Has a list of characteristics that are very specific, very hazardous. It's not just somebody who is into taking selfies, or that we might think the word is in reference to. So, there are pretty serious characteristics that they possess. If somebody has a pathological disorder.

Keen: Or let me rephrase the question: do you think there are more narcissists around now in the 2020s than there were historically, or are always the same amount? Of course, the word was invented by the Greeks. Its etymology comes out of Greek mythology: the God of Narcissus. So are we particularly prone, our culture or our individuality. To two to the problems of narcissism?

Reiser: I think that it's always been around. I think there are more people, but I do think that we are now developing the vernacular for the characteristics. And I do think that because we have social media, people are more inclined to discuss it. So, in some ways it's a good thing, because we are now talking about it more, and some of the toxic behaviors. But I think is also an uptick because people are more individualistic, they are potentially more vain, more narcissistic. In their approach to their marketing themselves, everybody is out there flitting about, trying to make themselves an entity of sorts. And so, we're seeing a lot of people that are seemingly narcissistic, but that is not the same as somebody who has a pervasive pathological disorder, somebody who is lacking empathy, somebody who potentially has overlaps with sociopathy and looks to hurt people. We see this in certain pop culture scenarios, like we're seeing it with the P Diddy stuff here. There's a lot of talk now about cults, which my book is about also. So, these are people that are dangerous in some regard. These are people who are interested in meeting their own needs at the expense of others. And so it is somewhat misused, the word.

Keen: Aren't we all want a bit like that? Aren't we all a bit self-interested? The subtitle of your book is A Therapist's Guide to Identifying, Escaping and Healing from Toxic and Manipulative People. Aren't all people, Vanessa, aren't they all manipulative? Aren't we all seeking what we want? This word toxic...it's another one of these words that's become fashionable, it seems to be used in all sorts of generic ways. Aren't we all, in our own way, toxic too?

Reiser: I think there is a level of ego that we all possess, so we are feeding our egos, we are trying to manage that up against others in society, etc. Very Freudian. But this idea that somebody would be particularly manipulative, somebody who's lying, controlling, uses isolation. And again, the book is aimed to fuse the concepts of narcissistic abuse and cult abuse. So, cult leaders are all narcissists, sociopaths or psychopaths, and the way that they operate is in line with what we see in domestic violence scenarios in a one-on-one interpersonal relationship. And those are the tactics. They are very much about mind control. So this is positive reinforcers, negative reinforcers, silent treatment. So the level of manipulation is different than, let's say, if you're having a bad day and you need a Snickers bar and you might just act like a jerk. That is not a pervasive behavior. This is more maniacal, to sort of oversimplify it.

Keen: I can't resist our promise not to bring up Trump too much in this conversation, Vanessa. But this is the week, of course, that he got elected, or reelected, to office. And often people use the word narcissist in association with him. You talked about its influence on popular culture. Does it also play a role in politics? You talked about cult leaders, aren't all political leaders in their own way, cult leaders?

Reiser: No, because, again, you have to have a pathological disorder. It's not to say that there aren't an abundance of--there are. There are a ton of CEOs and c-suites of, you know, poets, priests and politicians are generally able to kiss babies and potentially stab you in the back. They can be really dangerous. I wouldn't say they all are. I would say it is more prevalent in certain career paths for sure. We see this in the military. We see this in police officers. We see this in surgery rooms. So, there are certain jobs--see, I think 1 in 4 CEOs is a psychopath directly, which is very interesting.

Keen: But what do you make of that? Does that suggest that everyone is a psychopath, or does that suggest that certain kinds of jobs like CEO or perhaps presidents lend themselves to psychopaths and narcissists?

Reiser: I think the way that they climb the ladder without empathy, sort of lying...Jeffrey Epstein was a good example of this because he was a liar. His entire resume was a fraud. So they know how to work the system, climb to the top, convince others to do their bidding, hide, find loopholes. They're pretty slippery and sneaky. And as I mentioned, the level of manipulation is just a master level. And so this is why cult leaders in political arenas and otherwise, in the one-on-one relationship, they are able to get people to fall in line, right? Manson never killed anyone. It was his minions that did so. So, they are able to use mind control in a way that most people don't think they could fall victim to. But I think that's the beauty of the conversations we're starting to have around this, because we're bumping into these people in our work environments. We're now having a discussion about what they look like, how they behave. It's very hard to process when you go through something like this. I think most of us think that people are sharing similar perspectives and logical ideas. And when you go through this portal, you understand that not everyone is thinking the way you are. And I think it's brilliant that we're starting to talk about it, actually. I think the word is overused, but I also believe that there are far more dangerous people out there than maybe we ever realized.

Keen: Vanessa, you talked about Mayor Charles Manson, mass murderer Jeffrey Epstein, a serial sexual criminal. You also talk about CEOs. Surely there's a difference between the two, though. Are there, shall we say, criminal narcissists and then people who have done well, who have an element of narcissism in their personalities?

Reiser: Absolutely. I think there are unfortunately often overlaps between narcissistic personality disorder and antisocial personality disorder or sociopathy. So, the way I would characterize the difference would be what you are saying, which a is very, very big difference and yet somewhat nuanced, in my opinion, is the idea of no empathy. The narcissist might step over the dead body, the sociopath put the dead body there. So, it feels like it's a huge difference and a very small difference at the same time. Why? Because without empathy, I think our society really doesn't go on. I think empathy, is in the very first place, something that occurs when the primary caregiver realizes the baby's crying. Let's take care of the baby, the baby needs something. And this sort of innate experience is why we go on as a species. Without it, we are doomed. And so, this idea of no empathy already feels very wonky to me, and I think we need to open up a dialogue about that. But you're quite right. There is a difference between somebody who steps over the dead body and somebody who puts the dead body there.

Keen: Yeah, there's a very big difference. You use the E-word, empathy. It's another of these, what I think of at least, as cult words. It gets thrown around as if it's a good thing. You talked about the the species nature of empathy, that we wouldn't survive without it. I'm not an expert on evolution or Darwin's theories, but I wonder what evolutionists would say about this, that our species is a competitive one and we all compete with one another. Is empathy, then, self-interest, and does that, in a sense, undermine the idea of empathy, given that it's supposed to be about being empathetic? But if it enables us to survive and prosper, then maybe it's not quite as empathetic as we would like to think.

Reiser: I think probably there's a balance there, and the imbalance is what we're seeing. I think we need to cultivate more empathy. I think we need to be kinder to one another. I feel like it's gotten a little dark, and people are maybe acting out of fear a lot more than I've ever seen. And so, I think we have lost a good amount of that. I think we see it in times of tragedy, like in New York, on 9/11, you were able to see humankind in its best light. And we saw quite a bit of it with Covid when the first responders were being highly empathetic and volunteering their time and risking their lives to look out for others. So I think it's still there, but I think that we might be trending away from it. And that scares me. So, I think it is important. Empathy, to me, is ground zero for everything. I think it's important. I understand what you're saying, but I think there's a balance that we might be getting too polarized around.

Keen: Are you suggesting that if you don't have empathy, you are by definition a narcissist?

Reiser: No, I think that there are certain people that don't have as strong of empathy. Maybe they understand empathy. But I think if you couple that with this recipe of other characteristics like manipulation, like lying, controlling, isolating, abusing through addiction, smearing, withholding, there's, you know, something like 20 characteristics that most of them will possess a good amount. So, it's not an exact science. But no, I think no empathy, though, is one of the things that I think lends people to behave the way that they do if they're going to be abusive. So, it is a term that I think may highlight a good amount of what narcissists jumping off point is, which is they don't care, so they're going to do anything that they can to get what they want.

Keen: You mentioned Manson, Jeffrey Epstein, of course, a historic sexual criminal, both male and very male in their own way. You've talked about empathy in some detail, Vanessa, both on the show and in the book. Is there a gendered quality to this too? Do Women make, and of course, there are female narcissists, but is a female narcissist different from a male narcissist, or are all narcissists, whether they're made of female, essentially the same?

Reiser: There are some slight differences. By and large, the female narcissist will oftentimes exploit their children and use their children for supply. Not that the male narcissist won't do that, but a good oversimplification to identify the female narcissist is oftentimes the “pageant mom." Their children are an extension of them and they're sort of braggadocious about, you know, “my child is a doctor." The other thing that they they can do is--

Keen: Sounds like a lot of mothers, Vanessa. They're proud of their kids if they're adults, I think, or a psychotherapist...

Reiser: I think proud is very different from somebody who behind the scenes in the home, they're valuing that child based only on what they can get from the child. So they get supply from the neighbors who are excited to see the daughter, or the people at the cheerleading competition. It's very superficial and shallow. Behind the scenes, they can be particularly abusive and severely so. So, these children could develop eating disorders, could be self-injuring. And a lot of this is about the mask that they wear in public versus who they are behind the scenes.

Keen: But on a lot of shows, Vanessa, on social media and anxiety, as you know, as a therapist and as a writer, this is a huge issue these days: is there a connection between our age of anxiety and the prevalence of narcissistic abuse? Are some of the most important reasons why there's so much anxiety, particularly amongst young people, a consequence of the rise of narcissistic abuse?

Reiser: I'm not sure. It's an interesting question. I tend to lean more into the camp of nature, less nurture. So, my belief is based not on a ton of data, because there is not a lot of data on NPD because narcissists are not going into studies and saying, “Hey, I'm a narcissist, please study me," or “I'm willing to be studied." They are generally mandated. So, you know, there's not a lot of data to pull from. So, we're kind of theorizing, but I tend to lean more into the camp of something where intergenerational trauma may play a role, or genetic or biological predisposition. So, I'm not sure. There are certain people who have different opinions on this. Some people think this is something that happens in childhood, and it's a trauma. I tend to think it's something that potentially could be genetic.

Keen: Vanessa, is there a danger here? You're a clinical social worker, a psychotherapist, you have your own private practice. So I'm not suggesting, of course, you're self-interested and you're trying to build a clientele here. But aren't you, not you, but isn't this whole movement, or discourse, medicalizing the complexity of the human condition? So all parents are, in their own way, manipulative. They will perhaps use their children sometimes to self-promote. Everybody wants to control one kind of relationship, or rather, everyone has their own interest. What's the danger, in your work and in the work of others, of medicalizing the business of being human? And I mean that not in an economic sense, but in all the messiness of what it means to be human and in our relations with others.

Reiser: Yeah, I definitely do not see it that way. I think when my clients come to me, they are very confused about what has happened to them. And so the word being a clinical word, narcissistic personality disorder (or clinical words, narcissistic personality disorder) can feel very validating because it would be like going to the hospital and the doctor says, “you're sick." “Well, what do I have?" “You're just sick." And so my clients, very specifically, because I work only in the domestic violence realm, really are feeling validated around the language. So the language, you opened up this conversation today talking about words, these words like gaslighting, and the level of confusion that's gone on with--

Keen: --and lovebombing and hoovering and triangulating, all these words that you bring up in your book.

Reiser: They're very important for people to understand what they've endured. And so, I actually quite like the medical term, because it gives an answer to those that have gone through something that is particularly difficult to process and certainly very hard to describe.

Keen: You talked about abuse and a lot of your clients, you talk about violence, or as most of the narcissistic abuse verbal?

Reiser: All domestic violence is narcissistic abuse, all domestic violence is narcissistic abuse. Every single one of my clients who has been physically assaulted, or has an acute trauma through physical abuse, tells me that the psychological abuse is far worse. It's a brain injury of sorts when somebody lies to you repeatedly and skews your perception. I feel like the brain is kind of a fact-finding machine, and it looks for data, and it's constantly working to make those connections. And so, when that becomes fractured, people really decompensate. They do not do well. They fall apart. They fail. Most realms of their entire life can just fall apart. And so, it's a pretty serious thing, this psychological brain injury, if you will.

Keen: Yeah, I take your point. I'm certainly not trying to minimalize domestic abuse. But just to repeat, you said all domestic abuse is narcissistic abuse. Is that what you're saying? So the husband who comes home after some drinks in the bar and beats his wife up. Is that narcissistic abuse or is that just that an angry drunk man?

Reiser: I would have to sort of assess further, but it very well could be, and more than likely it would be. Now, does that mean he has narcissistic personality disorder? No, but that behavior itself is narcissistic.

Keen: But aren't you, again, making it such a big word that any kind of bad behavior...it becomes narcissism. So it's really everything.

Reiser: Certainly the high level bad behaviors that you're referencing, yes.

Keen: So domestic abuse, anything behind domestic abuse: smacking someone around, beating up your child, beating up your wife, beating up your husband, it's always narcissism?

Reiser: Yes.

Keen: So, okay, so we have this thing called narcissistic abuse. You're a therapist. People don't come to you to, as you suggested, to have this thing argued over. They come for help, and they come to identify it and escape it. How do you deal with it? Let's begin with children and their narcissistic mother. What's your advice? How to get out of a narcissistic relationship?

Reiser: That one is particularly challenging, because when you leave an intimate relationship, oftentimes you can just go back to the person you were prior, go find that person. When you are the child of a narcissist, it is challenging because, as I mentioned earlier, you become an extension of that parent. And so, your identity has not been developed, you have to figure out who you even are. What are your likes? What are your interests? What is autonomy like for you? And so, it's a big hill to climb. You're generally filtering thoughts through "what would my toxic parent want or what would they not want?" Which ultimately gives them control over every single thought you're having. And so that is a really, really hard thing to overcome. And then I suppose what we would do, probably, would be work on low contact or harm reduction to the extent that they feel comfortable, unless they're willing to remove them from their lives. Narcissists can be dangerous, in a way. So, these are people who might manipulate your love relationship, or the relationship you have with your own children, or your career. They can infiltrate everything around you. So depending upon the severity--it would be a case-by-case basis--but generally, with a parental unit, I would say probably trying to get to a point where you would see them maybe during holidays, or whatever you're comfortable doing, and then you don't really want to share too much with them, because they tend to exploit the information that you share with them.

Keen: How reformable then, Vanessa, are narcissists? You're suggesting that they can't be reformed, that they have this condition and that you shouldn't trust them with information? They're always trying to take advantage of you.

Reiser: Not a lot of data on the narcissist changing. It is a rigid pathological disorder. So, the neurotypical brain can move. Trauma victims can repair and develop new pathways in the brain. This is different. It's rigid. So, I don't see a ton of movement. I think that the best-case scenario is to get away from them.

Keen: But have you had patients who've come into your office and said, “I'm a narcissist or I fear I'm a narcissist. Nobody wants to talk to me. My parents, my kids, my friends, my children, my relatives won't speak to me. I need to become less of a narcissist." Is that a condition that you sometimes come across?

Reiser: Yes. And we would work towards developing empathy to the extent that they can. We would work towards developing emotional connections with other people. We would work towards understanding boundaries, working on accountability, communication style, attachment style. This is generally something that is best handled in an in-patient scenario. So it could look like a sex addiction treatment center, something like this, where they are really diving in. So the work that I'm doing is the best that I can with anybody who comes to me, as you mentioned. But it's something that would be best handled with extensive therapy.

Keen: So you're a therapist and you're in the business of identifying and escaping and healing from toxic and manipulative people. But what about medicine? I talked about medicalizing the condition. I'm slightly curious about that, perhaps even slightly skeptical. But are there drugs for narcissists or for people who have been abused by narcissists?

Reiser: In a word, no. There are tons of things therapeutically that have been coming out. We're seeing people who are trying certain psychedelics for post-traumatic stress disorder. So in the case of the victim, I know Bessel van der Kolk talks about MDMA and other options for treating trauma specifically that is very experimental and goes up against big pharma. So he has a lot of push back. But there's different treatments and things that people are trying, but there isn't really anything per se that treats trauma. In the pharma world, everything is to treat anxiety and depression, and sometimes that can work. So again, we're going to practice harm reduction. And the same could be said for the narcissist in terms of treatment. Pharmacologically, we would probably do something like the SSRIs, but there's no data that I can provide that says that that works. It's just something that I've heard people try to probably work on the anxiety of it. But there's no there's no drug that I know of that's going to remedy trauma or NPD.

Keen: So you're ambivalent on psychedelics. We've done a number of shows. It's becoming increasingly fashionable or popular.

Reiser: I'm not ambivalent.

Keen: You're against or for? You don't think it works, basically?

Reiser: No, I think I think it I think it could be tremendous. I don't know enough about it, but I'm kind of hopeful that it would work.

Keen: But isn't that kind of, some people might say, Brave New World? It's an escape? We live in a psychedelic universe, we leave the world and we go to another?

Reiser: I don't know. If we are microdosing, it's possible that we could quell the trauma responses to the extent that we may be able to then focus on developing different neural pathways and changing the way that the brain is thinking and some of the cognition that's negative that's floating around in there. So I'm hopeful that those things would help. I understand what you're saying, though.

Keen: In an America which, Vanessa, is very divided, a lack of, perhaps, your word, empathy, politically, on either side, an election that reflects and perhaps compounds the divisions...do you think that America needs to become more, shall we say, therapeutic? Is is that the only way to bring Americans back together? I'm not suggesting that all politicians are narcissists, although, as I said, a lot of people have argued, including, I think his own niece, that Donald Trump is a classic example of a narcissist. But does America need counseling, shall we say? Is America itself collectively suffering from narcissistic abuse?

Reiser: Well, that is a good question. Just gave me the chills. Yes, but also therapeutic practices that we can all do, I do this in my own life, is just...I really think it's important for people to express themselves. I notice in my clientele, when they are just sharing, they're connecting the dots really on their own, they aren't processing things, and I think it's important to express yourself. So even if you're journaling--so it doesn't have to be this, like, you're in therapy, so something is wrong with you, and let's fix you, and this is this is my advice, and all this. No. I do think that you need to have a safe place to express yourself. So, even just good friends, some way to kind of get it off your chest if it's through, you know, anything that you enjoy doing, like, running as I do, or the written word, or kickboxing, or some way to get things off your chest, I think, will help you to feel empowered, will help you to process some of the things that you're witnessing that could be upsetting.

Keen: Yeah there's a long tradition of narcissism in literature, many writers have written books about narcissism, and some people believe many of the greatest writers are themselves narcissists. You talk about, Vanessa, finally, a safe place to do this. We touched on social media earlier. You're on Instagram, you're on TikTok, like most of us. Is social media in your view, a safe place, or is it the problem, or is it both?

Reiser: Oh, great timing on that one. I would say it is something that could be both, for sure. It has tremendous benefits. There's communities that have developed through something as simple as a hashtag. So, there's so much good and then there's so much horror. I mean, that's just the way I see it.

Keen: Well, finally, I have to ask you this, Vanessa. Since I get some free therapy from you, sometimes my kids accuse me of being a narcissist. I think it's sometimes when they don't like what I say. Have I displayed any manifestations of narcissism in this conversation? Do I need therapy myself?

Reiser: No. You know, I don't know you well enough. You were certainly a gentleman. And it would be very, very hard for me to decipher something like that unless I got to know you behind the scenes. And I'm sure the same could be said about me.

Keen: Well, next time my kids accuse me of being a narcissist, I will tell them, “Go and talk to Vanessa." Well, congratulations, Vanessa, on the new book, it's an important subject, and you treated in a very down to earth, coherent way. The new book is Narcissistic Abuse--sorry--Narcissistic Abuse: A Therapist Guide to Identifying, Escaping and Healing from Toxic and Manipulative People. It's on audiobook, it's read by Vanessa, and it's also out in traditional text. Congratulations, Vanessa. Subject isn't going away, we'll get you back in the not-too-distant future to talk more narcissism. Thank you so much.

Reiser: Thank you so much.

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