The book focuses on identifying and healing from narcissistic people. Dr. Ramani discussed its importance for healing from narcissistic abuse, and recommended it for those dealing with narcissistic people in their lives.
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Her new book is called It's Not You, Identifying and Healing from Narcissistic People.
Go and grab a copy of this book right now if this is something that you've been dealing with. If you have a friend or a family member, this is the book to give them for that healing journey.
You have a new book out right now as we're speaking. As I said to everyone, it's called It's Not You.
And as I said to everyone, please do get the book. We'll be diving into a couple of topics here today, but to get the depth of the book, make sure you grab a copy of it.
The point of this book was really to say there are people with these personalities, they're out there. The way they show up in relationships is pretty consistently the same. And instead of blaming yourself and wondering what you could do, it's not you. It's really them and they're having their process and their journey and probably not going to get the help they need to defend it against it. But rolling up and turning your life into a human sacrifice to please or win over or prove something to an unwinnable over person. I have watched people waste lifetimes doing this, you know, and it's even particularly compelling if it's their parent, but even if it's a long-term intimate relationship with them, especially if they got into the relationship young. So this has always been a thing.
I want to start off Dr. Ramani by again, clarifying terms, because I think we're living at a time where there's so many terms on TikTok and YouTube and social media, and often they transpire into how we talk to our family members, friends. What is the difference between a narcissist and narcissistic personality disorder? Let's start there because this is already muddying the water so much, right?
This book is really focused on the in-between, right? So most people aren't dealing with someone coercive. That's, and many are, and that's a much more severe issue that is probably beyond the scope of the book. But most people who are dealing with the mild narcissism, they're frustrated and annoyed, but they're not devastated and hurt like we see in that sort of middle level of narcissism. Right?
And I think that the message a lot of people get is, well, if you're going to, if you don't forgive them, you're never going to heal the hell you're not. And I'm going to be very frank with you, Jay. There's some narcissistic people who harmed me immeasurably. I don't forgive them and I heal just fine.
A big point I bring up in the book, and I'm going to sort of jump ahead here is I actually don't know that forgiveness always has a place in these relationships. And this is a complicated conversation. A lot of people say forgiveness is all good. And I'm like, slow the, no, no, stop the presses. It's absolutely not.
I tell folks now we're going to hold on tight because grief is the most human of experiences. There's it's one of the other than life, other than being born and dying. I don't know of any other universal human experience other than grief. All human beings lose, right? We lose something or someone, and we all have a very similar experience internally. We we we grieve and that's why we have rituals. Right. But ultimately we go through a period of grief. And I think in this modern age, we think we're better than grief. We think we can soldier through. Oh, I can make my grief go like this. Nobody gets to make their grief go quicker. Right. It grief is grief. And that grief actually leads people, Jay, to say, okay, this feels terrible. Maybe I should go back into the relationship. Maybe I made a mistake. Maybe I'm not seeing this clearly. Maybe I'm the problem. Maybe I'm the narcissist. And so the holding on during the grief, understanding what's happening within you, that the loss isn't just, I'm not talking to my partner anymore or I'm distanced from my mother or I'm getting a divorce. But the grief is how much of yourself you lost in this relationship. When people have to dive into that, sometimes they'll say, I'm kind of glad they're gone, but oh, what, what just happened to me?
I tell folks we're taking you back to basics and it's little things like I'll say three times a day, set a little timer if you want. I want you to just when that little notification comes up, I want you to stop and say, how do I feel right now? Am I cold? Am I hot? Am I hungry? Am I thirsty? Like physiological functions. Figure out where you want your thermostat and move it and see like, oh, I'm feeling 68. This is nice. People don't even know that. I'll say, what do you want on your pizza? You'd be amazed how many people are flummoxed by that question. I'll say, well, he always wanted, what do you want on your pizza? And they'll say, and they'll catch themselves. This isn't meant to be silly. This is how even these sort of low hanging questions become a place where a person is now being able to recreate a subjective focus. They were told for years, you can't be hungry. You just ate. You can't be cold. I am warm. You're not tired. You got plenty of sleep. That's what they were told. So when that's done to you, not just once, but hundreds if not thousands of times, just that initial process. And part of what I write about in the book is just you keep reorienting to yourself and you ask yourself a few times a day, like, what's the temperature? I'm actually feeling a little bit cold and that's okay. Even if everyone else has a bathing suit on, it's okay.
Go and grab your copy today. We have just touched on the tip of the iceberg of the insights and the knowledge that's within this book.
This book is a love story to every survivor and saying to them, please bring, we need you. We need all of your gifts in this world because you have so many. Listen, the fact that you endured this relationship is already a gift, but so all the stuff you kept behind the gate, open those gates so we can see all this beautiful stuff that you could bring into the world.
