Cluster B Personality Disorders with @DrPeterSalerno

Welcome back to the podcast, and today I'm speaking to Dr. Solner, and we're going to talk about Cluster B personality disorders and recovering from narcissistic abuse.

Hello. Thank you for having me.

Great to have you on. So my name is Dr. Peter Cerno. I am a licensed psychotherapist, and I'm also a clinical supervisor, a consultant, a coach—trauma-informed coach—and I specialize in trauma-related conditions, treating trauma specifically, trauma that is the result of being in a relationship with somebody who meets the criteria or comes very close to meeting the criteria for a Cluster B personality. Something that I refer to as pathological relationship abuse is the type of recovery and treatment that I typically work with as far as my clients. And so the goal of my—I guess it's specialized uh work, but I also have specialized training—is to help uh individuals who have been in a relationship with a Cluster B personality, who may not even know that's what they were dealing with, help them come to terms with that, educate them on what a Cluster B personality is, why the relationship dynamics are the way they were or are, and how to recover from it, because there is a very unique, specialized way of recovering from that particular type of abuse. Let's just say there's a difference between pathological and non-pathological abuse; we can maybe go into that later, but that's something that I highlight with my clients because it's often not known that there's a difference. And so that's pretty much what I do.

Absolutely yeah. Okay, so can you give a brief overview of what a Cluster B personality disorder is and why these personality disorders are clustered together?

Yeah, absolutely. Well, so I maybe just a little bit on what personality disorders are in general.

Yeah, great.

So a personality disorder is a distinct disorder because it's based on characteristics rather than symptoms. So these are these are not symptomatic disorders; you don't you don't catch one, you don't have episodes of one, you don't have symptoms and then they dissipate; they don't come and go. They are pervasive, enduring patterns that, as far as the most recent research is concerned, are genetic and neurobiological, and environment can exacerbate the already predisposed, you know, nature of them. But the ideology or cause of these disorders uh has to do with genes and neurobiology. So it's it's a different kind of wiring from the beginning. And basically what happens with the personality disorder is it's an enduring pattern; it's a characteristic condition that affects the way they think, perceive, react, relate, in not just in one situation but in a pervasive manner across the board. The Cluster B personalities specifically are known as the dramatic and erratic of the bunch.

Yeah.

And that's because most of them, if not all—it's up for debate—but the more severe ones at least, which are the ones that are worth talking about, I guess, they have deficits in empathy; they have deficits in intimacy capacity. Something that that differentiates them from other people is they are extremely rigid in and inflexible in the personality traits that they possess.

Right.

Yeah. So whereas whereas some people can adapt and be flexible in different settings, in different ways, you know, they kind of have a toolbox or a toolkit where they can pull certain traits from when the timing and the situation is appropriate, personality disordered individuals can't do that; uh, they have like one predominant trait that they carry around wherever they go. And the Cluster Bs are specifically difficult to deal with because they don't know how to problem-solve; they use drama to relate and drama to try and problem-solve; they lack flexibility in their traits, as stated before, but they also—something that most people take for granted—is the ability to kind of step outside themselves and and self-monitor, self-correct, maybe like look at it from an outside perspective, how how am I handling this? They don't really have that capacity. So there's no like observing ego, if you will; there's no way to look at what's happening and say, "Oh, maybe I should correct this." They just automatically assume that they're doing things properly, and if anyone else has a problem with it, it's everyone else's problem. So and really, really one of the things too that I think a lot of people have a hard time understanding who possess empathy and possess the ability to be uh intimate is Cluster B personalities, for the most part, cannot collaborate. So when you're having a conversation or when you're even in therapy with one or when you are in a long-term relationship with one, there's this understanding that you know you're collaborating together, and with a Cluster B that's actually not the case; they're really not collaborating. So yeah.

So the Cluster B personality disorders: narcissistic personality disorder, borderline personality disorder, antisocial personality disorder, and histrionic.

Mhm. Can you tell us a little bit about each of those specific disorders?

So you said something earlier—Cluster—they're called Cluster disorders because the majority of people with one typically meet the criteria for another in the same cluster or come very close to it. There are so many overlapping features, which makes it very confusing for a lot of people to figure out like, "Well, what am I dealing with?" But to—there are four in the Cluster B category. So the first, the antisocial, which originally used to be termed the psychopath, and over time it morphed into the sociopath, and now is DSM manual is the antisocial personality disorder. Criteria focuses more on like social irresponsibility, a disregard for others, deceitfulness, manipulation. Typically, they are always seeking personal gain at the expense of others in a very callous, unemotional way. They're not concerned with how they get what they want, and they can be very vindictive in order to get their needs met—their aim.

Yeah, I was just going to say with the antisocial personality disorder, typically there's also this—it's not just a disregard for the safety of others but a disregard for the safety of themselves. Is that correct?

Absolutely. Yes. Yeah, you'll find them doing very self-destructive things, not because they want to self-harm because they have self-loathing or—which is kind of some borderlines will self-harm because—but with the antisocial, it's just a disregard; it's actually a lack of self- and other-respect. So they don't have respect for themselves; they don't have respect for anyone else; they don't have any honor. I would say it's like the main trait that they're lacking is honor; they don't fulfill promises, very unreliable, and it's that lack of fear as well, isn't it? It kind of fades into that lack of regard for safety of self.

Yeah, absolutely. You know, they will do—they're sensation-seekers and risk-takers; they will do anything to feel something, but they're not typically operating from a fear-based state or like an even a defensive state. They don't typically use defense mechanisms because they don't actually have much access to fear responses or threat responses like most people do.

Yeah. And in that sense, they're quite different from the narcissist—narcissists are—

Yeah, I I would say they're very mis—I mean, there is such a thing as malignant narcissism.

Yeah. What makes it confusing too is like an antisocial or a psychopath, they're all pathological narcissistic in addition to their psychopathy. So it makes it confusing for a lot of people because they start to group everyone in the same, but there are narcissists who—it's not so much that they're vindictive; it's just that they expect a certain type of treatment; they expect a certain admiration, and they don't have regard for others, but it's in much more of a passive way. So they're not going to go out of their way to punish you; often times, if you don't abide by their rules, they're just going to discard you and say, "Well, you must just not know how important I am," whereas the antisocial is going to say, "I'm important, and I'm going to make you pay if you don't if you don't agree." They go out of their way to punish and retaliate. Now, some narcissists can do that, but often times their grandiosity, their undeserved self-esteem, self-regard is like—it's just expected that you treat them that way, and so if you don't, they just kind of move on, whereas the antisocial is going to get—get even.

Yeah. And outside of the malignant narcissist, I think that narcissists are a lot more self-preserving than the antisocial.

Very much so. Like they care about themselves; they don't um typically put themselves in really crazy dangerous situations um much—I mean, they they definitely do enjoy um, you know, sensation-seeking and stuff like that, but but within reason, whereas the the uh antisocial will throw all caution to the wind for to get some sort of a feeling. They're very antisocial. Psychopaths are so prone to boredom that they will impulsively put themselves in danger just to feel something exciting, whereas narcissists are, like you said, that's a great way of putting it, much more self-preserving.

Yeah. And both are quite prone to addiction because of that need for stimulation.

Absolutely. All Cluster Bs actually are really—there's a comorbidity uh that occurs that takes place with Cluster Bs where they're very much prone to uh excess and substance abuse.

So how does borderline personality differ from these two?

The thing about borderlines is they definitely—their emotional disregulation can often times venture into a paranoia, almost like like psychotic-like feature, is a dissociation. They do experience fear; their emotional instability and lack of like proportionality is really one of the main features of them. There is debate whether or not they are—let's say—doing this from uh being the way they are as from a a place of shame. I think some borderlines actually don't experience shame and don't experience empathy; they're the ones that are a little bit more aggressive. Obviously, there are ones who have a deep self-loathing. So, for example, uh all Cluster Bs engage in what's called dichotomous thinking, where there really is no gray area; it's like black or white, all or nothing. With the antisocial and the narcissist, the dichotomy always is in their favor: so they're right, you're wrong; they're fine, you're bad. The borderlines actually reverse that dichotomy once in a while when they feel threatened or when they feel like they're not getting their way; they will then put the blame on themselves, and so they'll experience this deep self-loathing: "I'm bad, you're all good," and then they reverse it. So with a borderline, it's unique because their idealization and devaluation actually can switch places; they can put themselves in both roles. Whether or not this is conscious, whether or not this is for manipulative purposes, again, is up for debate. I think some borderlines are very intentional in this, and others are experiencing a deep, profound pain. I don't personally believe that narcissists or antisocial are experiencing a despair or a pain, even if they have an emptiness, but the borderlines definitely have pain. I mean, 10% of them successfully commit suicide, so they they want—they're experiencing something that is is just dreadful, and I wouldn't wish that on anyone, but not all of them are suicidal; a lot of them are just kind of mean, kind of vindictive, you know.

Yeah. Okay. Because I think that most people have this understanding that borderlines have a much larger capacity for empathy that is lacking in narcissist and antisocial.

I think that a recovered borderline does, and they are the mo—they are the ones who are most often willing to seek help, so they can become—they can work enough to where they no longer meet the criteria, and then things become very clear for them, and they'll admit like, "Wow, like, was that—was pretty horrible; they—" I would say a recovered borderline will admit to experiencing causing as much suffering as they experience; that's something that they can say like, "Wow, like, I I did these things, and they weren't okay." Uh, a borderline who's not in treatment would never attest to that. So again, the empathy, I think, could be learned to a degree, the cognitive empathy. And another thing about borderlines is they do feel a lot; it's a disregulated type of feeling; it's it's an extreme type of feeling. So I think a lot of people think because someone's that sensitive that they must possess a lot of empathy; it's not always the case though, because if you have a borderline who is also has overlapping features or all of the features of narcissism, let's say, and there are a lot of borderline/narcissists out there, they're going to be much less able to get in touch with empathy, and even if they do have that capacity for empathy, as soon as they feel threatened, that capacity for empathy for others goes out the window, doesn't it?

Yes. And the threat doesn't necessarily mean a threat of safety or fear of abandonment all the time; we get that gets thrown around a lot with borderlines, like it's the fear of abandon—they're just self-preserving because of the abandonment fear. If they could just not be abandoned—here's something interesting about borderlines: they fear abandonment, but they just as much fear engulfment. So if you're too interested in them, they act at the exact same way, just for the opposite reason. So you can't win either way; it's it's like a lose-lose.

Yeah. So that's another thing that I think is often um overlooked about borderlines is they don't want you to get close, but they don't want you to leave either. So yeah, you're in a double bind there; it's like the title of that book, *I Hate You, Don't Leave Me*.

Yeah. You mentioned before that we don't think that narcissists feel a deep pain inside.

Yeah, I know I'm not very—that's not very popular—that's not a popular opinion on my part. I personally—they're very shame-based, right? A lot of self-hatred—depends on who you're talking to. If you're talking to me, I would say no, there is—so there is a distinction between grandiose narcissism and vulnerable narcissism. Yeah, the vulnerable narcissist is the one who often gets uh described as having like the inferiority complex that Alfred Adler popularized or Heinz Kohut—these back in his theory was—these individuals have such low self-esteem that they developed this false facade of grandiosity, but which is really just—they don't believe in it. Most research uh basically has validated that if a narcissist—it can exper—it has excessive grandiosity; it's impossible for them to believe that they're inferior, like—so they can't be grandiose and also secretly self-loathing at the same time. So we know that the grandiose narcissist has high self-esteem; it's not earned, and it's not accurate self-esteem, but it's definitely high. The vulnerable narcissist is the one that we describe as the one who deep down has these inferiority uh complexes and these feelings of self-loathing and shame, and that's why they are the way they are. However, vulnerable narcissism is not classified in any diagnostic manual; it's up for debate, researchers as to whether it's even considered central to the definition of narcissism, and often people really categorize it as a form of like neuroticism, which is like uh they have highly neurotic traits similar to borderline. So another issue with that is most—if a narcissist does present in therapy, like meaning if they show up, what's going to happen is they're going to present as very vulnerable because something must have happened in their life at that point that made them feel very vulnerable, but that's not their baseline; that's just their crisis mode.

Yeah. Of course, they're going to—they can experience distress. I mean, when they get in trouble or when they lose something that they value, it's going to put them in a state of distress; that doesn't mean that they're necessarily vulnerable. So depending on who you're talking to, it—it's divided. Some researchers suggest there really isn't such a thing as a vulnerable narcissist who really truly hates themselves deep down and is compensating for that. I am more in that camp; I don't really buy that. I would say that's something else. I think narcissism has to do with grandiosity; it has to do with lack of empathy, empathy, and when you lack empathy, you don't really hate yourself; you might value yourself more than others, but you don't dislike yourself.

It's my understanding that a narcissist can kind of fluctuate between being grandiose and vulnerable depending on what's going on in their life; that's also according to like—depending on—depending on—depending on which camp you're in as far as the research. So a lot of researchers have suggested that every narcissist, if they fit the bill for narcissism, like pathological narcissism, can be both grandiose and vulnerable, can be both covert and overt; that there aren't actually truly distinct subtypes of narcissism.

Yeah. So again, that goes down to like a debate, and experts are always going to be disagreeing, you know, like there's lots of—these don't even exist; these disorders are—are not—they don't even exist; they're just trauma disorders.

Yeah, like I don't believe that, but you talk to someone else, and they'll be like, "Absolutely, there's no such thing is narcissism; it's just another form of complex trauma."

Yeah, I understand. Yeah, and I'm always saying that to my clients when they come to me with these kind of questions that you know different people subscribe to different lines of thought, and you know we all come with our own perspective and our own research.

Yeah, absolutely. So I just wanted to go back to the difference between antisocial personality disorder and psychopathy. Some people kind of lump all of these together, right? Factor 1, Factor 2, psychopath, antisocial personality disorder, and then some people kind of split hairs on the topic.

Yeah, the antisocial personality, as far as diagnostic features, is very heavily influencing or emphasizing, rather, like violent and criminal behavior rather than personality traits. So and sadly, the reason for this is there weren't enough therapists who were competent enough to identify psychopathy because they were getting manipulated by psychopaths.

Yes.

So so the so the response was—DSM was going to say, "Let's just focus on behaviors that are very obvious and easily identifiable, and that way we can have the majority of the people can then diagnose it." A true uh a truly trained clinician who specializes in in understanding personality pathology would be able to spot a psychopath eventually, you know, through its—it's a—ous process. But so the point being is antisocial is a an in-between that focuses more on criminal behavior and doesn't really give you the full picture of psychopathy, just to kind of appease people and have something. But a psychopath can be completely like have no legal odds or opposition in society and still be wreaking havoc in society with their emotional manipulation and conning.

Yeah. They're not all in prison; they exploit—they're conning—some of them can, you know, restrain their physical violence, and some of them can achieve social approval, even, you know—I mean, that's no surprise; we can identify, you know, colloquially, informally, see a lot of people in the media who could fit that bill. But basically, psychopathy is not synonymous with cri—criminal activity, whereas antisocial is much more focused on the criminal behavior of of the psychopath.

I've heard it said that the antisocial personality disorder kind of psychopath is the more unsuccessful psychopath.

Yeah, continually doing themselves in and getting caught and, you know, lacking that impulse control to such a degree.

Yeah, high recidivism rate, like when they get out of prison, they commit the same crime that they were in for, whereas there's—such a thing as like a white-collar or a successful psychopath who—you know, quotation marks—"successful psychopath," they usually do—themselves successful; they evade the law; that's why they're successful.

Yeah, I'm currently reading Hervey Cleckley's *The Mask of Sanity*. I don't know if you've read it, but it has like 15 back-to-back-to-back case studies, and it really highlights the pattern of the the unsuccessful psychopath and how they just continually reoffend. He's the first person to—well, he used—he created the term psychopath, and he's um the first person to really profile the that personality, and it was—

Go on.

No, I was going to say it's published in 1941.

Yes. And it's still used because he's so accurate; it's wild to read.

I was going to say he he started that like the criteria, the categorical kind of model of psychopathy, and then Robert Hare sort of—he didn't—well, it's—he modified it; he just added to it. I wouldn't say he like improved it, 'cause Cleckley was like really spot-on um, you know—so I mean, Robert Hare in his books still quotes Cleckley as being—

Yes.

Yeah. Yeah. I was—I actually had the honor and privilege of attending a a a training seminar by Robert Hare.

Really?

Yes.

Oh, I'm jealous. We got to do a Q&A with him, and it was just like, "Wow."

Yeah, it's pretty cool. That's amazing. Yeah. Okay, so what would you say are the main overarching similarities um of Cluster Bs?

Yeah, impulsivity, projecting their responsibility onto others, so that other people not only experience it but sometimes they misidentify with it and think it's theirs. Like they have—they do this really uncanny thing where they can make you believe that you are responsible for what they have done, lacking collaborative capacity, so they just don't collaborate in relationships; typically their relating is to serve a distorted purpose of—that's for their own gain; it's not to attach, connect, bond; it's not a mutual thing; they they're relating because they're getting something from it for themselves, period. Um, yeah, this is where again like a lot of people—I've posted about this, and people are like, "Oh, you're generalizing too much," but it's—when you really look at it, they are all entitled; they are all narcissistic to a degree; they are all coercive and manipulative to a degree, very thoughtless towards others; they use emotional blackmail and threats; they all have uh neurobiological deficits and impairments that are not found in trauma brains or uh neurotypical brains. So the wiring is absolutely different—identify different pathological lying, whether they believe—whether they're lying habitually and automatically or consciously and deliberately—like they are lying, very oppositional, responsibility-avoidant, uh controlling. I would say all those things are like fit all—all four to a degree.

Yeah. And in this sense, I know that you know we can never diagnose the person; we just look at the behavior, but in romantic relationships, I see in my clients people trying to understand, "Am I dealing—dealing with a borderline or a psychopath or a narcissist?" And I tend to see the overall manipulation and abuse is pretty similar; it's a little bit six of one, half a dozen of the other, because in a romantic relationship, you're dealing with very similar patterns. Would you agree with that?

Absolutely, 100%. And so people often—I get inundated with emails because people want to like a term—"What am I dealing—what am I dealing with? Is it a narcissist or a borderline or is it a—" I get all kinds of weird subtype questions too that I've never even heard of yet; there's like a thousand subtypes for narcissism now. But ultimately, it's like I tell them like, if your partner can't self-correct, if they can't take responsibility, if they can't collaborate, if they can't problem-solve, and if they're inflexible, it doesn't really matter what you call it; like that relationship is doomed to fail and could actually escalate to, you know, physical violence a lot of times or just so much covert and overt manipulation that you become disoriented and destabilized. So call it whatever you want, but it's pretty much, you know, it's the end is the same.

Yeah, absolutely. Um, and to what you were saying before about kind of pathological relationships, I know Dr. Sandra L. Brown prefers to refer to it as pathological love relationships rather than narcissistic abuse because it encapsulates pretty much the behaviors from all of the Cluster B personality disorders and intimate partner relationships, right? Um, but I mean, narcissistic abuse is a concise, easy way to refer to this predictable pattern of abuse. How would you define it—narcissistic abuse?

I would say—well, I would definitely say that it's a pathological versus non-pathological form of abuse that is insidious and so consistent and chronic that it starts to—and I'm going to borrow from Sandra Brown here—like it creates a cognitive dissonance that is so so beyond the level of just confusion or like contradicting beliefs, where it causes you to question and have simultaneous, contradicting uh beliefs about yourself, about the person that you're dealing with, and about the relationship in general, to where you don't know what's true and what's not, and then uh to put that—bring it even further—you blame yourself for not knowing anymore. So it's it—it creates like a chronic—I—I'm trying to think of a good adjective here, but it's sort of a a chronic destabilization where you're just like an emotional paralysis that is specific to the type of manipulation that you're under, whereas—and I'm again—I'm not minimizing this, so I don't want to be misunderstood—but like domestic violence, like physical violence, doesn't do this to its victims, right? It's a completely different type of abuse.

Yeah, I mean, it paralyzes you, just like you said; it puts victims almost into this permanent dissociative state where they can't make a decision and they can't think their way out of it.

Absolutely. Yeah, you summed it up. I mean, and that is unique to being manipulated by a pathological personality because yeah, they're doing it consciously and deliberately, whereas—

You can be in a violent, abusive relationship where somebody is essentially, not that it's okay, but they're unconsciously defending themselves and reenacting something that maybe they, they experienced early in childhood. And so they're taking it out on their romantic partner. When somebody like that comes to treatment, they can uh, they have the capacity to become aware of that, resolve that, and stop the behavior. Pathological person like a cluster B, they typically don't respond to a treatment like that because again, they're not collaborating, they're not problem-solving. So they're not going to say, "Oh, I can see that I may, why what I've done, what my part is, and I'm going to make a point to stop." I mean, they'll say that, but they're not going, they're not going to try to. Yeah, so it's that pathology and it's that emotional paralysis that makes the victim have no idea like what's right and what's wrong, and then doesn't give them the, it takes away their emotional freedom, sometimes their physical freedom to differentiate and to even know what to do about it. And so they just become stuck and trapped in it. Yeah.

And I would add to that that it's generally embedded in that narcissistic relationship cycle where you've got idealized, devalue, discard, which can play out multiple times in a long-term relationship; re-idealized, value, discard. Yeah, yes. And you know, it's unlikely that you're in a relationship with one of these personalities if you're not experiencing extreme cognitive dissonance. Yep, I would agree to that. Yeah. So unfortunately, a lot of victims are massively let down by therapists, counselors, and psychologists and given terrible advice in recovery—bad advice, unhelpful advice—because there's so little training in these personality disorders: narcissistic abuse, trauma bonding. Let's chat about that a little bit. Why is there so little understanding?

Yeah, this is very interesting. So I'm actually very passionate about this subject here because I've seen how many people have been let down. I've personally been let down by this system, right? So for the most part, uh, mental health professionals are taught that if psychopathology is present in adulthood, then at there had to have been some sort of a developmental rupture in childhood. And so all pathology is the result of a bad childhood, adversity in childhood of some kind. Um, when you conceptualize pathology in this generalized way as a therapist, and somebody comes into your office and tells you that they think that they are being abused, or something feels wrong, or something doesn't feel right, or they don't know how they feel or what to think about their partner, two things go wrong. One, we're taught that you cannot diagnose or discuss the patient that's not there. So we can't talk about the person who might be inflicting the abuse; we have to redirect it back to the patient that's in front of us, right? So that invalidates the abuse victim. Second of all, if there is any mentioning of the partner, the interventions are typically, "bring them in so we can sort this all out together," which is huge—no! Like you don't bring a cluster B personality into treatment with a victim; it's not indicated, it's not ethical, it's only going to make things worse. Or the therapist, because maybe no fault of their own, but because of their theory biases of how pathology develops, are going to assume that the only reason that you are being abused is because your abuser is an abuse victim. So let's get the abuse victim in intimate partner batterer program or management or, you know, treat their PTSD, and then your relationship is going to, you know, be fine because they are just a wounded child that needs to be…this is just not true; it's categorically untrue. So then the victim leaves thinking there's one, there's hope, "Well, my partner can change if they get the right intervention." Not true. Um, or, and studies have actually shown that the victim will stay in an abusive relationship way longer if a therapist tells them that they're being abused by an abuse victim because they'll have empathy and sympathy for the person who's uh manipulating them and/or physically abusing them. And then they'll think, "Well, one day I'm going to, I'm going to get, I'm going to convince my partner to go and get the treatment they need, and once they get it, this is going to stop." And so very few therapists actually know anything about personality science, personality pathology. A lot of therapists, sadly, do not believe personality disorders exist; they call them complex trauma disorders. They are like vehemently opposed to thinking that somebody uh could potentially be doing something bad on purpose; there's always some sort of an unconscious reason why somebody's doing something to someone else. And so those are some of the treatment failures, why it's not effective for, for victims. And then victims have actually kind of like in the last, I would say I don't know, for 10 years or so, and actually thank, thank goodness for the internet, they've been like stepping up and saying, "This is now like the fifth therapist that told me something that's just not helping." So they sort of created their own community of, yeah, victims and survivors online, and they're kind of trying to become, you know, victims turned experts themselves because nobody knows how to hell to help them. And I think a lot of that has to do with just the training. Like I wasn't trained in my degree programs about this at all. I was trained like, even people like Ted Bundy, something, you know, something really terrible must have happened to that poor kid, and he just really never resolved his wounds. It's a bunch of nonsense. And if you know Ted Bundy's story, he had a perfectly healthy enough upbringing. He sure did. And he even said at the end of his life before he was executed, like, "Society deserves to be protected from people like me," like not that you can trust psychopath self-assessment because he flip-flopped between all kinds of different things: "I did it because of porn, I did it because of this, I did it of that." Yeah, rubbish. It was, yeah, it absolutely is. Yeah, but it's, it's this inability for people to want, I guess, want to accept that there are, there's aspects of human nature that have that, for one reason or another, in some people are so, so excessive or so deficient that they're capable of doing some pretty heinous things on purpose. And that's where we failed victims.

Yeah, and I think that in helping a victim recover from narcissistic abuse, it's so important to understand that this person has been consistently psychologically and emotionally abused, isolated, gaslit, and essentially brainwashed by this person. And narcissists, when you're in a relationship with a narcissist, they put all of the responsibility on your shoulders: how they behave, how they act, how they feel, whether or not it's raining outside, whether or not they're sleeping, whether or not, you know what I mean? And when someone goes to a therapist who then also says things like, "Well, they're an abuse victim," that puts further responsibility onto someone who is incredibly brainwashed, to use a better term, and then it feeds into it. And like you said, that can cause people to stay in relationships with these people even longer. And I deal with that regularly. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And then there's like the "it takes two to tango" mindset as well, and it doesn't…when you're in a relationship with a pathological person…wonderful point, and that's very important to remember. And now EEG recordings of brain activity have proven this: people, pathological people can make you feel a certain way. So it goes like, narcissists will steal your good feelings; they will literally extract the self-esteem from you. Borderlines will inject bad feelings into you. So you can literally walk away, and this is different than bad vibes; this is like a literal mirror neuron system, like a transmission of like a negative state that's not contagious because you don't start acting like the narcissist, but you can be depleted by one just by being in their presence. And if that occurs for an extended period of time, you actually start to experience uh, brain and nervous system uh damage that is malleable; it's malleable, so it can, it's reversible, but you start to, you could start to deteriorate. I mean, it's not, that's why I, I take this stuff so seriously because like these abusers, they're not messing around; like they're really damaging people. And it's more than just, "Oh, you're just overly sensitive," or, "Oh, you must be codependent." The majority of people who get manipulated and abused by these people are not codependent, are not, no, identifying as empaths, are not overly highly sens…not that there's anything wrong with being empathic, trying to say that, but people try to come up with a reason why people are targeted. Everybody's susceptible to this. Yeah, and I'm always telling my clients that it's not because there's a pre-existing codependency…like codependent is this buzzword; it's like not even, it's not even a real…I mean, where…yeah, where…it's not because there's initially something wrong with you, and that's what leads you into this relationship. And the reality is that there's this toxic positivity culture, this hyper-independent, "no one can make you feel a certain way," you know, "you choose to allow that person to," you know what I mean? "You choose how you feel." And the reality is that we're social creatures, and we're wired for interdependence, and our partner can absolutely have that influence on us, and our state, and our nervous systems are designed to tend to one another. So when you get mimicked and pared and mirrored enough, and you're, and then you're bonded with a social predator, they, you belong to them; they control you because now you literally have a biochemical connection to them that is not breakable even by walking away. That's why one of my recent posts was, "You could be no contact for five years and still be traumatically bonded to an abuser," because it's not the proximity at that point that keeps you in it; it's that cognitive dissonance; it, there's a lot of long-term damage that can come from these relationships. Yeah, and people can get absolutely stuck—four years—if they're not doing the right work to understand the personality they were dealing with, to understand trauma bonding, to break the cognitive dissonance, to kill the hope; there's all of these things that specifically need to be addressed. And to your post, I saw one of your videos where you were talking about how it's not helpful to address, address the victim's childhood or attachment style or, you know, blame them for some kind of pre-existing codependency—in quotation marks—it's the abuse that needs to be tackled. Tell me a little bit more about that.

Yeah, so I just also want to go on the record and say I am in, I very much believe in attachment. My whole doctoral dissertation that I defend was attachment. Yeah, so I believe it, it's a, we have a biologically based, you know, attachment behavioral system that's required for us to connect to one another; that has nothing to do with being abused by somebody like this in your adult life. So even if you were identified as having a quote-unquote insecure attachment, you know, maybe you're an avoidant, or maybe you're an anxious attached, an anxiously attached person, that's not what got you into this position. Or if you were a, if you experienced, you know, adversity in childhood, that's not what got you into the relationship. So they, those things absolutely need to be dealt with, but they need to be dealt with separately because if you go into therapy because you are being like systematically dismantled by like a psychopath or or a malignant narcissist, or you are being gaslit or made to feel crazy by a borderline personality, and the therapist asks you about your relationship with your mom and your dad or your primary caregivers, what that is, that's under the assumption that you're just reenacting that childhood adversity and trauma or dysfunction in this relationship. So if we cure this, then your relationship's going to get better, which is a mistake because again, as we just talked about, it doesn't take two in pathological relationships. So you could be completely securely attached and still fall victim to a pathological uh personality. So, for example, when I work with first responders and they've experienced, you know, they had to, let's say they had to take, they went on a really terrible call and they had to, like, I'm just—a baby drowned, for example—and they have kids the same age as the baby at home, and they can't get that image out of their head, I'm not going to talk about their mom and dad and what happened to them when they were kids. I need to treat that call so they can go back to work. Now, if they want to come back and resolve those issues with Mom and Dad, we, we're fine, but that needs to be targeted first—CU—that's what's intruding upon them. So this idea that this relationship is somehow…now it's possible that the relationship does, in a lot of ways, mirror the way they were treated as kids, but we still need to get, educate them on what happened here, not three decades ago, four decades ago, five decades ago. There probably is a connection, like a link in the belief system of the person, but we still need to handle the trauma that's present first. And I only know that because I've tried both ways, and the way where you bring it back to the, the childhood first is just ineffective.

Absolutely. It's kind of like when someone gets out of a cult; you have to address specifically what was ingrained in them in the cult and deconstruct all of those beliefs and phobias and things like that. Correct? Can't take someone out of a cult and talk about their childhood; you have to address what happened to them and the beliefs that were instilled. Absolutely. That's a brilliant analogy. Yeah, yeah. And I mean, all cult leaders are narcissistic and psychopathic, and they use similar tactics in romantic relationships that they do in cult indoctrination. You know, I, I attended a seminar—I think I got into a little bit of trouble for saying this on one of my posts, but it's okay—but I attended a seminar where a personality, sort of expert and a cult expert said, identified several cult leaders that were borderline—male borderline. The male borderline is tricky because we often associate borderline personality with female, women. There are almost as many borderline males; most of them are in prison because of their violence. So they're already, their impulsivity has already crossed into violence, that, that got them in trouble, got them in trouble with the law. But um, this particular personality disorder expert mentioned David Koresh, Jim Jones, and even Hitler as having this, this like insatiable allure and seduction and then also this devaluation of their very own um followers. So they would split, but they also had like that self-deprecation, that self-loathing, which is something not characteristic of a narcissist or a psychopath. Historically, some of these cult leaders would reverse the self-inflict the pain onto themselves, back onto themselves, and then they would reverse it again, and they became the angel and everyone else was the devil again. But so some of them even meet the, some of the cult leaders could potentially have that overlapping borderline.

So what would you recommend that someone's recover, who is recovering from narcissistic abuse, looks for an a therapist or a coach or a psychologist?

Yeah, I would say that they need to, to look for people, uh, especially if they're reading like a bio or a profile, like for a coach or a specialist of any kind, a therapist, a psychologist, psychiatrist, whatever, who specifically and explicitly states that they have experience working with and helping people with recovery from pathological relationship abuse, pathological love relationships, narcissistic abuse. Because if they go to somebody who is excellent at treating developmental trauma, complex trauma, inter-um, inter-uh, generational transmission of trauma, single incident traumas, they're not necessarily going to know what to do with somebody who's been in a pathological relationship. So the credentials have to be ex-like clearly stated: "I, I am somebody who helps people recover from whatever narcissistic abuse." It's not trauma; it's not a one-size-fits-all. And I think a lot of people accidentally go into therapy thinking, "Well, this person treats trauma, so they're going to know what to do with my…" Also, a lot of therapists don't have any psycho-education on, on uh, personality disorders because they've taken one college course in it, if that, and it might have been just a theory course, not a personality disorder course, and then they've never looked back. So it's, I mean, even if you went to school 5 years ago, or even if you got, went uh, got certified as a coach 5 years ago, personality science, like education about it and research, has changed drastically within the last five years. So yeah, everybody needs an update; they could use an update on how far we've come.

Yeah. And is there anything that you would say if someone is speaking to, you know, a therapist, a coach, a psychiatrist, whatever it is, is there anything that you would say that if you hear this, or if you hear them asking this or saying this, "run, find someone else"?

Yeah, so if there's any indication, if the therapist suggests couple therapy or uh, conjoint therapy or collateral sessions where they bring the person who's you're terrified of in, they want to bring him in to, to reason with them, I would say that's a red flag. Another red flag is somebody who has theory biases where they believe that all psychopathology is the result of some sort of a wounding in childhood, and that we're all, we can all benefit from inner child healing, and then we're all going to be like happy as clams and, you know, soccer dads and soccer moms. That's not true. So, so somebody who holds these theory biases where like, "I can treat this person," or somebody who recommends medication for a cluster B because lots of cluster B's have co-occurring disorders, but the, but the personality disorder cannot be treated with a medication. Yeah, so I would say those are red flags. And I would say, "Ask your therapist, 'Do you specialize in either treating personality disorders, or do you specialize in treating people who have been in a relationship with a personality-disordered individual?'" And let them say yes or no. Yeah. And then I would just add anyone who is trying to blame you in any way for the, the relationship, anyone who you feel like is judging you, anyone who is pushing that "it takes two to tango" narrative. Yeah, that's a good one. Yeah, I mean, I, full disclosure, I experienced that personally. I had, about 10 years ago, I was going through this, and I had a couple therapist, an individual for me, and an individual for the other person, and all three of them basically said, "If I worked on my attachment issues with my mom, then everything would all of a sudden become better," and it wasn't until I had to provide hard evidence of uh, the danger that I was in that then all of them unanimously said, "Oh, maybe get a lawyer and change your locks." So I was like, "Thank you, thank you guys so much for finally believing me because I gave you proof." And it's not, again, I'm not, I don't mean to disparage professionals; I am a professional, and I'm not good at everything. Like I'm, I, I don't send me people for substance abuse; don't send me people for autism; I don't specialize in that; I would do a terrible job. I know this stuff, as you do, and but those therapists believed that everybody was cut from the same cloth, and you know, I kind of had to teach, like teach them inadvertently through my own uh, journey that like, that's not true, you know. So, and I'm one of millions, sadly millions of people that have gone, like, desperately seeking help only to be told, "I think you're just a bit insecure," or, "You just need to…" And it's like, if you're in a state where you are already in that traumatic like cognitive dissonance, that emotional paralysis, and someone tells you that…yeah, um, who knows what could happen. And I find in my coaching, and I've also been through the same thing that you're describing, I find in my coaching it's so important when you're dealing with someone who's experienced narcissistic abuse and they've just gotten out that you don't say anything that makes them further question themselves, and that can kind of lead into that gaslighting and that self-doubt and the cognitive dissonance, right?

Yeah. And a lot of therapists do a lot of damage in the things that they say to someone who's in such a vulnerable state, having experienced this specific type of abuse. Is the type of questioning we're taught is often times lands, has interrogation or blame for the victim, and it's not the right time to question a victim when they say this and this happened. It's the right time to say, you know, "I totally get it, I believe you, and I'm going to now give you some information on what might be happening," versus, you know, "Tell me about your mom," you know, "like, what's your relationship like with your mom?" I mean, yeah. Anyway, "What do you think that you did to attract this kind of person into your life?" Kind of questioning that people get, very damaging.

Yeah, I think, well, so I would say I was, I have a naturally agreeable and cooperative temperament. I mean, I say that in that I don't think that we attract these people necessarily, yeah, but there are some traits that are, they're not pathological traits, like cooperation and agreeableness, that I think somebody who vets you well enough can see how much of a beating you, you can withstand. Yeah, so I tell a lot of my VI, a lot of my patients who are victims of this, "It's not weakness that, that attracted them to you; it's the fact that you can take a beating for 30 years," like, and they somehow, you know, sniffed that out of you. That being said, though, there's nothing you did or didn't do to attract it. I mean, they'll vet anybody. I mean, yeah, there's no such thing as like um…and that's kind of, that's really unfortunate is that a lot of people believe that they have a certain personality type or a sensitivity or vulnerability that keeps, that makes them, you know, opens them up to this. Like I said earlier, the research shows it over, like I think it's over 60, maybe 70% of victims of this type of abuse are not in any way codependent; they don't fit the bill for whatever codependency is. So yeah. And I think you just need to, you need to be, I think we all need to not necessarily be pessimistic, but we need to be aware of the fact that there's some people out there who have bad intentions, and we need to be cautious, you know.

Yeah, absolutely. Amazing. Thank you so much, Dr. Solo. So where can people find you? What are your social media handles and your website?

My website is DrPetersSolo.com. Um, I'm on Instagram, DrPeterSolo; you can find my website link there. I've written a few books that are available on Amazon and Barnes & Noble. I'm coming out with a new book—should be three weeks, fingers crossed, maybe a month—called uh, "The Nature and Nurture of Narcissism," and it describes the cause of narcissism and then also uh, debunks a lot of myths and discredits a lot of the pseudo-science that we have come to believe about personality disorder in general. That's going to be out in about a month. And then I'm also working on a workbook or like a recovery workbook for people who have been experiencing this cognitive dissonance and uh, from these types of relationships. So yeah. And you can always email me; I'm open to people reaching out to me directly; I love hearing from people; I love answering questions. Hi. Amazing. Thank you so much. I think it's been a really good conversation.

Thank you so much for having me. Thanks.