Back in the 00s I saw the Hey Arnold episode "Helga Goes to Therapy." I still remember Phoebe saying, "Many people go to therapy, Helga. It's perfectly normal." It de-stimgatized therapy, psychologists, and psychiatrists for the rest of my life. I wanted to go to therapy, I wanted to be understood. As someone recently diagnosed with BPD (and Autism, ADHD, and Obsessive compulsive tendencies), it was a relief to understand who I am and why I do the things I do. It's tough to look in the mirror, but Helga was brave and I can be too.

JBU is like watching your professional therapist have a quasi-therapy session from their chill, non-therapist friend.

My older sister is an actual diagnosed Narc (covert) and I wouldn’t wish it on my worst enemy. I was a “good” little sister who idolized her until she started displaying her cruel behaviors towards me. When I refused to take them lying down, she would go on spirals where she would create fake rumors and social media campaigns about me and our parents. I have an ex who is a selfish prick - but he is NOT a narcissist. Dealing with a real narc is genuinely torture and the only way to typically heal from their abuse is to cut off all contact. It took YEARS for me to unpack everything she had done to me. Edit: Oh, and the core of Narc’s are DEEPLY insecure, wounded people. They actually just want to be loved unconditionally - but have no empathy or remorse for their bad behaviors.

As a cinephile, I just hope more people will bother to watch Gaslight (1944) before they rush to incorrectly use the term.

We have moved into an era of pathologisation. On one hand, it represents the democratisation of information and liberation of previously oppressed groups, but there are unintended consequences. I notice that everyone is more suspicious, guarded and quick to "assume the worst" of someone's motivations or point of view. The world is separated into goodies and baddies. Ironically, it means in some ways we reinforce black and white thinking. Hope we can move forward from that with more conversations like this! ❤

I love that yall had this conversation because it is so important. Only thing is, calling a person a narcissist is not meant to relate to the disorder. You wouldn't say "you're a borderline," or "you're an antisocial." But people have conflated narcissism with NPD in a way that does a disservice to those who have NPD. We don’t have enough time to go into the disgusting way personality disorders are named but basically, I hope more people can fight to change the name of NPD because the name is unfair and only mildly accurate while also muddying the waters for how victims of abuse related to narcissism (not done by people with NPD cus that is a weird way to talk about someone struggling) can discuss their trauma. Similar things are starting with ASPD now to which is also gross and annoying.

Keep having to rewind because I'm so transfixed by Phantoms sleepie face I was not at all listening 😭

Originally gaslighting would only be used in really extreme cases, like a person would have to be truly questioning reality before someone would say they had been gaslit. However, I think that having someone try to convince you of something that you very obviously know is not true, and then making *you* feel like the one that is wrong, is something that happens all the time and that basically is gaslighting. I think it’s okay to start calling things gaslighting in a non-medicalised context but yes, people absolutely have just latched onto the word as a fun synonym for ‘lying’ and that is unfortunate. I think the word took off because it is very useful because it does happen all the time! And I think, from that perspective, it’s basically filling a lexical gap, and will likely stick around, and I think that we will stop seeing it used outside of that slowly over time. On the other side, I think that narcissist the word. didn’t so much as take off as changed usage. Colloquially, people have been using ‘narcissist’ to call someone selfish much before we used it as a diagnostic term. I think that what happened is, in the last few years, people all learned about the medical usage of the word and now they use it in the same colloquial way they did before, but they also add the medical weight to it. We all knew the word narcissist before tiktok, we just didn’t use it as much. When NPD became a huge topic on social media, the word narcissist gained popularity, but it is living in this transition between the colloquial and medical definition. Also, personally, I wouldn’t say that you should call someone with NPD ‘a narcissist’. To me it feels similar to calling someone with bipolar ‘a manic depressive’. (ty for coming to my tiktok)

omg Gabe's shirt is killing me

I think that when people talk about narcissism, there’s an assumption that the ‘narcissistic person’ always likes themself. Just because someone has a heightened sense of importance doesn’t mean that they’re always seeing themselves in a positive light. Someone who thinks very highly of themselves could also think very lowly of themselves as well.

I hate how that ex weaponized their fame and power against you, glad to see you’ve read and learned so much, such a good book when coming out of a relationship like that

Such an enlightening video. A good check-in for some of the topics that get mentioned on the pod and elsewhere that are so complicated.

We appreciate your insights. Keep working hard.

Not the Jojo* Siwa Gay Pop shirt 💀. Gabe, you are so fast hahahaha! Edit: typo

Excellent video, guys! 💜💙 Nuance is so important: we don’t have these conversations frequently enough.

I figured out that I probably have BPD during the anti-self diagnosis era while being in a country where getting a diagnosis is hard. during the hardest point in my life I was called a gaslighter and narcissist. back then, the terms would make me worse, mostly because it was partly true. the problem with it was that it's one word used to describe years and years of context and trauma. I've done so much work to ensure that I don't slip into manipulation tactics when I feel upset or scared and to ensure I have kind people around who will tell me how it is but not label me with diagnosis. However, I don't blame people for using the words when they are hurt by manipulative people, even if they are incorrect. it's so much easier to come to peace with someone being fully unable to help their actions due to personality disorders than realising a person they care about might be just a bit of a prick sometimes.

Love u guys 🩷

Can the intent behind gaslighting be subconscious? Because I swear there's someone in my life who intentionally instigates people and when they have a valid emotional reaction, he acts innocent and claims they're overreacting. Even though his intention actually is to get a rise out of them and everyone he's known since childhood says this about him. It feels like a deep-seated insecurity, like annoy them first before they find me unintentionally annoying, but even if it's a subconscious MO at this point, the constant invalidation feels like gaslighting.

My ex had me questioning reality every time we spoke and I had to block them, go to therapy, and it took months to figure out what actually happened. Then they broke no contact by sending me an article through google docs about how I'm a narcissistic sociopath... 😅

Great intro Allison 😂

Selfishness implies conscious choice - as NPD is a disability then the person is a person with limited agency, therefore they should ideally have a more equal society that helps the person with that disability. The person is not more able to consciously choose selfishly than other people if they have NPD. It isn't one end of a spectrum of selfishness. It is someone who is no more inherently selfish than a blind person. At least this is my take as somebody who doesn't have this condition but recognises the patterns of how people talk about NPD as similar to my own experience.

Alison’s intros are getting progressively funnier

use and discard too unfortunately!

I think the point is that it is a term meant to shut down someone's whole being. I have no interest in "understanding" people who hurt me. A lot of it is lack of respect, absence of common decency, intentional harm, habitual gaslighting, and refusal to change. They're toxic, and all of this is very closely aligned to interacting with someone with NPD.

I would never want to put forth the idea that all people with x diagnosis are automatically y. Not all abusers are narcs and not all narcs are abusers. That being said, in my specific personal situation- I was abused by a person who had this diagnosis as well as by a different person who did not have that diagnosis and the abuse was so different between the two and the abuse I received from the person with this diagnosis matches perfectly with experiences shared by others who were in these same abusive dynamics. Again, not all people with this diagnosis are abusive but the abuse from these situations is such a unique and specific kind of abuse that follows very specific patterns so I do think the popularization of these terms is very helpful because these dynamics are engineered to make you doubt yourself and feel insane. So seeing these words and learning what they actually mean can be a life saver- it was for me. But watering them down and using them as blanket/general terms is very unhelpful and one really dangerous consequence of this is that sometimes the abusers in these specific dynamics will use these terms to further abuse their victims. Narcissistic abuse (again disclaimer- not all narcs not all abusers) is designed to convince the victim, and everyone else, that they are actually the abuser- not the victim. So when the abuser gets a hold of therapy speak and can manipulate it in a way to make the victim believe that they are being toxic and gaslighting their abuser, it can get really scary. So yes to popularization no to watering down- but I don't know how to do one without the other.

🙌🏻

A beautiful Jenny Nicholson inspired intro

There IS a difference between narcissism and NPD. Anyone can develop a narcissistic trait, but if you have NPD there's disability there. One is considerably more treatable than the other.

You gotta be a little solipsistic to exist as a human and take care of yourself.

To people who create online content and keep company with others who do the same, I can see why might think everyone's a narcissist. Bonus points: you live in L.A.

Hard disagree on selfishness = narcissism. Selfishness is prioritising your needs, narcissism is about prioritising yourself even at the expense of your own needs (i.e. Narcissus turning to a flower). But you don't have to be a Narcissist to exhibit that type of behaviour from time to time.

Gabe is wrong in suggesting narcissism is something that people don’t enjoy having. They don’t care about whether they hurt people at all. It is also in no way similar to autism. Most autistic people care about whether they hurt people

I thought this woman was a narcissist but after learning about addiction I realized it was just her alcoholism that made it look that way.

I love you both but Allison has this tendency to police Gabe’s perspective… mental health is her wheelhouse, yes, but at some point it does not feel like she’s showing a different perspective and instead comes as a know it all. Just something I’ve noticed in a few videos… your perspective is great Allison but so is Gabes!

Why would you do this to your body?