[Music] watch this full series at the links in the description below and subscribe to our YouTube channel to watch new mental health videos every week I read the comments on all of our videos and some viewers have left feedback that maybe I have narcissistic personality disorder well we're about to find out in this simulated therapy session with dr. Romani it's all you now I'm gonna answer questions so Kyle you know as we think about the pattern of narcissism in you place I'm gonna start is your relationships okay can you tell me are you dating anyone
right now no you're not okay so we don't have that if you think about your last relationship how was that emotionally was that an emotionally fulfilling relationship it was but I'm not a very emotional person what do you mean by that it doesn't take a lot for me to feel like I'm emotionally filled up so you almost get overwhelmed by emotion yes like if somebody is just like I love you oh my oh my gosh like have it your own deal okay yeah that kind of pushed back has anyone ever experienced that is something hurtful
oh yeah oh really like everybody I've ever dated it's like I wish you would just like show me you care I'm like I'm trying you're trying yeah so you actually do try oh I try as best as I can and I remember one conversation with an ex I said that my ex said I really need you to be more emotionally available I need you to hold my hand and touch me and all these things and I said I've I've tried as hard as I can and this is as much as you will ever get because
I I cannot give more than this and if that's not enough for you then that's a decision you're gonna have to make which I know now going through therapy that was the wrong thing to do I'm putting all the pressure on them to make the decision but that is what happened are you different in that sort of emotional space with your friends when you compare that to your partners no I'm pretty I think it's all like I don't I don't want to I don't do well with the like I like compliments mm-hmm but I don't
lie I just want to tell you that I love you oh my oh my god like okay thank you thank you I love you too but do we really need to like talk about it alright so what do you do when well how do you react or feel when somebody's really sharing with you in their own heavy emotional issue um well I do feel like I'm a very good listener and I do I really try my best not to offer advice unless it's to ask for and I I feel like I'm very comforting and I
will share personal stories if they relate and if I feel like it's appropriate because when I've when I brought personal things up to people and I feel like they immediately start talking about their experience I get annoyed I'm like oh my mom died when I was 16 and they're just like oh my mom died when I was 20 I never got my oh this isn't about you right now I try to make sure that I keep it about them and only share things that I think are relevant and I would I know I we've been
talking about narcissism but I would say and empathetic and I am sympathetic okay now my caveat to that is if you you broke up with your boyfriend two years ago and this is the 53rd time you've needed to get on the phone to talk about the break-up I'm not gonna be able that work or some pathetic more get over it so it's a limited yeah because sweetheart let's keep it moving okay all right I mean that could hurt someone's feelings though yeah I couldn't you know and then that's you know that where that 53rd time
T you may feel excessive sometimes people need to talk about it 153 times before they finally let it go do you feel like you're able to get in to understand where another person is coming from yes emotionally you do yeah I always I almost always understand where somebody's coming huh yeah there may be a few times where I really don't understand how you could feel that way but almost always I understand where they're coming from but other people have called you out there you have other people have said that to you that you're not being
empathic that that's missing right now no nothing being not pathing or not or unsympathetic mostly that I'm just that I'm not even motion alone okay okay got it alright so you said you like you lucky it compliments you just said how important are those compliments to you well today they are not as important as they were probably five years ago okay and what changed I'll be very transparent what changed I was I was online getting cyber bullied to the point of exhaustion and I don't mean cyber boy like you're dumb I mean like kill yourself
we're gonna find you I hope you get aids and die like the worst worst public and it was just monotonous because the Internet can be a terrible place and I had a conversation with a friend and she mentioned something like well those words don't mean anything that's just a random person's opinion right you don't know and if they're not even basing it on any right we're just trying to be much their own recha and I understood that but then in that the same token I thought then if somebody says something really nice to me I
also can't give that with in those spaces yeah because if it's a random person on the internet it says you're the best it's like we don't even know who I am yeah right I could be the work you don't know so it was that point where I started to take opinions a little more logically well I'm like that's a nice thing to hear but I'm not gonna put a lot of weight on right because if I do that I immediately have to put weight on somebody saying I should kill okay I mean that's very circumspect
a lot of people aren't that wise you know that they thanks for the compliment or they won't they'll just only focus on the one or the other but realize that both especially when they're from sources where you don't know the people are actually equally sort of irrelevant when one interview we did you said Kyle you are such a good interviewer and I was like Oh have been so much because I've interviewed you we've worked together that's true now what if I don't do that what if you're not what if you go through a whole busy
day doing whatever it is you're doing and not once that day you get any recognized validation no one says anything - everyone's caught up in their own stuff and then you go home at the end of the day I think I would be fine you think you'd be okay yeah I mean that happens and I'm fine right so it's not like the world falls apart do you use social media yeah and is it matter to you it matters to me from I'll be very be really honest in these mock there besides it matters to me
from a career level okay yeah I think if I wasn't if I wasn't having a career in front of the camera I might not even be able to okay alright well then okay that's important to know because it is a tool and it increasingly it's become an essential tool even if you want to say I'm above all the social medias I don't even know it's just not something that takes a lot of joy I doesn't mean you joy and it's not how you want to spend your time you're right yeah how you'd want to spend
your time okay but it's you like compliments you particularly like compliments if they came from someone who can offer it in a meaningful way because they've actually observed you doing it but they don't feel like a necessity yeah okay so let me ask you this when you think about what you hope I know you're not in a relationship now but I imagine that someday you hope to be in a long-term relationship when you think about what you want that relationship to look what are your thoughts well my the thing I love most out of any
relationship is the ability to be honest and transparent without fear of getting lashed at because I'm always honest and transparent even if it the consequences aversive and I want that quality and my partner I want them to be honest I never want to guess what you're thinking I want to never I don't want to be like oh no I'm fine if you go out don't worry I'll just stay here by myself I go you're clearly lying you know I don't like to play that game and then someone who is independent I don't want to complete
somebody I don't want to make somebody happy I want them to be happy and complete as they are just as I feel I'm happy complete as I am and I'm not looking for anybody to complete me hmm I'm just looking for someone to enjoy life with okay alright so it's a healthy conceptualization of what a relationship is that what are your measures of success whoo that's such a good question and I thought about that a lot yet I don't know if I have a concise answer but I'll do my best which is I think being
successful is having the freedom to do what you want to do and have it feel like it's the thing that you should be doing so I I don't just do this because I get paid for it I do this because I enjoy being on this side of the camera and I do this because I enjoy reaching everybody else on the other side of the camera I also enjoy that we're talking about mental health and not what Halloween candy is gonna be big this year which to me isn't as big of a deal like I love
that what we're doing is impactful and influential and I think if people can find themselves in a scenario like that where they're doing what they want to do they have the freedom to do it and it feels like what they should be doing because I would want to also you know run a sushi restaurant but I don't think that's what I should be doing so this also feels like what I should be doing so I think when you have both of those together that is successful and so I don't think money is an indicator of
success by itself but we obviously use money as an indication of how well a company does or sure what kind of lifestyle yeah right exactly and I don't even know if happiness is an indicator of success because I think there's something deeper than that not to get too philosophical but for you it's really doing doing what you love yes and having the freedom to do what you love for some people that's not possible because I mean I pay in kind of thing so that that's that's how you'd consider success do you feel that that you
you apply that definition to other people I don't know what you mean by that so in other words when you meet a person we judge people when we meet them on the basis of success whether we mean to or not and at the most extreme if we saw somebody who was sort of I don't know disheveled in the street and didn't seem like they were doing very well not judge them as successful and if we saw someone stepping out of an incredibly expensive car and going to express the expensive restaurant have rather you know well-appointed
home we might be use him as successful when you think about other people how would you judge success in them well I would have to know somebody I feel like before I could do that okay if I went to if I saw somebody get out of a $300,000 car in front of a five-star hotel I'd be like whoa good job you know and then if I saw somebody and rags on the side of the street I would go oh my gosh I hope they're okay and they're not freezing to death or whatever I don't know
if I would say so in that scenario yeah the person who's walking into the hotel out of a car is more successful than the person on the street is homeless but you know it doesn't mean you know game one may not be that that person who got out of the fancy car necessarily made better choices they made a financial choices okay that works okay yeah all right and I always said I would date I will ask me like would you ever date someone who made like twenty thousand dollars a year I go if they were
the best at that thing okay like if they weren't the best at I think well then they better be trying real hard to get because I don't want someone who's just like coasting okay if they go I really love making tables and I only make twenty grand a year cake and I'm I'd be like I then you're at least you're making okay you know all right you're in an interesting profession Kyle you're a public person okay and when you're a public person people know who you are right and that can that can have some risks
you know it might give people carte blanche to criticize you but it also benefits you know if you're recognized you might get a special benefit of some kind whatever form it takes does that matter to you it doesn't matter if I get a special benefit yeah let me again I'm saying that you're a public person do you expect it no no bill let's be real I'm public compared to like somebody who maybe works in a restaurant but not Ryan Seacrest and I mean met circle videos get a lot of views sure I I don't expect
any of that and I don't think I would ever expect do you covet it having that like ability to you know people making parting the seas for you here comes Kyle no that would feel uncomfortable okay alright so that kind of attention on you yeah and especially now that I'm thinking about especially if it was only because they saw in that circle video right well they give they if I went to a restaurant and they were like we have a table right up here and I was like oh cool thank you I would feel special
because they just did just happen to happen yeah but if they were like because you're from med circle we gave this table be like why because I did a job right cuz I did my everyone everyone did so the producer doesn't get a table because she just worked as hard as everybody else but she doesn't get one because she didn't ask questions on a couch absolutely okay alright so how do you deal with frustration mm-hm sometimes I go eat fast food sometimes I take a nap sometimes I have a fake conversation with myself or the
person that I'm frustrated with and just get it all out like that but I try to if I feel frustration coming on I'm pretty good about getting under control before it's out of control his rage ever been a problem for you mmm what let's say you were talking about I mean I always I'm always interested to hear how people deal with you know one of the most frustrating things we could do is deal with customer service yeah that's right you're on hold for a long time then the person answers it's clear that they you know
they're probably answered you're one of a million calls they might even be working for 20 companies that day you can't get to the person who can answer the question and they keep clearly the reading from a script' you get frustrated what would you deal with the call like that okay well I'll tell you very honestly today I would deal with a call like that I would be frustrated huh but I would deal with it and what I think is the most efficient way to a solution for whatever the reason I'm calling now ten years ago
it would have not been that way I would have been irate screaming yelling I mean just just so it did my my anger right we're not equal what was actually happening happen what caused the change because I realized it was I was having I was losing okay I was losing all right I still didn't get my cable bill paid and now I'm angry and all worked up for a stupid reason and I knew this would go on for as long as I was alive so I might as well make these things not angry today I
had to call a roofing company and they had not called me back they had not emailed they said they were gonna do this and this and this and they did none of those things and normally 10 years ago I would have told them what was up today I said guys this is what's happened I don't know why you're promising one thing but not delivering but can you please XYZ all right I already know and that just makes everything better uh-huh okay when you when you overall think about how you feel about your life right now
hmm how do you how do you feel about like where you're at in life well I was just thinking about this yesterday I don't what a night I don't think this is the most overall content and happy that I've ever been in my life ever and that includes the time I had my first dream job of working with animals mm-hmm when I thought oh man it doesn't get better than this this is this is it for me it was my childhood dream to work with animals I got to do it but now I look at
life and five pillars and friends family finances career which are different and health and all of those are so good right now that I like I think this is the best it's ever been yeah okay so I'm gonna I'm gonna put a sort of hypothetical to you Greg hey things are good yeah anyone's able to be doing doing well when things in those in those realms are good to be honest with you no not at all sorry I will say some people even with all those things good they still find something to harp at but
most would tomorrow mentor Collette did you go yeah okay you get fired okay we found someone who found someone else to do your job you're not.you know or and you love this job you may very clear you love what you get to do here love the people you work with how do you how would you cope with something like that I would honestly just throw myself back into the other in front of camera projects that I'm not doing because I'm okay how would you feel about yourself if okay if I'll just add to your hypothetical
if they fired me because they the company was like we just we just don't want they want a woman now you know we've had all these great these had all these great interviews with you're a guy we're on a woman so it's not you like you could not morph into a woman so you couldn't do so yeah no but even though I can't warfarin a woman that would be devastated I would okay yeah I'd be really upset mm-hmm yeah why well because I'm losing like my thing mm-hmm I'm losing I'm losing a really important thing
in my life yeah and I I did and I don't want to lose it for any for any reason yeah so that would hurt a lot would you be able to let go of it yeah of course mm-hmm yeah yeah and I would watch like the next two videos and then critique everything she did and be like that's not good that's not and then I would stop watching the videos because it goes be too hard I would just move on with my life okay yeah um how do you handle criticism I'd say 90% of the
time incredibly well no what about the other 10% terrible why what what differentiates the 90 normally the source the source what kind of source can be that part of that ten percent which throws you off a source that would have no reason to critique those subjects that we're talking about uh-huh it's like I see you know I I was an animal behaviorist for 15 years mm-hmm so you're a first-time dog owner and you want to set me down and talk about how to potty train your dog and I'm not gonna take those critiques very well
because I just don't think they know okay but if you're gonna critique me on mental health I'm going to be all-in right if director critiques me on my hosting performance and be like yeah I need to listen to that yeah do you have any people in your life that you feel genuinely jealous or covetous of their lives that I'm jealous of their lives occasionally I'm jealous of one friend because she's done so well in the industry in her career so well in an industry that's so competitive and I know there's a couple friends who have
really great marriages and relationships and I guess I am jealous I don't think I'm like jealous where I can't you know my friends and have you member or would you maybe I should ask you or have you ever take advantage of a person to forward your cause or get your needs met of course mm-hmm yeah I think when you say take advantage I feel like it's it sounds like I didn't they didn't know I was doing it but I'm pretty transparent I go hey do you know that person can you email them for me I
would like to meet them you know like let's do it so yeah I do that has it ever happened in a way that were someone's like oh here comes Kyle thank you so you're okay I mean if if someone watched that and I have done that tell me because I don't think that's the case at all yeah so how do you I mean none of us are perfect we all have parts of ourselves that we're not fond of no how do you manage that part of yourself well I go to therapy okay good yeah I
read a lot I try to be as honest with myself as I am with everybody else and there's also a point of just knowing that I'm not perfect okay ever like and you're never going to get to a place where you're like I and I'm done like self improvement over and so I think that's how I manager mm-hmm what's your what's your favorite part of yourself your favorite aspect of yourself probably my ability to have a relentless pursuit on whatever my target is okay whether that's a career getting my dog to do what she needs
to do anything finances relationships friendships family once I narrow in on something then that's it I mean listen after this conversation I'm not you do not have narcissistic sorry yeah I know you were could you could you imagine okay but I trust me I've done interviews with people in the media where I'm like oh absolutely if I got to do this with them I think it would be quite different you know listen you brought up some interesting issues that I poked at you know one was that sort of that emotionality you're like I can't always
bring it you know you own that I can't always bring it and that if that person does call me fifty three times there's a point at which I'm done that could be experienced by another person as a lack of empathy or coldness that was probably the only little like little red flag that popped up a little bit for me you know I would say to you there are peuta Klee and clinically be mindful of that aspect of yourself that there are times when you may not have the emotional bandwidth to take something on but a
human relationship is a reciprocal space and that there are times that people are going to expect you to maybe kind of be bigger than that emotional space you can be it would be exhausting for you on a daily basis I don't think you should be a therapist you know I don't think like that would play upon your strengths to be honest but I do think that you know it could somebody who is if you love someone and they're going through a hard time they may need more of that space from you and like I'd say
so much of how narcissism is addressed if you're addressing it clinically is mindfulness and every one of us can bring mindfulness into our lives you're not even a narcissistic I mean we look at narcissism as always hold on you you said I'm not even nurses yeah I don't really know I mean the closest you got was like that little bit that emotional you know kind of clip misses you I should have been more I feel like I need to be a little narcissistic to be like you you if I was gonna sit here and dissect
you sure could I say there was one or two things that you said there was like mmm superficial like how often do you you know do you are you like are you big into stuff do you care about your whole like what you wear and what you drive and all of that I don't have a car and I don't think I've bought a piece of clothing it what so I mean we so but if a person had a phenomenally great car it doesn't mean they're not empathic we look at it holistically you're you're telling me
that your measure of success is to get meaning and purpose from your work that's it actually sort of the opposite of narcissism and in fact when we work with narcissistic clients one of the things we try to do is meaning and purpose focused work thinking that if we can bubble that up to the surface it might help sort of address some of that emptiness and that insecurity I hear that you're able to be you know strong in the face of meaningful criticism and that yeah when the criticism comes from a place where you're like seriously
you have no place saying this it was a very normal kind of a reaction back to that you know if your your ratios more were like 20 80 like 80% of the time I can't tolerate criticism that would give me pause yeah you know you're not talking about a superficial world you're talking about when you do fall into a loving relationship that you want it to be where you're both are healthy and growing together not that I need a hot partner I know if I were watching this I would go well yeah he just talked
to the narcissist expert for five hours and they did a therapy session so he's just going to deliver the answers to make him right see Narcisa I can tell everybody I was very honest I'm all that's one of my weak and weaknesses and strengths but I mean is there anything that you can add to did this feel like a valid session to you or did you feel like I was putting on here's the thing when we're looking at something like narcissism or narcissistic personality it's a slow burn in in reality it could have taken as
weeks or even months of sessions for these patterns to come clear I've worked with clients it took me six to nine months for me to really see like oh now I know exactly what I'm dealing with you can get some of the superficial narcissism at a dinner party but the real depths work to get this that could take a long time I know you I had that advantage College I'm working with you for months so you know I know enough about you but what I could be lying you know you could be lying and anyone
could be lying in therapy and you know you could all listen you're in an industry that celebrates superficial validation seeking stuff and you do like being on this side of the camera maybe any of us that you want to be on this side of the camera needs to take a good hard look inside and say why is that why is it more important for us to be on this side than that psychos or those are absolutely equal roles yeah Timmy so there is some self-examination that means to happen there you know I I would over
the course of longer-term therapy we look at how do you intersect in your relationships maybe this pattern of low emotionality is actually something we do need to be more concerned about and as I got to know more about you and saw how it surfed it surfaced with family with friends with partners with coworkers I might start to see a pattern there that's not just low emotionality maybe it would evidence as lack of empathy so this is something that we're good we would have to continue to kind of pull up but you certainly didn't come in
here kind of arrogant and brash you're willing to put yourself out there in this kind of a platform so right out the gate there's a transparency you use that word a lot I don't know that many narcissist use the word transparency unless it's a buzzword but you do raise an important point so it can be tricky last thing because I know we're going a little long can you give me maybe two because of my inability to be as emotionally available as people want me to be has hurt me yeah better yes and it's something that
if I want to have a successful relationship in the future I'm gonna need yeah so can you give me like two things that I can do to practice that now while I'm not in a relationship listen in case and listen to people in situations where it's not as high-stakes you know in a relationship it's higher stakes but like you know don't be that person is like a stupid person on an airplane is telling me their story you know I'm so like oh yeah as soon as I can airplane I'm like uh yeah I gotta go
alone practice it a little bit you know do it with with smaller with friends you actually like also listen to your friends starts telling you their emotional stuff say uh oh man you know watch those reactions because for some people for whom sharing emotional stuff may not be easy and they see you going like this that might be enough to make them more reluctant to share in that space you've got to watch your nonverbals you've got a and you have to practice it I mean it's in order to love people we sometimes have to do
things that don't always feel comfortable for us because that's love you know is you know to really be there for people and hear them and give richness and validation to their stories by hearing them with an open heart oh god I can do that though I literally yeah can practice this with people because right now you're so right I avoid it at all cost because I'm like others as important I'm not practicing acting so how do I be able to do it when it matters it's not that it doesn't matter now but whenever you like
it could be like a friend Connie yammering on about something like that and I could just I could put my phone away and just go yeah and don't be yeah you don't need to be like you know all like you know trippy and all that like really just you know lie back in the sofa and hear it put that phone away be present with it don't let other people's emotions be a place of fear for us you know because they're not asking you to take them it's not like they're trying to unload cargo on you
they're just wanting to they want the simple act of another human being listening to them because that's really where a relationship happens they'll send more days than not the only thing a partner and two partners might talk about is who's taking the car this morning and did you remember to get the milk you know that not every day is a big-ticket day in a relationship one of those big ticket days happen those are the bridges that carry the relationship to the next level and that's where narcissistic people can't go so while I'm not seeing those
patterns for you I do think practice it because being there for another person emotionally is a practice skill and in our technologically soaked womb people are not good at being there for other people they're so distracted they're like fondling their phones put it away look at that person be present with them stop doing your grocery list in your mind and be in the room yes oh my gosh this was so good for me loved ones and hopefully you know a partner or even when you're dating this create a healthier space and if you notice this
broad pattern and someone else who can't be with your emotional space at all and that's also a red flag for you but like listen you know I'm not you don't seem like mr. narcissism you're you know given that you're in this industry you live in LA you know you're young you're you know all the things that kind of are the flame under that yeah under that pot kind of thing doesn't seem to be happening of a holistic healthy sense of yourself remember you have a solid sense of yourself the rest emanates from that and so
I believe that I've been up that hard a little bit more and my future spouse thanks you oh he'll be a much better listener by then thank you guys for watching this simulated therapy session with myself and dr. Romani thanks for watching if you liked what you just saw then why not subscribe click right here for new episodes and new series every week and to access exclusive mental health videos that we only release at Med circle com check out the links below [Music]
