Powerful Strategies To Deal with Narcissism and Addiction

Summary

Podcast Summary: "Powerful Strategies To Deal with Narcissism and Addiction" | The Ed Mylett Show

Podcast Information:

• Title: The Ed Mylett Show
• Host/Author: Ed Mylett | Cumulus Podcast Network
• Episode: Powerful Strategies To Deal with Narcissism and Addiction
• Release Date: March 22, 2025

Ed Mylett delves deep into the intricate dynamics of narcissism and addiction in this compelling episode. Featuring insights from renowned experts Dr. Drew Pinsky and Brendan Burchard, along with transformative advice from parenting and relationship specialist Rebecca Zung, the episode offers listeners actionable strategies to navigate and overcome these pervasive challenges.

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1. Introduction and Setting the Stage

[00:00] Ed Mylett:
Ed kicks off the episode by emphasizing the importance of a growth-oriented environment for personal and professional development. He promotes the Growth Day app, created by his friend Brendan Burchard, highlighting its value in enhancing productivity and personal growth.

Notable Quote:
"If you're in an environment that causes growth, you're much more likely to grow and you're going to grow faster." — Ed Mylett [00:00]

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2. Understanding Narcissism – Dr. Drew Pinsky

[02:17] Dr. Drew Pinsky:
Dr. Drew redefines narcissism, shifting away from the common perception of self-absorption to its core essence—a profound feeling of being small and empty. He explains that narcissistic behaviors are compensations for deep-seated childhood injuries, where individuals seek external validation to fill an internal void.

Notable Quotes:

• "Narcissism really, at its core, is a feeling of being small and empty." — Dr. Drew Pinsky [02:33]
• "It's an injury in childhood that leaves somebody disconnected from their core self." — Dr. Drew Pinsky [02:53]

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3. Dependency vs. Addiction

[19:58] Dr. Drew Pinsky:
Dr. Drew distinguishes between dependency and addiction using the example of opiates. Dependency involves a physical need for a substance to avoid withdrawal, whereas addiction is a chronic relapsing condition where the individual is perpetually preoccupied with obtaining the substance, often switching to other addictive behaviors when one is curtailed.

Notable Quote:
"Dependency is trying to avoid withdrawal... An addict is permanently preoccupied with getting that drug back." — Dr. Drew Pinsky [20:00]

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4. Personal Experiences and Therapy

[06:26] Dr. Drew Pinsky:
Dr. Drew shares his personal journey, discussing his long-term therapy to address narcissistic injuries stemming from growing up with narcissistic parents. He underscores the importance of setting boundaries and differentiating between one's own emotions and those absorbed from others.

Notable Quote:
"I subjugated my own needs to the boss... therapy was really getting reconnected again, regulating the feelings and being fully present." — Dr. Drew Pinsky [12:09]

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5. Narcissism in Society Today

[03:43] Dr. Drew Pinsky:
Highlighting the rise of narcissism over the decades, Dr. Drew attributes this trend to widespread childhood trauma from the mid-20th century. He references Christopher Lasch's predictions about the "narcissistic turn" in societal behavior.

Notable Quote:
"We've had this narcissistic turn where narcissism is a very common sort of feature of how we manage our lives these days." — Dr. Drew Pinsky [04:48]

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6. Dealing with Narcissistic Relationships

[22:18] Dr. Drew Pinsky:
Addressing relationships with narcissists, Dr. Drew advises against direct confrontation. Instead, he recommends minimal, specific responses to avoid escalating conflicts, emphasizing the importance of maintaining one's own boundaries and emotional health.

Notable Quote:
"You can respond with something like this: Thank you for your email. I deny all of the allegations herein..." — Dr. Drew Pinsky [59:38]

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7. Strategies for Negotiating with Narcissists – Brendan Burchard

[51:22] Brendan Burchard:
Brendan introduces the “Slay” strategy, advocating for anticipating manipulative tactics and ethically countering them. He emphasizes the importance of creating leverage by understanding the narcissist's motivations and using them to guide interactions favorably.

Notable Quotes:

• "Developing a super strong strategy and creating invincible leverage." — Brendan Burchard [51:22]
• "People will think what you tell them to think." — Brendan Burchard [60:31]

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8. Parenting in a World with Narcissism – Rebecca Zung

[44:07] Rebecca Zung:
Rebecca explores the vulnerability of empaths in relationships with narcissists. She describes how narcissists exploit empaths' innate desire to help and fix others, leading to emotional depletion. Rebecca underscores the necessity for parents to foster resilience and emotional intelligence in their children by allowing them to face and overcome challenges independently.

Notable Quotes:

• "An empath is the perfect victim for a narcissist." — Rebecca Zung [76:00]
• "Confidence is all about confidence." — Rebecca Zung [86:17]

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9. Conclusion and Final Thoughts

As the episode wraps up, Ed integrates the insights shared by his guests, reinforcing the importance of self-awareness, setting boundaries, and fostering genuine connections. He highlights the profound impact of understanding and addressing narcissistic and addictive behaviors for personal growth and healthier relationships.

Closing Remarks:
Ed encourages listeners to apply the discussed strategies in their lives to achieve greater happiness, success, and peace of mind, emphasizing the transformative power of conscious effort and informed action.

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Final Notable Quote:
"You have to be prepared to become whoever you're supposed to be. That's really a hard thing for people to do." — Dr. Drew Pinsky [31:58]

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This episode equips listeners with a comprehensive understanding of narcissism and addiction, blending psychological insights with practical strategies. By learning from experts like Dr. Drew Pinsky, Brendan Burchard, and Rebecca Zung, individuals are empowered to recognize, manage, and overcome these deeply rooted behavioral patterns, paving the way for personal transformation and healthier interpersonal relationships.

Transcript

[Ed Mylett]

So, hey guys, listen. We're all trying to get more productive and the question is, how do you find a way to get an edge? I'm a big believer that if you're getting mentoring or you're in an environment that causes growth, a growth based environment, that you're much more likely to grow and you're going to grow faster. And that's why I love Growth Day. Growth Day is an app that my friend Brendan Burchard has created that I'm a big fan of. Write this down. Growthday.com forward/ed. So if you want to be more productive, by the way, he's asked me, I post videos in there every single Monday that gets your day off to the right start. He's got about 5,000, $10,000 worth of courses that are in there that come with the app. Also, some of the top influencers in the world are all posting content in there on a regular basis, like having the Avengers of personal development and business in one app. And I'm honored that he asked me to be a part of it as well and contribute on a weekly basis. And I do. So go over there and get signed up. You're going to get a free tuition, free voucher to go to an event with Brendan and myself and a bunch of other influencers as well. So you get a free event out of it also. So go to growthday.com that's growthday.com Ed.

[Brendan Burchard]

This episode is brought to you by Progressive Insurance. You chose to hit play on this podcast today. Smart Choice. Progressive loves to help people make smart choices. That's why they offer a tool called Auto Quote Explorer that allows you to compare your Progressive car insurance quote with rates from other companies. So you save time on the research and can enjoy savings when you choose the best rate for you. Give it a try after this [e-mail] Progressive Casualty Insurance Company and affiliates not available in all states or situations. Prices vary based on how you buy.

[Ed Mylett]

This is the Ed and Mylett Show. Hey everyone. Hey everyone. Welcome to my weekend special. I hope you enjoy the show. Be sure to follow the Ed Mylett show on Apple and Spotify. Links are in the show notes. You'll never miss an episode that way. I am so grateful that this man sitting across from me is here today for a lot of reasons. Number one, he's changed so many lives in my lifetime and I grew up listening to him on Loveline. And so I'm really grateful to have Dr. Drew sitting in this seat finally across from me today.

[Dr. Drew Pinsky]

Well, finally, indeed. It's such a privilege. We have mutual friends. We kind of live near each other in weird ways. It's all odd, but I'm so glad I'm here.

[Ed Mylett]

It is od start out because your version of narcissism is a little bit different than I've heard it from other people before. So what is the definition of a narcissist?

[Dr. Drew Pinsky]

So people think about narcissism in the sort of common lexicon as being somebody that's self preoccupied or thinks a lot of themselves, which is really not typical narcissism. That can be a way it manifests, and malignant narcissists certainly present that way. But narcissism really, at its core is a feeling of being small and empty.

[Ed Mylett]

Really.

[Dr. Drew Pinsky]

It's an injury in childhood that leaves somebody disconnected from their core self, such that the only way they can feel okay is to get from the environment what they need to fill that emptiness and that smallness. And oftentimes one of those strategies is to make myself feel big. You know, get my. Get everyone around me to think I'm great or have lots of power or money or something. So I. I'm feeling buttressed against this inner core that is very fragile and empty. Emptiness is a very common feeling in narcissism. And so really, at its core, it's a. It's a. It's a smallness and an injury and a wound. It's not a bigness and a preoccupation and a vanity, because that's just what's on top to protect the core.

[Ed Mylett]

Okay, so when you said this, the time that I heard it, this makes me emotional to say I thought, I think I'm a narcissist.

[Dr. Drew Pinsky]

Well, pretty much everybody is today. That's the. I was working at a psychiatric. I started working at a psychiatric hospital in 1985, and we had these admitting sheets where the various diagnoses would be put down and always the. The personality assessment would be there too. And when I got there, there's different personality A, B and C clusters, and they were all over the place. There are all kinds of different personalities, obsessive compulsive personalities and dependent personalities. Around 1988, I noticed it all started shifting to sort of cluster B. And by the mid-90s, it was only cluster B, which is the narcissistic cluster. And there's a lot of literature out there, and Christopher Lasch predicted this that shows that we've had this narcissistic turn where narcissism is a very common sort of feature. Of how we manage our lives these days. It's a personality style and it might be, I suspect it is the result of a whole wave of childhood trauma we went through in the 50s, 60s and 70s.

[Ed Mylett]

And do you think there's something like social media contributes to this form of narcissism? Like in what sense? You've written about this, but I just want them to hear your version of this because I just feel like the two things you just opened up with, one is the service of others and how that helped my day. Dad stay sober and others stay sober and brings a level of just bliss to your life and value the other side of that coin to some extent is so self focused. So trying to fill that hole that you've described.

[Dr. Drew Pinsky]

That's a never ending treadmill that goes nowhere, that just keeps going, going, going and it can feel good, it can get you high, but it's an addiction at that point and you're just in it and just. And it never fills anything. It never really regrets. A lot of ways to think about these conditions of the human being. But one of the things that I focus on or like thinking about is how humans regulate.

[Ed Mylett]

Yeah.

[Dr. Drew Pinsky]

How they can connect with spontaneous affect, experience it, regulate it, share it with others. That's actually a taller. I had to have 11 years of therapy before I really got that. And you had therapy. Oh, prolonged therapy. I, I was. Well, it's a couple things. My wife sent me in, she was like, she was. It's one of those. I had one of those phone conversations with her where she's like, you need to see a therapist. I'm like, oh yeah, yeah, ye. I know I need to. I'm going to make me a better, you know, better work with patients. And she just goes, listen to me, you need to see the hair stood up on the back of my neck. And I was like, oh, got it. I put the phone down, called somebody, got a referral and started going right then and greatest experience I ever had and healed a lot of my own narcissistic injuries because I had narcissistic parents. And that's how you get narcissistic injuries. It tends to feed on itself.

[Ed Mylett]

I wanted to ask you about that. So I'm prepping for this. You've always seemed to me, obviously your intellect level's through the roof. But over the years I'm like, this dude just has it together.

[Dr. Drew Pinsky]

Oh, I don't know about that.

[Ed Mylett]

No, but you know that that's the impression, right?

[Dr. Drew Pinsky]

Let me be the first to tell you, I Have generalized anxiety disorder. I had panic. I'm prone to depression. It's rearing its head again lately a little bit. Me too. Yeah. And, yeah, we all are human beings and we have brains, and those brains have these proclivities. And having it all together is almost anathema to me. I almost don't understand what that is. I am grateful for a ton, and I've had a really productive, really good life. I've had the. And one of the greatest things I've had is the opportunity to see the human experience through a lens that very few people do. My days for 20 years, or certainly 15 years, was getting up at 5:30 in the morning, doing intensive care rounds, then hospital rounds, then outpatient medical patients. And then I would go to the psychiatric hospital and do a full day there and ended up running their addiction services. And I saw everything you have seen, and it was just such a. I'm so grateful to have had that now. I just want to give it back. I just want to give it because I had this crazy experience.

[Ed Mylett]

Well, I think you've done that. I mean, I. I want to stay on something there because you went to therapy. And the reason, I think it's so important that both you and I say, hey, look, we don't have it together. Because I think the impression probably for both of us is that we do and people come to us for advice and counsel. Right?

[Dr. Drew Pinsky]

Yeah. Well, being available for service and counsel is. You don't have to have it together really, to do that. But just think about the brain, like our heart, although the two are deeply connected, and I have a lot to say about that. But, I mean, we're in shape and our heart is, you know, we have a mapped home, hopefully cardiac output and cardiac workloads and things. And don't think about the brain any differently. Even though I may have certain proclivities in my heart. Do I have heart disease in my family? And who knows what's going to happen to my heart because I have a heart. Hearts get sick. Things happen. Same thing happens with brains. Same things. Not because my heart has it all together. My brain has it all together.

[Ed Mylett]

And you think I want to talk about brain and heart coherence in a minute. However, stay on the brain thing for a second. So you talked about there being this injury when we're young of some type that can create this. Are most people aware of what they are? And in your case. So I. You know, I think your dad was a gp, right? Your dad was a gp.

[Dr. Drew Pinsky]

He was a Family practitioner.

[Ed Mylett]

A family practitioner. And then your uncle was actually a psychiatrist.

[Dr. Drew Pinsky]

Correct.

[Ed Mylett]

So you had this really diverse medical background in your family, yet you. I've heard you talk about your dad a little bit lately, and mom and you just said it a minute ago that they both had narcissistic tendencies. I want to know how you think that impacted you. Oh, well. And by the way, when someone's listening to this, how do they know whether or not they had an impact like that as a child? Are there emotions they'd be experiencing now that are indicative of. You've probably got an injury?

[Dr. Drew Pinsky]

Yeah, there's many, many ways. I think the first and foremost way is I should have a piece of paper and a pen, because I have so many things I want to say.

[Ed Mylett]

Sasha, let's get a piece of paper and a pen.

[Dr. Drew Pinsky]

So how you function in relationships is numero uno. So if you are having problems empathizing or having problem compromising, all the things that make for good relationships or intimate, that's a sign. And that's. That's really where our. I always used to, like, say this when we. When we did Loveline, our craziness enters the room through relationships. That's where you see it. That's where you see stuff. But in my case, I can just. So people have a little model for how. How I experience it. I had sort of a. As a relation to my dad. It was a very kind of. This is going to sound pejorative, but I don't mean it that way. He was like a closeted narcissist. Everyone loved him. He's a nice guy. He was an excellent doctor, a great judgment, and thank God I inherited some of. But I was there to serve his needs. That is narcissism. When you're. As a parent, you were there to be present for the child, and that's it. To be present, keep them safe, and to be present. And while they go out and struggle with the world, your home base that they come back to, if. When that child comes back to home base, I, as a parent, have a bunch of needs that that child has to attend to. That's a narcissistic injury right away. That's parenting the parent. So I lost that, and it made me highly attuned and highly effective with other narcissists. Yes, because I'm responsible for his feelings all the time. And if his feelings weren't protected, he would get wounded. You know, all this kind of stuff. And so I've had many narcissistic bosses that I Was extremely. But I subjugated my own needs to the boss. And when you realize after a while, you're like, hey, wait a minute, this isn't working for me. And yet the boss is always like, yes, you're the best. You're the only one. You're the perfect. Thank you for being that guy for me. And it's so seductive when you're. When you've been in that relationship with a parent like that. It's very challenging to get out.

[Ed Mylett]

I want to interject one thing. I just hope everybody listening to this is hearing this through the filter of prisms of other relationships that you're currently in.

[Dr. Drew Pinsky]

Yes, for sure.

[Ed Mylett]

Because that addictive. I'm gonna help you and serve your.

[Dr. Drew Pinsky]

Needs thing or fix you or whatever it is. Our job is to be present and close. That's it. That's what a good relationship is. Fully present. The totality of our being and body. Right. The brain is embedded in the body, and the body's a major part of what the brain is doing. And being fully present and with the other person and available. And then was flat out emotionally abusive. It was just like, really emotionally abusive, like, severely. And so that was critical.

[Ed Mylett]

And harsh.

[Dr. Drew Pinsky]

Yelling. And harsh. I mean, yelling. I'd only heard yelling like hers once in the whole time. I spent those 30 years in the psychiatric hospital. Only one time did I go, oh, that's familiar.

[Ed Mylett]

Really?

[Dr. Drew Pinsky]

Yeah, it's like really crazy yelling.

[Ed Mylett]

And how did that manifest itself in your life? In a good way and a bad way.

[Dr. Drew Pinsky]

My dad's part had some good stuff to it because, you know, again, strategically and also. Well, I'll tell you, here's the good way. When you have somebody like my mom in your life, you as a child learn that your survival depends on that person not freaking out or getting angry at you. So you would get. You get highly attuned.

[Ed Mylett]

Yes.

[Dr. Drew Pinsky]

To another person and their emotions and regulating them.

[Ed Mylett]

Yes.

[Dr. Drew Pinsky]

That's where codependency comes from. Okay. I'm over the top codependent. That's my proclivity. All right. And therapy, thank God, has re established boundaries. And I can tell the difference between another person's feelings and my own. I had trouble early on in my career. Other people's pain, pain I would experience so profoundly. It was really my pain being activated, but I thought it was the other, you know, and so I'd have to save them from their pain, which is not what they need. They need you present while they build and struggle the pain against the injury that they've had not a rescuer because then they're permanently in need of rescuing. Right. So that sense of taking care of other people, once I got that regulated. Oh, the side effect of that is you stop listening to your own emotions because you're busy looking out there and you start experiencing yourself through other people. And your own primary affects are way off in the distance, if you can feel them at all. And so my work in therapy was really getting reconnected again, regulating the feelings and being fully present. And it's a great experience.

[Ed Mylett]

I want you to know something. I've done 600 shows. This is already one of my favorite conversations.

[Dr. Drew Pinsky]

Oh, good.

[Ed Mylett]

And the reason is. This sounds really familiar to me.

[Dr. Drew Pinsky]

Well, to a lot of people, this is. This is the. This is the thing. So as I said, you know, by mid-90s, it was all cluster B personality disorders, which are the narcissistic disorders. And we've, you know, and as I. And all these years on Loveline, all I heard about was childhood injury. It's all every call. Because of course it would manifest in the relationships. The other thing about these injuries is we recreate them in our present lives. And so there's something about the human. Freud called it repetition compulsion. Psychologists call it need for mastery over trauma. We don't know what it is. It a wiring thing. It's some. I guarantee you it's biological because it's so reproducible and so profound, which is when. And people don't think about how they get into these recreations. And I've thought a lot about it. When we've had trauma in our relationships in childhood, we are attracted to people and places that are just like the circumstances of the trauma of our past. People will say it's an attempt to master it or make it right. I don't know. We're just attracted.

[Ed Mylett]

It's familiar, for sure.

[Dr. Drew Pinsky]

Sometimes profoundly attractive. We always tell people, if you're feeling lightning bolts, attraction to something and you've had that kind of trauma and by the way, you've been here before. This is a repetition. It will happen again. You're a perfect instrument. And so you get in it and you get re traumatized and the whole thing gets recreated because it's the same kind of person. It's the same person that traumatized you in the first place. And you're the perfect victim for that person. So you go together and away. It happens all over again.

[Ed Mylett]

Do you have any theory, as we talk about this, on percentage of people that have a high degree of happiness in their life? I think about this a lot. Like you did this study on the narcissistic tendencies of celebrities. That was pretty fascinating. You can talk a little bit about that when you want. But you and I both have worked or are around, let's just be real, lots of very rich, successful and famous people. And I have found the vast majority of them are in lack of some sort of bliss in their life and peace in their life, for sure.

[Dr. Drew Pinsky]

That's why I did that study. I was. Well, during the. You know, they'd come on Loveline and they would unload their stuff on me during the commercial breaks and I'd go, oh, Jesus. And I learned quickly that people that are celebrities, and we were able to prove with our study that celebrity itself is a bid to manage narcissistic injuries, to try to repair it. Remember that? I said, you gotta get for the environment what you need.

[Ed Mylett]

Yes.

[Dr. Drew Pinsky]

Never works.

[Ed Mylett]

Never works. In addition to that, because, by the way, I've not found that just with celebrities, I found that with just people that have produced high levels of success, that potentially the external results, they're filling this. And by the way, I'm describing me to some extent, but not all, but many are trying to fill this hole with external achievement. And it can be incredibly depressing because then they get there and they're like, and even this isn't enough. And even this isn't enough. And I'm wondering, even with you, with what you've achieved in your life, you've had a lot of notoriety, you've had a lot of fame, you've helped a lot of people. I wonder, even with you, did it fill up what you were looking for it to fill up or unconsciously looking for it to fill up up.

[Dr. Drew Pinsky]

I think, who knows why I was attracted very early to using media to make a difference. That was sort of my thinking on it. It's interesting in recent years, that same interest isn't there the same way. I'm just not as motivated, I'm not as interested. Even though I think it's a great outlet and can do great good, it's not as interesting. It's also become more painful. You're always under attack and stuff.

[Ed Mylett]

You've had a lot of that crazy stuff.

[Dr. Drew Pinsky]

But I look back on the things I've done and I am extremely grateful. So that gratitude feels like it did do what I wanted it to do. I was able to have these interesting creative experiences where I made a difference. It doesn't get better than that. And so to the extent that it was filling Something by the time. Let's see, when was I. I was a lot better by around 1996. You're already.

[Ed Mylett]

But there's a difference Drew between. And I look at this for me too. I look back at my life, hope this is as deep for everybody else as it is for me. But I do have gratitude for the experiences I've had. I feel blessed that I've been able to make a difference or got to have these experiences or grow in certain ways and have the understandings of myself and others that I've feel like there's.

[Dr. Drew Pinsky]

A but behind that.

[Ed Mylett]

But I didn't enjoy them as I was doing them. In other words, it's only in retrospect. And I'm wondering this with you too.

[Dr. Drew Pinsky]

No, I enjoyed them while I was doing them.

[Ed Mylett]

You enjoyed the journey.

[Dr. Drew Pinsky]

I loved everything I was enjoying and grateful all the way along. You know, there's parts in my. I was severe workaholic. That was one of the other manifestations of my thing. And when it was really bad, there was a certain amount of dread then. And I don't. I do not know how my wife put up with it for many years. God bless her. I don't get it. But she did. And once I got through that dread by frankly bringing other things in and doing different things, that's where I learned to really appreciate. I don't like doing the same thing all the time.

[Ed Mylett]

Me either.

[Dr. Drew Pinsky]

Different things.

[Ed Mylett]

I need to be challenged.

[Dr. Drew Pinsky]

Yeah. So. So I, I. Let's look. Let's look at your thing for a second. So. Yeah, so not feeling fulfilled along the way, but being grateful afterwards. Yeah, it's got to be that you're just better now.

[Ed Mylett]

I think I've had a ton of healing and I think also perspective changes over time. Yeah, I. I've done more of the work later in my life than I. I think like many people, I was just in a hurry to get somewhere. I wasn't.

[Dr. Drew Pinsky]

Yeah, I get it and I understand that.

[Ed Mylett]

I wanted to get somewhere I wasn't as quickly as I could.

[Dr. Drew Pinsky]

Hey, man. The other thing I had on top of me, you know, my dad and his family escaped the Holodomor in Ukraine. Right. And then got here just in time for the depression. And so I had all of that intergenerational trauma put down, put upon me. And that's, I think, where some of the workaholism and had to get somewhere fast kind of feeling came from.

[Ed Mylett]

Yeah, it did for me. Now I also have looked at myself in terms of habits. I've Developed that are either addictions or dependencies. And so a lot of people listening to this, I'm so excited to ask you these questions. Is there a difference between dependency and addiction?

[Dr. Drew Pinsky]

Oh, yes, 100%.

[Ed Mylett]

Okay.

[Dr. Drew Pinsky]

And there are even ways of parsing those things out.

[Ed Mylett]

Okay, let's talk about that. Let's open that up a little bit.

[Dr. Drew Pinsky]

So dependency. Let's just talk about opiates, because opiates can make any human dependent. In other words, if you take an opiate in high enough dose long enough, you will need more to get the effect over time, and you will have withdrawal when you stop.

[Ed Mylett]

Okay.

[Dr. Drew Pinsky]

An addict, when that happens to them and they stop, become permanently preoccupied. And the motivations, the motivational system in the brain becomes focused on getting that drug back. So it's a motivational disturbance. A person who's dependent, while they're dependent can look like a drug addict. They're trying to avoid withdrawal. They're trying to get drugs. They start manipulating the line to get the drugs, but when they stop, they stop and they stay stopped. While an addict always goes back or switches to something else. Because that motivational thing, once the switch is thrown, it's on.

[Ed Mylett]

What if you're addicted to, like, a person?

[Dr. Drew Pinsky]

Okay, so a little more complicated. A lot of that out there, but there's a lot.

[Ed Mylett]

Right. So I think a lot of people. I don't have a drug addiction. I don't have an alcohol addiction, but you might have one with something else. And for me, I think my addiction was somewhat healthy to the extent that I do think work became my drug addict became my addiction.

[Dr. Drew Pinsky]

By the way, now that I'm. For me, interestingly, I personally will share with you. I have another overlay on the addictive quality of my work. And I've talked to you about. I was traumatized by my dad and stuff, but I think it was also fighting away depression. Because now when I'm working less, I like that high of working a lot. And as it goes, goes down, I start feeling the mood sink.

[Ed Mylett]

Gosh.

[Dr. Drew Pinsky]

Yeah. And so I kind of think I. There's probably a sweet spot in there somewhere. Right? But it needs to be a little more than I'm doing right now. I told my wife this the other day, and she's like, what? I'm like, it's just what I need. It's just my thing.

[Ed Mylett]

It's same here.

[Dr. Drew Pinsky]

Yeah.

[Ed Mylett]

I wish you could fix this for me, but you.

[Dr. Drew Pinsky]

Well, my problems of medicine can help both of us, but I'm not gonna do that.

[Ed Mylett]

I'm not gonna do that.

[Dr. Drew Pinsky]

And in the meantime we work out and we exercise and we sleep right and we eat right and all the things that do help mood to the people that are prone this way. But I think, I don't know, we may have to make peace with this and be okay with having to work and just make sure it's work that's good and fulfilling.

[Ed Mylett]

What if your addiction though is a person or a relationship or by the way, love, just people in general.

[Dr. Drew Pinsky]

Happens a lot.

[Ed Mylett]

This is now where this thing gets shared all over the planet right now. Right? Because I really do feel like there's at least in my own life. I have some friends that I know have chemical addictions. I do. They're in my life, I love them. Well, they're dependent, trending towards addiction. I think I have a couple that are addicted. Based on your definition.

[Dr. Drew Pinsky]

Well, let me define it. Addiction. So that was dependency. Addiction is a disease. Addiction has a genetic basis. You see a family history. There's some sort of inciting influence, typically trauma. It has a characteristic pathophysiology in the brain. That pathophysiology is reflected in signs and symptoms, using and pursuing and whatever. And those signs and symptoms progress in a very predictable way. We call that a natural history. And the whole thing has a predictable response to treatment. That's the disease of addiction. That's actually a definition of disease generally. And addiction fits it perfectly. The question is addiction a disease or a syndrome? That's the only legitimate question you can ask about it because it has a common genetic basis and common pathophysiology. I call that a disease.

[Ed Mylett]

Do you believe that there's on drugs or alcohol. Do you believe there's a chemical predisposition to be genetic? Genetic. My dad did too. So you don't see.

[Dr. Drew Pinsky]

I see. I've treated thousands and thousands of addicts. I can only think of like five where I couldn't see a clear cut family history.

[Ed Mylett]

Okay, so then based on that definition, I would say I have more friends that are dependent upon other people than they are addicted to.

[Dr. Drew Pinsky]

But that's the challenging thing about talking about relationship as addiction. I bristle a little bit at the overuse of the addiction construct though. It's very useful when it comes to sex and love. It's very useful. Now it's not a formal diagnosis. It's not the DSM 5. It is a construct that people use to help people manage these behaviors and these experiences we call drug, excuse me, sex and love addiction. Now if you are a sex and love Addict and you have a chemical addiction. It's all the same thing. And you have to get it all treated. It's all a disease state because you can go from sex to cannabis to opiates to alcohol. You just switch around all you want. You're still doing the same thing with your brain. And it's hard to activate, throwing the switch. As I was saying, like you have that genetic switch that finally gets thrown in the shell of the nucleus accumbens. Hard to do that with behaviors. It's hard. Usually a chemical throws it first, Then you go to gambling, then you go to sex. It just, it's just you're, you're just, you're, you know, you can't go over here because that'll kill you. So your brain goes, yeah, but this horse races, that's no big deal.

[Ed Mylett]

It's just a pass around, right? No, I'm laughing, but you're right, you're right.

[Dr. Drew Pinsky]

Yeah, it's how. It's the crazy thing about the addiction is your brain starts. It's thinking that's effed up in. In addiction that your brain convinces you certain things are good when it's just that motivational system that's the problem. So sex and love addiction is a challenging construct. I worry about the overutilization. If you're interested in it. Pia Melody has some great books on it. I think it's called Overcoming Love Addiction or Facing Love Addiction. It's a big one. And she talks about the love addiction love avoidance cycle and the cycles of abuse. She's lots of great constructs in there that you will see yourself in if there's any sense that you have one of these things. And again, they're very common, built off trauma again. And there's various ways to manage it. If you are somebody that keeps getting yourself in situations that are really problematic, either the relationships are not working or you're getting hurt physically or emotionally. You want to look at this. You want to look at it. And it's useful to think of it as a sex and love addiction sometimes. And the one thing that I mentioned it earlier, how you'll be attracted to circumstances and people that always end up being the same. Your body's a perfect instrument. If you've had that trauma and you'll be attracted to these things and you'll just do it over and over and over again. So when you feel lightning bolts, if you're that person that has this pattern, beware the lightning bolts. The lightning bolts of attraction. They call it a coup de foudre. And it's, it's gonna be the same thing all over again.

[Ed Mylett]

What do you do beyond looking at it? What's something else you can do? So you can look at it, but then there's something you gotta physically change, right?

[Dr. Drew Pinsky]

Yeah. I always tell people, look, you can, you can. It depends. You know, it's always hard for me. A lot of this I get when I'm just talking to people on telephone and things. It's hard for me to tell how serious it is. But I say, well, you can give yourself. Try, try to start dating people you're not having lightning bolts with. You're just having butterflies and see if you can hang with it. Or do you sabotage those relationships? The nature of the trauma makes it really difficult to have real intimacy. And so intimacy becomes uncomfortable and boring and weird and all these kinds of feelings. And so they either leave or sabotage or something. And so if you can't stay with a relationship that is not a lightning bolt relationship, you have to get treatment. Okay, now you want, you can do various things. You can go to a 12 step program. I think this kind of thing is best professionally managed. And trauma therapy does tremendous emdr, things like that. Tremendous. And quick to start being attracted to and by different kinds of people.

[Ed Mylett]

Do you wow. Now when someone's gonna get therapy, by the way, people advertise on the show for it as well. But is there any advice you would give to have the right type of therapist? Meaning is there something about them?

[Dr. Drew Pinsky]

These are hard things. Referrals are helpful. You shouldn't. It's certainly not at the beginning. You shouldn't love your therapist or feel better necessarily after therapy. The idea is not to feel better. The idea is to he. And that often feels not so good for a while. It should be challenging. Now a good therapist should give you tolerable doses of that so you're not miserable and you're not depressed. You just, it's. You're not. You should be challenged. You should be challenging. And should they have initially next to.

[Ed Mylett]

Their name of some type?

[Dr. Drew Pinsky]

Well, that's where I was going to go. And so, you know, the sort of, the best thing is if you have a PsyD, PhD or MD after the names. I, I think LCSWs make excellent therapists.

[Ed Mylett]

Also because they're TR.

[Dr. Drew Pinsky]

It's something about the kind of person that becomes a licensed clinical social worker and their training just they make, I've hired a million of them excellent therapists and this just seems to be a consistent thing. I always worry that it's Just in Southern California or something because that's where I work with all these people. But it's been. My own therapist is nlcsw and I just was outstanding. So the level of expertise is generally better. The MDs rarely do therapy, so it's really hard to find an MD that they refer to it out. But they often know who to send to that are good.

[Ed Mylett]

Okay.

[Dr. Drew Pinsky]

So you can. So one of the ways, ideal ways to do this, if you have the resources and insurance and stuff, first get a psychiatric evaluation. You know, what is my diagnosis, what's going on here? And given that construct, what kinds of treatment are gonna be most likely to help me? Now, most people don't do that, right. And it's always, you know, I always worry that, you know, I both worry that the MD is kind of overprescribed, the meds and I also worry that people that need meds never get to the md. And you wonder why they don't get better. Might really need it. Hopefully somebody enlightened will be judicious and careful and not throw meds on everybody. It's not the way to go. They're useful and sometimes very important, not all the time. And then if you have trauma, you need to be with somebody with really ideally LCSW, PsyD, PhD after their name, who has explicit trauma therapy and look for things like EMDR and various kinds of. You know, there's all kinds of ways now to hook the brain and the body up. It's all about getting the brain and the body reintegrated, integrated well.

[Ed Mylett]

That's where I want to go. So I want to talk about heart, brain, what I call coherence or whatever. And you said you wanted to talk about that a little bit today. So one of the. I said earlier that I've done a lot of work. Some of that work has been therapy, reading, having friends like you in my life that I taught. Literally, I've just become more self aware and a lot of times just my awareness of some of my behavioral patterns, it's lost some of its power over me 100%.

[Dr. Drew Pinsky]

That's why, that's why there's a whole category in treatment, frankly called psychoeducation medication.

[Ed Mylett]

Okay.

[Dr. Drew Pinsky]

And interestingly, early in my therapy, I had to understand what was happening before I felt comfortable going in. I read a ton of stuff before. The therapist was always like, why do you? Why do you. I just, I need to understand. I just need to.

[Ed Mylett]

Well, for me it wasn't just that. It was like, I've produced an externally really Pretty good life. And I was afraid, if I'm being candid, that if I change some of these patterns that I had in my life, that although maybe I had a little bit more Zen and peace, but I'd lose my edge, I'd lose my success. By the way, I think my aud listening resonates with what I just said deeply.

[Dr. Drew Pinsky]

Well, but here's the thing about treatment and healing. You have to be one of the. Your brain hates change. Our brain fight changes just the way we hate. We don't want our arm cut off. We don't want to change fundamentally who our brain thinks we are. But you have to be prepared to become whoever you're supposed to be. Wow, that's good. And that is a really hard thing for people to do. I went through it myself. You have to kind of let go and let things happen. And your brain fights you. And that's kind of why when I recommend professionals get involved, that's their skill set is working around and through those resistances.

[Ed Mylett]

That's one of the most important things someone said. Because what I ended up finding out. Because this is like an achiever audience overall. Right. I ended up finding out that in fact, I externally produced way more abundance in my life when I had patterns that served me in my life. And I gave myself the gift of a little bit more equanimity and peace in my life. One of the things I did also work on, though, was what I. I'd like you to elaborate on because you'd be better at it than me. But I've worked on small things all the way to, like my breathing.

[Dr. Drew Pinsky]

Oh, sure.

[Ed Mylett]

To, you know, alter my HRV rate so that I've got a little bit more heart and brain coherence which most people don't know about. So just rift on that.

[Dr. Drew Pinsky]

Well, I just. There's a guy named Stephen Porges. Okay. If you want to read about the neurobiology of attachment and regulation, Alan Shore is your guy. And Peter Fonach really has worked out this socio. Emotional exchange system, which is something that's evolutionarily built into not just our bodies, but actually into our development. And so there's. I'm gonna have trouble explaining this in a way that's cohesive, but I'm gonna try the. The brain, the base of the brain, the brain stem, the cranial nerves, and the autonomic and parasympathetic nervous systems all develop together and are embedded in the face, the ear, the vocal cords, through something called the branchial pouches, which is these Things that develop into our face and neck and whatever and the sympathetic outflow to our heart and gut. Okay. And it turns out obviously the face and our voice and our ear is how we exchange emotionality. We are exquisitely sensitive to what's going on in other people's faces. And what goes on in our faces can have micro, micro changes is that the other person, maybe even not on a conscious level, is able to read and receive as information about the other person's emotional states. So we ultimately learn to regulate our emotions through being in and around other people. Our identity comes from being in and around other people. Like we said, the brain is embedded in the body, but the brain body is embedded in a social system and how it manifests. And you mentioned earlier about trends and things and how they affect people. People, they do. I'm interested in that. I'm not an expert in that, but I read a lot about that stuff these days. History was one of my weak spots. So I've read a ton about it, trying to make sense of it all. But the socio emotional exchange system is also connected through various nuclei in the brain stem to the, the, you know, vagus nerve.

[Ed Mylett]

Yes.

[Dr. Drew Pinsky]

The gut and then the sympathetic outflow. Something like 70 or 80% of the vagus is an inflow to the brain. When I went to medical school we were taught well, the vagus is a system that decreases your. Maybe changes your acid secretion in your stomach and slows your heart down. No, 70% of it is getting information from your body and taking it back.

[Ed Mylett]

To the brain, to the brain goes that way.

[Dr. Drew Pinsky]

It's crazy. And it's deeply embedded in this socio emotional exchange system. And he has all this data about how heart rates change and breathing change with our emotional states. It's from infrastructure. Infancy, infancy, infancy.

[Ed Mylett]

What have you done in that world for yourself?

[Dr. Drew Pinsky]

I like the breathing stuff. I try to do that. I'm not a religious. My thing has been the psychotherapeutic process. I'm not quite sure where I'm going with this, but as it pertains to breathing and heart rate and facial expressions and stuff, I know when I'm around great therapists that are highly attuned to their patients because when I see them work or I interact with them, I notice I start breathing with them too.

[Ed Mylett]

Interesting.

[Dr. Drew Pinsky]

My, literally my heart rate and breathing starts syncing up with that other person. Yeah. And, and I, and I. And when I become aware of. I've actually been this one woman who I've become close with who treats us, treats Sex addiction, actually, I saw her in a video working with a patient, and I noticed it was happening to me and I went, oh, this woman has got no way's got powers. And so I got to know her and lo and behold, you know, she really is an exquisite therapist. And they can just be fully present and attuned to that person on not just a attentional level, but the whole body as an instrument. And if you've ever been in a therapeutic process where your body is present like that, it's weird. I've been the subject of it as a patient, and I've helped other people by being the antenna. And you experience things and smell things and hear things that are not your. Yours. And you know it because you've never experienced these things before. And the really, the. I'll tell you a story in a second about my favorite story with this. I tell it all the time. But the real art in the therapeutic process is not just receiving, listening with your whole body, I call that. But knowing when to bring it in the room. In other words, when to go. You know, I'm having an experience. And I'll tell you a story about that. I had this guy that was severely traumatized. And usually it's traumatized parts of the self that are needing attention that aren't. The patient isn't even aware, isn't there in the room with that patient at the time. It's sort of a walled off part of themselves that's screaming for some kind of attention. And this guy was coming in, and as he would sit down every day, I started hearing the opening riff in Mad Men. I was like, where is that coming from? Like, I don't hear that normally. And I thought, well, isn't that interesting? And damn it. Every time it would start, he walked in the room. Well, then it got weirder then as we were working together, it wasn't that long either. A few visits, I started feeling like I was that shadowy character falling through the buildings, right? Like, yes. So I had that feeling and I was like, whoa, this is interesting. But I didn't bring it up with the patient because he was talking about horrible trauma and all these horrible things that happened to him. And then about halfway through one of these visits later, music kicked in. I'm falling. And all of a sudden I experience myself as a baby falling through these buildings. As I talk about it now, it constricts my chest. It was an overwhelming experience. I couldn't stay with it. It was like it just took my breath away. It's like this incredibly traumatic feeling. And I thought, I have to bring it in there. I have to bring it up. And I said, listen. I actually interrupted him. He was telling another traumatic story. I said, look, I'm having an experience and I'm wondering if this is meaningful to you. And I told him what I've been experiencing. He became furious, stormed out of the room. You and your psychobabble. How dare you. You think you know what you're talking about. And just ran out of the room.

[Ed Mylett]

Whoa.

[Dr. Drew Pinsky]

And I thought maybe that wasn't the right time to bring that in. Comes back in the next day, and he sits down calmly and says, how did you know? He goes, how did you know? All I hear is the baby, the baby, the baby screaming in my head. It's going all the time. And because of the depth of that attunement, he and I were. He trusted me. And. And by the way, if you've been traumatized, trust is a big deal. We were able to kind of work together for a while, and I always see that. Yeah. And so I would get people in, working with people with trauma and addiction and stuff. I'm always getting them at the front end at the beginning of their treatment. And I really always conceived of my role other than get them through the medical stuff to teach them that you could be fully appreciated. I can fully experience you, and you can trust that you can stay close to another person. And they don't abuse, they don't nothing. You just be. They'll be there for you.

[Ed Mylett]

Wow.

[Dr. Drew Pinsky]

Makes me emotional just thinking about it.

[Ed Mylett]

Yeah, it makes me emotional.

[Dr. Drew Pinsky]

And the part of it that makes.

[Ed Mylett]

Me emotional is that to understand how connected humans can actually be together, it's unbelievable.

[Dr. Drew Pinsky]

Right? Unbelievable. Right, Right. And so when you ask can. Can. And that's. And you know, it's weird. It's.

[Ed Mylett]

Right.

[Dr. Drew Pinsky]

It's almost psychic y kind of stuff. And. And every therapist who does this kind of work has had these experiences where you feel a pain somewhere that's not yours, or you hear music or you see something and. But of course, then we affect each other on a macro scale too.

[Rebecca Zung]

Right.

[Dr. Drew Pinsky]

I don't understand why there are these huge moot trends, why it happens. I'm trying to understand that. And it feels to me like it's sort of French Revolution type trend, you know, like where people are bringing out guillotines and things.

[Ed Mylett]

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[Brendan Burchard]

Thank you. Thanks for having me.

[Ed Mylett]

The narcissist thing that you've been talking about lately is how to negotiate with a narcissist. But to me, when I hear narcissists, correct me if I'm wrong, I think there's degrees of narcissism in life. But it's also, for me, it's a lot of people listening to this are in different relationships, business relationships, personal relationships, and how to identify whether or not this person is toxic to you or just detrimental to your life or whether or not they're a benefit to Your life. So what is narcissism to start out with? And are there varying degrees?

[Brendan Burchard]

Yeah, I mean, to me, a narcissist is a person who has a very fragile sense of self. It's the person who is the absolute most insecure person in the world. They have no inner sense of value. So therefore they have to get all of their sense of value from external sources, from either the, you know, adulation from prestige, from people giving them compliments, from all of the things that you think about when you think of that. But what I call the dark underbelly of that is that control, devaluing, debasing people, degrading people. That's the other side of that as well. That's the one side of that. And then the other side of that is that they therefore have no ability to have any sense of compassion or care or empathy for other people. And that is because it's scarcity, mentality to the extreme. If I give to anybody else, therefore I can't have or I won't have. So that's really what a narcissist is, all the way to the end of the spectrum. And as you said, I do believe that all of of us, you know, to varying degrees, have some sense of that. We've all, you know, had some feeling of insecurity at times. We all want to feel seen, heard, and know that we matter. That's part of being human.

[Rebecca Zung]

Right?

[Brendan Burchard]

And so, you know, it's. It's when it becomes pathological, it's when it becomes, you know, that's the only way that you feel so brilliant.

[Ed Mylett]

I want to stay on it because, listen, what's the most important things in our lives is obviously our sense of self. And we, like, as you said to people, people want to be seen and hear, heard and felt. And they want to express themselves. They want to feel valued. That's healthy. That's okay. But right now, if you're listening to this or you're watching this, you may be in a relationship where you're like, is this the one? Or maybe you're even married. You're thinking, why are we not happier together? Maybe it's a business relationship that you have people that work with you for you or are a boss of yours. And so I want to hone in on this idea that because for me, I started to really, when on reading about this, people start flashing. Well, yeah, that particular person in my life, man, they are so addicted to attention, so addicted to getting accolades and admiration externally and will do almost anything to get it. Even do things to their own detriment. So how do we distinguish between the unhealthy and the healthy? I want to ask you specifically about something. When I was kind of ranking people that I know, including myself, on this spectrum, so to speak, because I think there's a point where now no longer is this person healthy in my life. They become toxic. There's a line there. And for me, the other sign of the aggressive narcissist, or the more severe one, is they also will never take responsibility for any of their behavior. They immediately make you think you're the crazy one. Well, what about you? And they constantly turn the frame and put it back on you. Everyone right now that knows someone like this is going, I know that person. Do you think that's where you distinguish the line that this person is unhealthy because they won't take any responsibility for this addictive behavior? For attention and admiration and accolades? Is responsibility one of the quotients we should be looking at?

[Brendan Burchard]

Well, I mean, I think there's a number of different types of lines, and I think it depends on the type of relationship that you're in with that person as well. I mean, is it a work relationship? Is it an intimate relationship? You know, I think it really kind of depends. I mean, are you in a business relationship with this person? Is this person, like, in your finances? Are they in your space? You know, I mean, or is it kind of a more of a casual relationship? I think it really kind of depends, you know, how. How much control do they have over you? You know, but if, you know, you are feeling where, you know, the hairs on the back of your neck are up, the gut, your gut reaction is not feeling good. You're feeling like this relationship is not working for you in some way. I mean, I know for me, I had a very min. Business with a person, a business relationship where I had gone into a business partnership with someone. Thank God it didn't go very far, and the business didn't really make any money, but it was enough that it absolutely made my life completely miserable. It was a covert narcissist. And, you know, right from the beginning, I saw red flags, but I kind of ignored them because I was like, well, but this person seems so nice, but yet I knew that there were these flags, and I let them go. And I thought that I could overcompensate for them. And I thought that, well, there's these other things that seem good. And I continued, you know, and I ignored them because I thought that I could make up for them in other ways. And because I did that, I paid for it so dearly. And it ended up to be one of the absolute worst nightmares of my entire life. And you know, most of the time with these people, you know from the beginning that it's not good.

[Ed Mylett]

You said something in there, Rebecca, I just want to jump in and ask you about it because to me, you said such a great distinction between business and personal. Personal. For me, one of the things I measure is how much of my energy am I using to have to feed this person's ego and prop them up right now, if you're in a relationship, friendship, personal, intimate relationship with somebody, measure it. How much of your energy time thinking goes to having to prop up their ego constantly. Right. And how much energy are you expanding and is it a never ending thing you're doing? You want to do that the rest of your life business? Sometimes, though, to your point, I'm locked in now and I may need to be dealing with them for a while. Maybe I do need to exit. But if you can't, you have to deal with someone who's got some form of narcissism. You have this thing you say that is so brilliant. I want, if you'd cover two of them at once, one is Slay and the other one is sort of this related. Is this sort of how to ethically manipulate the manipulator? Would you sort of touch on that? So I'm in a business relationship, I can't exit it right now. How do I negotiate and deal with, on all different settings, someone who has one of these forms of narcissism?

[Brendan Burchard]

Yeah, well, I mean, those are kind of both related with each other. Okay. So, I mean, Slay is developing a super strong strategy and creating invincible leverage, anticipating what they're going to be doing and then focusing on you and your position and your case. And this is if you're having to negotiate with this person and I call it, and you're ethically manipulating the manipulator throughout the entire process. Because these people are master manipulators. I always go back to The Malcolm Gladwell 10,000 hour thing, you know, where he talks about how it took 10,000 hours to become good at something. These people, 10,000 hours was like, you know, they hit that at toddler. You know, I mean, they were doing this long ago, long ago. They're very good at what they do. They know exactly how to push your buttons. They know exactly how to trigger you. They've been reading you from the beginning. And, you know, so A lot of times people beat themselves up over, like, how did I fall into this thing? How did I fall prey to this? Well, they know how to read you. They know how to, you know, manipulate you. So you have to learn how to take what it is that motivates them, which is their need for narcissistic supply, which is anything that feeds their ego and use them to manipulate them in order to create leverage. I mean, this is within the context of actually negotiating with them for people who are negotiating with them.

[Ed Mylett]

Well, everything's a negotiation, though. And so every single day you may have a boss who's got a form of narcissism. And so what she's talking about with Slay is being very aware, right? And being cognizant of. Listen, oftentimes you. You have to. There's got to be compliments, there's got to be feeding them and then sticking in there what you need or that you want, right?

[Brendan Burchard]

So a good example of that, you know, not to cut you off, but I want to give you.

[Ed Mylett]

But you want you to please.

[Brendan Burchard]

I want you. I want to give a good example of what exactly you're talking about. So a good example of that would be something that I call bartering. So bartering in the real world is, you know, know, an exchange of goods and services, you know, without money. So what. What does value look like to a narcissist? Well, it's adulation. That is the grade A diamond level supply for a narcissist. So in the narcissism world, supply is what they feed on. It's their lifeblood, it's their food, it's their oxygen, it's anything that feeds their ego. But within that world of narcissism, there is a hierarchy of this supply. So, you know, there is the good food, there's, you know, that prime rib of beef or whatever. You know, there's the grade A and then there's, you know, like the scraps of food or whatever. So like the prime. Prime rib or the good food or whatever is the adulation. It's, you know, and so. So if you want something, you might want to say, you might want to give them some adulation. So you might want to say something like, if you want them to get, you know, do the QuickBooks or something. Hey, can you do the quickbooks? You are so much better at it than I am. You know, you are way better at math and figures and you'll get it done so much faster. I'm terrible with that. And then you beef up Their ego, they'll want to do it. Yeah, you're right. I am so much better at it. They get motivated, they'll get it done. You get something you want and everybody is happy. And you know, so a lot of people think, but I don't, I hate them. And now you're playing into their ego, blah, blah, blah. Well, but if you want them to do something, then you've got to like think about what it is that's going to motivate them, right?

[Ed Mylett]

Yes. You may have a, you may be in a situation. You say, well, manipulate is a strong word. Oftentimes manipulating somebody to do things for their own good. I've had to manipulate family members of mine to go see a doctor. And then they found out they had cancer. Thank God I had the ability to put the words together, the emotions together to persuade them to go do something for their own benefit. So you may not be able to escape some of these situations that you're in. And so these are things that are important. You do need to learn how to do them. And I want to ask you about confronting someone. And again, guys, there's degrees of narcissism, there's degrees of being self centered, degrees of ego. We all have a little bit of it all the way to this point where it's not really healthy. And we're going to talk in a minute, by the way. We're going to talk about how to get what you want regardless of who you're interacting with. But what would your recommendation be about you are interacting with someone who is behaving and acting out in a way that doesn't serve them or you, but business or personal? Is there any upside in confronting a narcissist directly about their behavior or do you believe that that's completely useless use of energy and words?

[Brendan Burchard]

Well, I mean, there's no upside to, you know, going up to them and saying you're a narcissist and I'm referring.

[Ed Mylett]

More about their behavior. Hey listen, this thing you're doing here, here and her doesn't serve you or I or if you've already identified them as somebody who's a narcissist, are they not going to own it in any way, shape or form anyways?

[Brendan Burchard]

No, you're not going to, to say you're right, I'm so sorry, you know, blah, blah, blah. You're totally wasting your breath and your energy by trying to get them to do that. You know, you might as well, you know, go pound sand or whatever. I mean, you know, I think this.

[Ed Mylett]

Is important, Rebecca, just because I think people are constantly doing this with people in their lives that are this way. Like, hey, listen, just change this. Just change this. And then what they like to. To do is they like to turn the lens and go, but you, you and you. So that's the other part I wanted to ask you. They start sending you a list of the 18 things you're doing wrong. How do you recommend you reply or respond to somebody who's got that personality type, who's then sort of. I wouldn't call it attacking, but turning the lens on to you? Do you recommend you reply specifically to all the things they're saying you're doing wrong? Or how would you best reply to somebody, business or personal?

[Brendan Burchard]

I mean, what I recommend is a lot of times I say you want to reply in a way that's very, very, very specific. So, for example, they sent a very, very long email, and a lot of times it's calculated to trigger you in a certain way. And it might be 18 pages long. And there may be one line in there that you have to respond to, like, what time are we going to meet on Wednesday? Or something like that. And that's actually when you distill it down. That's the only thing you actually need to respond to. And so you can. And a lot of times people are like, but I need to respond to it because I don't want the judge to be seeing this. I don't want this to be used down the road in court. I don't want this to be some trial exhibit. I need to defend myself, all that sort of thing. So what I will say is you can respond with something like this. Thank you for your email. I am in receipt of it. I deny all of the allegations herein. And we can meet at 3pm on Wednesday since sincerely, that's it.

[Ed Mylett]

So reply to the smallest possible, most necessitated item in there, whether that's personal, email, legal, business or otherwise. That's your advice?

[Brendan Burchard]

I've received it. I deny it. Here's the only other thing I need to respond to.

[Ed Mylett]

Really good. All right, so that's dealing with them. Now let's talk about dealing with our lives. So the first thing you wrote was about negotiating as if you matter. And so I want to talk about now about negotiating our lives and getting what we want in life, because that's ultimately where everybody's listening to my show. They want more happiness, more money, more success, more peace of mind, more whatever it might be. So a broad question to begin with. What are some of the keys you believe in life to negotiating the life that you want. What are some of the keys you would suggest?

[Brendan Burchard]

The best lessons that I ever learned myself is I learned this from one of my business. Well, the main business coach that I've had, who's now become one of my best friends, she taught me something. I'm going to tell you what the lesson is and I'm going to tell you what the story was. She taught me that people will think what you tell them to think.

[Ed Mylett]

Yes.

[Brendan Burchard]

And I gotta tell you the story of how she taught me this. And it's actually a great lesson for negotiating, but it's also a great lesson for life. So what happened was I had been practicing law for about eight years, and then I left the practice of law for about two years to go be a financial advisor, wealth Advisor. I spent two years with Morgan Stanley. I got my series, my 66, and I thought, oh, I'll have an easier lifestyle. I had a little child at the time. My daughter, who's now 19, was young, and I was like, oh, I'll have better hours. Which didn't really work out that way. So after about two years, a friend of mine was leaving her law practice and she was moving out of the area. And she said, I've got these clients. If you want, you can take over my client base and start your own own practice. So I was like, okay, well, people are not going to be dropping law practices in my lap on a regular basis. I'm taking this opportunity. So I decide to take over this law practice. And I'm talking to my business coach, and I was like, the people in this town are going to think I am such a flake. Like, you know, this girl's a lawyer now. She's a financial advisor. Now she's back to being a lawyer. Lawyer like Squirrel does not know what she wants. And my business coach said, people will think what you tell them to think. And she said, you can tell them to think that you're a flake and you don't know what you want, or you can tell them to think that you're the only lawyer that has a financial background. So you are actually more qualified than any of the other lawyers in town because, you know, you've got this financial background and what other family law attorney has that?

[Ed Mylett]

So good.

[Brendan Burchard]

And I was like, oh, yeah, I guess I could do that. And so I started to kind of hold myself out as that. And I can't tell you how many people ended up hiring me because that's how I held myself out.

[Ed Mylett]

I love this. I have to tell you something, I have to acknowledge something when, like wisdom is preached. So I just, I, that's brilliant. And just last night I was mentoring, I have a finance. One of the business I'm affiliated was a financial firm. I was mentoring a very young guy last night and I told him, I just want to second what you said. I said, listen, most people are busy with their own lives. You can create the story and if you tell them what to believe, they're going to believe it 98% of the time. I said, I learned this because later in my, my career I ended up working with a series of doctors. And the doctor said to me, said, ed, listen, when you're dealing with doctors, it's different than dealing with other clients. We're really busy. We just want you to tell us what we need to do, what we need to think, and let us do it so we can go back to working with our patients. And I said, really? You want me to kind of. He goes, tell, ask, tell us and ask us simultaneously say things like, obviously we need to take these steps. And you create the frame, pre frame what you're going to tell me, tell me what this means, then mean it, and then when you're done, tell me what you just told me, what it meant. So pre frame, frame it and then post frame it. So I started to do it and everyone was buying. And I said to him about six months later, I said, you know what I found out? It's not just doctors, it's everybody. I should have been doing this the entire time with everything in my life, pre framing what this means for everybody, then framing it. And then when I'm done saying, this is what you just heard and what it meant, and you create the meaning. And so this is something for if you get no lesson out of this entire TV show, what Rebecca just, just told you is absolute truth on how to get what you want in your life. It's key number one in your life. Let me ask you about this number two, when I listen to you and I've watched your content. So Rebecca's got content that's very diverse. She's got stuff on divorce, she's got stuff on negotiation, she's got stuff on narcissism. She's also been a TV personality, which she'll get interviewed when a high profile person's going through something. And so she's learned to communicate in different settings, one on one financial, courtroom, television, podcast. You're an unbelievable communicator. How Much of persuasion for you has just been your personal certainty level, just actual certainty in the way you deliver a message. Are you conscious of that or was that just sort of like a natural gift you had when you started practicing law?

[Brendan Burchard]

My father used to say. My father was from China, actually, and he came over here when he was 14. 14, and he went to Columbia University undergrad and medical school. And, you know, he was the only Chinese guy actually in those days. And, you know, it was a big deal. And he used to say to me, whatever you say, say it with authority and people will believe you. And he just kind of, you know, groomed me that way. Like, even if you don't know these answer, don't lie. Just say, I don't know. I will get you the answer. But you say it with authority, like. And so I don't know, I just think that he was. And even as a girl, like, he just was, like, always believed in me in that way. And I was really, really fortunate to have a father who was. Who believed in me in that way.

[Ed Mylett]

I think there's things. Rebecca, I think some people. I watch this on my show, show all the time. It's fascinating to me that certain people are great at something and they're almost unaware of their greatness at it. And I think this is the case with you. You have a massive degree of certainty when you communicate. It's almost like you have a style when you speak. It's almost like. And I'm going to. I mean, this is a compliment. There's a way in which you deliver a message. My audience is going to nod when I say this. Do you have a style of communicating? It's almost like there's a tone to it that you're almost an idiot if you don't believe what I'm saying right now. That's almost what it sounds like. It's that depth of certainty. It's not arrogance. It's not condescending, but it's an expression of certainty that's almost like you just don't get it if you don't agree with me. That's what it sounds like.

[Brendan Burchard]

Well, I appreciate that. I mean, I certainly haven't always felt that way, though. I mean, for people that have followed me, they know that I've certainly had my share of, you know, stumbles in my life. You know, I got married at 19 the first time. I had three kids by the time I was 22. I dropped out of college. I went, you know, I got divorced. I went back to law school at night you know, I met my husband, my current husband in law school. I got married again. I had another child. I have four kids. You know, so I certainly like have. I feel like I've had my share of, of, you know, bootstrapping and getting, you know, where I need to be. You know, I was bullied as a kid for being half Asian. I talk a lot about that. You know, I've had to deal with these narcissists in my life and you know, I definitely have been. I've tried to be as authentic as I can to so that people understand. That hasn't always come easy for me. You know, I've definitely had to deal with my own struggles for sure, because I want people to understand like I'm a human being too. And if I could do it, anyone can do it.

[Ed Mylett]

It's amazing what you've accomplished. I mean, I don't. Everyone just flew by. But this is a woman who's married at 19, three kids, drops out of school and you. Fast forward. Bob Shapiro writes the foreword to her book. One of the most powerful, influential attorneys of all time. I've met Bob few times. Founded LegalZoom. She's television personality. She's a sought after. She's one of the sought after experts in the world on negotiation. And it's a remarkable journey. And I'm curious, did you, have you done anything specifically that you would share with us to work on your self confidence? Because you are, at least externally, a very strong, very confident woman. But now I'm picturing this little girl who's half Asian getting bullied at school. I'm picturing this mom running around the house with three screaming babies at any given time in her early 20s, probably not in the best marriage at that time. You know, I'm picturing this, you know, precious lady at those times of her life. And then you flash forward and we have what we have in front of us right now. What have you done to change you, Change your confidence?

[Brendan Burchard]

Oh, I mean, I always joke like that, you know, like I never leave my thoughts unsupervised.

[Ed Mylett]

Whoa, whoa. Very good. What do you mean by that?

[Brendan Burchard]

Audio books. You know, just always making sure I'm working on self development and surrounding myself with the right people. Defending my light with my life at all times. Can you say that again?

[Ed Mylett]

What did you say there? Say that again, please.

[Brendan Burchard]

Oh, it's one of my mantras. I defend my light with my life. Life.

[Ed Mylett]

I know it is, but I wanted them to hear it. So what do you mean when you say that?

[Brendan Burchard]

You know, I believe that. I know. I'm not going to say I believe I know that we are beings of energy and that we are vibrational, you know, beings and we. I mean, you know, I talked about this with John Gordon. I mean, it's so funny. I'd read the Energy Bus years ago, and then when Irwin introduced us, I was like, you know, I know I must have manifested that because I had read his book so long ago. And, you know, I'm very, very conscious about keeping my vibrational energy at a certain level, so that I'm always attracting, because I know that like attracts like. And that you. You have to keep your vibrational energy at a certain level. Otherwise I'm conscious of it, you know, dipping or. Or negative thoughts coming into my life. I think, well, you better get rid of that unless you want more of that coming in, you know, so how can I pivot this right now? What can I be listening to? What can I be looking at? What can I do to be pivoting that? It's not that I ever, never have bad thoughts or I never have bad people, or I never have, you know, dark, you know, times or whatever. I mean, everybody does because we are human beings. Beings. I'm just conscious of it now. I get. I'm aware of when it happens, and I have an arsenal of tools that I use to go to combat it now.

[Ed Mylett]

I love it. See, awareness of our thoughts helps them lose their power over us. And it's such a critical key that you've just said, just being aware of your thoughts helps the negative ones lose their power over you. I just interviewed an MMA fighter named Dustin Poirier. And I said, because it comes to emotions, the way the world works, everybody, just so you kind of understand how you can change. What she's describing is, it's not the events in our life that define our lives, it's the meaning we attach to them. So what happens is an event takes place, a conversation, a meeting, a failure, a setback, whatever you think it is, you attach a meaning to it that gives you an emotion. And based on an emotion, you take an action. So if you can go all the way back and attach the right meaning to an event, that will change the emotion you experience and change the action you take. And I was asking this fighter, he just beat Conor McGregor. I said, do you get scared and have anxiety and worry before you get into the Octagon? He goes, every time, still fearful for my life, Afraid, worried. He said, those thoughts never go away. But he said, they do become more familiar and he becomes more familiar with those emotions, more familiar with those thoughts. And then he's in control of them, they're not in control of him. You don't have to believe everything you think everybody. And this idea that Rebecca just gave you, that is absolute truth, that your vibrational frequency, the energy level that you're moving out in your life is deeply affected by the emotions you're experiencing and the meanings you attach. So please be conscious of that. She's 1 trillion percent right about that. Hey guys, when's the last time you knew you needed to go to the doctor but you pushed it off? You made an excuse? I'm going to tell you a specific one. With me, for about a year I've had this thing kind of growing on my earlobe and I kept putting it off and putting it off because we had moved and I didn't know what my new doctor was. And then Zocdoc started sponsoring my show and I'm like, now that's a killer idea. And so I use Zoc Doc to find the guy who ended up doing the treatment on my ear and removing this thing that was there that turned out to be pre cancer. Zoc Doc's a free app and a website where you can search and compare high quality in network doctors and click instantly to book an appointment. We're talking about booking in network appointments with more than 100,000 doctors across every specialty from mental health to dental health, primary care, urgent care and more. So stop putting off doctor appointments and go to Zocdoc.com mylet to find and instantly book a top rated doctor today. That's z o c doc.com mylet zocdoc.com mylet so I gotta be honest with you, anything you see in my business life that forward faces the public somehow. Shopify has had their hand in and has been involved with now for about a decade. Shopify handles the entire interactive customer experience. They help track my metrics, by the way, at the register when people buy, they've upgraded for most people about 30% more buying at the point of contact, at the end of sale. It's smooth, it's professional, it makes you look like a pro. Small businesses with one or two people, up to businesses with thousands of employees, all use Shopify for their checkout, their customer experience and even more marketing now. So you can do this as well. Upgrade your business to get the same checkout we use with Shopify. Sign up for your $1 per month trial period at shopify.com mylet all lowercase go to shopify.com mylet to upgrade your selling today. Shopify.com mylet very short intermission here, folks. I'm glad you're enjoying the show so far. Don't forget to follow the show on Apple and Spotify. Links are in the show notes. Now on to our next guest. Today is going to be an experience that you are going to enjoy so much. I certainly know that I am. And the reason for that experience certainly isn't me. It's because of this lady to my left here. She's an incredible woman. And my crew will tell you I've been kind of giddy all morning about this conversation and looking forward to to it for so long. She is an incredible poet, speaker, author, but I think she's become one of the great thought leaders in the world as well.

[Nezua Zabian]

Thank you. That means a lot.

[Ed Mylett]

It's true. You make me think. And so this is Nezhua Zabian, everybody. Nezua, thank you for being here.

[Nezua Zabian]

Thank you for having me.

[Ed Mylett]

You did say that you have to watch this in your relationships, that he was a narcissist and you're an empath.

[Nezua Zabian]

Yes.

[Ed Mylett]

And this is a combination that is really not good for the empath in a relationship. So just give everyone just a minute on so they can identify it if they're in one.

[Nezua Zabian]

Yeah.

[Ed Mylett]

What that looks like what a narcissist does and what an empath does and why it's no bueno.

[Nezua Zabian]

Yes. So an empath is the perfect victim for a narcissist. Because when we were talking about you complete me, it is a complementary thing. It really, if you imagine a heart, that's just the way that you would draw a heart and then an inverse heart and just put them together. They're very complementary. So a narcissist makes a lot of mistakes and looks for someone to make excuses for them. An empath, by nature, makes excuses for people. A narcissist needs fixing, needs help. And an empath naturally wants to fix people and wants to help people, gives love unconditionally, blames themselves for anything that happened. And the narcissist is always blaming and projecting blame. So when he would blame me for things, I would accept that and say, yes, you're right. When he would say, look at the way you're standing. Look at yourself, look at your body language, like, who do you think you are? When he would say those things to me, I would think I'm a nobody. You're right. Because we as empaths, we take things, we Absolutely absorb. And then we give all of ourselves. And when you're completely depleted from giving everything within you, you have no defense mechanism to tell that person, that's not true about me. Because you're completely depleted. They take everything out of you.

[Ed Mylett]

Yes.

[Nezua Zabian]

That's just how narcissists are. So as an empath, you would be called one of their supplies. They come to you for whatever they need. And so that is what I was.

[Ed Mylett]

Yes. And empaths love, obviously the empathy play. They love to build homes and narcissists. And so you have to really watch this in your relationship.

[Nezua Zabian]

You have to really think that you can change them and you cannot change them.

[Ed Mylett]

You can change you, but you cannot change them.

[Nezua Zabian]

You can change you, but you can't change them. And there might be short periods of time, like here's the thing, and I'm sure you know this, but when you go through an experience where there's somebody who's very toxic to your well being at a moment when you're contemplating leaving, you think back to those very brief moments when he or she expressed to you love in their own way. And you say they can do that. I know they can.

[Ed Mylett]

They just haven't awakened it within them.

[Nezua Zabian]

Right?

[Ed Mylett]

Yes.

[Nezua Zabian]

And so you hang on to those little moments hoping that if there's one thing that you do differently. Right. You put the blame on yourself. They changed because I changed. So if I go back to the person I was when they first met me, maybe they will go back to the person they were when they first met me. Or they will treat me that way or that moment will happen again. We hang on to those moments.

[Ed Mylett]

Oh my God.

[Nezua Zabian]

When they've completely moved on.

[Ed Mylett]

That's brilliant. And you just helped the millions of people with. I hope so, by the way. That is absolutely, totally true. That's exactly how the mind works. You go back to these little glimpses.

[Nezua Zabian]

Yes.

[Ed Mylett]

You think if I could go back to this other.

[Dr. Drew Pinsky]

Wow.

[Ed Mylett]

Jesus. Really good. Let's talk about a couple things. We're helping people. Thank you by the way, because you don't need to be doing this. And I want to say one thing about her speaking too. Nezuwa is an incredible speaker.

[Nezua Zabian]

Thank you.

[Ed Mylett]

And I told her before we started. The reason is she has, by the way, when she comes, speak to your request. Just so you know, nobody moves. Were we talking about that? You have the most dynamic screaming speaker in the world. This woman walks out on stage and I'm telling you, no one moves. No one's grabbing their cell phone, no One's looking around. No one's using the restroom. She has this ability to have presence in silence like no speaker that I've seen, and she uses silence. She's comfortable in silence because the caliber of her content and the beauty of the way she writes things, she will literally get up there at some points and just read to you what she's written, and you'll be captivated by having it. Have hearing it come out of the mouth of the actual author. So I want everyone to know, you can go to her website, you can go to her social media. You're talking about a speaker that will reach people. And I just know both men and women hearing this. You've made so many points that are so profound. I have such a unique woman here today. Been a fan from a distance for a long time. She's a global parenting expert, but I actually think she's more than that. I think she's a transformation expert. And she's also great on tv, too. And she was just giving me some advice on how to be great myself on tv. So. Jo Frost, welcome to the program.

[Rebecca Zung]

Thank you. Thank you for having me.

[Ed Mylett]

Ed, this notion with the. I'm just curious of your feelings about this. Pushing a child. That's not the word I want to use, but I'm just going to. I think you'll know what I mean. I think everybody listening or watching, watching. Will. Where's that line of getting your child to do their best and pushing them to the point where they're like my children in sports? If you want to have a study and parents needing some help, go to a youth sporting event and watch particular parents with their children. Right. It's a sometimes very scary thing to observe. Almost like they're projecting all their hopes and dreams onto this child that they didn't achieve. And there's this. This unbelievable pressure that's put on. And then there was kind of me. I was almost the other way, where oftentimes I felt like maybe I would surprise many people that I didn't nudge, encourage accountability with my children quite enough to get the best out of them.

[Rebecca Zung]

Well, I think maybe there was a balance there for you. Excuse me. Maybe there was a balance there for you in a very conscious way. Way. Because we don't want that narcissistic parenting. We don't want that child having to perform and to always do good. Hey, look at me. Can you see me now? Can you see me now? Can you hear me now? Based on performance? Because I believe that, you know, men and women grow up and you know, they kind of lose themselves like who they are, you know, it's always about being this type of person so that you're liked so that people think you're the cool guy or the cool chick, you know, and we can, I think we have to ask ourselves as parents, are we living vicariously through our children? What make us feel? Does that mean that we can say, hey, well my child, you know, made, you know, made the finals. And you know, again, that to me is very narcissistic.

[Ed Mylett]

Right.

[Rebecca Zung]

Because it's then teaching the child that, you know, we'll love you on terms and conditions not unconditionally, but that has a major impact on an adult when they're older with respect to them kind of having this mask and really not knowing who they are and accepting, you know, who they are and being okay with other people being okay with that as well.

[Ed Mylett]

Yes. So guys that doesn't have a child, I want you to hear, maybe help you understand yourself better. I had loving parents, but one of the things I was conscious of with my children was even when they did achieve, to acknowledge it and love them, but not such a dosage that was so in contrast to my day to day love of them. Let me tell you all why I grew up. At some point it was my parents fault at all. It was just the way I read things that I get attention, acknowledgement and love when I achieve. So I attach achievement, winning, getting the first place, doing this, doing that to my identity and feeling loved. Be very careful. I think you would acknowledge, Joe, doing that with your children where it is at one level most of the time, then they achieve its way up here, then it's back down here again. Something we're not conscious of. True.

[Rebecca Zung]

Yes, absolutely. And I also feel that if parents can be less distracted with all the noise and the technology around them. Because listen, it's not just kids that are on their phones, it's parents as well. If we're more in tune to our children, then we should learn to be more confident in trusting our gut because we know, we know when our children are being lazy and not wanting to show up or when they're just procrastinating. Like there comes a moment when you know, because you've seen it, you know, they can do better, but they're just rushing it or they can't be bothered right now or they want to go out with their friends or just not interested, or maybe they're tired, you know, because they've had a stressful couple of weeks. So again, when we're more in tune, and that takes us being more observant, that means us not being distracted by outside stuff. But then we can really connect on a level where we see every detail, and we start to see more as we connect intuitively with our children. And I want parents to, you know, like I said, you know, trust your gut. Like, if you're in a rut, like, trust your guts. Because, you know, that's never normally wrong. Parents normally know when something's off, when it's just off tilt. They normally know.

[Ed Mylett]

I love that. You know, it's funny about this presence thing, because I teach it. I say, put your phone down when you go to dinner. We're at dinner two nights ago, and so I want everyone to give themselves some grace, because I think it's something you have to be intentional about all the time in the world today. So I'm fortunate that when I go out, sometimes people want to come up and talk to me or take a picture of those kinds of things. Sometimes that breaks my routine. So, anyway, we're at dinner. I just want to share this with everybody. We're at dinner the other night, two nights ago, and I looked and I watched this family, and I just noticed them, and they were all on their phone. Dad's head was down in his phone, Mom's head, and the two kids were. They weren't looking at each other. They were typing. And, I mean. And went, gosh, that's not the way it should be. I feel bad for them. And then my eyes glanced back to our table. My phone was up because I had just done an Instagram post. My daughter was on her phone. My son was checking the golf score. And I went, now we're doing it. So it's something you have to be vigilant about all the time. Everybody. I know that I do. And I want to ask you about this idea. Let me just jump in here. Do you have, like, two or three best practices? You go, hey, you want to be a better parent? Here's two or three. Three things you should be doing or thinking. What would you say?

[Rebecca Zung]

I think one you have to. I think one to be is confidence. It's all about confidence, right?

[Ed Mylett]

And how do you be confident in something? Maybe you grew up not in a good one, and no one taught you how to do it in school, and all you've got is Joe Frost, get one of her books. Or how do you display that confidence?

[Brendan Burchard]

Well, you could.

[Rebecca Zung]

I think it's practice. I think people are hard on themselves. Like, they expect they want it right now, immediate gratification, like they want to be able to just pick something up and get it right. They get impatient with themselves. But, you know, what I've learned has been over thousands and thousands of hours in the trenches with families and lots of different types of families. So I say in order to build that confidence, you know, one, you have to be realistic with identifying what those challenges are. You have to face them head on. You can't run from them. You have to be real with yourself. You know, what are we really dealing with here? That's the mirror. And then secondly, you got to have an action plan. Like, how are you now? How are you now going to change this? Like, how are you going to take the first step on the ladder? What are you going to do? Are you going to buy a book? Are you going to take an online course? Are you going to call somebody up? People call me, right? Are you going to call up and we're going to do the work together? And are you going to make a commitment? Because you can talk a good game for five minutes, but can you walk it? Are you going to commit to the changes? You know, and that's really important. Like, when I help the families that you see me help on the show, they give me their undivided time and attention, and they are committed to the process of wanting to change. Now.

[Dr. Drew Pinsky]

The journey.

[Rebecca Zung]

Journey challenges them. And there are hurdles, but it's not looking at the hurdle or the brick wall as unclimbable. You can climb that wall if you want to. You'll find a way. So it's got to be. Everything's got to be about stay open, stay open. This is about us working as a team and families get into a space where it becomes that it's you, it's you. Like you're on the same side. So how will we talk about an issue together, to resolve it together, you know, and really taking into consideration how the other person is feeling and why they're showing up that way. And again, it comes back to ego. A lot of that ego gets in the room where it's about being right rather than really being happy with what the outcome could be. You know, it's about an immature. It's about somebody feeling slighted and the communication is off where somebody felt they weren't able to communicate how they felt without being attacked or without hearing a defense. So again, it's unblocking. It's unblocking for those parents so that they can continue moving forward. But you've got to Commit. You've got to give the time. You've got to surrender and identify what those issues are, and you've got to keep going because we all come off track. But you got to get back on the horse, you know? You got to get back on it, you know, and we. We. We do tend to helicopter parent. We don't want our children to feel disappointed. We don't want our children to feel upset. We don't want our children to feel angry. So we pacify. We don't want them to feel. What makes you mentally stronger. You know, a kid's got to fall apart a bike and graze their knee and feel the pinch and feel that little bit going on the knee to make it better. Ouch. Right? To get better at their coordination and ride, like, sometimes you've got to fear the fear and do it anyway, right? And face it head on. Recently we had our grandson. You know, my husband's son. Son, right. So we had him. He's got his helmet. Helmet on, and he's ready to ride his bike. You know, husband taught him how to ride his bike. He was, well proud of himself. I want to go out my bike and ride it down the street. We're like, okay. And I said, he's going too fast and he's gonna fall. So my husband was like, eli, slow down, slow down. You're gonna fall. I said, nothing. And he's looking at me like. My husband's looking at me like, you're not saying anything. I'm like, is going to fall. And when he falls, it's how we're going to react to that that's going to make the difference in him getting back up on that bike and riding. And he fell and he grazed and he cried. And we said, you know, oh, look, come and let's have a look at that. But as soon as we did that, we're like, all right, buddy, so you've had your first fall. Get back on that bike. Let's do it. You know? And he was like, all right, it's all done. Let's go. And there he was.

[Ed Mylett]

What a magic lesson. What a magic lesson. Shoot. Where were you 15 years ago? That's the shoot. I should have been reading one of these books of yours. What a magic lesson that is. I got to tell you that, by the way, you want to raise a kid that can stand out in the world. You do a little bit of what you just said. That's a huge difference.

[Rebecca Zung]

So I got snowplow. You know, we've heard a lot of it, you know, parents snowplow plowing, making it easier, you know, where, look, you can be really, really intelligent, but that's only going to get you so far. Like the grit and the character to not. To. To not give in. Every time you get knocked down, you back up again. Like that grit is what's going to take you the extra five miles. And that's about having mental strength as well. I like to post that the other day. Don't give up on your children. So you teach them never to give up on themselves. Right.

[Ed Mylett]

That's so powerful. I did do a couple things right, like you're making me feel good. But a couple times there's things at school where the teacher wasn't unfair. It was unfair to one of my kids or something. And every parent's going in, negotiating with the teacher. And I remember telling my wife, I said, you know what, let's just let them handle this. And even if they are being treated a little bit unfair, they're going to have this happen in their lives when we're not around. Let them navigate this, Let them deal with it. So it's not that I wouldn't intervene in something if it was dramatic, but much intervention. There's not enough of letting them metaphorically fall in life. Right. And you're doing such a disservice to your kids. Now, as a parent, is there a way to give our children more confidence? Like one of the things I wanted from my children when they left my home, I wanted them to have their faith or their moral compass. I wanted them to have self confidence. And I actually wanted them to be really good communicators, which I'm. Which I also put under that banner. The ability to be present with people and listen. I think a high form of communication is listening. Yeah. Anything that you recommend to a parent who's listening to this, or by the way, it could even apply to an individual. I think you did it okay.

[Rebecca Zung]

I think you've hit those points already. You know, being able to teach by example. Communication starts with listening first, you know, so this your style of communication, having the patience to listen to give children a platform to recognize the difference between them voicing their opinion and not mistaking it for back chat. Sometimes I hear a lot of parents say, my kids back chatting. And I'm like, no. Back chat is when you deliver your opinion and you're insulting and you're cocky and you have an attitude. You know, that's not the case. You know, when a child is giving their opinion respectfully, that's them voicing how they feel. And we can mistake that sometimes for back chat. So we also must give our children the breathing space to learn themselves. Not everything has to be structured like that. Genuine self esteem and confidence comes from them having the ability to work things out and do things themselves and to see that they're capable and they have the ability to be able to do that. Just like you exercise with the school, not everything's about intervening. Like step back, like don't try and fix everything. Don't try and snow plow and make everything good because life isn't like that outside the house. They're going to struggle. And it goes with, I feel it goes with a very delicate line in teaching our children resilience and teaching them the importance of still recognizing emotionally when they're overwhelmed and needing to voice and to talk and knowing that they can come to you as children when they're, when they're struggling, when they're feeling overwhelmed. You know, there's a very, there's a, there's a very fine line. There's a balance between that. Because I do want children, I do want children to have mental resilience, you know, and we are caught, I believe, in a time where we have a generation of people that wouldn't communicate as well. They wouldn't have had a higher emotional intelligence. Intelligence that just suck it up and deal with it, you know, and then children can't talk and then you have this whole generation of touchy feely and it's all about the feelings and then no self discipline. Like none at all. So really the compromise is meeting in the middle. It's truly about recognizing that it's not one particular parenting style. It's being able to think very quickly on your feet, to look at scenarios that's happened before because parenting is also moving target. So look at everything. Why is the child behaving this way emotionally? What are the circumstances surrounding that? What is the best way for me to respond and not be reactional? You know, we can then build, you know, certainly this, this infrastructure in our homes that really honor the importance of mental resilience, but an emotional compassion and empathy. But our children know that they can always come to us, even if they. Which they will in their older teenage years. They'll make decisions and they'll screw up and they'll learn by it.

[Ed Mylett]

I have to tell you, Joe, you're so brilliant because I love being vulnerable. That's something I didn't do a good job of. I did not do a good enough job I set standards. I was loving. We had our faith. We had goals as a family. But one thing I didn't do, that. Teddy Mellencamp actually pointed this out to me, One of my dear friends recently.

[Rebecca Zung]

Recently.

[Ed Mylett]

And she said, well, does so and so feel like they can call you and say, hey, I've made this mistake. I need your help? I said, I think so. Well, have you told them that? No. And I promise you, they don't know that because they want to make you proud, because you're a good example, because of the. So as you as a parent, please make sure you hear what she just said. The other thing you said that's just profound, that made an impact on me is, why is my child. Child acting this way? I didn't ask myself those questions until the last few years. When they were little. I wish I asked myself, why are they behaving like this? Why are they acting out like this as opposed to just reacting? I think in families, correct me if I'm wrong, but because of our proximity to each other and the regular frequency in which we're together, there's like this boiling pot of reactions happening all the time. They do something, you react. You do something, they react, and it's reacting all the time. Whereas in business or in other areas of our lives or even with our friends, we're like, let me think about what I want to say here. Let me process this. Let me be intentional to some extent. But in families, we are reacting all the time, unless we're conscious of not reacting and asking ourselves these questions. Don't you think it's even more true in a family structure than anywhere else that the reaction takes place?

[Rebecca Zung]

Yes, because we're emotionally invested. Because, you know, this is our family. And there's nothing more sensitive to a family when you start talking about their partner or their children, because it's a reflection of us, and we start to think about that. And what does that say about us? Again, it's the ego. What does it say about us?

[Ed Mylett]

This is the Ed Milan show.