 Yesterday in my live stream, the conversation of narcissist and narcissism came up. So I thought this would be a great opportunity to lean into a conversation. And I brought a good friend of mine, Marybeth Schroeder, to join us to talk about this. Hey, Marybeth. Hi, Jonathan. Thanks for inviting me. You're very welcome. Now, before we get started, well, I wanna share something I read yesterday, and I'd like this to be the jumping off point for our conversation. One of you lovely followers wrote the following. She said, Thank you, Jonathan, for tackling the narrative about narcissists. I had never encountered that word being used so much until I started to follow you and other dating coaches. I completely agree with you that that is such an overused word, and it seems that people throw it around too easily. Throughout my pretty long life, I have met thousands and thousands of people and not a single one of them that I would call a narcissist. Accusing someone of being a narcissist is a very serious allegation. I do not take such terms that describe illness lightly. I wanna repeat that. I do not take such terms as describing an illness very lightly. I think we all need more understanding, empathy, and acceptance of each other's flaws. And yes, we should all be looking in the mirror before we put a label on someone. Thank you, Jonathan. Thank you for being you. So with that said, what are your thoughts on that, Mary Beth? Well, I love it. She definitely nailed it. And that's something that I'm also sensitive to. There are real narcissists, but it's a personality disorder. It's actually in the DSM of the fifth edition. It's the diagnostic, what is it, how does it go? Diagnostic statistical manual of mental disorders. So it's a true mental disorder. And if you look it up, there are criteria that you have to match. And it's not like you can just, like we see people doing all the time lately, it's, oh my, Axie is such a narcissist, or she's such a narcissist, or, you know, I think I hear a lot more of women's calling men narcissists. Yes, exactly. There is some level of superficiality, certainly, in the Instagram world, in the selfie world. And let me share what I shared in the video. And by the way, those for watching really quickly, why I brought Mary Beth is she is a life coach. She specializes in addiction. She specializes in narcissist disorder. There's lots of specialties that she has. I'm probably over exaggerating or undervaluing your work, but you're a fantastic coach. You're someone who I can connect with on a regular basis. So Mary Beth, I have gaslit people. I have loved bomb women. I have been, I have shown a lack of empathy in certain circumstances. I have gotten defensive. I can turn things around. I sometimes think the world revolves around me. And I always excuse being a Leo for that because that is supposedly a trade of a Leo. So why, if I probably check off every single box of a narcissist, am I a narcissist? I'd like to think I'm not. Yeah, it's more about frequency and patterns of behavior. Not like, cause that's something that I'm really glad you just asked because we all have the ability to act like a little narcissist. We all have tendencies, right? Like I can be a brat, especially when we're in a fight. Think about like, you're in a relationship, Jonathan. You and Marie, if you get in an argument, we can revert back to our childhood brain and sound completely irrational and illogical in the moment. But that doesn't mean that's who we are as a person. We go back to where we get defensive and it's kind of like some people use it as a coping mechanism, but it doesn't mean they are an actual narcissist with the personality disorder. So we do all need to stop right now throwing that word around because unless there's actually, you have to go in and you're evaluated. There's structured interviews. It takes time, they don't just say after one time of meeting you, you're a narcissist and this is by someone who specializes in it. There is a way to be diagnosed and it's not by your ex-wife or your ex-husband. Yeah, so now here's something interesting. So I suspect that there is a significant percentage of self-centric people. I think in the dating realm, people can be very myopic and only focused on their own needs. And certainly I do not wanna discount any person who has truly been to the extent experienced true narcissistic behavior towards them and they didn't have the tools and resources to navigate their own self-love in this particular case. I think though, and I want your take on the following, I think because there's so much content out in the YouTube universe. And there's some people that I admire watching their content about narcissistic behavior. I think there's an addiction to watching this content so much that it creates a story that every man they ever meet is a narcissist or most men they ever meet and they've been to the extent a victim or experienced it. I wonder if that's fueling this narrative like the woman who wrote to me that everyone's a narcissist. I think so. You even posted a meme about this the other day on like pop psychology and people take things and run with it way too much. And then we're all labeling each other. And we don't, and I wanna go circle back to what you said. We don't wanna invalidate anyone who's actually, listen, I've been with an actual narcissist. So I do understand. And that's almost why it's annoying to see the word thrown around so much is because it's like, hang on, like how do you know? But- By the way, can I read that? I want you to finish that thought but can I read that meme for everyone really quickly? Yes, that's a great one, I love it. Pop psychology is not psychology. Everyone you dislike is not a narcissist. Every unpleasant experience is not trauma. Having needs does not make you codependent, disagreement is not gaslighting. Conflict is not abuse. Taking offense is not being triggered. Everything does not need to be normalized. Speaking like an HR memo is not self-awareness. Yeah, speaking like an HR memo. Is that what you said? Yeah, exactly. Yeah, yeah, that's funny. That's perfect. And when it comes to gaslighting, we should first like, let's define that because I want to talk about that's a really good one. I think I even commented on that meme, the same thing. But gaslighting is when someone intentionally tries to make you feel like you're insane. Like they will tell you, they know what they're doing. They want to throw you off balance. It's a form of psychological abuse, okay? That's real gaslighting. So- Raise my hand, question teacher. Question. So I can hold a different perspective than my partner on something. In fact, this just happened where, and I can't remember the specific, I really could, but I said something like you said this and she goes, no, I didn't say this. I go, no, you did say this nice. She said, no, I didn't say this. And, you know, I wasn't trying to convince her being wrong. It's just in that particular case, I interpreted the circumstances this way. Yeah. Is that gaslighting? No, that's perception. It's when someone intentionally knows that they're messing with your brain. Okay. So they're going out of their way to intentionally make you feel like you're going crazy. So that's very different. What you're talking about is her perception versus your perception. I don't think she was trying to drive you insane. No. Right, so that's- But it was driving me insane because I was right. I'm just kidding. Yeah, it might drive you insane in that way because you remember it differently and you're being serious and she's being serious. And that happens all the time. Like, you know, like when people, that's why people can experience the same thing and there's so many different, you know, perceptions and people can have two traumas exactly the same. And one person attaches this deep meaning and it takes over their whole life and another person doesn't think anything of it, you know? So it's everybody's different. So I want to make sure that we spend some time, you know, actually answering the title. It says, if he does this, you know you're with a narcissist. And we just laid out some examples of how I checked the boxes of being, you know, narcissistic experience, if you will. I don't want to call traits, you know, when I've loved bomb, it's an experience, you know? When I've turned something around because my perception was different, that wasn't gaslighting, that was an experience. When I've lacked empathy, you know, that was an experience. Where's, you know, we've all experienced and we've all done narcissistic thing. How do we differentiate very early on that if we're with a narcissist, then what do you do about it? Well, like when you just said, when you love a bomb, it's an experience, explain to me. So do you mean you were just feeling it in the moment and you weren't intending to mess with this woman's head? You were just really feeling excited about it. Yeah, I don't, yeah, chemistry. I mean, I don't, and by the way, in the hundreds of first dates I have ever had, I'm sure I've experienced luster limerence in that moment and I felt like whatever was coming out my mouth was real. It wasn't until the chemicals were, you know, dissipated that I realized, oh, wait a minute, I didn't mean any of those things, you know, but I got caught up in the chemical moment. So that's what's different. So like someone who's an actual narcissist will actually almost be, well, not almost. They do groom their partner, they groom them. They intentionally are love bombing and it's a pattern and they do it over and over and it's a way of getting their narcissistic supply. So they're going to love bomb with the intention of building you up. Okay. So that later on they can tear you down. I think you even said you had a woman do this to you before. Yeah, actually good memory. I had, I'll never forget it was right after my divorce a couple of years. I was actually at a very low point in my life. And I remember on our second, not our second date, but our third or fourth interaction and we went out of town, she said to me, I love you. Now, this person was highly successful. I mean, very accomplished, successful millionaire, very gorgeous and I was feeling rather well in my life. And so the minute this person I put up on a pedestal said, I love you, I took and ran with it. By the way, the only reason why I believe she was a narcissist was simply because she couldn't walk past a mirror without literally idolizing herself. I don't even think that's one of the criteria, Jonathan. Well, no, no, think about it. Narcissists fell in love with their reflection. So narcissists, excuse me. So that was my- Someone could technically be in love with the way they look and still not have any of the criteria, to be honest. This was my own self-diagnosis. I am not a victim of that experience. I'm grateful for that experience. I wouldn't be a coach today if it wasn't for that experience. I wouldn't have been able to go seek help if it wasn't for that experience. So I am incredibly grateful whether she was or not, although I could check the boxes that she checked off a lot of those things because she's not diagnosed. I don't want to necessarily characterize her as that. At the same time, I am ridiculously grateful for experiencing that. Because of the benefit it brought into my life. I think when you talked about her last time, the reason I thought the narcissism thing is because you said she crushed your spirit. She put you on a pedestal and then crushed your spirit. And that's definitely one of the things. They will use your vulnerabilities against you. There's a feeling of self-entitlement almost like in a delusional way where they have to be around the most special people. There's a preoccupation with that actually with success or beauty. So you're right. That is one of the- No, both the beauty and success was something that there was a preoccupation. Yeah, so I'm not saying she wasn't, but I'm saying that wouldn't be the like that. I think we see that a lot. You're right. A lot of people are narcissists if that was it. But they have this, they have to be admired. They have to be like, and a lot of this comes from when they were children, they were either overly praised for doing well or overly criticized for not doing well. And it creates this, it's actually pretty sad because if you think about it, it's programming. It's conditioned. And this is a lot of the reason why it's so hard to, go ahead. Go ahead. Something interesting, you said not being praised. No, being overly praised. No, that was one, but the opposite of that is nothing. Oh, not being criticized. Yeah, so interesting enough, my mother overly criticized me. And to the extent that I do have a dependency on validation, I'm aware of my, for lack of a better word, shortcomings, if you will. But I am aware that I can exhibit a dependency on validation because yes, in my childhood, I was rather over criticized by my mother. Right, and then usually it's kind of like an unpredictable type of parental caregiving is where some, like sometimes you're praised and sometimes you're criticized and you don't know. So you kind of, you do get addicted to that validation because what do I have to do to get my, to get that praise again, right? It's becomes a coping mechanism. It really is. You kind of like... I think in the case of the realm that we're talking about, I think Instagram profiles fits this narrative and certainly for women, particularly, I think men in their professional capacities, by achieving some level of financial success. And while this is true for both genders, I'm just kind of characterizing this. The thing is, and again, I wanted this to be a discussion. So I do believe that the term narcissist is overused and then yet at the same time, a person might have experienced either characteristics of a narcissist or true narcissism. What can a person do before they ever meet a potential narcissist to actually repel a narcissist? That's, see, that's where I'd like to dive in. So if everyone's talked about, yes, I've had 10 narcissists in my lifetime. Well, what can we do so we avoid that in the future? So this is a journey I had to go through. Okay. And you do want to get to this point and this is not to invalidate anybody's experience, but if we keep talking about it and focusing on it. So this, like I said, I teach law of attraction and this is one of the main things. Energetically, if you keep whatever you talk about, whatever you focus on, you're attracting cause you have an energetic spark. So you literally, you don't have to be a narcissist. Like a lot of people don't understand law of attraction cause it drives me crazy. Like your pop psychology thing drove you crazy. You know, like I see so much misinformation on law of attraction, but the truth is, is the more that you focus on something, you have an energetic spark. It doesn't mean you are, you're attracting liars and cheaters and narcissists because you're one. You don't always attract what you are. You attract anything that you focus on and have an energetic spark towards it. So if you don't want to meet a narcissist, quit focusing on those people, quit focusing on the old story, on your victim story. And that doesn't mean you weren't a victim, by the way, but eventually we need to get to a point where we heal and forgive. And even some of your people are not gonna like that I'm saying this, but have compassion, have compassion. Cause like I was saying earlier, it does come from childhood. This was once a baby that had a clean slate and it's programming, it's conditioning. Like I did, I do know that like some neuroscientists will say that people who have a sensitive temperament are more inclined and that makes sense to me because if you have a sensitive temperament, if you're born that way with that temperament and we are born with a temperament, then you will kind of attach meanings. You're gonna attach more magnified feelings and emotions and you're gonna react differently than a child who, you know, isn't as sensitive. Does that make sense? So with that, because you're just literally born, and then you're gonna attach meanings that aren't really there, you're gonna be more reactive. Yeah. Does that make sense? No, that makes total sense. So we are a product of our environment to some degree and our upbringing and our conditioning. Does a narcissist truly know, do they even know they're a narcissist? No, mostly no, mostly they do not. And when they're told, they don't believe it. But they can, like there are, like how you are saying that you were, there are people who they can become more self-aware. Now, usually they're, if they go to a therapist, it's not because someone's like accusing them of being a narcissist, so don't do that, guys. The more you accuse your partner being a narcissist, the more they're just gonna get in self-defense mode and turn you off, they're gonna shut you down, they won't hear you. But usually when a narcissist ends up discovering that they are on their own, let's say, they have usually like a coexisting mental issue, like anxiety or depression, and they end up going to a therapist for something else that they might, you know, really need help with. And just so you know, narcissists actually have very fragile egos. They come across as quite arrogant, but it's the opposite going on inside. So anxiety is very common for a narcissist to have. And, you know, the lacking empathy to me is the most disturbing part. And that's like, that's a real criteria. Like you are gonna put your own, your, like your own goals over, you know, you're gonna take advantage of other people to reach your goals. Yeah. Narcissists, you put yourself above people, you wanna have power over people. And this is different, like with gaslighting, I wanted to make sure that we hit this is because trying to make someone think they're crazy is different than, let's say, Jonathan, that you're just trying to get me to bend to your will. And I set a healthy boundary. You call me a narcissist because I'm trying to set a boundary. Like we're allowed to have, you know, you know, like, like I'm not selfish because you want your way and vice versa. You know, it's natural, it's human nature for us to all be a little bit selfish and act like brats sometimes. That doesn't make us a narcissist. I was just thinking, you know, bend to my will. And I'm gonna, I'm gonna call myself out on something. Certainly in my early stage of dating, I dated somewhat unconsciously with the desire to have sex with most everybody I went on a first date with. And certainly I would use alcohol, not flushing it down their throat and not sticking a roof inside their drink. But I would certainly, you know, I would, I've libations certainly, you know, can cause someone to reduce their boundaries. Now I'm being selfish in this way. I'm gonna own it. I was being selfish. At the same time, you know, I respected boundaries, okay? I might push a boundary, but I respected boundaries. Some people don't respect boundaries. I'm fully clear of that. Does a narcissist even recognize a boundary? No, and that's something that I would like to share with anybody who feels like they might be with a narcissist who's trying to have power over you, manipulate you, gaslight you, things like that. The number one thing you need to do is speak up for yourself and set those healthy boundaries. That's like so important and you need to call them out because a lot of times what we do is we wanna avoid conflict and keep the peace because guess what, it's easier. It's easier just to keep the peace, but nothing's gonna change. And I do wanna give people hope because narcissists can change, but there nothing will change if you don't set healthy boundaries and you don't speak up for yourself, nothing. You have to do that. Okay, so if I glean this and I wanna open it up to questions in a moment. By the way, folks, if you have a question for either Mary Beth or myself, please write the word question and post the question there after or you can purchase a super sticker, super chat. But again, if you have a question for either one of us, write the word question and post it thereafter. So if I can glean one thing is with narcissist, there's a consistency. It's not like the way I am where I might do something that might be classified as a narcissist or narcissistic. There is a consistency. It's programming and I know you know, Dr. Bruce Lipton, right? Yeah, sure. So like he will tell you, he's a neuroscientist, 95% of us are living on subconscious programming and most of that programming happens before the age of seven and that's why I always go back to childhood is because until we wake up to these unconscious programs, we're running on subconscious programs. We think the same thoughts. We do the same stuff from the day before. It's all repetitive and most of that's negative. That's why it's so important. Like when you're in this programming, so you can imagine what motivation does a narcissist have to even change or go fix themself? Number one, they're not usually gonna be aware because they're on 95% programming. So they don't even know they have a problem. So that's why you can't help them. But how much can you tolerate? Maybe it's not something you wanna take on because it's work. And to clarify something you said earlier, I believe every human has the capacity to change and grow. I believe they all have the capacity. I think deeply rooted issues, particularly clinical issues like narcissism, while if they're possible, I think it's very rare that they're gonna change and I know you said that they can change. Again, I believe everybody has the capacity to change but you'd have to really immerse yourself into being hyper-conscious, hyper-aware of your actions. And I say this because the reality is, okay, this is the way I view the world according to Jonathan. Most of us are suffering in some way, shape, or form of not being lovable, not being likable, not being enough to some degree. I think we're all suffering in this. And I believe every human has negative patterns limiting beliefs that stem from childhood trauma or adult trauma like a divorce or even experiencing narcissistic behavior from someone. I think very few people actually spend a significant amount of their every single day doing individual healing. They might go to a retreat once and get a little bit of flavor for it. You're a life coach. I think most humans don't really even have conscious awareness to those negative patterns limiting beliefs and find themselves in their own circle of unhappiness. What do you do as a coach to wake them up? I'm curious. Well, the same thing I do for myself. I think this is why people stay stuck and crippled and they literally don't change is because they don't realize it's daily stuff. Every day I set myself up to just stay awake be self-aware. We gotta interrupt our patterns, right? We gotta make the subconscious stuff conscious. So that interrupting patterns and then doing repetitive repeating new patterns that's the only way to break habits, break addictions like we talked about addictions. It's catching ourselves, interrupting those patterns and then creating going out of your way. And like you said, if we without a disorder, it's hard. It is hard work. So in most people are dysfunctional, I do believe that. So like just because they don't go out of their way to do the work. So if it's that hard for us, imagine if you have an actual disorder or an actual chemical imbalance, it's hard and you don't. So I mean, that's a really great point that you brought up. I'm glad you mentioned that. Well, thank you. So something occurs to me that a lot of my content hyper focuses on what's wrong out there. And we don't have to necessarily make it about narcissist, but certainly the fact that I draw attention to the dysfunctionality of human beings and the dysfunctional nature of dating and relationships. I just wanna call myself out on this. And I share that with my audience because I'm like, look, I get it. It's a shit show out there, okay? I get it. I wanna change my narrative today. And I'm glad I have you here because as a law of attraction coach and for those that aren't familiar with law of attraction, I'm gonna give Mary Beth an opportunity to lean into this more. The energy you put out is the energy you track. There's kind of a simplistic way of doing this. So I wanna right here, right now, invite everyone to a little prayer for their love life, okay? Particularly their romantic love life and I've got this. So I'm gonna set a prayer for everyone. God, universe, spirit, I call it Gus. I invite in a beautiful, juicy, delicious, healthy, happy relationship where we have amazing chemistry with one another and the communication between us is off the charts and the banter can go on for hours and hours at a time and we have the ability to resolve conflicts and differences with ease. We have the capacity to blend our lives together because we share the same values and we build the deep roots of trust that can help sustain a healthy, happy relationship. God, universe, spirit, I invite that in. Nice, I like it. How do you like that little prayer? Really good, were you channeling? Felt like you were channeling that one. Yeah, it's a little bit of my work, but I was channeling. But my point is, for those watching right now, would you rather hold space for what I just shared or do you wanna hold space that it really fucking sucks out there dating? All men are narcissists, all men are users, all men are cheaters, all men are liars or would you rather hold space for attracting your ideal relationship? Mary Beth, you're the law of attraction coach. What are your thoughts? So like when I'm dealing with my clients, for instance, as a coach, as a life coach, it's different from therapy so we don't spend a lot of time focusing on the past. Amen, because of that vibrational pattern that we don't wanna continue, that energetic pattern. So I do need to spend some time on the past of my clients so that we can establish where they are. But then as a life coach, we're focusing more on the present moment and the future. So I do try to keep them energetically in a more positive place so they are no longer stuck because when we keep talking about the old story, we keep recreating the old story. Yeah. So it's huge. What was your question? Well, I don't think I had a question. I think I wanted to pontificate for a moment. Okay. So if I'm being honest with myself, actually. So I think the real issue out there in the dating marketplace. Is people not listening on themselves? Yeah, is a distressing lack of self-love. I mean, look, I wrote a very simplistic book. What the heck a self-love anyway? A journey of personal development, self-open spiritual work. By the way, there's a link below to get a copy of my book under the book recommendations. I'm gonna share something with you. It's a very simplistic book. It's kind of like the Cliff Note version of Law of Attraction and Corson Miracles and Wayne Dyer and... You ever see the Dummies books? It's self-love for Dummies. Yeah. I mean, big borders on that, to that extent. I mean, there is... It also is a reflection of my experiences after losing my son Connor and the dive I did into real spiritual work. I wanna invite everyone who's watching this video or any of my future videos to really allow yourself to immerse yourself in daily work on some level. So it's like a vaccination to emotional chaos. That's what self-love is. It's like a shield against narcissists, if you will. You will be repelling them. I think the more we love ourselves, the less likely we will attract those. Because, oh, by the way, one thing I've heard is narcissists know how to sniff out weak people. Well, if that's the case, then don't be a weak person. Yeah, and, you know, visualizations important and what we, like we said, focus, but also we wanna focus on, like even if your last relationship was awful, everybody, you got into that relationship for a reason, they had some positive aspects. And I know you were Abraham or at least you used to listen to Abraham, you're familiar, focus on their positive aspects, write all that stuff down, visualize what you want, let go of that past story unless you wanna create the exact same thing, because now you could focus on the positive aspects of somebody else, and if thinking about your ex at all, it's just gonna make you nauseous, don't think of, you know, focus on the qualities that you want instead of going over and over and telling all your friends your story and can you believe he did this? And by the way, I did the same thing. So this is not me condemning anyone. I did the whole victim story and this mine was a long time ago. So it's easier for me to have compassion. Do you see that there? Do you consider, I don't know what cratum is. I don't know what cratum is either. I thought it said krypton. Can someone write down what cratum is? I was like, maybe I don't know what it is. Mandy wants to say that narcissists can't stand boundaries, create boundaries early and they will walk away on their own. Mandy's correct. Like when they're gonna want someone and Jonathan kind of what you said about the weak thing, they're not gonna really gravitate towards someone with a lot of strength and independence because they want to be the rescuer. They want to get in there, rescue you and then use that as power over you and you know, you're gonna feel obligated to them. They want someone who's an empath who really cares a lot about what other people think. They want a people pleaser. They don't want someone who's gonna be like, no, I got this on my own because you're too difficult to manipulate, to be honest. And they're not gonna stay around because you're gonna already have strong boundaries and why would they wanna mess with that? It's not gonna work. They can't play their games. Yeah, I'm in full agreement on that one. So Melanie writes, I have been working on myself from my mother's programming but I do not know what main boundaries are or what a boundary is. Do you wanna touch on that? It's gonna be different depending on what you're talking about for everybody. But anytime someone is just trying to have power over you like I keep saying in some way, control manipulation. Like, I was in a relationship where there was a lot of jealousy. I was always accused of being things. I wasn't allowed to do like, what is this not being not allowed to do things as a grown up? There's an isolation from family and friends. You need to just be like, no, you're allowed, you're an adult. You get to go do things. That's a healthy boundary. You should not be isolated from family and friends. You should not be made to feel guilty for doing just normal adult things. I'm gonna offer a simplistic term for boundaries. Okay. Cause there's certainly the aspect that you just shared which I totally resonate with. To me, it starts with knowing what your standards are. And what I mean by standards, particularly in a relationship is, what is the standard you seek in a relationship? Now folks, I'm gonna share my repetitive story as a standard. You know, when I prior to meeting Maria, I was looking for a relationship where we spent three or four days a night a week together doing shared activities, hobbies, mutual interest, spending time with family and friends, traveling together, teamwork building skills, both in our personal, our professional life, intimacy, both physical, emotional intimacy that led to either moving in together, getting married. That's a standard, okay? A boundary, I like the way Brene Brown states boundaries. Boundaries is simply what's okay and what's not okay for me. So if your standard is this and your standard could be integrity, your standard could be charity. So a boundary is what's okay or what's not okay in any standard and then expressing yourself of what's okay and what's not okay. To me, that's a very simplistic version of boundary. At the same time, a boundary, we think of the word boundary, it means no, but to me, boundary means expressing what you want and then getting agreement based on that. That's the way I view boundaries. I agree and sometimes you don't, I don't remember her name but you don't know what you want until you have what you don't want. So sometimes you're establishing those boundaries after you're already in a relationship. Like that's how you learn is through contrast, right? So if somebody does something and it doesn't feel good to you or feel right or you feel like you're being controlled, then that's how you're learning. This is not gonna work for me and then you create a standard in that moment. Like literally, I don't know until we're experienced the opposite. Okay, hey, really quickly. Wanda says, or there's two people that say that Cratom, it's a T to replace opiates. Cratom saved my life, but less is more. And then Wanda wants to go on to say, it's a smoke, it's sold at a smoke stores, it's pills, a green lead, highly addictive for pain. So I don't know. I know you're throwing. Okay, yeah. I don't know enough about that to just. Okay. All right, Martha writes. I've never even heard of it, sorry. Okay, so for really quickly as far as the addiction to Cratom, Mary Beth will do some research and get back to us or on her channel. Okay, we tend to overuse the term narcissism like we do saying someone is ADHD. It is now accepted as a way to describe someone's overactivity and not necessarily a medical term. Martha, I really appreciate that you wrote this because I do believe it gets thrown about so much. I don't want to discount the validity of someone's experience, but at the same time, I think it comes back to what you said earlier. If you're focusing on, if you're watching every video on narcissism for the next year, I guarantee you everybody you meet is a narcissist. Well, unpopular opinion about ADHD, but maybe not everybody would think they had it if the medicines weren't given out like candy by, I mean, it's overprescribed. So that's where it starts. And then people are labeled and then they go around and tell people they have it because they were diagnosed when what is the test for that even? Like, you know, I have a lot of energy. People accuse me of being on Coke, have an ADHD. I can accuse of that all the time. I mean, I mean, I'm on medication. Well, you know what I think we might be in a society where there's just too much information. I mean, I grew up where if anyone remembers something called the World Book Encyclopedia was Google and you had to get a replacement version of it once a year at a very expensive cost. But now we have- I remember you were a salesman selling us encyclopedias. Exactly, so and I think we're now, we have too much information and we're trying to decipher the information. And certainly I'm, you know, I'm part of that. I am part of that equation too by the virtue of what I do. My invitation for everyone, the message I really would like to convey and I think you mirror this is the more we begin to be introspective, the more we step into victor, victor consciousness, not victim consciousness, the more that we have empathy for ourselves and others. You know, compassion for others is equally as important as compassion for ourselves. I believe we attract better experiences in our lives. Absolutely. And I also want to say to anyone who's currently in, you know, and by the way, if someone comments below, if you're currently in a relationship where you feel like you're being manipulated, the one thing you want to definitely do, especially if you're being, if so you feel like you're being gaslit, like where someone's trying to make you feel like you're crazy, start gathering evidence, start recording things, start writing things down in private, in private. And so that first you need to convince yourself that you're not crazy. And when you write things down and record things that's very helpful to get back your balance because you can literally lose your identity, question your sanity, because you're always being told, you know, black is white and the sky is green. So I don't even, I don't know what that's about. I don't know where that came from. But also I think it's really important to have like focus on yourself more. Self-care is so important during that time and try to get out of your head. You know, to stop focusing on him or her, cause we know as we've established there's female narcissists to stop focusing on them and just a lot of self-care work and that's gonna help raise your vibration. You're gonna have more clarity and you're gonna be able to really know what's going on, you know, you know, don't try to escape from it with drugs and alcohol and things like that, you know, tempting. Okay, so I have a, I have a question. I have a question for you. I don't know your, at the very moment, your relationship status, but I knew at one time you were single looking for love. Do you believe good men exist and do you believe there's an abundance of good men? I believe good men do exist and I'm going to say there's an abundance because that's what I would like to attract. So in real life, I think like we established earlier, more people need to do, you know, self-development work and I don't, you know, I think it's important to have that balance. Like Jonathan, you're doing a good thing by saying it's a shit show out there in the dating world because just reality, but we can also have optimism that we're gonna find the, we're gonna find, we're gonna be the exceptions or, you know, you were living the shit show and how happy are you now with Marie, you know? Yeah, you know, it's interesting. It takes one person. Yeah, no, you know, and we have a question came in, I want to address that in a second. You know, I recognize that I bought into a lot of the narrative of the challenges out there and I do, and I recognize that there's truth to that. Okay, is it the truth? Not necessarily, there is truth to the complicated way in which we engage with people, the fact that a lot of people don't share the same values, a lot of people don't have lifestyles that are blendable, a lot of people don't have the relationship skills to actually engage in the type of relationship I was looking for, at least in my life. With that said, I practiced discernment. I think discernment and intentionality are critical components for attracting a life, a partner. And, you know, to the extent that, you know, I did that work to attract Marie and she did the same thing for herself. She just learned it a different way. I believe it's quite possible. I mean, we're not the exception. I would love for us to be the rule our relationship and we are certainly not the exception. Really quickly, Mary Beth, Zoe writes, hi, Jonathan and Mary Beth, question. Is there really a problem with the language? There is a difference between being narcissistic and narcissistic and someone diagnosed with NPD. Oh, I'd love your thoughts on that one. Well, being narcissistic, yeah, narcissistic, I would say you're just saying they have narcissistic tendencies. That's what I'm imagining you mean. But I don't know that what's the difference between a narcissist and someone diagnosed with narcissistic personality disorder? Like, to me, that's the same thing. Like, we should be more careful and not just label people a narcissist unless they actually have the disorder and then should we even go around with that disorder? Yeah, and so, well, I wanna lean into this for a second because, you know, someone might say, well, my therapist said I'm with a narcissist. Well, I highly doubt a therapist would diagnose a person they have never met before. They might have characterized the person as a narcissist, but they didn't diagnose. And, you know, a true NPD is being diagnosed requires that person to be in the room. So it kind of is the reason why we had this conversation but term, narcissist is so thrown about by people, both lay people, and then even hearing it from a therapist, it's not, you know, the therapist I highly doubt said, no, this person is diagnosed that way. No, they might have characterized that person that way, but there's a big difference being diagnosed. And my suspicion is, I believe less than 2% of the population is diagnosed in this case. So why is it that everyone you've ever dated is a narcissist? That could also be because of what we talked about earlier where, I mean, they don't really go for self-help. They're not going to go in. So I'm not a statistics person because no one's ever pulled me on anything. So I always think stats are weird. Like, have you ever been pulled on anything? Like, where are they getting statistics from? I want to know. Well, I profess occasionally, I go, you know, anecdotally speaking, it's my observation that I'm taking statistics from my observation, but I usually kind of own that. Really quickly, I just want to say that Ms. Robinson says, good men exist. Okay. We do. I know a lot of good men. Yeah. And we also have Melanie who says, myself and my good man, which I manifested after reading Jonathan's book, should we read separately or together? Well, she's saying that they are both reading your book. Okay. Currently. Oh, good. Well, I'm grateful that you're reading my book and I'm really grateful, Melanie, that you shared with our group the fact that you manifested this person. Yeah. I invite everyone to really hold space and study manifestation. I'm going to put a link to Mary Beth's work as soon as we wrap up this video. I invite everyone to lean into the, not just the possibility, but the power of setting really good intentions from this positive, affirmative way, not as a way to bypass any pain in your life. At the same time, do you want to be Eeyore or do you want to be Tigger from Winnie the Pooh? Eeyore was everything is, the sky is falling every minute of the day and Tigger was the happy go lucky one. And I suspect that Tigger was happier than Eeyore. And that's my invitation. Well, and also manifesting, a lot of that is to do with self-awareness too, because let's talk about manifesting a relationship. You know, and I know that we have to, if you aren't, would you marry yourself? Right, that's always the question. Would you marry yourself? God, if I could have sex with myself, absolutely. Okay, there you go. Well, that's why you're in a great relationship. I'm kidding. A lot of people want amazing relationship, but they haven't done any work on themselves. So I think that's the first step is self-awareness. Make sure, would you at least date you? Would you date you? You know, and then if you would date yourself, you're ready to date. If you know you're dysfunctional and have a lot of work to do, I would wait because you're going to attract someone similar or someone whose standards are, you know, maybe subpar because you know you're a mess. If you're a mess, yeah. So it's interesting, and I'm going to, only because I work with women, I'm going to characterize this this way. Most women come to me desirous of a fully committed relationship. I think there's, I think women inherently desire commitment more so than men. I think men, you know, even at whatever age, I think they're less, you know, it's, you know, because that biological need to spread seed, they're not, they don't have the same propensity as women. I'm not saying they don't have it, okay? And for a man to truly surrender to another person, he has to be willing to say, I want to take care of someone. I want to take care of someone. And that takes, that these days, you know, there's a lot of things against us if you've been through divorce and poor experiences. Okay. With that said, so many women go through my private coaching program and at the end of it, they go, Jonathan, I'm not really ready for a relationship. They, it's through this experience they've invested in themselves only to go, wow, I may not be ready for the guy. I have to date myself more before I'm ready for the guy. That happens frequently. Any thoughts on that? Well, you know, to, so that you asked earlier if I was in a relationship. So I feel like I respect relationships so much and I understand, you know, I do some relationship coaching too, like how much it takes to be in a relationship, how much time it takes, quality time. Like you always say 100% agree, face-to-face quality time. And I don't feel, the reason I'm not is cause I don't, honestly, I probably could if I wanted to, I guess I'm not ready. I'm not willing to at this point in time because I do respect relationships too much and I know what it takes. I would have to find someone who was like willing to accept, you know, just crumbles and then I wouldn't even respect that person. Yeah. To be honest with you. So I forgot- I think by the way, I think the awareness, well really quickly the awareness for yourself is that at this moment in time in your life, you don't have the capacity to take on a day in, day out relationship. Correct. That's okay. That's really big to say that, you know? Because a true relationship requires- Jonathan, you're the one who helped me realize that, so. Well, if there's a thank you there, you're welcome. Yes. I'm just being silly. So, you know, that's a big piece of this. A relationship to really foster and nurture it requires daily watering. You know, when we only have the capacity to water the plant once a week, there's a good chance, you know, it's not gonna survive. And a relationship is the same thing. And texting each other every single day isn't watering the plant, okay? It's physical interaction with one another that waters the plant, in my opinion. Not to suggest that, you know, a text here or there doesn't, you know, like putting the spray on a plant to make it shiny or so to speak. But true interaction is where a relationship has a chance to flourish. Well, and I admire you for, you know, because part of why I feel like I just am exhausted in the day, because when you're dealing with clients and, you know, it takes a lot out of you and I'm always, technology and always did it. Like the last thing I wanna do at the end of the day is, you know, be texting, you know, some more. Like I'm over it, so I like to put my phone away. So, yeah, like, I don't know what kind of guy would be okay with me not wanting to be on the phone or text or see him in person. Yeah. Well, I think a lot of people have, at least from what I've observed, they have artificial relationships. They have a relationship with their smartphone connecting to another human being, but which is creating artificial intimacy. And I am screaming at the top of my lungs to encourage everyone, especially since many people are engaging in long distance relationships. It isn't real until you're spending face to face time together, otherwise it's simply a casual or situation ship and not a true fully committed relationship, but I'm digressing there. You can easily create stories in your head about the other person when you do that too. Cause you're not faced to face with them. It's very easy and it's very easy to put someone on a pedestal, which isn't fair because when someone's on a pedestal, there's only one, they're gonna fall off eventually. So, and this being in person just gives you such a more realistic view. Thank you too, Jonathan, you helped me this past year to get back to my tigger or self. Way to go. Something I talk about in my private coaching. All right, really quickly Charlotte says if I start dating a man, is it bad if I say that I want a man to be equal or higher in terms of salary or profession? Not no, it's just one of your values. That's fine. You're allowed to have a preference. You're allowed to have a preference. I will say this though, I have a client who I'll be candid with everyone. She makes a half a million dollars a year. She met a man who was in the startup business and actually the business failed, okay? And she was reluctant to continue in this relationship and I'm like, now mind you, this man gave a kidney to a total stranger. She knew this before she ever met him. So I'm like, look, you know what? This guy's like probably like on the top of the list of character and kindness and generosity. Maybe let go of the egoic aspect of your desire because you make enough for like five families, okay? And by the way, they are happy, they've been living together for four years. I think to the extent, I'm a big proponent of choose people who can take care of themselves because you don't want to necessarily create a dependent situation. But I don't think you have to, it's okay to want it. I'm in agreement with you, Mary Beth. It's okay to want it at the same time. If you made a dollar less, would you reject them? If you make two, yeah. You made a good point. I didn't think of, it's obviously, she's allowed to have preferences, but if you are saying, if you make 500,000 a year and your dating pool is gonna be a lot smaller, so you better start making some allowances here and there. Now, and roughly by the way, for those, 80% of Americans make less than $100,000 a year. So most people, I don't know if you knew that. By the way, I believe less than 3% make over a quarter million dollars a year. It takes two incomes to make it work. So just really quickly, Charlotte, and I know you don't make a half a million dollars a year, ha, ha, let me just say this, two incomes are always better than one. So if you made 75 and he made 60, that's 135 between the two of you. That's a lot better than doing it all on your own. So. You're in the top, what, 20% or whatever. Yeah, exactly. You made it. Well, you know, this is a real, we're going off tangent from our topic, but, you know, resources is an important part of an aspect of a relationship and then having those conversations about money is an important conversation to have early on. In fact, I'm wondering, I'm just now hypothesizing here, talking about money early on, if to a narcissist, that would be an interesting to see how you can actually ferret out if they are one or not. Because you could ferret out their me energy versus their we energy. I'm just curious. So in my experience, I didn't have that problem. The one I was with was very actually generous in that area because think about it, they care a lot about appearances. So I actually got a lot of gifts and things like that and a lot of people were jealous of me in that respect. I was always treated like a princess, but then behind closed doors was the different story. It doesn't matter how you look to other people really matter. Okay, so let's throw out a hypothesis here. Let's use money as the example. So narcissists can use money from a place of generosity to hook you or they can use, but it's also a power over with you which is about control. I'm a big proponent of women initiating like maybe it's the second or third date by inviting the person out and contributing by paying for it. And to see, does the person, like if they get offended by your generosity, if they get demanding at paying, could that be a clue to control? It could just be, it's possible. But that's when discernment, like you said earlier, I was like, discernment is like, it's tough. Even just discerning between intuition and anxiety is a really, really difficult one. But it could also just be old fashioned programming. Here we go. I want to. Okay, and I'm in full agreement that old fashioned, but if they take offense to your desire to be generous, okay, and even if they claim they're old fashioned and you simply say, it would mean the world to me to do this for you. And they put an absolute stop to it or they take offense to it or even if worse, they judge you for that or like you're being in your masculine energy. I think that's a huge clue. It's one of the things I observed is that if a person gets offended by your generosity, where else are they gonna get offended by your generosity? Just a thought. Yeah, I think that's when a good communication needs to happen where the female would say, look, you know, I just, you know, like you had a woman say this to you because I remember details, you had a woman say, Jonathan, you're worth it. And you were just like, oh my God, I've never had anyone, a woman say that to me. She wanted to pay for your dinner. So I have a close female friend who actually is. And I accepted it, by the way. And I accepted the generosity. I didn't reject the generosity because that's such, because I think that's an insult to reject someone's generosity. I do too. And that's what I was just gonna say is I have a female friend who's a very good person. And I was trying to offer her money at one point in time and she did not wanna accept it. And it was more like a pride thing, but it was part of the way she was raised. It didn't mean she was a narcissist or anything like that, but it was hard for her to accept money. And sometimes people just don't feel like, you know, maybe they just don't like that feeling either of then, you know, I'm taking your money. It could be so many reasons. That's why communication is so important. You gotta just say it and then the more you dig in, then you're gonna see that it's hard to be discerning when you're not communicating and you're only creating a story in your head. Yeah, well, I'm in full agreement on that. And I know we went down a rabbit hole there, which is off tangent to our topic. Well, you know what? We're coming up on the top of the hour. I don't know your schedule. I know you and I could keep talking for hours. I just wanna say how much I appreciate you coming in to share your perspective on this particular topic of narcissists. A, how can people reach you and just give your five second elevator speech to everyone? Well, Jonathan, I think you have my link tree, which you're gonna put down there. So, and that's got everything. I would love for, I'm trying to grow my YouTube. So if you like me, subscribe to my YouTube. Okay. Well, I just, I pretty knew it YouTube. So I'm just trying to grow it. I would be very appreciative, but I'm also on every platform, Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, you name it. Yeah, well, thank you. Really quickly, everyone, thanks for joining us today. I hope you found value in this. If you did, please hit that like button. Please share this video. Please subscribe to my channel. Subscribe to Mary Beth's channel and check out her work. And I'm gonna wrap up this video by reaching into the camera and giving you a big gigantic shot in Bear Hub, Mary Beth. And here's one back. I did it right this time, right? Okay, you did it right. Yeah, you gotta do the odd. So what I do when I do my videos is first I give myself a hug, then I switch arms and do it the other way. Oh, okay. I was doing it wrong. I wanna thank Melanie and Charlotte and Martha and Markey the cat and let's see, Heidi and Ms. Robinson and Zoe and everyone who joined us today. Big hugs to you all, wishing you a fab day. Take care, bye now. Bye. Bye.