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Episode 54: Repairing a strained relationship On-air session with Olivia and Dr Lisle
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hi there Olivia how you doing hi I'm good um I'm calling because I have been sort of having some interpersonal issues but I think that you could shed some light on okay I currently live at home I currently live with my dad and we are in a situation where it seems like we can't find a way to communicate um where we keep um missing each other in terms of like the message that the other person wants to receive and um I'm I can tell him that he it the way he's speaking to me I don't think it's respectful I don't think it's okay it's not kind I think it's abusive and he keeps telling me that I don't appreciate the things that he's been doing for me this whole time that being said I mean I finally gotten to a point where I think after so many years I will be moving out in a few months but in the meantime I need to figure out a way to UM coexist with this person under the same roof and not and not get sucked into argumentative conversations that you know it's like very clear that he like he will come and try to create a conflict or cause an argument about something that is to me I guess sort of like it's very clear that it's a non sequitur that it's something that he's trying to pick a fight about and like how do I get out of that one his when his primary intention is to suck me into a debate about something and I get a suicide fall for every single time and I get emotional and then I start to defend my own position I can't really get outside of that cycle because it feels like very very difficult every time I try I seem to not be able to do it correctly if you haven't eaten site about that I would really appreciate it and would be willing to give you more information if you have questions or anything right so what I like to do usually is I like to mmm just a lot of times if if we explain some basic essentially the instincts of the human so if we if we explain what it is that they're up to then sometimes the solution will essentially sort of start to reveal itself okay so okay let me let me explain a little bit there's different there's probably some different things that are going on but there's there's one fundamental thing that seems like it's probably sort of the top level organization of what's happening and this is going to be what I call a vicious cycle so let me let me explain the difference between a vicious cycle and a virtuous cycle there are two different ways that human interaction can take place so when it's in a virtuous cycle people are essentially reinforcing and giving each other positive feedback and when there is an ambitious cycle they're actually chopping each other down and there's reasons why did this happen both of these these mechanisms are instinctive mechanisms and people and so I'll give you an example for some reason I get examples in my head and then it's the only example I can use for about three months and so this is the example that I've been using here for the last month and unfortunately it's probably going to go on for a couple months before I come up with a new one it's about twenty years ago I was hanging out in a girlfriend's apartment and she happened to watch reality television which was really disgusting to me and so the relationship was not long for the world.the but it was a new thing in the world it's MTV a real world or whatever the heck it was anyways in term with what this was an interview on Rod Stewart and so it was all about how great Rod Stewart was which is fine because I like Rod Stewart then I heard they chirped in little chirps of an interview with Elton John and Elton John was saying how Rod Stewart was I quote the quintessential rock and roll voice and then rod would say great things about Elton and then it clip to Elton singer things about rod and aroundaround it went and to me I was like getting disgusted with the whole thing hmm but that stuck in my mind later on when I sort of formally worse thinking this through now I want you to think about from Rod Stewart's perspective if Elton John says the Rod Stewart is like this greatest rock and roll voice I want you to imagine that how valuable Elton just became so mmm it is now in rods best interests to tell the world that Elton has exquisite judgment okay in fact it's in rods best interests to convince the world that Elton has the best judgment in the world about rock and roll voices that's actually what's in rods best interest so when Elton says something very flattering about rod rod now Elton just became more valuable to rod and not only that it is in rods best interest to elevate Elton as much as possible this is a virtuous cycle okay now I want you to imagine that had the interviewer interviewed Elton and Elton said well I actually think rods kind of overrated that I think there's I've met you know hundred voices at least as good but hey he got lucky with Maggie Mae and sometimes the brakes or the brakes and he you know he turned it into a great career well at that point rod is is highly motivated to undermine Elton's credibility as a judge of voices okay so he's very likely to say well Elton doesn't know so from a hole in the ground he you know exploited that the gay marketplace and soft pop and you know then he got politically correct behind all that and then he got you know he's really not that great he's overrated okay so then we have a vicious cycle okay so now we goes the other direction so it's going to turn out that very often this is exactly what you're going to see and in fact the entire concept of rapport so when some guy goes in for a job and the interviews the person he comes out and he's told by his coach oh you have to get rapport well coach doesn't know reporters they don't have any idea what they know what they can see it they can feel it but they don't know the cause the cause is that each individual winds up being seen by the other as an asset to their own esteem okay so rapport is a reciprocal mechanism it's a virtuous cycle where I see that elevating you is in my best interest and then you see that elevating me is in your best interest that's rapport okay and that's exactly who it is that that hiring manager is going to hire is going to hire somebody with whom he has quote rapport and he's not got hire somebody that he doesn't feel the rapport with IE that he doesn't feel like that individual is going to bolster the hiring managers esteem in this company or with some other situation so you and your father have a vicious cycle happening and so you say that he comes up to you with a non sequitur in other words he's just coming up to pick a fight and you can he's after he's going to be criticizing you what arguments are his arguments are the heart of argument is actually a vicious cycle when it comes to the esteem flow that is taking place between two people if two people disagree um but they but they have enormous respect for each other actually and they don't feel threatened like their own esteem is threatened by the other person's contradiction then it's not an argument it's actually a discussion so it's like way Sega I didn't I didn't think of that it wasn't the way I was thinking about that tell me more what you're thinking that's how people act and acts actually how they feel okay but when it turns out that the quote discussion winds up being that one party essentially is not only contradicting the other party but the nature of the contradiction and how it is that they go about it is indicating that they are attempting to lower the status of the other individual then it tips this into what we call an argument and you can feel it okay you feel that they are actually trying to reduce your status now reduce your status how well it's going to turn out that arguments between two people are not usually between two people but in a Stone Age what would have happened is that these arguments were actually taking place in front of half a dozen other people in the village and so the other half a dozen people in the other in the village were not really that interested they were bystanders they know everybody they're tracking the little flow of status and contribution to the village and we've got two people they clearly have a conflict and they're starting to argue there is some degree of interest in the village in this but the degree of interest is relatively modest so as a result they don't have a lot of time to drill down through the details about who cheated who or who's right about this or that okay who Oates who what and who lied about this amount of the other thing they don't really want to listen for too long as a result of the lack of patience or interest that the third parties have in this situation it's going to turn out that human beings have evolved argumentative instincts and those instincts are all of the bizarre rhetorical capabilities that human have humans have for cutting to the core and hitting the other guy where he's vulnerable in an argument so we make this we make this into an art form that's what a presidential debate is okay we also make it into if you ever saw the movie 8 mile with mm they made it in these rap contests they made that essentially an art form as to how it is can you cut the other guy to pieces and hurt his status in front of the group how creatively can you do this and people are so good at it so some people can do it poetically and in meter for god sakes okay so I'm an English teacher so I you're talking I totally know what you're talking about okay take a weight out and you're very proud of that yes okay so it's going to turn out that that the what's it what's it steak here is how fast can you checkmate the other person's argument appearing to be logical and fair but actually cheating in any possible way that you can and essentially cutting the feet out from under them very very quickly and it's also useful to show that you're angry because you're indicating to the other people that are watching including the other person that's listening on the other side that they are being unfair okay so that's a signal of unfairness and anger is a mechanism that is designed by nature to signal that one one has been unfairly treated and therefore one is due a concession so the whole purpose of anger is try to activate a guilt circuit and the person on the other side this is so this is a universal human characteristic and it's very dangerous to have people angry at us so that's why it's actually exceedingly easy to police if they halt somebody into a police station and they're very angry with them as they insist that they believe that the person is guilty it is succeeding ly easy to get false confessions okay police don't know this but it turns out that it's very clear the evidence is very clear that this is true and that's because it's much better to be to admit that you are guilty of something that you're not guilty of and not get kicked out of the Stone Age tribe than it is to stand your ground and then if it turns out that the village really believes you're guilty but you're insisting that you're not then they smoke out that you're not honest and you're not trustworthy and therefore they kick you out of the group okay so human nature has algorithms that have run the cost-benefit analysis on this and so it's very easy to tip people over into false confessions if you're insistent and angry enough about it now so these are all part of these sort of rhetorical tricks arguments argumentative instincts etc and so your father sounds like you know he's no day at the beach in terms of personality so my guess is if he's acting this way this is an inherently quite disagreeable human so agreeable how agreeable people are how pleasant and reasonable they are is actually a function of genetic variation and and so people if you plot this on a bell curve it's just like their intelligence so there's people in the middle half the people you know most people are sitting somewhere pretty close to the middle then there's people that are very argumentative and there's people that are extremely pleasant so if you think about the concept of quote agreeable and why this is the dimension that we found in personality research and why we call it that it's because people that are agreeable very agreeable they agree okay where'd you like to go to the movies oh I don't know well how about if we go see the movie about the cats and the dogs oh that sounds good to me ie agreeable okay do you want to go to Mexican food or Chinese well wherever you would like oh let's go to Mexico okay that's fine that's an agreeable human and a disagreeable human says where'd you like to go you said would you like to go to Mexican and they say no I don't think so okay so you know the Monty Python movie the Knights hussaini out of the Holy Grail is perfect for this anybody that knows this movie it's like King Arthur says can we pass in your forest and there's about a whole bunch of these guys right around on horses that say Nene I eat no no no very disagreeable okay this is this is a natural genetic variation in human nature and and so it sounds like your dad is sitting somewhere probably in the upper 25% of the distribution in terms of being disagreeable maybe he's in the top 10% I don't know we'd have to I'd have to talk to you about him here his history here how many jobs he's been fired from how many employees he's had that he fired and yeah I mean how many arguments he's had and how how conflictual his life is with everybody in and around it but you can estimate that for yourself and look at him visa vie an average guy on the street in an average conversation with his average daughter and then you tell me where it is that we think he stands my guess is he's what upper 20 percentile for disagreeable what do you think um I would say well okay so this is the thing for me for me I would say like an up in the test like 10 because that's what I see from him now there's now this situation because like he okay so my so I would say that a lot of his friends that I have like a good rapport with his friends even admit to me that they believed he was like pretty disagreeable um so I know that it's not just me but like whatever amount of disagreeable he is around the public yes it's like way increased behind closed doors completely right so there's a lot of this posturing or in public and then just soon as I'm at home it's like he could say one thing and then completely reverse that position right away as soon as or like he could say to his friend like I'm so proud of my daughter I love her so much and then all of a sudden he gets home it's like I can't stand you and your your disappointment to me and you don't love me like right away so right there's that element of it - yes so yeah that I see that he's got enough intelligence and conscientiousness to sort of mask the process that's going on and also to probably to blunt some of this heart harsher edges in order to protect his his standing in the village is reasonable so he is probably solidly in the upper twentieth percentile for four disagreeable and that means that in principle what this means is that he usually is not going to see things fairly so someone who's at the 80th percentile for disagreeable they kind of think that when it's about seventy thirty their way yet feels about right okay that feels like it's an honest 50/50 deal if you're sort of in the middle of the graph you feel like a 50/50 deals a 50/50 deal and if you're sort of at the bottom of the graph of your total sweetheart you're an extremely agreeable person then when it's 70/30 against your kind of okay with it and it seems reasonable okay so these are just genetic variants on on human beings and so your dad is sitting up there we're going to call him a 70/30 trader which means he's probably somewhere in the upper twentieth percentile of the distribution that's probably about how bad that gets up there which means very often he is asserting that he's right they're wrong this is what's fair etc and there's disagreements now he's not so outrageously bad that he doesn't have any friends at all but the bottom line is is that he's not easy to deal with now with somebody like this it's exceedingly likely that a great many of their relationships from time to time will be caught in vicious cycles that's because they'll get pushed back they'll get criticism they'll get they'll be attacking someone else's value in order to enhance their own in some competitive process and so we will start the the vicious cycle Elton will say that rod isn't that great after all and then rod will have to hit back and then we start the cycle and then it's sometimes very difficult to get out of it if you can imagine the the Jews and the Muslims you can imagine that this is a vicious cycle that is unbelievably difficult to stop okay so you did this is a vicious cycle that can go on for 2,000 years and just keep being reborn in every new brain that comes up in one side of the river or the other side of the river so this is now what we're going to do is we're going to we're going to try to fix the problem and the way we're going to try to fix the problem is we're going to do something that's going to go completely against the vicious cycle we are literally going to slam on the brakes and we're going to shove the car into reverse and we're going to back up instead of go forward okay so this is this is a what I would would suggest that you do and if you do this the whole idea here is that you're going to give this one hell of a shot okay we are going to do this essentially as well as it can be done or at least to the best of my knowledge as well as this can be done we're going to do it this way and we're not going to do it half-assed and we're not going to do it 90% if you would this is obviously your option to do this you can you're going to listen to this and then oh I think about opening I'd like to know what is it got it so understand that what we're going to try to do is we're going to stop the vicious cycle and we're going to reverse it okay and the way we were reverse a vicious cycle is we're going to shove it and push it into a virtuous cycle and so I'm going to explain essentially the underlying evolutionary mathematics as to why it is that this essentially never fails okay so I say essentially because I've never actually had it fail in my face clinically in other words when I'm actually in the room with a couple of people that are in a vicious cycle I've never failed okay but that doesn't mean you couldn't fail and certainly one could fail if you if you wobble and drop the ball you know we can we can hand you the ball but you can fumble it anyway all right so I'm going to step you through this to give you the best possible chance of executing this and if for some reason this doesn't do it then at least you have the peace of mind as you go forward that you knew that you did everything that you could reasonably possibly do to give every chance to to get this thing better okay all right so here's how we do it this is called flood the circuit and it turns out you can you can get I go through this on my website esteem dynamics it's one of the audio files that I have up there I explained it at about seven minutes or something like that so that you can those are the Cliff's Notes version so we'll step through this in a little more detail than I do there so that some beaches understand what to do what we do is we're going to set them up a little bit so we're going to set them up by saying you know dad you know I really want to meet you know tomorrow I just want to talk I just want to have a little time it won't take much I just I really want to talk I have about like 15 minutes again is there time when you can spare me 15 minutes okay so he he'll have to agree in him hon he'll bitch about or whatever he does doesn't matter we just say look that's all I want I just want 15 minutes okay so then when we get to 15 minutes you know we give them some tea you get some tea you sit down you say okay listen you know I just have some things but I want to get off my chest and I just just want you to listen and I don't want you to interrupt give me a few minutes and then you can respond you know after I'm done but I just have a I have a few things that I really want to say okay and uh he'll have a little struggle with that but he'll choke it down right the and so now he is set up because he feels like you are ready to criticize him and he thinks that you are going to you really thought this out and you're really going to you know you're going to really give him relatively fair and highly defensible to the village critical feedback okay and so he knows now he's in for an argument and this is he's getting already okay and this is what we're going to do what we're going to do is we are going to actually fled his esteem meter with the most concentrated dose of positive feedback then he's probably ever heard in this life right so the times when people get extraordinarily concentrated doses of feedback there's really only one time it happens and that's when they're following the love with somebody so somebody that is falling in love with them has rose-colored glasses on and is extremely motivated to look at all different aspects of the person's physical and and psychological being and they will flood them with all kinds of feedback about how wonderful they think they are okay that is the time in a human's life where they get the most intense diverse positive feedback that they ever get now an actor getting an Oscar is basically told you did a really fine performance and you know Hello Dolly okay so you're a great actress and we think you're a great actress but that's not saying that we love their character that we think that they're sexy that we think that they're you know a fantastic person and creative and intelligent and imagined a little bit no that's not what it is you're a great actress here's your award okay so even though it can be extraordinarily gratifying to to get public recognition at that level it's not the same thing as falling in love falling in love is the most diverse complete set of positive esteem signals that one will ever get and the most valuable because you want you want the esteem from that individual more than anybody else on earth now clothes would be your daughter okay parents absolutely want to have the respect and admiration of their children and love their children and vice versa all right so it's going to turn out that very often in close relationships close relationships can tip into vicious cycles and the reason they can tip into vicious cycles is because that individual on the other side if they're criticizing us they hold more cards than anybody else in the village they have more in-depth knowledge of us of anybody else in the village and so if they start criticizing us they could criticize us in front of the village and the village would give them very high credibility on that criticism so you can do extraordinary damage to somebody's reputation if you if you you know so someone close to you husband wife child father anybody that gives very negative feedback that's close to you is potentially holding a tremendous threat over you so if they do and you think it's unfair your feelings are going to be hurt very badly and you're going to want to strike back and then we can start a vicious cycle okay so this happens often in husbands and wives when they're heading towards a divorce everybody starts butchering everybody else's reputation because for the for the simple evolutionary mathematical reason of the Elton John Rod Stewart situation that if my soon-to-be ex-wife starts telling everybody that I'm a shit husband then my only option is to tell everybody she's a shit wife and she doesn't have any credibility and so now we wind up in a vicious cycle okay it's horrendous when it's in front of their children and they're they're angling for the judge in divorce court you know men and for it's just horrendous but anyway this is what happens and I tell people to stop it and to shift the cycle the other direction if we possibly can in your condition this is how we spin a virtuous cycle so we have them sat down and he's defensive as hell and he's getting ready and all of this argumentative instincts are getting ready to pick your argument apart and he's he's thinking he's going to try to stay silent but he knows he's going to be ready to interrupt you as soon as he's got anything to contradict to it okay so instead what we're going to do is we're going to shock him with an extraordinary flood a positive feedback that positive feedback will not be you know dimensional it's going to be multi-dimensional it's going to be talking about essentially all for an aspects of his personality and even his appearance for God's sake if he if he has an appearance what you're going to think about before you do this is you're going to think about anything that he thinks about himself where you believe he has pride in it okay so whatever that is his his big muscles his tattoo his ponytail and his hair is pinky ring you know the fact that he you're you know killed three people overseas and people nobody knows about it I have no idea what this guy might be proud of himself about okay but whatever it is you make a list of what you believe he's proud of himself about and you make a list of what it is that you might in principle be proud of him about okay and anything on there that you can choke out an honest or legitimate positive feedback we're going to use it and the way we do this is we're going to do it what I call attribute anecdote so we don't just go into our teacher and say or your girlfriend and say I think you're a great person I think you're a great person no you say I think you're a great person I saw how well you treated that that homeless guy on the street that was so unbelievably kind of you ie we say the anecdote that matches up with the attribute the attribute or the adjectives that we use to describe the person is an overarching a summary judgment that we have made of the character ie you're intelligent ie you're conscientious ie reliable ie you're a flake ie you are agreeable disagreeable you're in jerk etc those are summary judgments okay so what we're going to do is we're going to give them very positive feedback but as we give them the positive feedback on the adjectives we then quickly tumble into the anecdote that supports it okay and we may use one anecdote or we may use two or we might even use three we don't use more we don't need to use more than that there's a reason why we do this the reason why we do this is that if we say your your you're such a you're so gorgeous you know God every time I walk into a room I see guys looking at you and it just makes me feel proud boom okay now the guy has given his wife the anecdote that is supports the adjective I know why do we do this because people have an intuition about other people's psychology and the intuition is if you give if you actually believe in the global summary attribute that you are saying of me then you must have evidence for it underneath okay if not you're just saying something flattering to try to manipulate me so the little bullshit meter works up out of people's heads like they've got my favorite Martian little antenna and it like it perks up in their heads you're too young no my Martian is but it's a long story the bottom line is anybody over 50 knows of which none of them are listening now bottom line is that people got like very fancy antennae to feel like to know when they're being flattered but if it turns that you then very quickly spill into an anecdote then that suspicions that they're being flattered starts to go away because it feels like what's happening is that your mind is actually organized with those judgments of them in it and then what the reason why they've you've been arrived at that summary judgment is because you have observed these instances and those instances are literally located in memory right underneath that summary judgment and so as I'm saying things it's spilling out and on and I can remember the time we were on the ship and that handsome guy up there kept asking you to dance and we kept saying that you were with me and you kept doing it anyway it's like that's it was just amazing okay and then I remember the time when you're in the silver dress the Christmas party and nobody could take their eyes off you and I felt so proud boom that guy just gave three anecdotes to support the his summary judgment okay he must think I'm beautiful if he three anecdotes just stumbled out of him he couldn't possibly have rehearsed this the human mind never would make that inference okay so with your dad we start with something and about something that you know through this I know we've had our troubles and I know that we've had struggles but the bottom line you know as I get ready to to move out of this house and move on my own you know there's some things that I you know it all starts coming to me is a big deal and there's some things that I really need to say and I just have to tell you how incredibly proud I am of the fact that you are so such-and-such whatever that is okay you know the time when you did this I was 16 years old and this has not happened you stuck up for me and I'd said that setre boom and I remember the time when such a such happened okay and you know what and then remember the time when such and such happen as if it's spilling out of you spontaneously okay okay and you know I also wanted to tell you that I really appreciate this also about you okay and we spill it out again okay like I'm I whenever we went to open house I appreciate how my dad I know is he tall short fat strong tell me anything about your dad physically um shall we tell me it might be about red-billed um yeah he likes to work out I guess so so yeah maybe that's something is he injected Galatian feed he likes you look very proud of the fact that you like you like you he's cared cares a lot about his health and he lies a lot about his health now you know what that's beautiful I'm that's grating something like sure so you can say you know the truth is I'm actually proud of the fact that you really care about your health you know I've got friends whose dads smoke and drink and are falling apart and I know that they're they're just headed for a wreck and they look terrible and I see people on the street that I know our problem your age and they're probably younger than you but they look older than you Hey and it's like you know this didn't happen by accident because you got the conscientious to take care of that and I can remember a time when I was talking to this little guy and he looks like he was falling apart and I and and he said gee will four you know I think I'm doing okay for 50 and I thought Jesus that's my dad's age and he's in a hell of a lot better shape than you okay okay so we spill things out just like that okay and we go down through this and we hit about five six points okay so like different a lot like like it was more than for more than one or two that's right so we're going to go down through about five or six different attributes about him okay then you have valued over the years and that you have seen and in to admire hey now as we're doing this remember you're going to have that you should probably type this out and read it over and over again and edit it okay and to the point where it comes out like a soliloquy like it has just been like you're on stage and a Shakespearean play did you ever see jaws I got a movie Jaws yeah you did okay I can't remember Robert Shaw I believe was the the old seaman the old sharper yes I yes famous actor right now you remember if you remember he's on that boat with the two of the other guys and he starts talking about us SS Indy appleís and the sharks and the water etcetera that was phenomenal that was a gripping soliloquy that went on I don't I timed it once it was like a minute and 50 seconds okay it was chilling you get done with that and everybody in that audience and those other actors are looking at this like shit like we just heard this guy's soul in his memory and the horror of this okay now of course this didn't happen it's a friggin actor for god sakes and but that actor probably spent a week getting ready for that soliloquy and he does a brilliant job of it and you remember it for all time okay it's an important little little pearl on a string of that movie that makes it a classic okay now didn't happen by accident somebody wrote it somebody edited it Shaw edited it he practiced it like this is no frigging joke and they probably did it 17 times to get the one that they wanted now you're going to only have one shot okay so you better practice and you're not going to practice five times not to practice ten times you're going to go through this little three-minute scenario three four minutes scenario you're going to go through this like 20 times okay so you and not recommend doing this like like trying to do this anytime soon like wait no and wait another think about it and practice that yes because you're you will edit this little file over the next two weeks and you'll change it and you'll modify it and then it won't sound quite right then you'll think of something else okay and you are going to be cooking and cooking and cooking and cooking up your Hollywood scriptwriter and you've got not much okay you got about 600 words not a lot this essay is meant to actually reverse a vicious cycle between father and daughter that's just terrible right so there's no way he can do this this is outside of his capabilities the only person that can do it is you you can do it he can't do it now if you do this and we flood this on them there's some things that could happen number one you could start crying that's fine that doesn't hurt this thing at all so don't worry if that happens hey number two he could start crying that's great that tells you just how much cognitive dissonance he's in over how bitter and her he is that he gets negative feedback I'm happening to be honest with that yeah I think I might cry but I don't know if he'll cry I don't he me I cried depends on who he is what he's like okay it's just not yeah very well may not but what he might but you will see emotional reactions that will be bizarre okay he will he will be puzzled he will be pleased if I if I read this guy correctly as you've described him this is what I call a sunflower okay this guy needs the Sun of positive feedback if we shine the Sun on him scary Thunder shower opens up and you just can't get enough okay is what I call the narcissist test okay yes GFI right and true absolutely yes right so when people are narcissistic ie highly disagreeable which is what this is then the then what happens is when we flood their circuits they really can't get enough of it now when you flood the circuit of someone who's just in the vicious cycle and they're moderately disagreeable then they're all upset and hurts and everything else if you overdo it they actually they aren't upset or feel manipulated they actually feel bashful okay you felt it yourself you felt that when somebody gave you too much credit and you actually wanted to almost turn away and say no no that that's not true okay no thank you but no I didn't really deserve that much credit that tells you that that individual that feels that is not a narcissistic okay you get a narcissist you start flooding a narcissist like this and mostly if you do this all watching myself because I'll do it to check them out and it's like oh you can't get an F I know what kind of answer the question though because I've always been really paranoid because I grew up with a narcissistic parent I was always like worried that I would myself become a narcissist but now you you helped me realize that I'm not because I don't take compliments very well right so you're not or not we thought oh there's that paranoia yeah you can't become a narcissist you're either born one or you're not okay so these are genetic and so you're it's all about where you land on the agreeable disagreeable dimension so your dad he's probably solidly up at the 90th to 95th percentile actually pretty narcissistic and as a result of that he is so pissed off that you're not worshiping the ground that he walks on and he is very upset about the fact that you give him negative feedback and therefore you're likely to give negative feedback to the tribe about him and you're likely to have high credibility because you're in tight to the situation and you're behind closed doors so you can report with a credibility that other people don't have so as a result you are a threat to his status in the village okay so he feels that and so what he needs to feel if we're going to repair this relationship is that you are not a threat to his status in the village because in fact in your deepest darkest most truthful heart after all the hurt and the bitterness and some of the conflicts the truth is you admire the hell out of him okay that's when what that if I what if I have made some choices in hindsight that were not good where I've actually kind of broadcast the fact that yes you do not you know kind of how he is to the village quote-unquote right and that he you know now it's like oh my gosh convincing him that I'm not going to do that we get kind of a happy challenge it's really not as hard as you think because the truth is is that that's why we open this up by saying you know we've had our conflicts and I've had I've had negative feelings about you and you know I've had negative judgments about you and I I know I've had those things and that's part of our history AJ it really is but you know what now that I'm I'm getting ready to move out and I'm getting a little older and I'm getting a little bigger perspective broader perspective the truth is is that I'm actually very proud of the person that I see I see that you as X and then we start okay so what his nervous system is going to do now is this is Elton John telling Rod Stewart that he's a great voice it's going to turn out that Rod Stewart has no choice Rod Stewart has to say but suppose that they had had a tiff four years three years okay that they'd been in a vicious cycle and then Elton comes out one day in an interview and says you know what truth is rod and I have had troubles in the past and you know we got we had some rocky times and it's hard out here in rock and roll but the bottom line is that I think that rod steward is the quintessential Rock voice of our generation okay what is rod going to do any here's that I Love You Man I Love You Man you're fantastic that's what he's going to say he doesn't have any choice he is under evolutionary logic that says I now need to elevate Elton as fast as I can so when you need to do this to your dad your dad will not be able to help it okay he will want to tell the world gee you know gee Olivia can we get this on videotape you know I mean because I want to play this to everybody that's sort of he's not really thinking now he's really thinking is she's going to be saying these deep positive things about me to other people okay she's just bared her heart to me and it wasn't easy for because he knows you've been in a vicious cycle okay so now for some strange mysterious reason this has turned something has happened just a new perspective ie there's about to be a change change of life that's significant and for some reason this is shifting her perspective and it's big on her heart because we're under a lot of tension then BOOM you come at them with the virtuous cycle okay you do this well you do incredibly you practice it and you give him a Robert Shaw soliloquy hey and three minutes and 40 seconds later your relationship has a complete new window of opportunity okay that's how fast this works okay so that's how we do this and if we do it well the he should be like like it's a shot of heroin it's like oh my god like what a relief this is fantastic oh I love you get up did it it up let's all go out with my friends and celebrate so I'm saying this is what this guy is going to be feeling and we just ride this once you've spun things into a virtuous cycle it's not impossible to keep them there for a while okay now we've got a disagreeable dude etc so we recognize that and we could talk about that another day you know but but our first thing is to clean up the biggest mess in the living room which is that we're in a pre test fit of a vicious cycle and we need to reverse it okay um don't wanna I totally think that that's something I'm gonna do but it further kind of complicates things when yeah I feel like keep so the whole thing is like I think that when I when you're identifying that there's a vicious cycle it's I I see now how it's working because any time I've ever been reinforcing he's taking that reinforcement and try to like change my this kind of control he's very controlling right as Isis would be and Joe so then his impulse after like a like a flood as you're describing it was like oh I am like master of the universe I can control like every and as I'm moving out I'm trying to make decisions for myself felt like where I'm living and what I'm doing and he used his ultimate goal and I can just tell you that right now is to have as much control over that process as possible and I know that by reinforcing him his strength is going to be okay now I can really like dig my closet and really and really tell her what to do in this situation so right how do I keep up that that flood and change that dynamic yes instead of right we are going to do no doubt they you know yeah what we're going to say is dad the the greatest gift you could give me okay you gave me the greatest gift that you could give me which is you gave me a good brain okay so I got lucky and I inherited a good chunk of your intelligence so in the same way that you have good reason to have a lot of confidence in your own judgment because you do have a lot of confidence in your own judgment I'm proud of the fact that you are not intimidated by other people and that you hold your own opinion you know in high esteem and it doesn't matter what the odds look like or how many people disagree with you you hold on your opinion and I totally admire that even though it's upsetting to be on the other end of it that I actually admire the daylights out of it okay but the truth is dad I didn't just inherit some of your intelligence I inherited some of that stubbornness too okay and so what I'd like you to do is give me the chance to make a few of my own mistakes so I'll listen to what you say and you're probably right because you've lived longer than I have and you've seen more than I have but sometimes you know kids need to fall down if they're going to learn how to walk okay so you know I'll listen but I want you to understand that sometimes if I you know if you say to do go left and I go right it isn't because I disrespect you it's because I have to learn about my own judgment and I got to find out my own limits and that means I'm not always going to do it the way you say but I'll always listen okay that's how we do it and we try to get out of as best we can okay that's like a fairly good response actually never thought of that wonderful there you go all right well listen I have great appreciation for you bringing a real live clinical problem to our show and I think that this was a really good one for other people to be able to listen to and so that hopefully thousands of people with similar variants on you know types of problems will be able to use learn how we drill down through this technique and and how we essentially engineer it to optimize their chances of resolving you know very difficult problems just like this one this one is a tough one I know what personality is on the other end of it and and I can also tell that you have enough steel in you that it's brutal to be in the face of that because you're not a natural Wallflower you're somewhere solidly in the middle of the bell curve in terms of confidence in your own judgment and so this is this is a very tough place to be it's a strong win to be in but we're just going to learn how to bend a little bit in the wind kind of cleverly and hopefully patch this thing up so as you go on and you have some distance between you this is what I call the disagreeable distance we have to with disagreeable people you know we need a little distance and so I think your life's headed in a real good direction getting some distance thank you so much for your um feedback and I definitely there are a lot of things that you hit on that were very weirdly on point and I will be working on my my soul my soul illa Queen in the next couple couple weeks here okay you know the feel free to give give Nate or myself feedback just let us know how it goes or and I'll be glad to take a few minutes and we'll get over it I got a lot of confidence in you I I believe that you can do a great job thank you so much I really appreciate it you got
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