Dr. Romney, welcome to Aiway. How are you? Thank you. Jamila. I'm great. Thank you. How are you doing?

I'm really good. I'm so excited to talk to you. I have been thinking about you every day. No, but honestly, I've been watching your videos, watching your interviews, sending them to everyone I know. And your work has been so important

to so many people, you have completely revolutionized the conversation around narcissism. And so it's a

huge honor to have you on the podcast. Well, that's really kind and I appreciate it. Thank you.

And I'm so glad you want to have this conversation because I think it's important for people to hear it.

A hundred percent. And I, you know, I've read a lot of your work around how narcissism, like we are currently in a generation where narcissism is kind of being like willingly bred now. You know, it's something that we don't consider even that toxic or that bad anymore. It's

kind of become so hyper-normalized that we are contributing to the problem. Before we get into all of that,

I just want to ask you, what is narcissism for someone who has no idea? So narcissism is a pattern,

it's a personality pattern, and it's considered to be a rigid and

maladaptive pattern, meaning that it's not really good for anyone. And it's not rigid, meaning it's not

likely to change. But it's a pattern characterized by a person who has generally low empathy,

but it's a little complicated, but we'll just call it a lack of

empathy, entitlement, grandiosity. These are people who are arrogant, who are constantly

seeking validation. They are also, they're not really capable of deep, intimate relationships.

They view relationships as being for their personal gain and not at all for the

enhancement of the other. They're very egocentric. And they're also very sort of, they're externally

run, meaning that when they set a goal, they set a goal that they think the world would want them to do.

Their self-esteem is determined by how the world views them. And at the core of the narcissistic

person is an individual who has a deep, deep, deep core sense of insecurity and inadequacy. And so all of that

stuff, the grandiosity, the entitlement, it's like a suit of armor around that to protect that

so that inadequacy doesn't pop out so they can walk around looking like the king or the

queen or something like that rather than the insecure person that they really feel that they're sort of

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