Toxic Abusive Relationships and Personality Disorders | Dr. Jamie Huysman, PsyD, LCSW - Stronger Weekly

Episode Transcript
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(00:00):
We found out that codependency is an addiction, and all
addictions, I believe, are trauma responses.
So like Gabor says, it makes sense to be an addict or an
alcoholic. It's a trauma response.
It's a solution, not a problem. But if you came out of a home
like this in a fight, play freeze to medicate, to get out
of the moment to disassociate makes a lot of sense.

(00:39):
All right, everybody, welcome toRunning Free.
I'm your host, Jesse Carajet, and I am here with Doctor Jamie
Heisman. Like the Heisman Trophy.
How you doing, Doctor Heisman? I'm doing well and my daughter
wishes it was spelled like that.Jesse.
But maybe next lifetime. Cool.
Well. I'm just, I'm just going to say
you're, you're an interesting guy doing a lot of meaningful
work. And we have a mutual friend that

(01:01):
that introduced us. And when he sent me, I think it
was a link to your website, one of your websites that we're
going to get into. I had not even thought of
talking about toxic, abusive relationships.
And I think that a lot of people, including myself, should
know more about what that is. We're going to talk about
everything in between the three lines, addiction, mental health,

(01:23):
trauma, etcetera. But would you mind just kind of
introducing yourself however youwould?
I'd be happy to. I won't make it long.
I was I'm a kid who came up within a family.
Obviously my father was an immigrant came over during the
Holocaust. So the generational trauma and
handing it off to the family, you know, was there and mental

(01:43):
health was not really talked about by him.
And my my parents, like any parents, probably did the best
they could, but it was pretty much a dysfunctional up and down
roller coaster. Like most generational trauma is
diagnosed later as a kid with depression and gotten therapy.
I was a tough kid and but therapy I started enjoying it

(02:04):
was like seeing some effects with and it, it started a little
bit turning my life. And eventually I, I saw the
shame and stigma way back when and my 'cause my mom kind of
kept me camped out and with other doctors instead of putting
me in the hospital. And then I realized the I was
going to dedicate my life on a personal basis and it turned out
professionally to to taking the shame and stigma out of mental

(02:27):
health and creating, we hope, social innovations,
entrepreneurial innovations to fill in the gaps.
And I'm very fortunate to be able to to do that.
When I became a social worker, Isaw myself and every patient
there, but for the grace of God go I under bridges and somehow,
you know, develop the skill, butsaw myself there without maybe

(02:49):
my mom or somebody lucky in my life shifting me.
I could be one of them. So on a professional basis in
healthcare, I professionally deal with delivery systems of
healthcare and on a personal basis I developed charities over
the the decades that would address mental health as best as
possible. Yeah, we're a phrase you
mentioned there I don't want to skip over because I think I know

(03:11):
what it what it means, but someone with your mind probably
has more of a definition to it. But what is generational trauma?
That's a that's a great question.
I think every show should begin with that question.
You know, we we're doomed to recreate our dramas and traumas,
Jesse of our families until we intervene on them.
And that's what we often say. We have another saying we'll get

(03:33):
into the star network where I say if you don't break the
family trauma, the family traumawill break you.
So generational trauma is probably, you know, our parents
probably did the best they could.
Most of them do. I testify in courts against the
ones I know crossed the line feloniously.
But they did what their parents did what their parents did, hand
it off to us. And unfortunately, parenting

(03:56):
used to be a lot of operant conditioning, which is kind of
Skinner, you know, where you know, intermittent
reinforcement. You get good stuff one day for a
kid, you get not so good the next day.
Your parents can't see all of your behavior cause 8 hours
you're in school. And to be a parent, the best
parent possible is to be fair, consistent and available.

(04:16):
That's the three things. So generational trauma as we
keep carrying on from our parents what they did, and if we
have an opportunity to understand that operant
conditioning only works best in two environments, one which you
know too well, it's the militaryand in prisons.
Why? Because it's a controlled
environment and it's used to more regimentize, systematic,

(04:39):
consistent application of the intervention.
It doesn't work in childhood. It just doesn't.
And somehow we passed it on and developed even our kids, this
fight, flight, freeze and we'll get into complex trauma.
But the fawn response, which is the codependent response as
kids. So we keep pushing that
generational, generational. My dad, God rest his soul, was a

(05:02):
Holocaust survivor. So he had inside of him, you
know, trauma already, the hand of my sister and I because he
hadn't worked through it. But generational trauma is
really, you know, our parents probably thinking they did the
best they could or got a book like mine did from Doctor Spock,
and it really wasn't the way to raise a child.
And so we just tend to recreate the dramas of our parents.

(05:26):
And we hope we can break the generational trauma with
ourselves 1st and our kids next.Yeah, I love that.
Hey, you said something else I want to just double click on
real quick, fair, consistent andavailable.
How did you set that up? Did you say that's that should
be the goal of parents or that's?
Yeah, I, I really believe it. Let's get real about parenting,

(05:47):
you know, because I testify in court, I'm an expert witness in
court, in family court. And the the poop shows of toxic
relationships are played out in high conflict, you know,
relationships there. I'll walk in.
I'll see a guy or girls, whoever's charged with a felony,
you know, screaming to their child, I love you, I love you.
And you know, their love, is that what they learned as a
child? Maybe some insane things, but we

(06:10):
learn what love is in a weird way.
And so I understand that the ones that crossed the line and
I'll testify OK against them or I'll do mitigation and trials,
but being fair, consistent and available should be the North
Star for parents. That literally is it not telling
your kid I love you 100,000 times and not doing the work,

(06:32):
but really doing the work on yourself as opposed to telling
your kid, attracting them through your activities, but
being fair, consistent, available, then you really will
avoid a lot of the fight, flight, freeze and fawn response
because the child will feel I call neuro safe.
You know, they know what to expect.
You keep them on the railroad tracks of value based parenting.

(06:56):
They're a safe breath work and go see your therapist and chill.
But controlling a child is a four letter word to me because
most parents don't aren't don't do what they say they need to do
with their kids. So that like me, I don't know
about your background. I every time my parents said
something to me and they didn't do it, I got more oppositional,
got more crazy, said this is hypocritical, you know, what are

(07:20):
you telling me? So yeah, the quintessential sort
of gold standard, I think, for parenting or even caregiving,
which was the last charity I had, is to be fair, consistent,
available. And that is with ourselves
first, if we can, is our own healing and recovery.
So we learn about the world, butit's with our kids too.
Not just kiss them on the head 1000 times, tell them you love

(07:41):
them 1000 times, but make sure you back up with action.
Yeah. Well, and the action just could
be being available, right? Clearing out all of the things
that are competing for your timeby being physically available,
because that shows so much more love than just saying I love you
100 times, right? Yeah, I don't know if I'd be as
good a father. I really love being a dad and
I'm older. I don't know if I'd be as good a

(08:03):
father before because now I can tell my boss, Listen, great that
you I'm working for Optum UnitedHealth and well men happy to do
it. But my kid at 3:00 when she gets
off at school comes 1st and and I could do that now and I don't
know the insanity. We're all works in progress,
right. I'm not a Buddha, but I think
having my child now with understanding, obviously the

(08:25):
trauma model therapy, my own therapy and where I am today,
you know, makes me more. I think of, I don't know what to
say, compassionate or understanding or also puts the
onus on me to be fair, consistent, available, both of
my life and hers. Yeah, yeah.
How did you navigate in your career to a point where you are

(08:47):
now putting all of your focus and talent and experience into
this very specific area of toxic, abusive relationships?
Well, it's fascinating in some ways, but it's also harrowing
and others. So I, I was a business person
years ago. I actually did real estate,
commercial real estate felt a bit spiritually bankrupt in the
process. I'll put it was pretty pretty OK

(09:08):
and successful, but I couldn't wake up and feel really good
about myself. My sister convinced me to go
back to school and social work. I didn't want it.
I said look Pam, you know I'm going to get out of social work
school and get 5 bucks an hour to state hospital.
Three years. That's a big change.
Big change, I said. She said, yeah, but you know,
there's 37 women and two men in our class.
You may get a date. Shallow motives.

(09:32):
I never got the date. I did get the degree in social
work in the 80s and then I went on to really believe in and
learn about trauma through working with cops and firemen.
I really was always fascinated by people like yourself, the
military or cops who run into burning homes while others are
running out. And I learned trauma model even
though I learned it in my head, not in my heart, that was yet to

(09:55):
come. And I started working with cops
and firemen and and got lucky and got it took for the business
side and the clinical side and ended up renting rehabs and
psych units. And which which, which, which is
wonderful and do program, even though I like clinical work
better. But for mental health, you have
to learn it because there's a real split between the medical

(10:17):
and the mental, right? There's siloed worlds of mental
and medical and never the twain shall meet.
And this is the reason why the cost of healthcare are so high
is that our doctors aren't awareof the mind and body connection.
They'll just carve out the psychplaces and say, go and I'll look
at them because I work at now ata company called Wellmed, which
I, I say it loudly because it's a good group and and I love my

(10:39):
boss and the founder, but you know it.
It's important that the doctors learn that the mind and body
inextricably bound up that the costs of going into a treatment
that into the hospital, which isa three day length of stay for,
you know, 20,000 bucks could be from anxiety or depression.
And if they properly could treatit, that would be great.

(10:59):
In fact, I tell them, look, it'snot like diabetes or or or
measuring numbers or, you know, COPDPDI said this is our people
either relapse or suicide on you.
They don't have access. They don't have somebody there.
So mental health was always there.
I put it now in the medical world, they integrate, integrate
it into the medical world and try to break down these silos.

(11:22):
And so, you know, the cool thingabout psychology is kind of
paralleled where Healthcare is now our old days.
I'm a young and trained therapist of emotional
flashbacks and come and see me at 1:00 and talk about your mom
and your relationship. Yielding now to a more trauma
model where the brain is neuroplasticity, where we can be
our own trauma coaches and whichgoes back to your question of

(11:46):
generational trauma. We can break the generational
trauma by re parenting ourselvesbut yeah we never befriend their
neurological system. Our parents weren't aware of the
fight, flight, freeze and thorn response and now that we are, we
can't. Look, one in ten Americans today
struggle with alcohol use disorder and I was one of them.
Did you know that there is a safe science backed daily pill

(12:09):
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It's called naltrexone, a doctorprescribed medication that you
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(12:29):
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journey to finally find freedom from.
Alcohol. Yeah, Well, something I,
something I really like look foropportunities to talk about is
integrated care, the integrated model, because there is, there's

(12:50):
a big movement. And if you look at just from the
type of content we talk on this show, like I'm exposed to
statistics. And when you look at, you know,
preventable deaths in America and you look at the the leading
causes, so, so many of them are driven by lifestyle choices and
they are truly preventable, right.
And it has never made sense to me why let's just say like a
healthcare, a healthcare organization could on floor 3,

(13:12):
have behavioral health therapists that are seeing
patients in a silo. And then two floors down, you
have primary care doctors and family doctors who are talking
to a patient who is clearly smoking and drinking and
depressed. And those variables are driving
their physical health outcomes. But we're just addressing the
physical health outcomes. So to have like a truly

(13:33):
integrated system where you havedoctors and workflows and
medical assistants that pick up on these key indicators that
say, hey, this person answered this to a questionnaire, we know
this about them. How do we extend an olive branch
and an invitation to behavioral health so that we're addressing
the whole person, not just the symptom as it presents itself,
right? The the metro analytics and the

(13:53):
outcome studies are there Now you know, all one has to do is
go to cdc.gov and look at the Aces studies by Kaiser
Permanente, the longitudinal studies of how many adverse
childhood experiences you have. And if you have 4 or greater,
you're more likely to either be in prison in a rehab or 10 years
shorter of a lifespan. With those social determinants

(14:14):
of health, mental health grew upin the shame and stigma, the
dunk the drunk world, the Salem witches world because we are so
ourselves couldn't look at ourselves and and it was always
somebody else's issue until it happened to us.
Whereas the medical world could live more you know open and and
had been around. We had to evolve tough.
We went to, you know, Freud and young and Adler and eventually

(14:37):
now we're in the world of Gabor Mate and trauma world.
Healthcare was always in the in the sunshine.
So when I started working in themedical world, bringing psych
and I have to tell you, you're amilitary guy.
So the military does it better than most integrative health.
They do much better than most and certainly commercial
insurances and healthcare groups, but proof positive.

(15:00):
And then I'll leave it to you because we cannot solve the
healthcare world on this hour. But when I started putting
psychiatrist and nurse practitioners and P As into
medical clinics, especially in Miami, because Miami is a heavy
Cuban American area, right then shame and stigma.
I'm not going to be sitting in apsychiatrist's office, you know,
as soon as I started integratingit properly.

(15:21):
Whereas the medical assistant orthe front desk after they saw
their doctor would then walk thepatient to the nurse
practitioner for psychopharmacological
interventions or SSRI or whatever.
The engagement and compliance went sky high.
The most difficult treatment resistant people, all you have
to do is take them out of the psychiatrist's office and put
them in their medical primary care office and they had no

(15:45):
problem going to see their psychiatrist.
It also helped the medical worldbecause I know from my own
personal mental health challenges or from our my
patients that I'm much more closer intimately to a mental
health professional or psychiatrist.
So I'll come in more often. So and then and I'll see my
doctor and if I'm my doctor can see me more often, I'm less

(16:07):
likely to be in a hospital and make costing them money.
So we had these studies and I did hear, you know, to look at
that. But the future is, you know,
brighter. But unfortunately, it almost has
to happen to people for them to become aware that this is just
as important as any health care is mental health care, that
there is no health without mental health.

(16:28):
Yeah. Because all you need to do is
start instead of the chicken bones, voodoo santeria and 12
steps that they think we are. Yeah.
Training them on the neurology of the system.
Right. The fight flight freeze, fawn
response, the cortisol output, the inflammation, the adrenal
glands. The fight flight freeze is
medical. They don't really understand
that the neurological system, the common of the vagus nerve is

(16:49):
done through breath work, is done through Pilates or yoga.
They can actually befriend themselves if they did, because
my doctors are now doing breath work 478 at well Med.
They then would then not see us as voodoo and chicken bones and
Freud and what happened at Psycho.
They'd understand more part of the neurological system.
And so you'll start training them on a language they'll

(17:10):
understand, and I'm sure you'll do well.
You're, I think you're obviouslyyou're more than on to
something, but I think what you're hitting on there is like
certain people need to have it tied to like an objective, like
anatomical, kind of like system or benefit for them to see.
And I think that's why you're seeing the explosion of cold
exposure and mindfulness, particularly amongst males,
right. And, and I think that's why it

(17:30):
kind of opens that door to like,Hey, there's more going on here
than how your body feels like it's all kind of works together.
And any way that we can your, your word.
But I think important is destigmatize mental health is a,
is a win is a good thing and a net positive, you know?
And taking you back to generational trauma, this is
also how to break the generation.
Personal trauma is for men and women, but men are loath to get

(17:53):
help if they understand that by caring for themselves
neurologically, basically you'remodeling a new parenting thing,
which is emotional regulation. You're doing it in a healthy
family, which is what our program Tarnan does.
Co regulation. That is what really comes in
their system. That that'll also prevent your
hospitalizations. That'll also attract a child, if

(18:16):
you will, instead of promote to a child.
All of this is, I think, ingredients for the trauma model
for we can break the the generation of trauma.
But hey, if you want to go down the celebrity road and talk
about either P Diddy or Johnny Depp, I'm more than happy to
because I think that's how people learn is unfortunately.
Let's let's connect. Let's connect to how about this,
if it's OK with you, why don't we start with more of like a

(18:36):
kind of introduction and definition to a toxic abusive
relationship. And then like kind of, I would
love to like selfishly just kindof hear like, hey, what do you
think is going on with this whole Diddy trial thing?
But let's start with so toxic, abusive relationship
relationships. Can you just kind of just
discuss that open-ended What? What is that?
Well, listen now, let's just take it to the American
Psychological Association. We'll take it to the metrics and

(18:57):
analytics. You know, one out of eight
people really is figured and mendon't report have a personality
disorder of 1. Out of eight, one out of eight.
One out of eight and just think about it, whether it's intimate
partners, OK or it's work sites or it's teens and tweens or is
it high conflict caregiving thatone out of eight impacts we

(19:19):
think almost the entire culture,300 million people in this
culture. It's like a a pinball.
So what is the cluster B the personality disorder?
Well, it's an attachment disorder.
Now all of us for your audience have attachment issues,
attachment styles, you know, no,there is no real Leave it to

(19:40):
Beaver family that they think secured attachment style.
As a therapist, I've not seen many.
Most of them have anxious avoiding.
We did all have attachment issues.
That's the new theory of psychology and trauma.
But if you hit on five indicators or greater and you
end up becoming diagnosed as a borderline, A narcissistic
personality disorder, histrionicor antisocial, we call them the

(20:03):
relationship disorders. That's what we call tar toxic
abusive relationships. Because when I was in TVI would
have Geraldo or Montel screamingat me.
Hey, cut the psycho Babble, Jamie, you're talking to 6
million people. So when I created the charity I
said I can't talk about Cluster B and.
Narcissistic personalities or I have to call it all tar toxic

(20:26):
abusive relationships. So if you think it or you go to
our hashtag * network foundationon Instagram, you'll see there's
155,000 people there just this year.
We teach healthy and non healthyrelationships in animated style
because even my daughter loves it and she can get out of tough
relationships. But it's how we we actually say

(20:47):
things to the public. So when I started her charity, I
said, hey, we're not going to talk about psychopathology.
People run from that and we're going to talk about tar, that
sticky stuff that you don't evenknow that when you step into it,
whether it's a work site or a partner or maybe you were raised
by a parent that was toxic. You don't even know it.
That they love bomb you initially.

(21:09):
You know, they they elevate you and put you in a pedestal.
They value you until they don't.And when you get too close with
them intimate wise, they devalueyou, they discard you when you
start running away, they want tobring you back and you become
supply, narcissistic supply to aperson who has tar toxic abusive
relationship. And the most susceptible people

(21:31):
are those empaths or codependents without boundaries.
Because I do think toxic individuals really do go towards
saviors and healthy. I mean, they think healthy
rescuers and high achieving people, but and, and we
collectively, including myself, we've all met a toxic individual
and I did as well years ago. We want to say if we want to

(21:52):
help, we want things. But then we start seeing what
love was again, and we see it through the eyes of a child,
which is the first eight years of our life, which is then what
was love? Well, it was that operant
conditioning. I had to bring things to my mom
or dad that calmed them both down.
I had to be the peacemaker, you know, I couldn't be authentic.
Gabor Mate is a fabulous person.On our Polybagal Institute, the

(22:14):
board says the child could neverreally be authentic.
So we developed these roles as children.
So the toxic individual sometimes praise because they
have no empathy, no accountability.
They have a, you know, and they're transactional, but I
have compassion for them becauseit's an attachment disorder.
I want everybody to hear me loudand clear.

(22:35):
It's not your fault. And you can't change them
because they literally default in their minds to the attachment
stage, which is 5-6 years old, when they too didn't have a
primary caregiver to show them the world was safe.
So they came out with two takes 2 totally detached parents to

(22:56):
create a toxic or we call cluster B individual which has
no connection. So they had 5-6 years.
They saw life as a killer be killed mentality and they had to
adjust as children that the world ain't safe so a.
Couple real quick clarifying questions.
Make sure I'm tracking I think. I think I don't give a drink
from a fire hose on this so it'snot.

(23:18):
Much different. I don't want to slow you down.
We're going to pick up right youleft off but the first one so
you said we think studies that show.
One in eight. People have a personality
disorder, right? So far so good.
And now OK, so far so. Far so good.
Now there are different personalities, but I'm
concentrating here on the relationship.
On the relationship ones, so andthose relationships are the four

(23:38):
that you mentioned and that's cluster B, right?
Can you say this again for me? Yeah, sure.
One is borderline personality disorder, which is probably the
most salvageable because we havea dialectical behavioral
therapy. And if they do get on their
hands and knees and want help, they can change their brain.
The other is narcissistic personality disorder and that
very tough. They come in different
malignant, covert, all differentstyles.

(24:00):
Histrionic is 1 and antisocial. Antisocial.
Most of the time they're in jails.
This is what community protection's about for people
with no empathy, no account. But sometimes, sometimes they
become CE OS and Regional Medical directors.
Because I have toxic work sites.When I go in, I get called in or
my staff gets called in. I sometimes find somebody who

(24:22):
they're high achievers. Jesse, they had to create an
image at a young age. They would do what you would not
do or I wouldn't do because we have a conscience.
So they make it to high places, they make it to heads of
hospitals, heads of psychopaths.I think CEO sometimes I'll see
they make it to Heads of Government, but they really will
do what we won't do to get to the top.

(24:43):
So I do think it's also preventable disorder and one of
the reasons our charity does we call narrow parenting and we're
scaling on obstetric units. I don't think people nearly know
how not to create Frankenstein. I don't think we teach people
breath work or the Moz method before a child's born, but we
don't teach them how to not to create a toxic kid.
So we have a neuro parenting program and I think our whole

(25:06):
culture, the toxic culture all around us, is actually
preventable if you had good parenting.
That's how convinced I am. The childhood trauma is driving
this world of toxicity. Look, life can be hard and
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(25:26):
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And Speaking of good Pam, but let me let me just ask you about
that. You mentioned that if a child is

(26:12):
raised paraphrasing in a home with potentially one or two
parents, it's not like 2 parentsis really the problem.
But with these toxic, abusive personality traits, that child
does not have an environment where they can be authentic.
What even in a dysfunctional home that has connected parents
who are using operant conditioning, meaning it's

(26:33):
conditional whether I love you or not, or it's conditional
whether you go in the corner because we create the trauma
bond at a young age. Stockholm syndrome when the kid
doesn't know what's doing. But in the toxic, if you want
to, what creates it? It's when 2 parents do not
connect. No primary caregiver mirrors to
their child that the world is safe.
Let me hold you. We should cry.

(26:54):
Let me, you know, make sure I respond and and I, I can mirror
to you healthy connection and attachment.
So when you come from a home where neither parent can do
that, and if you look at some ofthe serial killers, the man
since we got into P Diddy and stuff like that, and you look at
their background, you'll see thefirst eight years, nine years of
their life is coming from a homewhere there was no connection.

(27:16):
And now the rest of their life is a result of that.
And that's, that's exactly what I wanted to kind of ask.
So if, if, if you were that child that was raised in that
home and you didn't feel like you had the safety or the safe
environment to be authentic, what are the long term impacts
on that child? Assuming they're one of the
seven of eight that doesn't actually have one of those

(27:36):
personality traits. But like what happened to that
child as they grow up? And maybe even like what can
they do about it to recognize itand maybe kind of reverse or fix
some of the the damage to the trauma?
Well. The beauty is that today, if
you're not diagnosable with A5 indicators, OK, because that's a
whole other world, our addictionworld.
Their treatment world is not really created treatment
centers. They can teach empathy, teach

(27:57):
people. You know, I, I would do in my
rehab world. If anybody's familiar with the
12 steps of A, A when somebody could not do a fearless immoral
inventory, which is the 4th step4th.
One right? Right.
Or couldn't make amends to people during their addiction,
which is a ninth step, I'd say, Oh my God, we may have a cluster
B here because literally that's the indicator.

(28:18):
But to your question, we come ina dysfunctional home, which is
mine for sure. You develop the fight flight
freeze response or I came out ofit, quote UN quote codependent.
I came out of it with a role andmost people in healthcare, a lot
of us in healthcare as I work with our Staffs come in with
this role, the rescuer, the emotional calmer downer.

(28:39):
And later in the 90s, through a lot of of good therapists who
wrote books like 1 Pete Walker, who wrote about complex post
traumatic stress, we found out that codependency, it is an
addiction and all addictions, I believe are trauma responses.
So like Gabor says, it makes sense to be an addict or an
alcoholic as a trauma response. It's a solution, not a problem.

(29:02):
But so, so you know, realize that if you came out of a home
like this in the flight, flight freeze, to medicate, to get out
of the moment, to disassociate makes a lot of sense.
I was diagnosed with ADD. I don't take any medication
today. I realized today with our trauma
model, you can develop resilience.
You can be a trauma coach. But I think ADD was a response

(29:26):
in a very, you know, chaotic roller coaster home.
So we're learning more and more today that we can be our own
therapist along. We should get a good licensed
therapist to help us whose trauma train.
But we create a program we'll get to later called Tarnon,
which is free and virtual, wherepeople can re parent themselves
for the things they did not get as a child and they can do it in

(29:49):
a healthy family of choice environment.
So we just mirrored childhood. But if you really want to know
the same, it took us eight years, Jesse, to become who we
are. It takes 80 years to get out of
it. 88 and 80, is that what you said?
I think it's eight years behind where we are about next 80
years. And it's a beautiful process.

(30:10):
I mean, recovery isn't great, right?
It's like watching paint dry, but it's a beautiful color.
And I had to go through hell, and I'm sure you did.
And a lot of people just to findthis all out later in our lives.
I was thinking of this earlier when you were just talking about
how it appears in the workplace.You had mentioned that, you
know, you have seen it personally sometimes in CE OS,
high performers, high achievers.Is there a connection or a

(30:30):
correlation between people that have some of these these toxic
personality traits? But with.
Other traits that allow people to be successful, I'll just
throw some out there, but a lot of times emotional intelligence,
raw intelligence, which allows you to be manipulative in your
of personal relationships. But are there other indicators
that usually kind of go hand in hand with those traits that
allow them to get to these successful positions?

(30:53):
Yeah, I would say yes. It's an absolute yes.
However, take us a whole nother show to heal.
Unpack what you just said, because emotional intelligence,
which EQ, which is Daniel Goleman's work at Harvard, which
is really powerful stuff. It's the basis of what I do in
work sites. And I would say IQ get you
hired, EQ get you fired. That is more mindfulness work.

(31:15):
That is more what I'm talking about being the corrective
experience. That's more healing ourselves.
Does the psychopath have that? No, the psychopath is more like
a Rambo, you know, and they've learned everything of the killer
be killed world. They learned the manipulation.
They learned that they don't have a conscience so they can do
things that you and I don't do and they do.

(31:37):
If you don't end up in in jail or you don't end up in a rehab,
you chances are you could end upin a high performing position
because we call ourselves Tardojo for our impasse and
codependence of people that comeinto Tarnan.
But them, they learn from five years old, six years old, the
Dojo of you know, this ain't a safe world.

(31:58):
I've got to manipulate. I got a transact.
I can't give a anything about the person in front of me.
And so those traits do get that.And I think I do government
affairs. And if you look at governments
around the world, a high narcissistic trade is usually
necessary to get to high places in our government.

(32:19):
So it's a very self engrossing thing and also, but I'm finding
it in the work site, whether it's medical directors, whether
it's, you know, medical assistants or regional directors
or corporate officers, literally, I'm totally saying
that they do have a better glidepath if we don't confront them
or hold people accountable to get to those high positions.

(32:42):
That makes sense. Are you like, sitting at home,
like watching CNN and Fox News, just diagnosing people with all
these personality traits? No, but your point is it's, it's
a blessing and a curse because Ido see it through clinical
lives. But that's why I do government
affairs. I think because, you know, I'm
in, in the Medicare world like you and healthcare.
I, I, everybody knows that I'm going to see this more

(33:03):
clinically. I don't see it like tribally,
like it is more in our culture, you know, this person and that
person thing. I do see the clinical dynamics
of, of everything. So it is, yes, more difficult
for me because I, I could see the beginning, the etiology, the
cause and effect, but then I seelater on and I also see, look,
I'm powerless over. I'm not going to change one

(33:25):
narcissist on the face of the earth.
I've already made that. But I do know that we can treat
people who go through this relationships and we do that at
Tar Anon and we can prevent it and we can do that with
education in hospitals and obstetric units.
I'm realistic, you know, I can't, I got to drop the mic.
I can't change anybody that doesn't want to be changed and
that disorder does not want. They don't come to you and say I

(33:48):
have a problem. No, they project, distract,
deny. They'll blame that person, that
person. But when they send it home, by
the way, just so you know, thereis an emptiness.
There is an emptiness inside them.
That's why they need supply and they need the lights, camera
action because there isn't anything there.
They're talking about the empty suit.

(34:09):
They're not, they're not empathic.
They look inside themselves as lost souls and so outside they
will control the world. So yeah, it's unfortunate.
We've rewarded those behaviors to people in high places.
Maybe one day it'll be a value based system that we won't
reward them. We'll hold them accountable and
our kids, then we'll have a morevalue based world to grow up in.

(34:30):
So let's talk about Star NetworkTaranan.
What is it? How does it help people?
Years and years ago, I, I realized not just through my
training and education as a trauma therapist or psychologist
or social worker, I learned first hand about the the
personality disorder and how it works.

(34:51):
And I too succumb to it. I was in recovery already for
codependency. You know, I, I truly believed I
was the hero child. I needed to go through meetings
and I need have a sponsor and but I also knew that
codependency also used to be called Co addiction.
So I knew that people, places and things and being that

(35:12):
healthcare person who would always help people was there,
but I really never understood ituntil I had to go through it.
And when you have to go through it and your knees hit the
ground, which is usually the waypeople finally get ha ha around
mental health. I realized that heck, years and
years ago when I went through it, if I was going through it
with 30 some years of training and recovery and believing in

(35:34):
mental health, I couldn't imagine what the rest of the
world is going through. So when I had my daughter, of
course I said, Oh my gosh, how do we help save something in
this world? How do we pay it forward?
And for me, I would, I am a little bit of a ninja in terms
of five O 1C threes in healthcare and mental health
care. Not ninja, but I'm tireless in

(35:55):
terms of making it work or trying to make it work.
Failure is not an option. C3.
But I realize this is the worst public health disaster in the
world. The COVID wasn't going to be a
bubonic play. What was going to kill us was
some malignant narcissist with their hand on the bomb.
In some country would be the endof the universe.
And so like that, yeah. Yeah, the Cluster B to me was

(36:16):
the worst public health disasterI ever saw.
So in gaining through my experiential stuff and my hell,
remembering it from years ago, Istarted working a lot with men.
And then I realized women were going through the hell and
domestic abuse to the narcissistand you know, men were going
through it. Also.
When I dealt with men going home, we don't talk about them.

(36:38):
When Johnny Depp came out, that was the first time we started
really talking really about men going through this.
I realized that I needed to do something from A5O1C3 status and
and so we started the TAR network, toxic abusive
relationship network, knowing full well we can't
psychopathologically talk about these terms in public.
Nobody would like it, they run away.

(36:59):
So we talked about TAR. Then a year in into it, we
started a program, a virtual 12 step program based upon trauma
recovery. Like radical acceptance of the
moment without judgement, self compassion, forgiveness.
These are all parenting sort of things.
And realize that we were teaching peer-to-peer,

(37:20):
peer-to-peer like a, a Alcoholics Anonymous, Narcotics
Anonymous peer-to-peer, that people were helping each other,
They were recreating the family basically through healthy
people. And I always say, if you want to
get well, learn how to befriend yourself and do it around
healthy people. You can't get, you know, nailed
in the environment that made yousick.
So we started tarring on and I brought the complex post

(37:42):
traumatic stress disorder foundation in and we took our
broken heart of the tar network and we mended it with gold
Japanese lakes, which is a metaphor for healing.
And we became the star network. So instead of being a victim and
using tar, which I can imagine was negative in people's eyes,
we became the star network. We registered this.

(38:03):
We, we always say state gold because state gold is the
authentic path, because a child couldn't be authentic.
And our goal for our charity is to have people on the road
ourselves. First of authenticity.
The child cannot be authentic. OK is to drop these rolls is to
be able to say to the person in front of them what you'd need to
say compassionately. And if they don't like what you

(38:26):
said, have them call their therapist.
Basically, you're not responsible for that if you do
the best with that. And so we developed Taranan and
now it's exploding. And so, you know, right now it's
being adopted by a A and a people attendees as a relapse
prevention piece. Hell, I was your control study.

(38:47):
If I ended up relapsing because I didn't embrace my childhood
trauma, then it was just a pandemic.
So we the disease model that we always thought that's great and
fine, but we really never discharge people with recovery
for complex trauma, their childhood trauma.
CPTSD can also be thought of as childhood PTSD.

(39:09):
And so when you wrap that into the treatment plan, you're a lot
less likely. So we have letters coming from
people in Taran on how it saved their lives.
It stopped the craving, the trauma bond, which is really the
Stockholm syndrome. The most intense bond to try to
break it happens in childhood. As I mentioned, if you have a
very intermittent reinforcement,the next toxic relationship you

(39:30):
have is with yourself. If you never saw a healthy
relationship, OK, I came out of it.
I never saw a healthy relationship, so my next toxic
relationship was myself. The third one is the person
probably triggered you to come into Taranan because it felt
comfortable. We call the glove effect.
You literally learn this in yourbrain the first eight years of

(39:50):
your life and then later on it gets triggered and bingo, it
feels normal. It feels like a glove.
So you know, that's the sad part, Neuro parenting.
You probably have boundaries andnever do it.
Operant conditioning creates thefact that this feels
comfortable. That's why people stay in
abusive relationships longer. And don't get out.

(40:11):
It just feels like it. So when you start getting
recovery for complex trauma, youalso then obviously start
healing the world. Why it's self love is the
product of awareness transformation.
And then collective love can only happen if you have self
love. So we started turning on, we're
scaling it, you know, worldwide as we speak.
We're with the knock on wood. We every year we do have a day,

(40:34):
stars day for survivors, a toxicabusive relationship.
And to your point, this could beintimate partners, it could be
high conflict, caregiving, LGBTQplus teens and tweens.
We don't, we don't just think it's just the relationship.
It's everywhere. So we're actually branching out
now niche wise. We're working with the National

(40:55):
Association of Social Workers asfunds get cut for certain
groups. So we're doing a demo project in
Tampa for the LGBTQ plus and we're doing something with the
military in one country too, because of it's a we are a rural
answer. You're a fairly qualified health
group here for free virtual trauma recovery.
You don't have to pay $50,000 togo to a 30 day length of stay

(41:18):
like Alcoholics Anonymous. You can get well with healthy
people learning emotional regulation.
So whether you're a veteran witha cop, we're doing one with
police officers through the PortAuthority because they want to
be amongst themselves, right. So they want to heal and help
them. Yeah, try.
And. And so why should I throw them
in? When I used to get cops out of
our treatment center in Washington, DC, they go, I don't

(41:40):
want to go to that a a meeting. I arrested half the people in
that group. So I would have to drive them to
Baltimore instead of DC because they wouldn't see anybody.
But they want that. That's also clinical
neurosafety. And so they should have it.
So we're scaling a virtual trauma program that's 12 steps
and we have the steps and not anybody goes to tarnan.org can

(42:01):
read our steps, read our promises.
It works well with a A and NA and and OA and any other
anonymous program. But we really believe with the
trauma model that we can re parent ourselves.
There is real hope in this modeland hope that for the world,
maybe not in my lifetime, but certainly in in my kids
lifetime, I hope. Yeah, and if someone places Hope

(42:24):
in the Star Network and Tarnon that they can get help, what can
they expect? Let's just say they.
Go to the If you go to tarnon.org right now, you're
gonna get sign up. You can do it anonymously, you
can do it not. I have celebrities that come in,
they don't put their camera on. They change their name on the
bottom layer and then and they become more neuro comfortable.
You know, they may turn their light on.

(42:45):
There's a lot of people from domestic abuse shelters.
There's celebrities, there's allwalks of life, toxic, abusive
relationship, knows no boundaries.
See the billionaire P Diddy. I see the poor woman sitting in
a domestic abuse shelter. I have people in back seats.
I have people in Beverly Hills. So they come to our program,
they sign up, we send them texts, reminders, we do

(43:07):
meetings, you know, all week long.
Now we have to scale to England and Australia because we became
global and there's no difference.
There's just no difference. You know, the, the attachment
disorder is everywhere. In fact, it's maybe even more in
the East where you have in Indiawhere you had domestic abuse was
off the scope and women were marginalized or Maoist China,

(43:29):
where if you had a girl, you didn't want it.
You want, you know, they didn't have any attachment with their
parent. You know, the girlfriend, right?
So you, you can culturally make this worse, but this is a
clinical situation. So you can come to tar Anon.
You'll find about 50-60 healthy people.
You, you get, we, we do a littlepsycho education the 1st 20
minutes, then so everybody knowsabout the recovery world of

(43:52):
cluster B and, and us, and then we open it up to a topic.
And then at the end we do breathwork like we do with cops
environment for 80 seconds so people can calm their nervous
system down. And that's basically what turn
on is. And we're working now every with
the Kennedy Forum, as I mentioned, with the society,
human resource management, because it's toxic work sites.

(44:12):
That's all I'm teaching them is how to regulate.
You know, I've got families and clinics and I got families and
supporting teams and I say you're the mom, you're the dad,
you're the child. You know, let's get it together
and do some breath work. What's my responsibility in this
family here? And you'll see they talk to each
other. Connection is the antidote for
Trump. Healthy connection is what

(44:35):
creates with what's happening now.
I don't want to get off on a diatribe.
It's a whole nother thing is through the Internet, we start
separating. Through social media, we
separate more. Through AI, we're going to
separate a lot. We're going to have the most
toxic environment in the entire world.
And our children, unfortunately,will be a product of that
digital world. What heals is connectivity to

(44:58):
healthy people, to healthy kids.So Tarnon is got going back to
the childhood womb almost and doing that.
And I think the more we detach digitally, the more need we're
going to have for Tarn. Yeah, I've always thought it's a
sad, ironic reality that this invention and explosion of
technology which was meant to connect us is isolating us.

(45:19):
And of course, isolation, the opposite of connection.
And then that's making a sicker and sadder.
And I've always thought that is.Sicker and sadder.
And even now when the government's got to come out and
call out isolation as a public health disaster and talk about,
you know, from the Surgeon General's office, you know,
we're with the Clarion call out there and it's just connection.
Listen, if everybody thinks we grew up as an evolved as human

(45:43):
beings because of the survival, the fittest, whether it's
Darwinian or Lamarck and you canforget it.
The guy who runs the Poly Vagal Institute, which is the the
group of Vessel Vandecoch, Dr. Bessel Vandecoch, Gabor Mante,
Stephen Porger, the trauma specialist, Doctor Stephen
Porger, he's not a psychiatrist or psychologist, he's an
anthropologist. We evolved because communities

(46:05):
could Co regulate. We evolved because we could as
we're the only species on earth,humans who could actually, you
know, emotionally regulate when our bodies are feeling
dysregulated. So we can consciously ship the
chemistry of our body and we would connect in communities to
create innovative solutions. So if we thought it was survival
fitness, that's that's also how we raise our kids.

(46:27):
Unfortunately, it's not. It's the narrow regulation, it's
a psychological safety, and it'sthe the real connection between
two people that separated the humans from the rest.
Yeah, Bessel Vonnekok. How do you say that name Bessel?
Vonneko is a psychiatrist who went to Harvard.
He was booted out pretty early. He wrote the book The Body Keeps
This. I'm I'm on page 379,000 of that

(46:50):
book right now. I will get through it
eventually, yes. You will, and you know what?
And it's tough, but Bessel, justfor your audience sake, got it
right. Let me tell you how he got it
right is that the body does keepthe score.
The mind can distract. They can project, they could
deny I'm a hit in the therapist.I can take you into an
induction. I could bring you what we call
an AB reaction. You'll follow my voice.

(47:12):
The mind can do anything and yousee that narcissistic
relationships. They can do word salad.
They could they could, you know,gaslight you, but the body keeps
the score. If you look at I'm a boxing guy.
So I love, I love Muhammad Ali and he grew up in Miami and
stuff, but his Muhammad Ali could beat you before you went
into the ring mind wise. But let's face it, you know, he

(47:33):
rope a doped it. He got hit, his body got got hit
a whole lot and he ends up with Parkinson's.
That's the metaphor. Trauma beats up the body.
I've seen middle ear surgeries, I've seen kidney disease, I've
seen cancer come and but the mind will always tell you
something. So in Taranan, we say, let your
body think for you. Yeah, we return back to this,

(47:55):
this this this dysfunction of our bodies, disease DIS dash and
we able then to read our own bodies and, like you said
earlier, you know, do what's right for ourselves, and that's
the re parenting. But he was right medical issues
that's happening, man Gabor helped me understand to teach
our doctors quit asking your patient.

(48:17):
You know what's wrong with you. Start asking your patient what
happened to you. It's that's.
An important distinction. Yeah, and the trauma and the
social determinants of health and heck, you know, P Diddy
would say I had roaches as a kid.
My dad died as a gang member. My mom, you know, never looked
at me twice. You know, you'll start knowing
and understanding all these things that go into the the

(48:39):
child brain that manifests itself I think is creating
unfortunately, you know a lot ofthe consequences we see today.
Yeah, well said. Well, I'll tell you what you're
doing beautiful, meaningful work.
I thoroughly, thoroughly enjoyedtalking to you.
I can tell that we could probably do four more episodes
on these topics. Police officers and 1st
responders I love. It hey, I'm, I'm all in on that.

(49:01):
I will do my part in the movement, if you will, and I
will link to these websites, starnetwork.org, tarnon.org.
I'll spell them out. Anyone listening, if you think
that Doctor Heisman's work can help you and his organization
help, we will definitely do our part and send you there.
But I'll say this, I'm so, so grateful I've met you and I
really enjoyed our conversation.Doctor Heisman.
Now listen, Jesse, I'm very happy to.

(49:23):
And it isn't natural that we metthrough a connection of a
friend. There you go, who, if you think
about it, go inside your body. How neat that dude is right now.
He meant to you and you're in Colorado and meet in South
Florida and how that person is the bridge, the connection to
us. And that's exactly what this is
sounds primitive to the world, but that connection is how you

(49:44):
and I are connecting today. And I think you know, thank.
Thank you, AJ. You know, we appreciate you
deeply. So I'll end this with this, with
this, and we say it always at turn on and we say the Star
Network stay, go stay gold meansstay authentic.
And yes, if you want to be a film buff that came from the
outsiders when Johnny was, he was dying and he looked at

(50:06):
Ponyboy and and before he died, he said Ponyboy stay gold, stay
gold. And if you think about Ponyboy,
he was the only guy in that street gang who could see the
sunsets and the sun rises and hewas dying and he honored the
fact that Ponyboy could see that.
So when we now lace up our heartand a Tarn on, we always end up

(50:27):
saying stay gold. So Jesse, stay gold.
Stay gold. Stay gold, everybody, Doctor
Jamie Heisman. All right, everybody.
That's the show, folks. Thank you so much for tuning
into this podcast and spending some time with us today.
We've got a favor to ask. If you enjoyed the show, would
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(50:49):
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Toxic Abusive Relationships and Personality Disorders | Dr. Jamie Huysman, PsyD, LCSW

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.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}Toxic Abusive Relationships and Personality Disorders | Dr. Jamie Huysman, PsyD, LCSW