Tip: click a paragraph to jump to the exact moment in the video. “Bad” Relationships Are Opportunities (with Daria Zukowska, Clinical Psychologist)

1. 00:00 So hello everyone. We have a special guest today. Long time no see uh
2. 00:08 professor Sambakn the author of malignant self love narcissism revisited and the author of the um
3. 00:17 sentence narcissistic abuse. So hello professor. Thank you. Call me Sam would make the
4. 00:24 interview more more efficient. That was my plan. Hi Sam.
5. 00:30 Hello Davia. Clinical psychologist. Yes. H. So Sam, today I would love to
6. 00:38 speak about um relationship but what is going on after with some of clients,
7. 00:46 some of uh people that they come into to our office. Uh and the main issue is
8. 00:54 they asking about should they regret the bad relationship with narcissism for example narcissist
9. 01:07 should they it’s a learning and they lost time. Mhm. Yeah. First of all, there’s no such
10. 01:13 thing as lost time in relationships. Any relationship, good ones, bad ones. There’s no lost
11. 01:20 time in life generally. There’s no lost time. You learn. You’re all the time. You’re all the time learning all the
12. 01:26 time adapting. The brain is neuroplastic and you’re changing all the time. You’re
13. 01:32 not the same person from one day to the next, which is why psychology is in
14. 01:38 trouble. It’s very difficult to replicate experiments and studies
15. 01:44 because the raw material people they’re mutable. They’re changing all the time.
16. 01:50 So when you say a bad relationship, you need to reconsider the word bad.
17. 01:58 It’s it’s been a relationship, but you need to rec reconsider the word bad. Bad in which sense?
18. 02:04 You have suffered. You you experienced loss,
19. 02:10 you were in bad mental health and so on. But suffering and losses,
20. 02:17 they are the engines of personal growth and development. There is no growth and development
21. 02:23 without suffering and losses. When a mother is overprotective,
22. 02:30 when a mother isolates her child, doesn’t allow the child to get in direct touch with reality and experience pain and hurt and loss and suffering, that
23. 02:41 child doesn’t grow up. That child then throughout life remains a child and
24. 02:47 suffers even much worse than he would have suffered had he been exposed to reality. Reality is harsh. Reality is
25. 02:56 unforgiving. Reality is cruel. Reality is unfair. And the only way to survive in reality is to accept all these attributes of reality, to internalize them, to experience them, and to change yourself
26. 03:13 accordingly. So I think bad relationships are learning opportunities. I I wouldn’t call them
27. 03:20 bad. I would call them dysfunctional. I would call them, you know, but they’re
28. 03:26 not bad. They’re never bad. Okay. But let’s say for example, if I
29. 03:34 was 10 years with dysfunctional relationship, where is the boundary that it’s still a lesson and where it’s absolutely not? And um
30. 03:47 where then if you remain in the relationship as long as you remain in the relationship
31. 03:53 it means that you are resistant to learning that you are not learning.
32. 04:00 So it doesn’t matter if it’s 10 years, 10 days or or 30 years.
33. 04:08 You will be out of the relationship. You will exit the relationship once you have learned. As long as you have not learned, you will not exit the relationship. So, it’s a little like going to school. If you don’t pass the
34. 04:19 exams, you will not progress to the next year or university. If you don’t pass the exams, you will not get the degree.
35. 04:26 Life offers you degree programs. You graduate, but to graduate, you need to study or learn. And to study or learn, you need to be in the classroom. And the classroom is the relationship. And so some people refuse to learn.
36. 04:45 Everyone is capable of learning. It is not true that some people are not capable of learning. Absolutely every
37. 04:52 human being alive is capable of learning of change of transformation
38. 04:58 of of deriving lessons of modifying behaviors accordingly. Every human being is capable of this. But many of us of us do not want to. If
39. 05:09 you are in a relationship and you do not want to learn, it’s because the relationship is offering you something
40. 05:17 that you don’t want to give up on. The relationship is catering to your psychological needs. The relationship
41. 05:23 maybe is fulfilling some dreams and wishes and fantasies and hopes that you had the relationship as long as the
42. 05:30 relationship as long as the balance of the relationship is positive, you’re going to stay.
43. 05:36 and and so learning is a function of a negative balance.
44. 05:44 So first before you before you become capable of learning the relationship must be must present a negative balance where the positives the con the pros of the relationship are much less than the the cons the negatives.
45. 06:01 Now people sometimes you look at a relationship and you say you say to yourself what is he or she doing in the
46. 06:07 relationship? There is physical violence, verbal abuse, financial abuse. I mean it’s horrible. Why why doesn’t she just pack her things and go? It’s because she is getting something. The relationship overall is a positive for her. The balance is positive.
47. 06:25 Now where the problem is, sometimes the things that we consider positive, the things that we feel are positive, the things that we experience
48. 06:36 as positive are actually pathological. They are actually negative. We mislabel,
49. 06:43 we we misjudge some dynamics and some some processes in in the relationship
50. 06:50 and we think that they’re positive when they’re actually negative. So for example, if you are not allowed to make
51. 06:57 decisions in a relationship, you may feel very good with it. Because if you don’t make decisions, you’re not
52. 07:03 responsible. And if you’re not responsible, you will never feel anxiety. You will never feel guilty.
53. 07:09 It’s anxolytic. So you say, you see, it’s wonderful. I don’t have to make my husband is making all the decisions. I never I never deal with money. That’s his thing he’s doing.
54. 07:20 and you think it’s positive but actually of course it’s negative. It takes away your agency, your personal autonomy,
55. 07:27 your independence. So the problem is not in the relationship. There is no such thing as bad relationship. There is a misjudgment of relationships. There is a mislabeling of dynamics and
56. 07:40 processes as good when they are actually not good at all. Okay. Thank you so much. when you said
57. 07:48 that uh that this is the lesson that you will learn or not like I I felt that
58. 07:57 this is the key like I felt that oh yeah aha okay aha moment so thank you for that it’s I think really important so
59. 08:06 after let’s say the relationship it’s finished and we learned a lot and then
60. 08:13 we’ve got a lots of questions sometimes to to ask for you know what was going
61. 08:20 on. Why is so hard some to believe that I deserve goodness and a healthy love, a
62. 08:28 healthy relationship after dysfunctional relationship? Why it can be so hard to
63. 08:36 see yourself in a good way?
64. 08:42 Even if you have learned something from a a dysfunctional relationship, even if
65. 08:48 for example you discovered that some things you thought were positive were actually negative and you should avoid
66. 08:55 them and so on. Sometimes the learning does not produce insight.
67. 09:02 Insight is something completely different. Insight is when you couple cognitive learning with emotional
68. 09:08 response. Transformation and change occur only
69. 09:14 with insight, not with learning. Learning is not enough. You need to have
70. 09:20 an emotional reaction to what you have learned. And many people are incapable of this.
71. 09:27 Many of them are divorced from their emotions. Many of them are afraid of their emotions. Many of them were
72. 09:33 brought up to believe that expressing emotions is not okay. Uh many of them
73. 09:39 when they express emotions they are mocked and ridiculed and so on. So many many people are divorced from their
74. 09:45 emotions. they have reduced effectivity and uh because of that they’re unable to
75. 09:54 internalize the learning and as long as you do not internalize the learning and generate an emotional
76. 10:02 resonance with the learning you will continue to preserve your
77. 10:08 self-concept. So the reason you found yourself in a dysfunctional relationship is that you
78. 10:14 believed that you deserve no better. That this is what you deserve. This is your self-concept.
79. 10:22 Everything we do, relationships, business, anything and everything we do
80. 10:29 reflects of the way that we perceive ourselves. Something known as self-concept. If you have a negative self-concept or if you have a an inferior self-concept,
81. 10:41 what is known as low implicit self-esteem, if you have a low implicit self-esteem,
82. 10:48 you will believe that you deserve an abuser. You deserve an relationship because you can do no better. You are unlovable. You’re unworthy.
83. 11:00 Maybe you’re stupid. Maybe you’re ugly. You know, you have an internalized bad object. and you say, “I’m going to take
84. 11:07 what whatever h whatever comes because I’m never going to do any better.” And so, one of the main lessons in dysfunctional relationships, the the main lesson in my view is that you can always do better,
85. 11:23 but if you do not internalize the learning, if you do not internalize this lesson, then you are not going to
86. 11:29 believe it and you will continue.
87. 11:35 Thank you so much for that. I can see this um when I’m working with people that the cognitive level it’s not enough. You have to embodiment embody this what you know because the cognitive
88. 11:48 it’s not enough the emotional is very important and I can uh speak also from
89. 11:57 my experience that when I felt something then I understood um what is going on and what I can deserve or not but thank you for for the
90. 12:09 insight that insight is different than cognitive level. But how can someone
91. 12:15 recognize that this negative selfimage or self-concept? It’s a the result of
92. 12:23 the manipulation after this after dysfunctional relationship or is
93. 12:29 objective true or is it true somewhere? How negative negative self-concept is never
94. 12:36 true. Negative concept is a set of voices, a group, a constellation, a cluster of voices that are enemy voices. They are hostile
95. 12:48 voices. They are voices that intend to defeat you, destroy you, take you down.
96. 12:55 They could be voices of a mother. They could be the voice of a mother. Could be the voice of par a parental
97. 13:01 figure. Could be the voice of a teacher. Could be the voice of a of peers. But these voices are your enemies
98. 13:09 and they form if if you don’t have countervailing positive voices, if you
99. 13:15 have only or mainly negative voices, they would inform the self-concept. They would in effect influence the self-concept and you will end up having a negative self-concept. We therefore
100. 13:27 can say with certainty that a negative self-concept is never realistic is
101. 13:34 counterfactual because a negative self-concept reflect the voices of other people. The voices
102. 13:41 these voices that are your are hostile to you that do not want you to be happy
103. 13:47 or to succeed. Your authentic voice is always a good friend. Your authentic voice is never sadistic,
104. 13:58 never hateful, never harshly critical, never pessimistic.
105. 14:05 It’s not a doom doomsday voice. The So your authentic voice is a good friend. A
106. 14:12 good friend is not always positive. A good friend is realistic. A good friend is balanced. But a good friend has your
107. 14:19 best interest in mind. A good friend wants you wants you to have well-being and welfare. A good friend would encourage you to experiment and try
108. 14:30 things. A good friend would give you courage and and and and encouragement.
109. 14:36 That’s a good friend. If you are listening to a voice inside your head that tells you u listen don’t
110. 14:44 go dating because you’re really ugly that that is not that is not your authentic
111. 14:51 voice that’s someone else’s voice could be your mother could be anyone I mean that’s someone else’s voice if you’re
112. 14:58 listening to a voice which says uh don’t bother to go to university because you know you’re not you’re a bit stupid you know you’re not really you know that’s not your voice. That’s a negative voice.
113. 15:11 If your self-concept is negative, if you’re ashamed of yourself, if you are embarrassed of yourself, if you don’t
114. 15:17 dare to do things, if you then this self-concept represents a cluster or
115. 15:23 constellation of negative introjects, negative voices. And uh the only way to counter this is to recognize these voices, shut them up,
116. 15:37 eliminate them and remain listening only to your authentic voice. And then you will gradually de develop a positive self-concept and things will look much better. But this cannot be done with
117. 15:49 cognition only. Cannot. You mentioned embodiment. It’s a very very strong point which I forgot to mention. Your body also absolutely your body comes into play the body the mind emotions and
118. 16:02 cognition it’s the to change transformation is always integrative
119. 16:10 it’s always integrated big big names in psychology like Jung Jung called it
120. 16:17 constellation Freud Freud called it integration the process of putting all the elements together induces change. If some of the
121. 16:28 elements are missing, you will never change. You will maybe lie to yourself that you’re changing. You will maybe
122. 16:35 change externally like you will change your your home or you will change your profession or you will change the location or and you will say see I changed. I no longer live in this city. I live in another city or
123. 16:47 whatever. That’s not real change. That’s selfdeception. Real change is about suddenly feeling very differently about yourself.
124. 16:59 Suddenly making decisions from the point of view of the authentic voice. Suddenly
125. 17:05 becoming your best friend finally. That’s real change. And bad relationships are a great way to get to this change.
126. 17:16 They’re actually a very good way to get to this change. The dysfunctional relationships are very traumatic and
127. 17:22 they wake you up. You definitely wake up and then there is a window of
128. 17:28 opportunity a short period of time where you can really change. If you don’t take this opportunity, the window closes and when the window closes you again cannot
129. 17:39 change and again extremely likely to find yourself in a dysfunctional relationship. Many many victims that I talk to, they tell me that they have had
130. 17:50 relationships with five narcissistic men or women, you know, and they go from one
131. 17:57 bad relationship to another bad relationship to another bad relationship and they know it. They know it. They
132. 18:03 have completely self-aware, but the the self-awareness is cognitive and leads
133. 18:09 nowhere. Thank you so much. This is amazing. like
134. 18:15 you said this level cognitive emotions and embodiment body uh and I can see and
135. 18:23 I can tell that clients who can integrate like Freud would say uh I can
136. 18:31 see that they changing environment and different field health money work friendships hobby um they they took the you know chance
137. 18:43 when the window was open and I can tell from my relationship that I was 10 years
138. 18:49 that I took the chance and I changed a lot to work with this three levels because like
139. 18:56 you said one level cognitive or emotions are not enough. So thank you so much for
140. 19:03 that uh that we have to work with three levels and we have to um invite also
141. 19:10 body to change something. May I make may I make a comment? Um, yes. It’s a historical comment. Until the 18th century, our perception of our expectations from relationships were basically
142. 19:26 transactional expectations. People got married because they wanted to uh merge
143. 19:33 the lands or they wanted to enhance the family or they wanted to or they wanted to have children and you
144. 19:40 needed two people to. So people were very transactional even marriages were very business
145. 19:48 business oriented and everything was like everyone was an entrepreneur. Even when you got married,
146. 19:54 it was like establishing a new company, you know, and so on. Then in the 18th century, there was a movement that
147. 20:00 started in Germany, of course, and it was known as romanticism.
148. 20:06 And what the romanticist told us is that we should look when we when we look for an intimate partner, a boyfriend, a girlfriend, a spouse and so on, we should look for someone who would fulfill all our needs, intellectual,
149. 20:22 emotional, sexual, financial, economic, etc., etc., etc.
150. 20:30 The romanticis, the movement of romanticism which culminated in Britain in the 19th century, they redefined what
151. 20:39 is a good relationship. A good relationship is when you find the answer to all your problems and needs in one person. That is an unrealistic
152. 20:52 view of relationship. And because of that, and only because of
153. 20:58 that, most modern relationships fail because we expect our partner to be a
154. 21:05 panacea, to be a cure all, to provide everything we need from sex to
155. 21:11 intellectual conversation, from intellectual conversation to money, from money to everything,
156. 21:18 everything in one package, you know. Yeah. And that is of course completely wrong. I think if we were to modify our our expectations, many many dysfunctional relationships
157. 21:31 would no longer be dysfunctional. I think I think there is um a
158. 21:37 misconception and misunderstanding of what the human mind and the human
159. 21:44 body can provide. What the fact that we all limited and that we should look for in in our
160. 21:52 partner we should look for the things the partner can offer and not be disappointed and disenchanted
161. 21:59 and angry and because the partner cannot provide something. So maybe you have a partner who is great
162. 22:06 in in bed you know and is also very reliable and responsible and has a good job. Mhm. But he’s not the brightest star in the galaxy. You know, you can’t really discuss with him psychoanalysis.
163. 22:22 So, you have two alternatives. Alternative number one, you can say, “I’m in a bad relationship. I’m in a dysfunctional relationships. My needs are not met. I can’t talk to this
164. 22:35 person. It’s horrible.” and and then of course this creates aggression and friction and unpleasant situations in the in the relationship and so on because the expectations are not met.
165. 22:47 He’s also the other party is also angry because he feels the disappointment. He feels a dis enchantment and he resents
166. 22:54 it and so on. So this creates a a very evil evil dynamic in the relationship and destroys the relationship. Mhm.
167. 23:01 But if you are able to say, “My partner is wonderful. He gives me great sex, a
168. 23:07 lot of a lot of money. He contributes to the household and he’s very reliable. I can trust him.
169. 23:13 He’s my best friend.” When I need to talk about deep intellectual issues, I go to some
170. 23:22 normally. Yeah. Thank you for that. sound. But when someone is finishing the dysfunctional or abusive relationship,
171. 23:33 how can they um regain their ability to be close uh emotional
172. 23:40 um with someone in a romantic relationship after such a difficult experience when someone was doing the
173. 23:48 dynamic hot and cold? How can we regain that? I think you should not regain that. No, no. I actually think that one of the
174. 24:00 main lessons of a dysfunctional relationship is to not trust too fast, too soon, to test the partner. Definitely to test,
175. 24:11 to be a bit paranoid, a bit cautious and careful.
176. 24:18 One of the main uh lessons from a dysfunctional relationship is that you moved too fast.
177. 24:24 Most dysfunctional relationships involved involve a very intense period of idealization
178. 24:31 and and blindness. And so this is a main lesson.
179. 24:37 You would also look for someone who would not trigger in you this
180. 24:43 idealization would not trigger in you this fantasy would not would not trigger in you this blindness and this this you
181. 24:50 know sense that you’re in Disneyland. You would look for someone Yeah. with whom you could have a stable low
182. 24:57 intensity maybe relationship and yes you would take one or two or three years
183. 25:04 before you trust this person. Nothing wrong with it. I think it’s a bad advice
184. 25:10 that I all over the internet. I see it on YouTubetubes and even textbooks and even self-help book books. I see this
185. 25:18 bad advice. Immediately after you exit the dysfunctional, abusive, traumatizing
186. 25:24 relationship, you should trust again. I think that’s a bad not a good one.
187. 25:31 I do agree. When I’m speaking with my clients, I’m always telling them that give yourself minimum a one year when
188. 25:39 you will pass important days uh Christmas and uh you
189. 25:45 know that day they are important for you to see how you will behave, how you
190. 25:51 feel, how you trust to yourself and then you will for example start another relationship and then you will see how is trust in this relationship. So thank
191. 26:01 you for that. So you you mentioned excuse me for disrupting you. You mentioned something very important right now. You mentioned
192. 26:09 trust yourself. Again one of the main lessons of a dysfunctional relationship is that you
193. 26:15 cannot trust yourself. You are not making the right choices and decisions for whatever reason. You are
194. 26:23 self-defeating and maybe self-destructive. You need to work on yourself before you trust other people. You need to establish trust with yourself. And to establish trust with yourself, you need
195. 26:34 to change because it’s not true that victims have no
196. 26:40 contribution to the dysfunctional relationship. Of course, they have a contribution. They made choices. They
197. 26:47 made decisions including the decision to stay to stay in the relationship. So something’s wrong there and needs to be addressed before you start other before
198. 26:58 you trust other people again, you know. Mhm. Yes, I I do agree. uh I’m many
199. 27:06 years after my relationship and sometimes I’ve got the moments when I don’t trust myself and sometimes I’m
200. 27:13 asking someone my friend or like how can they see this because I’m still uh
201. 27:21 learning this and still developing my selfrust and sometimes I don’t trust or ask you or some other friend that how can you see this what is your point of view because right now I’ve got issue
202. 27:32 with my trust And please could you share with that? So absolutely uh I do agree
203. 27:39 but you are but you’re in a good place because you have a few people whose judgment you do trust.
204. 27:45 Yeah. So that’s already a good place. That means that you are Yeah. Maybe there is issues with
205. 27:51 selfrust but you do have a few people around you whose input whose feedback
206. 27:57 whose judgment you do trust. That’s a very advanced stage. That’s very good. It’s a very good sign. Thank you. So I do have u another
207. 28:08 question. How can someone distinguish a healthy relationship from for example
208. 28:14 dysfunctional or someone with disorders on early on? Oh that’s a super critical and
209. 28:22 surprisingly very easy to answer. Okay. I think there are two two conditions.
210. 28:29 Number one that the person accepts you and loves you as you are does not try to
211. 28:36 change you because in dysfunctional relationship there are cycles of idealization and
212. 28:42 devaluation. The person doesn’t see you as you are. Either he sees you as much more than you are or he sees you as much
213. 28:49 less than you are. He never sees you. He’s never having a relationship with you. is having a relationship with your
214. 28:56 idealized version or devalued version or enemy version of or you know there’s
215. 29:02 never you are never there in in a dysfunctional relationship. So if someone accepts you as you are loves you
216. 29:09 as you are helps you when you ask provides constant support even when you don’t ask but never ever comes to you and tries to change you
217. 29:20 in a forceful way. You know that’s the first sign of a healthy relationship. You could ask yourself very simply if someone wants to change me then he doesn’t love me. And then
218. 29:33 then you know the second thing I think is in a in a healthy relationship the the parties have their own private space and
219. 29:44 private time private experiences the presence of other people in their lives
220. 29:51 and the capacity to evolve develop and grow outside the relationship.
221. 29:58 So healthy relationships contain a huge degrees of freedom. They are very free.
222. 30:06 They are not coercive. They are not insecure. They’re not there’s no jealousy. There’s
223. 30:12 not the it’s it’s simply the parties allow each other to have a separate life
224. 30:19 that they can then bring into the couple. So you have your own friends,
225. 30:25 your intimate partner as his own friends and his friends and your friends become
226. 30:33 your joint friends maybe and some of them don’t but you’re still allowed to have friends which are not common friends. You want to travel, he doesn’t want to
227. 30:45 travel. You still travel. He he allows you to travel. you want to study something which is of
228. 30:53 completely uninteresting to him. He will not insist that you do things only together. You know this freedom is a
229. 31:02 major indicator of a very healthy relationship. A healthy relationship is enriched from the outside not only from
230. 31:11 the inside. It’s not a cult. It’s not a prison. the all the enrichment comes
231. 31:17 from most of the enrichment comes from the outside. You bring the world into the relationship. So that’s healthy. I
232. 31:24 think these are basically the two criteria. You can derive many other criteria. Yeah.
233. 31:30 Because for example, if I idealize you and you uh you don’t match my idealized
234. 31:36 perception of you, you deviate from it. You diverge, I may become aggressive and abusive. So all
235. 31:44 the other problems in relationships they come from these two issues.
236. 31:50 An unrealistic view of the partner and lack of freedom in the relationship.
237. 31:56 Yes, these are the two and then many many many other issues come from these two. Okay Sam, thank you so much. Uh that was
238. 32:05 the all the questions that I uh have on my list and thank you for your insights.
239. 32:11 uh really amazing uh keys we have here. So I think a lots of people can use this
240. 32:17 knowledge or not. Uh do you have any advice at the end for the people around
241. 32:23 this topic that we are speaking? Yes. Only one maybe. Yeah.
242. 32:29 Relationships the pursuit of relationships should not become a compulsion. You shouldn’t feel that your life is incomplete if you do not have a relationship. This is again the outcome
243. 32:41 of romanticism because the romanticist told us that if you don’t have romance in your life, if you don’t have intimacy
244. 32:47 and love, you are somehow incomplete. You’re somehow missing. You’re missing on something. You are and you are you’re defective. You’re probably defective if you don’t have this. This is these are
245. 32:59 wrong messages also. They’re not real. So don’t pursue relationships
246. 33:05 compulsively. Don’t regard it as a precondition for happiness, for a sense of wholeness and
247. 33:14 and so on. Pursue your life. If you pursue your life,
248. 33:20 relationships will come. If you pursue relationships, you will not have relationships and you will not have a life.
249. 33:31 Professor, thank you so much for all this knowledge that we can hear from you
250. 33:37 today. Thank you so much. Thank you. Yay. So now we will say we now say goodbye but you can click on the same link and we will have another Zoom session where
251. 33:48 we can talk a bit. Okay. Sure. Okay. So now say goodbye. Wait five minutes
252. 33:54 because it’s recording. Okay. Okay. In 5 minutes, we’ll see each other again.
253. 34:00 Okay.