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Individuals are advised to seek independent medical advice, counseling, and or therapy from a health care professional with respect to any medical condition, mental health issue, or health inquiry, including matters discussed on this podcast. And part of what made it easy to believe Anna is that while one she was a friend who ostensibly wasn't asking anything of me um, you know, aside from friendships. So I think had she been a man, it might have been different. Welcome to
Navigating Narcissism Episode one. I'm Dr Rominey, Drvass, and a lot of you know me as Dr Rominey. I'm a licensed clinical psychologist and I've been practicing for twenty years. And I'm also a survivor of narcissistic abuse, which is why my focus is helping survivors. I've helped thousands of people who have suffered through narcissistic abuse, and my life mission is to teach you how to recognize the red flags so you can spot a narcissist before they spot you.
In this episode, we are going to hear the story of Rachel Deloche Williams and how she met con woman Anna Srikin better known as Anna Delvey. This story dives into manipulation and narcissism as it comes up in a friendship. When we are talking about toxic behavior. Gender can really throw people off. People often let down their guard thinking awesome, woman. It's usually men who are narcissistic. I don't need to worry,
not so fast. There are plenty of narcissistic women, and there are even certain types of narcissism, like vulnerable narcissism, where we see it's sort of pretty much equal men and women. Red flags are red flags, It doesn't matter who the person is. So, Rachel, where I'd like to begin is tell me a little bit about you. Where you grew up, your family, and before you got to New York. Sure, I grew up in Knoxville, Tennessee, and the oldest of three kids. My sisters two years younger.
My brother is six years younger than me. My parents have been married since before I was born. They're both clinical psychologists. They met in graduate school, and I grew up really close with my family in a pretty like small and tight knit community. I would say I had a pretty healthy and happy childhood. Let's use that as the jumping off place. You met Anna, and there was a natural trust there, and how natural it is to trust people. So talk to us about how easy it
was to trust Anna in the beginning. What drew you in and how your relationship grew with her? That's a good question. And part of that sort of willful trust came from having been raised to really ask why not just what? So looking at people around me as a kid, you know, when somebody would be sort of bullied or somebody might act in a way I didn't understand that.
I think my parents really went probably above and beyond to try and help me empathize and to try and say, well, oh, you know, here are reasons why, and like, instead of poking fun, why don't you try to be a help to them. I think that carried over into my friendship with Anna, which is not to say that the friendship started from a place of pity. You know, I was drawn in by the sort of the opposite, you know, where I was very conscientious and like concerned with how
my actions affected people around me. I saw that she was very bold, and she said whatever she wanted, and she was very direct, and she was hard to predict. Having someone who was so much the opposite of the way that I was was part of sort of what drew me in because it was so different from the
way that I moved through the world. So saying whatever she wants and rebranding it as being direct and being unpredictable, those are red flags, but alas opposites can be compelling, and many toxic relationships begin when an empathic person is drawn to audacious behavior that should really be a red flag. What made you trust her? I've until that point, chest had been sort of a default setting for me because I had never really had someone betraying my chest in
a way that was so cataclysmic. I had had very healthy relationship models. I had had very healthy relationships. So it was counter to my intuition going into especially a friendship, to think that I needed to constantly be um cynical about whether or not what somebody was presenting to me was actually truthful. Cynical is so such a tricky word in a world full of narcissistic people being sort of tentative and making people earn our trust, it's actually really important.
And when we frame waiting for trust to be earned as cynical, it actually takes something that's wise, and it makes it seem unhealthy. And I understand your default setting was trust. So how did she draw you in? I think she made everything seemed very easy. You know, at first, there were no stakes that were apparent to me. It wasn't as though she was asking me immediately to lay anything on the line aside from just have fun with me.
Let's do these fun things that weren't so far outside of the realm of my normal day to day life. The places where I feel like I had to sort of rationalize her behavior with regard to trusting that that she was good or you know, giving her the benefit of the doubt had to do more with her behavior like entitlement or being rude to waiters, or sort of acting in a way that did and drive with my values.
And every time that started to sort of add up, like you know, if it happened multiple times and I started to kind of question it, she seemed to always kind of connect that I was starting to pull back, and she would immediately say something to dispel you know, that sort of distance that might be growing between us. So entitlement and being rude to waiters. These are actually really huge warning signs, and they're great ones because they
often show up early in a relationship. Toxic people will often test the waters to kind of see how much they can get away with, and then when they sense that you may be onto them no, they'll often play it off as a joke or try to soften it. Pay attention to their bad behavior, and don't fall for that post bad behavior manipulation. And so the combination of your natural tendency to trust, the history of the relationship,
which felt like many of her friendships you'd had. Even though she was unaware with what she said, it almost seems like there was an awareness when she felt that you were noticing her behavior, and then she would sort of course correctly, And all of that contributed to you
giving her the benefit of the doubt. Yes, and I think she was very good at figuring out what people like needed, like what made them tick, and she kind of would I feel like sometimes when she would push the boundary in that way, she was sort of learning where the edge was so that she could figure out what she needed to do to keep the closeness there
as my guests. Yeah, that's interesting though, because you could say that she's unaware, right, but actually she's deeply aware because despite the kind of abrupt and and sometimes entitled throwaway comments, when she sensed that someone who was in her purview might be changing, almost shifting, she was so aware that she could quickly change back to keep you or anyone else where she needed them. She also had a manner about her that seems sort of cut through
anything negative that she might actually be doing. So she was saying something rud or if she was doing something maybe questionable, she would smile or she would giggle. It would seem like a bit of mischievous fun. And it's only later when you look at the behavior, or when I looked at the behavior on paper, that it became so clear to me that so many of her actions were wrapped in this delivery. It relied on her charm, It relied on, you know, her powers of persuasion to
be acceptable in the moment. Toxic people are masterful at turning their bad behavior into a sort of little joke, to be kind of rude with a glint in their eye, right, and narcissistic people care so deeply about what people think of them, so the entitlement, which is rude, has to get delivered in a more palatable way, like with a little giggle. If it's uncomfortable, If their behavior is uncomfortable, it doesn't matter how cute they are when they do it.
It's still a problem in a way. What you're describing a sort of a really natural evolution of a friendship. What I'm hearing, and I believe hearing this and knowing the story is what happened to you could really have happened to anyone who was in a friendship with her. I believe that's true, and I know a lot of people would like to tell themselves otherwise, if everybody were immune to this, nobody would ever sort of get wrapped
into a relationship like this. And it doesn't necessarily happen in the way that you expect, and a lot of it's very subtle. Yeah, and it happens over time. But it does happen over time. It's not like in the first hour you meet the person, they're abrupt and they're rusque with a waiter or something like that, that there's a process. And she did the same story through so many different people that whatever I didn't hear from her, I heard from twenty other people in the same social circles.
Even when I started to question what was happening, you know, after she would meet the sementum amount of money, which I'm sure we'll get to you. It was very hard to move forward because every time I thought I had a theory that might work or makes sense, somebody else would dispel it, and I couldn't tell what was real and what was fall because everybody had misinformation. What a shame.
There is no such thing as YELP for people. We can go online and find out if a restaurant has good French fries, but we can't always figure out what other people's experience has been with someone. Let me tell you, if we had something like YELP for toxic people, we would be saving people so much time and heartache. You had said, how had Anna been a man, your relationship
with her would have been different. How so being a young woman and having grown up like a young woman, you know, we are taught to be wary of men. Who swoop in and give lavish gifts or invite you on trips or even just say hello, Like I'm always questioning, like what is your motive here? Are you? Are you know? Are you hitting on me? Are you you know, checking
me out? Like you just you have a different way of sort of interpreting behavior based on an agenda, And with friendship, it never to me to use that same sort of standard for judging behavior based on where someone's coming from. Friendships with toxic people are so so tricky. We may be more sensitive to red flags where we're actually dating someone, but so many people we'll cut friendships, new friendships more slack, and that can be a real
problem when you're dealing with a toxic person. It's something that you know, struck me. What you've talked about written about is also that there was this almost admiration of Anna making it in a man's world, right, Yeah. I admired that she was a young woman who had the ambition to go up in these traditionally male dominated spaces and vi first like a seat at the table. And I definitely did admire that. I didn't realize it was lacking sort of a moral ballast, but I admired her guts.
Do you feel that that admiration just feeling like, Wow, she's really making it in this really difficult and in the high end of this, you know, finance and all this real estate and all this other stuff she was doing. Do you think that that might also have led you to cut her some slack. I think not so much that she was making it, but that she was trying. Absolutely, you know, I wanted her to succeed. She was my friend. I believed in her ambition. Even if I didn't believe
in every one. I could see that she was working towards something, but I was rooting for her. My session with Rachel will continue after this break. So in this show, the show inventing Anna especially, a lot of people were sitting there saying Rachel got into this relationship frivolously. But that's not the case. So can we break down the traits and behaviors that were starting to come out in Anna that you observed and that gave you pause. The
show definitely gets more wrong than it gets right. That person has my name, but there's little else. I would say that it was unbles the truth of my experience, and I didn't buy me close. She didn't buy me accessories. Why first pulled bian was the boldness, the ambitions, the fun. She was very entertaining. She made me laugh. She had a way of framing the world that made sense and this very twisted kind of logic, but was certainly not how I thought. And there's something about that sort of
contrast that was transfixing. Our friendship was fairly fast. I knew her for a year. I saw her, you know, being entitled, being sort of insensitive, not not being mindful in big ways and small of the way that what she said or did affected other people. She would play too. I think this big sister impulse I have. I kept sort of chalking up certain social behavior to seeming like maybe she was like under socialized, maybe she didn't have somebody teach her that, Like that's just rude, And I
kept wanting to sort of help her. Oh, the contrast, right between being bold and ambitious and fun and entertaining against entitlement and being insensitive and unaware of her impact on others. It's really confusing. So what do we do? We justify, and justification is how narcissistic people get away
with so much bad behavior. We will tend to focus on their good stuff, We rationalize their bad stuff, and it gets so dangerous when we try to rescue or help them, because that is when a toxic person smells blood on the water and recognize that now they have a soft target. When do you think you started connecting the dots to seeing that this is something that hangs together, This is actually a personality style. Maybe this person is
even narcissistic or something. When did the dots start forming a picture that that showed you something that was a bit more concerning and that you're willing to name it that way. It's funny. It took me a very painfully long time. I had every reason to understand in theory
what a personality type looks like. Not only do I psychologist parents, but I also, like, I don't know, I studied English literature, and I know that's not psychology, but I've made a study of characters, like I have seen them play out in films and in books, and like, that's part of what drew me to working at Vanity Fair in the first place. Was a love for characters, was a love for storytelling, and I think that subconsciously knew that pulled me into the friendship because she is
this larger than life kind of character. So that's tough life lesson. And it is so interesting though too, that you have the love for English literature. In some ways that might have damned you a little bit. Oh totally right. In literature, the character can be written so eloquently that a good writer can actually put the character in the round and in some ways can really make a very compassionate narrative around someone who's quite narcissistic. You know, let's
face it, we know your story. She's a con artist. And what a con artist does is that they draw you into a behavior or into doing things on a false assumption, and in essence, they really indoctrinate you. And like you said, it's a process. It doesn't happen over one time. It happens over time. For example, her not paying you back but living as though she had the resources to do so, which created a false security that
this will be fine. And what it sounds like she did, and something you've also talked about is she weaponized your trust and she weaponized your empathy. Does that ring true? Yeah? Absolutely, And part of that I think has to do within this story, in particular the distraction of money and flashy things. I think people look at sort of a net outcome and think, why you're fine, therefore you're not a victim whatever. Narcissistic people are so good at shiny things. We make
a lot of assumptions about them. They are successful, and they're well put together, and let's face it, superficiality and materialism just by themselves. Maybe that's a pink flag. But when we add in other patterns like entitlement and being abrupt with people, and then those flashy, shiny things show up, that's when we need to sit up and pay attention.
You know, you said something so smart. I've heard you say this that someone like Anna, someone who is a con person, they sort of get you to use your own arm against yourself. Can you talk a little bit about that, because basically it's sort of the way they play the game is that ultimately you're acting in your own con is how you had framed it. I think that is what connartists and just sort of manipulative people do best, is they tell stories and they they ask
you to place your test in them. You know, how much confidence do you have in me? And they sort of they almost make it like a dare you know? They make it like here you say this and this or why wouldn't you do this? Because x y Z a sort of shift your perspective of reality in a way that makes decisions that you wouldn't normally make feel like the only decision to make. They just have a way of sort of working working a perspective on something that makes it makes you not complicit. I don't think
it makes you guilty. You play a more active role in the kind of orchestration of whatever turns out to be built on a false premise. But it's built on a false premise. That's the key. And this sort of leads into this next issue, because this one I feel very strongly about too. This story is a lot about we can talk about blaming the victim, and we can talk about a pathologizing the victim. That's how I see it.
Too many people have looked at the story and have portrayed you as the person who took advantage of a situation. But when we bring this down to brass tacks, it was her behavior that was illegal, unethical, and manipulative. And yet the pathologization of the person who survived the story is something that was happening all the time. What was your experience of that. I mean that that is always hard.
That will never not be hard because it is so twisted, and I think there are a lot of hard things to process in the world, but being misunderstood is I think a really tough thing to swallow. When people condemn
the victim, they're saying you had it coming. It's also ironic that like I was the one in debt, like Amex protected me two years later, that the Inventing Anna showmakers rearranged a timeline to say that I got protected before the trial, which isn't true, and even if it was, it doesn't matter, doesn't mean that the crime didn't happen.
Point being like, I think it's very like twisted. I'd say that a lot of sort of the people around Anna in real life who are still standing by her side condemned me from being an opportunist when I was the only one who was stuck holding you know, six. So it's too convenient and it doesn't really make any
I mean, it just doesn't make any sense. There's this sort of double abuse that a person experiences when they've been harmed by a con woman and then they see that people are actually standing by the con woman and painting the victim, the person who was harmed by that person, as the problem. And this is where we see the power of the enabler when it comes to these kinds of toxic relationships. I mean, listen, the manipulation, the gas lighting,
all the rest of it. That's bad enough, but then to watch people prop the manipulator up that can be just as difficult for so many survivors of these situations. We will be right back with my conversation with Rachel
where she breaks down the infamous trip to Morocco. So, when Anna needed to leave the United States to reset her visa waiver in two seventeen, she had these suggestions to take a trip to somewhere warm, and it evolved from something that was close by and affordable that I assumed I would obviously pay my share for into Hey, I've booked a private villa at the world's most luxurious hotel in Marrakesh, Morocco. Who should be invite? So it's snowballed.
It was presented as an all expenses paid vacation to sunny Amrakes. It's funny looking back, It's like, well, how could you have gotten that and not known. I had no idea that a trip could cost sixty dollars in the span of a week for starters. Second of all, I had no idea it would cost that much. And there's so many like subtleties and nuances in real life. Thicket completely glossed over when you look at something backwards. And I framed it as a business expense because she
was working towards the creation of this foundation. But she framed this as a research trip. And when it's your friend, I kind of was trying to be supportive. I understood that maybe there would be some degree of research. She wanted to factor in some sort of international cuisine and hospitality and food and beverage components to this foundation. So it became this much bigger ordeal than I had initially expected. The hotel we stayed out in Marrakesh was called law Mommunia.
It's the site of a former palace. It's a walled garden with alling villas and essential building that has four restaurants and it it was beautiful. I kind of always cringe it describing. Yes, it was razzle, dazzle and beautiful, and it just I think there are so many distracting elements when it comes to this story, and a lot of them have to do with razzle, dazzle and money.
And it's not to say that that's not important. I think that's the reason that people are paying attention to the story, for better or for worse, because this kind of a thing happens every day, but it's just not as glamorous as this one looks from the outside looking in.
But I think focusing too much on the material grandeur of it all detracts from the fact of, you know, very self serving, machiavellian behavior at the expense of everybody around Anna, and and sort of real betrayals of confidence. You know, some of this feels like love bombing. When we think about love bombing, we think about you know, romantic relationships usually, right, But the bells and the whistles and the razzle dazzle, they're distracting, or at least the
narcissistic person hopes they're distracting. It doesn't matter what kind of relationship it is. I just think the misbehavior gets really overshadowed by the glamour of it all. I remember, though, it sort of started to slip into almost like a business bossing nous kind of attitude as we geared towards
the trip. Obviously she was still a friend to me, but it felt a little bit more like she kept asking me to do favors and kind of like, oh, well, if I can't have you as a friend, I'm going to start bossing you around kind of way because you're going on this trip, you know, Rachel, I'm really glad that you use this word machiavellian because it's such an
important and it's also a confusing red flag. A machiavelian person is a very manipulative person who has a goal, right and a goal they have to reach, and they will do anything they need to do, including throwing other people under the bus, to get to that goal. Now, in this case, it was about more than just making this trip to Morocco happen. The endgame was that this was the kind of life that she felt entitled to.
And it's actually kind of chilling for any of us to consider, is that a person can view us as nothing more than a tool to get what they need. And I at the time didn't see this. I just thought, yeah, like, obviously, if you're gonna invite me on this like luxurious trip. I'm going to do everything I can to help. As as to what I did professionally, I booked travel and manage logistics. So it felt much easier for me to do than it did for someone like Anna, who was
often kind of disorganized and aloof at least distensibly. So is the Davis supposed to leave for Mary Cash. The trainer and the videographer both both texting me like what time has our flight? Like what is going on? Because Anna's confirmed everybody, but she has not sent out any ticket information. So I'm put in this position of being like the Anna whisperer and having to liaise. And I was like, oh, I don't know what time I'm going to be done with meetings here, like just take this card.
So she's like book the tickets. She's like, I I can't do it. Can you help? So I go on Kayak, I book the cheapest tickets I possibly can, and it seems like her cards go through. I just remember getting a text from her like the bank just called me. It was you know, I can't get ahold of anybody, like the transaction was blocked. I was like, well, I'll just put it on mine, and she was like, if that's okay, I can wire you next week. So it started with the flights, and then it became sort of
in for a penny, in for a pound. Once she owed me that amount of money. Anna accidentally checked her wallet at the airport, which I know screams red flag today. At the time, it was not beyond the fabric of her character, which was always kind of erratic, always kind of doing stupid things like forgetting her credit cards. I could rationalize it. I understand that is a red flag, which is why I'm quick to point it out. But
here we are. And then it became meals added to the tab So the distractability, the being disorganized, the chaos, you know, those are also red flags too. And if you are any kind of a rescuer and you also happened to be an organized person, it can really be a set up for someone to step in and try to feel useful in one of these relationships. It started to be this little bit by bit trickle like death
by paper kuts, tabulating of debt. But then the hotel itself escalated in a very different way that was not alone I consented to. Over the course of the week, I'd say halfway in, I noticed Anna was being pulled aside by managers at the hotel who wanted to speak with her. I didn't give it much thought because as far as I had had seen her, as far as I knew, everything was settled with the hotel in advance.
She afforded me a booking confirmation that had a credit card last for digits on file except my last full day in Marrakesh. I was like, Annah, these people are here, you need to go talk to them. There's something going on. She goes out to talk to them. I like go back to the room, thinking she's settling it. And when I come back out into the living room, Anna is sitting there. Her phone is just flat on the coffee table.
These two men are standing there. They're not the again that the Inventing Anna show has them with like guns, being violent and like, that's not how this was. But they were stern. They were not leaving. But I think what was the most alarming was certainly not the men. It was Anna. She just completely disconnected from the seriousness of the situation. She did not seem to comprehend danger
or risk or urgency. She she just seemed totally cool, totally calm, totally annoyed, and it was such a puzzling thing to walk into. They looked to me and they're like, we just need a functioning credit card, like the bill will be settled a pun check out, and she's like, can we just use yours for now? And I just did not see an alternative, you know, especially in the urgency of the moment and believing this person is still
my friend, I just did not see another solution. Mind you, again, I did not know the cost of that trip, nor did I know my credit card could support that kind of a debt, nor did I know that debt would be going on my credit card. There are so many things that we know now that I didn't know then. But the day just unraveled from there, and by the time I left the next morning, I landed in France and got a text from Anna that said, like, the hotel manager is sending you a receipt. Thank you so much.
I'll wire you seven thousand dollars to make sure everything's covered. And I felt so many different emotions all at once in that second. That was the first time I understood how expensive the chip was, so I was kind of racked with this strange gratitude and shocked because I would never I don't. I still don't fully understand how someone
spends that much money and so little time. Rachel. One point you bring up when retelling this story is how people focus on the grandeur of it all, but you feel that focusing on the grandeur distracts from the real story. What do you mean by that, um, I mean that at its heart, this is a story about, you know, the making and breaking of our friendship. That we came together fastest friends, spent a lot of time together, went on this grand trip, and it was beautiful and it
was fun. But it's also why I think people tend to miss the point, because it's easy to sort of bask in the gossip girl quality or even looking at the inventing Hannah show itself, this like multimillion dollar production with front row of fashion seats and exotic yachts and jets, like it's sugarcoating something that at its core is is very rotten. It couldn't agree more. I mean, it really
did distract attention. And you also mentioned how what was most alarming to you was how disengaged Anna was when things really started falling apart. What did it feel like to be with her disengagement? How did you make any sense of it? It was panic inducing because there wasn't sense to be made of it. When the men showed up in our ela and or demanding payment, it was very obvious that they were not going anywhere and that
this conflict had reached a head. She would make herself to be the victim, like, why are they bothering me at this? Like I've already dealt with that, you know, excuses, excuses, the lack of panic, the lack of recognition when it came to the urgency of the situation. That's what caused me to take on her panic for her and to and to sort of internalize the danger in a different way because I felt like I was the only one
aware of it. Something that's so unsettling in toxic people is how, in some cases a person is willing to let everyone else take on the messes and the chaos that they've caused. Did you sort of coolly sit back, disengage and let other people clean up the mess? If you're a rescuer, if you're someone who wants to fix things, you may find yourself trying to clean up the mess, a mess you didn't make, and they are definitely counting
on that. So the plan was you were paying I mean, in essence, that egocentricity is that there's no danger for me, so there's no danger for anyone. And that was sort of how that was playing out. Why were you so confident that she would pay you back? I still believed that she was who she said she was. I believed she was having a falling out with her family. I believed that she was disorganized and had overspent some kind
of allowance. I believed, though, in part because she was living in hotels full time, regardless of whether we were in Morocco or New York. What I'm hearing is it was plausible. I mean, it was absolutely plausible living as she did, and she had paid you some things back
in the past to sort of set this tone. And so what then became the breaking point of realizing that this was actually a con and that led you to go to the authorities a sixty dollar in balance and my credit cards and and no clear sign of reimbrassement being on the way despite constant reassurances. It was this extreme disconnect between words and actions, you know, false promises like talking in circles, moving the goal post for every ten questions asked, getting maybe one answer, and it still
didn't give me any actual clarity. So here we see a classical form of manipulation, making false promises, which is something called future faking. Then there is the talking encircles, which is something that's called word salad, talking but not really making any real sense, and then also not answering the question, which is really a form of gas lighting. We go into this next piece. Anna is now getting
more famous and reinventing herself. What is it like for you to see her sort of succeed in this way and to see people get behind her despite her conduct. There are a lot of things I feel about that, most of them aren't personal. It's kind of frustrating at this point to be talking about this story because in life like I am happy, healthy, like don't think about Anna very much. You know, it's really not about her
and me anymore. But I am speaking because I do think this is indicative of a sort of bigger picture issue with the way that our culture tends to reward narcissistic individuals who are larger than life, and they captivate us because they're entertaining and they say whatever they want, and they make these weird promises, and they do these quirky things, or they act in these like really bold, audacious ways. What I make of it looking at it now, it's like, my takeaway from this is that, you know,
what I gave to Anna was my attention. I say, the stakes were low and it was frivolous, but I gave her my time and and that's not without value. That's how our behavior is influenced, That's how our our view of the world is influenced. Like you said, our attention is a resource and when we when we give
it away, the story gets to stay alive. I watched the story and I said, oh my goodness, like this is just straight up a story of narcissism, and on top of that, blaming the individual who came into the narcissistic person's life, which is what my entire clinical practice is about. So when I saw your story, I actually became incensed, Thank you, right, I mean, I thought, what
are they doing to this woman? She was harmed by this person and we are glorifying in some ways, you know, looking at the con with some grudging admiration, versus all of us are vulnerable to this story, all of us. I don't and anyone who thinks they're not, they couldn't be kind like this is going to get conned, to be frank with you, if anyone was that arrogant. Right.
This takes me to this next question is that I think one of the struggles in this question, and like you said, they didn't even get the time frame right. For two years you had to sit with that credit card, you know, bill hanging over your head and that lack of resolution. But now we're telling the story at its end, and it seems like since you got the money back and your your book was successful, it's as though people are telling you, Rachel, you don't have the right to
feel hurt. Yeah, It's like resilience is like antithetical to victimhood somehow, right. And so I think that the piece that I struggle with is that you don't get to have a feeling. And that to me, that that piece is really really messed up because the behavior you saw, right, the behavior you saw, the entitlement, the grandiosity, the and and I will argue lack of empathy. She didn't have empathy for you. You were an instrument. All of you were in this story of hers. The arrogance, the constant
need for validation. I mean, this is like narcissism one oh one. To me, there's no other way to see this.
And also the other ways that you were, You were gaslighted, your reality was doubted on regularly, and then she became very vindictive, and that vindictiveness, to me, was the icing on the cake that in romantic relationships we talked about something called post separation abuse, but I would argue that the point at which their friendship sort of cleaved off, she went at it with the same vindictiveness as, for example,
an angry narcissistic partner would in a romantic relationship. And I think the way that the Netflix showmakers approached it in that television show, that's part of why I chose to speak up, just because I think it doesn't injustice
to anybody who's been through relationship like that. And like I said, like this story has gotten attention for all kinds of reasons, since I have a platform and people will listen, Like, I feel like I have a responsibility to speak up because I do understand what's happened to her and the gaslighting. I learned hard. I didn't know at first. I learned. I read things. I tried to understand what had happened. I tried to you know, I wrote so that I could look at the events on
paper and try and figure out what did I miss? What? Like? Where is my responsibility? Where you know? Where was I wronged? Like? How can I learn from this? Whatever? Like I come away from it with a better understanding of people and myself. We often think of gaslighting is one person to one person. Not only were you gaslighted by one person, then you were gaslighted by a system, and then honestly gaslighted by
the world. And I can't think of anything more psychologically destabilizing, Rachel than going through that, because I have a real problem with this idea of Okay, sure, i'll meet you halfway on that one, Rachel. A bunch of privileged people doing privileged things and privileged setting. Sure, all great, But the feelings you had were real. I don't care how privilege the story was. That was real. I agree, So that was real, hurt. Thank you. There's a real cruelty.
Forget individual narcissism. Honestly, the story you shared speaks of almost narcissism on a societal level, and that's really concerning to make I'm with you, thank you for giving it voice, because I feel that way. But I think having been through this for however many years, like process after process, just acknowledging privilege doesn't mean that it makes anything okay.
I don't say that to undermine the fact that that distress was very real, that the repercussions were very real, to that the betrayal of trust was very like, it
was all very real. I just think I've been through so many different iterations of this that I've come to realize that anything I say can and will be picked apart by people who are looking for reasons to blame me and correct to some extent that has nothing to do with me at the end of but at the end of the day, to the Rachel, shaming you puts
all future victims at risk. That's that's where I struggle with, Like, Okay, go ahead, and you want to shame or shame her, But what that does is everybody else then, who feels that A if I come forward with any kind of story like this, people are going to shame me. And I'm too scared too, so I'm gonna have to put up and shut up, and that is a really dangerous paradigm.
So it is so important, and I know it must be hard after all these years, because it sounds like you've moved forward and having gone through this, And since my life is thinking and talking and musing over a narcissism and psychopathy, do you have any questions for me after having gone through this experience? Just like, do you
see an antidote? I guess to this sort of like toxic spread of not only celebrating but rewarding this kind of behavior in personality type a show like Inventing Anna, the way the story sort of played out in the media, all of that, that actually makes me feel more pessimistic because when I saw how quick people were to glorify the con, I thought, of course they're here, and of course their partner did this to them because they feel incentivized to do this. You know, the antidote is something
that is so it feels impossible. I mean, it really is paying empathy forward. But the problem is if empathy is weaponized. That's an issue. When we see a case like you went through with the individual who who engaged in this behavior, I see absolutely no likelihood of change. I mean, that's what the research literature would tell us to that somebody who so resolute in their lack of remorse and their belief they did nothing wrong, there's no way you're going to see any form of change there.
So at the individual level, there's not likely to be an antidote. At the societal level, we're gonna have to switch up our game entirely. But as long as this stuff is clickbait, as long as this stuff gets eyes and views and virality and money, it's conversations like this to say, okay, everyone, I can. I looked at your so I said, I could have been conned easily, and and and I got really worried that everyone who's so
arrogantly saying I wouldn't have gotten played. I said, oh wow, then that means you're going to be the X one who's going to get played by a narcissist, because at least I have the humility to know I can and I have been and I likely will be played again. And I think that that humility is where we get resolved, and that resolve is where we learned to set boundaries and be more discerning. And I think that discernment than Rachel becomes the key, and yours is also an interesting
story to Rachel. Ironically, the solid beginning you had, loving parents, consistent loving you know, history with your family, close knit family, and then really good friendships. In a way, you're not even prepared for this, So I don't know if we have to put everyone in sort of toxic summer camp so they can learn this once and then go back to healthiness. But what it did do was give you resilience to be able to grow past this. My mom and dad will thank you for that, and I agree
they did. I think that the fact that you're in a safe place to land in a way meant that your likelihood of connecting the dots into Anna as someone manipulative and cruel that needed to be walked away from. In fact, it went another direction that this was some bit where you could actually meet them with empathy. You can actually reach your hand out to the bully, as it were, which I think in in concept is beautiful, but practice is dangerous. Boundaries are important, Boundaries are everything.
I think that ironically, that same sort of safety net, or you know, the healthy upbringing that led to resiliences and that, combined with working as a producer and always looking for creative solutions to complex problems. It's what allowed me to figure out, you know, book Dealer x y Z before I went to trial, which I think is part of why people didn't see me as a victim, because I had already managed to find resilience, and I think that is hard for most people to relate to
share with this. Rachel, what are you working on now and how can people support you in the work that you're doing. I wouldn't ask anything of anybody. I appreciate anyone who's listening to this, and I wish you the best if you're going through something similar, And I appreciate curiosity and the desire to look deeper into something that at its surface may present as one thing, and at its core actually involves a lot more new than initially needs. Again,
I thought your book was really fantastic. I really really enjoyed it. In fact, I had watched the series I was like, then I read your book and I was like, Wow, this is what I was looking for, which is a far more clear telling of the story. So, you know, I think people who haven't read it, I highly recommend your book and I also thank you for elevating this story to the place of friendship. We talked about narcissism and families. We talk about narcissism and romantic relationships, but
we don't talk about it in friendships. And I think that's a big mistake, because friendships are often really defining relationships, especially for younger people, people in their twenties and thirties, and can be just as impactful as any intimate relationship, and really impactful in some cases. So I think that sometimes we give friends a freer pass than we might
give other people. And I think your story is a reminder that these kinds of toxic personality patterns can really do harm in any human relationship, whether it's a romantic relationship or a friendship. Thank you, thank you very much for giving at the space as well. Absolutely here are my final thoughts from my conversation with Rachel. Be aware that the very best part of you, your empathy, unfortunately, can actually make you a target. Yes, be empathic, but
catch yourself when you justify other people's behavior. All of us have to stop glorifying Cohn people. Khan, men can, women can anyone, and we must stop blaming the victim, because when you do that, when you blame the victim, you really actually set yourself up for more self shame when a narcissistic relationship happens to you, and inevitably it will happen to you. None of us are safe from toxic relationships, whether you're from a happy family messed up family.
For our family, that's sort of in between. Manipulation always plays on our trust, our core wounds, and our insecurity. We have to remember that cynical is not a bad word, and all of us need to let people earn our trust instead of just handing it over. Thank you so much for listening. Lastly, make sure you subscribe on I Heart Radio and please rate this podcast on Apple Podcasts.
This show was produced by executive producers Jada Pinkett Smith Falon, jethro Ellen, Rackitton, and Dr Romeny Dr Vassila, Also producer Matthew Jones, Associate producer maur Dela Rosa, and our editors and sound engineers Devin Donnahy and Calvin Bailiff.