What If Donald Trump Practiced Mindfulness? An Episode about Narcissism and Mindfulness

In this episode, Sarah and her former co-host, Jacob, discuss the possible hypothetical outcomes of Donald Trump learning the practice of mindfulness. Would he lie less? Would he treat women better? Would he still have run for president? How would a mindfulness practice change the thinking of someone like Donald Trump? Sarah also shares some revealing research about people with narcissistic traits practicing mindfulness. The results of these studies might surprise you. They certainly perplexed the researchers who conducted the trials.  Please share this episode if you like the content!

Here is a link to an article outlining the various types of narcissism: https://tinyurl.com/ycks747n

“Do bigger egos mean bigger presence? Facets of grandiose narcissism and mindfulness” Current Psychology; 2022 
“Pathological narcissism and psychological distress: The mediating effects of vitality, initiative, and mindfulness” Personality and Individual Differences; 2022
“Does mindfulness meditation increase empathy? An experiment” Self and Identity; 2017

Important links:
Sarah's Mindfulness Coaching website: http://www.sarahvallely.com The Aware Mind on Instagram https://www.instagram.com/aware_mind_podcast/
TSD Mindfulness Virtual Meditation Center http://www.tsdmind.org
Jacob's Personal Training website http://www.jacobderossett.com
Jacob's YouTube Channel https://tinyurl.com/9yykwne9

This episode is a meditation for beginners, and mindfulness for beginners resource. Intermediate and advanced meditators will also benefit. The Aware Mind produces content that supports stress reduction, anxiety relief, better concentration and focus, and trauma healing.

The Aware Mind is produced by TSD Mindfulness, a virtual meditation center, offering mindfulness classes, certifications and private coaching. Sponsorded by RENVA Turmeric Shakes

Transcript

 Hello, this is Sarah Vallely. I am the host of the Aware Mind podcast. So welcome to a little bit of a come to Jesus here with Sarah, the host. We are living in some very unusual times here in our country. And I had a podcast episode recorded, edited, and ready to upload, but I don't feel it's the most appropriate topic based on what's going on in our country right now.

I've decided instead to upload a few podcasts that I recorded during my first season. Back then I was doing some episodes that were slightly political. I do want to say that I consider myself to be a centrist. I'm a moderate centrist. I feel that I really do see both sides of the political spectrum. So if you are one of my clients and you don't share the politics that I have, or you are a listener and you do not share the politics that I have, Absolutely no judgment on my part.

I am open to all different perspectives. But as you can see from this episode that I'm uploading today,  I am not a fan of Trump. The next three episodes that I will publish will be from my first season. This one today is about mindfulness and narcissism. I will upload another one about racism. And one more about global change.

Thank you for listening, and if you enjoy any of these episodes from this three part series, please share them with people in your lives. This episode that you are about to hear was published on October 22nd, 2022. At  this point, every information portal is saturated with mindfulness content.  But this show is a unique, unusual, curious take on mindfulness. 

Some of what you hear will be completely new to you.  Let's dive in and take a look at the nature of the aware mind. I invite you to deepen your awareness, so that you may be liberated and inspired. 

We are here with Sarah Vallely, mindfulness teacher, coach, and author. Sarah has been teaching meditation and mindfulness for the past two decades, training and certifying others to teach mindfulness. Sarah is the author of four books. Her latest book is titled Tame, Soothe, Dwell, the 55 Teachings of TSD Mindfulness.

Sarah, how are you? I'm doing great, Jacob. Thank you. Yep. We're going there. We're crossing the line. We're going to talk about some politics. Jacob and I. Haven't had a conversation about politics off the air, on the air, so you'll witness our first possibly political conversation. My prediction is that Jacob is gonna be super nice, he's midwestern, gonna stay neutral, and be nice about everything, so we'll see.

Well that's because I am neutral. Okay. You know, it's not an act, it's genuine, yeah. Yeah, yeah, I think I'm pretty neutral too.  I understand the need to progress forward with social justice issues. I understand the need to do what's better for the whole as opposed to for the individual. I understand the benefits of being fiscally conservative.

I understand Christians who want their beliefs about right and wrong to be reflected in the law. And I do understand that there are some people who are really fed up with the political system and they think someone like Donald Trump can really Have an effect, but I don't get Trump. I absolutely don't. 

I guess I kind of think he's an asshole. So I said it off air. I'm like, what is the appeal here? I really am bewildered by people's love for him and admiration. It seems like he's a jerk. I'm so don't want to follow him. I'm so off put by his all of his his thing, you know? So yeah, that's that's my whole stance on it.

Being as open as I can possibly be. It still doesn't seem appealing, you know, like that's just where I'm at. And I think we agree on that. I think. We practice mindfulness. We practice loving kindness. And then it's like you hit a wall with Trump.  I've had these conversations with people who are in a similar mindset.

You just can't cross that line. But after preparing for this podcast, I am going to make an effort to include Trump in my loving kindness meditation. Whoa, okay. Yeah, that's pretty high rung. I agree with you. That's a good that's actually a really good North Star. Like, you know what I feel like If I can do that, boy, I'm, I'm doing pretty good.

There's a spectrum of like degrees of ease to include someone in your, in your loving kindness and boy, that's an interesting one. I didn't think about that. They're a part of your family. It's a global family. So that's my whole view on all this really. I love that you brought that up about these personalities are part of our family.

They're part of our society. That's how I really look at it. I try to look at it that way.  Some of my biggest strides in my compassion practice I made while George W. Bush was president. I was just learning how to be compassionate for a leader who I didn't necessarily agree with. But I haven't done that with Trump.

This is maybe something that I can incorporate into my practice. So again, what if Trump practice mindfulness, the Washington Post's fact checkers report that Trump made 18, 000 false statements between the years 2017 and 2020. So if Trump practice mindfulness, would he lie less? I mean, that's what mindfulness is about, right?

Picking up on all our own lies, all the stories that we're making up. And I think people that tend to lie, they're lying to themselves first. They're convincing themselves and then they end up lying to people around them. If Trump practiced mindfulness, would he run for president? Would he treat women differently?

And I'm just going to say it because I'm sure everybody else is thinking it. If Trump practiced mindfulness, would he be a better person? So let's just say we're just talking about somebody that does these things specifically. And this is a great example of that. If we have a friend that is doing all of these things, of course somebody that is more aware is going to do these things less.

If you are doing things like that, you're causing harm. There is a certain amount of harm that is happening at the wake of lying, at the wake of you being even misguided. So then the more attention that you have on the fact that you're doing that, the more rooted you are in your practice in yourself and compassion for others, you're probably going to do that a lot less.

Yeah, that's an important tenet in Buddhism is being aware of when you're causing harm and making adjustments so you don't cause harm. I'm going to put some oil on the fire here. Do you think Trump is a narcissist? Okay, well, I can get out of that one easy. I have no business judging, especially using a clinical term.

I can't judge. Yeah. Yeah. And as mindfulness practitioners, we shouldn't be diagnosing other people and making these judgments about other people. But I'm going to say, you know, we're having a beer. If you and I are having a beer, we're going to talk about how Trump is a narcissist. I'm a trainer for God's sake.

If this is my uncle, I'm going to be like, boy, it seems like something's going on there, you know? Yeah. I'll review what being a narcissist means. A grandiose sense of self importance. Fantasies of unlimited power, demands for excessive admiration, and lacks empathy. There also are some positive attributes that are associated with narcissism, and that is high self esteem, charisma, and leadership strengths.

5 percent of the population meets the criteria in the DSM 5 for narcissistic personality disorder. There are a few different types of personality disorders. There's also a borderline personality disorder. There's sociopath, a few others. 15 percent of the population is diagnosed with a personality disorder.

So that's one in seven. Mary Trump, Donald's niece, is a clinical psychologist and the author of Too Much and Never Enough, How My Family Created the World's Most Dangerous Man. She says that Trump is a narcissist, but she's trying to sell books, right? So maybe we don't have to go by what she says. Vanity Fair, Psych Central, CNN, The Guardian, Psychology Today, the list goes on and on.

All of these news outlets have published articles. Trump is a narcissist, and not only that he's a narcissist, he's a textbook case of narcissism. There's a guy named Bill Eddy. He's the author of Why We Elect Narcissists and Sociopaths. And he says that Trump has malignant narcissism. One of the things that I learned researching for this episode is there are about five or six different types of narcissists.

I hope to be able to relay some of this information to you. One of them is called malignant narcissism, which is considered a combination of narcissistic personality disorder, sociopathy, paranoia, and sadism. I'm just repeating what I read on the interweb, not my personal diagnosis, but I will tell you that malignant narcissism is like the worst one out of all of them.

This is really interesting that you say this. When you brought up the positive, I guess, symptoms of narcissism, those all seemed like the reason that people love Trump. You know what I mean? Yeah, I totally agree with that. I mean, there are attributes that narcissists have that draw people in. It's, it's quite true.

I've personally experienced it. Humor. I mean, you know, I love humor. And for the most part, narcissists have a great sense of humor. They just make me laugh. So yeah, it's very interesting, isn't it? Some people that I really look up to are Brene Brown and Kristen Neff. They are both researchers in the fields of psychology.

If you read Brene Brown's book on shame called Daring Greatly, amazing book, she says that at the root of narcissism is shame, that they're experiencing so much shame that they're doing all of these things to make up for that. If you read Kristen Neff's book called Self Compassion, she shares research and That narcissists actually don't have shame.

They truly believe that they are superior. I think it's interesting that they conflict in this way, but maybe it's because there are these different types of narcissists, so maybe it depends on what type, but they both live in Texas, Brene Brown and Kristen Neff, one's in Austin and one's in Houston. So I kind of imagined them sitting, having coffee at Starbucks somewhere and be like, so  what do you think is at the root of narcissism? 

The way I see it, there are four possible outcomes to if Trump learns mindfulness, or if somebody who's narcissistic learns mindfulness. One of the outcomes could be Trump is already mindful and we don't realize it, so if he learned mindfulness, it wouldn't really have that much of an effect. Or, He could learn mindfulness, and it would simply have no effect.

It could go in one ear, go out the other ear. Or he could learn mindfulness, and it could help him be more empathetic and less self centered. Or, the last possible outcome here, if he learned mindfulness, it could exacerbate his narcissism. And there's actually data that supports this theory, so stay tuned.

One of the studies I read is called Do Bigger Egos Mean Bigger Presence? What do you think of that title? Do you get the pun? Meaning if you are a narcissist and you have presence, you have presence and everybody sees you. Or is it presence? I'm very mindful and I'm very present. That's clever. Yeah, very clever.

Yeah, the rest of the title is Facets of Grandiose Narcissism and Mindfulness Current Psychology. They gave tests to everybody who participated in the study. One test was on their mindfulness skills, and the other test was on attributes of being narcissistic. The attributes of being narcissistic were Divided into two types of narcissism, one that's called agentic narcissists, which is also called overt narcissism.

You might have heard of that. And this type of narcissist has grandiose views of themselves, but are not necessarily aggressive. And then the other type of narcissism is antagonistic narcissism, which is characterized by their manipulative behaviors, their aggressive behaviors. They don't have a lot of self regulation and reacting a lot.

The people that had agentic narcissistic attributes actually also had high mindfulness skills. And then the people that, yeah, and then the people that had antagonistic narcissistic attributes, they had low mindfulness skills. Oh my god, I never even realized this. Every time I hear a podcast where a mindfulness person is on, specifically with Sam, he always asks them what they think about all these mindfulness teachers that misbehave.

People that have had very, very deep levels of, call it mindfulness skills, have displayed narcissistic behavior. I never thought of that until right now. I never drew that. Wow. Yeah, isn't that fascinating? I was blown away when I That's so fascinating. Overt narcissists are quite aware of their thoughts and their feelings, quite aware of their external environment, very aware of their social interactions, and they may be using mindfulness to maximize their self promotion efforts.

Yeah, I, now I'm drawing so many parallels right now to this. This is incredible, because self awareness and deep awareness can manifest itself in so many different ways. That's so fascinating. I wonder why that is. The difference between these antagonistic narcissists and these more overt narcissists is They're able to self regulate more.

So if they're able to self regulate more is because of their mindfulness skills, because of their awareness, they are aware of what they're doing. People in general self regulate better because they have more awareness. Wow. That's interesting. This antagonistic type narcissist, they're very reactive. They don't have this self control necessarily very temperamental.

And so in some ways they're missing out on using their narcissistic. qualities. The researchers recommend that people who have antagonistic type narcissism, that they learn mindfulness, that it could help them, but help them do what? I don't know, be more narcissistic. I  think you'll find this interesting.

When I was doing my research, there are several studies and several articles about spiritual programs making people more narcissistic. And I, Didn't want this episode to be centered on that. Maybe that could be a future episode, but I thought I would mention One bit of research. This is another type of narcissism.

It's called communal narcissism and this type of narcissist They have an inflated sense of self worth and a need to help others when I was reading this I was like, oh no I've been really trying to work on my worthiness issues feel more worthy and I feel like I really like to help others maybe I'm That's kind of narcissists, but don't do that.

If you're listening, yeah,  even, even so far, when you mentioned that, I'm like, do I have that? Like I'm a little concerned. Yeah. Yeah. So no, don't diagnose yourself listening to this episode. Don't diagnose other people more. Just look at this research and find the interesting connections that are made here.

What the study shows is that there are higher numbers of communal narcissists in yoga groups and meditation groups than in a control group with just random people in it. Wow. Yeah. Fascinating. Yeah. Yeah. In gym culture, you know, this is like a thing. I think gym communities also people are kind of known for the narcissistic endeavor.

People wear minimal amount of clothing and then they spend so much time and effort making their body look a certain way. That makes total sense and I think that's exactly what I'm talking about here. Maybe not the helping part Maybe when you go to the gym, you're not necessarily helping people. That's interesting.

It makes you think about things Another study that was published in Personality and Individual Differences Journal. This is very similar to the study I just shared, so I'm not going to spend too much time on it, but they did basically the same thing, but the two types of narcissism that they broke the groups into were vulnerable narcissism, which is also referred to as covert narcissism, Narcissism is another type.

This type of narcissist portrays themselves as humble and sometimes as a victim. They're often more introverted, but they have an inflated sense of self importance and crave admiration. The other group of narcissist was that agentic. narcissism, that overt narcissism that we were talking about. Same thing.

The overt narcissists were more mindful and the vulnerable narcissists were less mindful. So it supports that earlier study. This last study, does mindfulness meditation increase empathy? There's something called cognitive empathy. And when you have cognitive empathy, you can figure out what someone is feeling or possibly what they're thinking.

This skill helps us see the perspectives of other people and motivates us to help other people. The idea is, is that if we practice mindfulness, our empathy or our cognitive empathy will improve. And the reason that researchers believe this is because when experienced meditators practice mindfulness, they activate the areas of the brain that are activated when we experience empathy.

And those are the prefrontal cortex, the anterior cingulate cortex, and the anterior insula. When we get stressed It's more difficult for us to have empathy, and the reason is to have empathy or to have cognitive empathy. We need to use our higher functioning abilities in our brain. Empathy requires a high level of processing in our brain.

And when we get stressed, we're pulled out of those areas of our brain that do high level processing. And we're moved more into those lower levels and more primal levels. So, reducing stress is really important to our ability to be empathetic. Therefore, I would say mindfulness practice would be really helpful.

So, the researchers who conducted this study, they wondered if mindfulness meditation could help narcissistic people be more empathetic by quieting their egos and that this practice might affect their grandiose image of themselves. So what they did in this study is they had some groups. One group practiced mindfulness for five minutes, focused on their breathing.

And they had the people in the study look at photos. And then describe what the person in the photo might be thinking or what they might be feeling. Interesting. Yeah. I would love to do that. Yeah, yeah, we should do that. This is a way for them to test cognitive empathy ability. Oh God. I'm actually scared of that now.

The thing about it, I would think I would do really, really well, and then I was actually doing horribly. That's the worst thing, is that I'm walking through life really believing that I'm doing such good things, and then everybody, from everybody else's perspective, I'm doing horrible things. That's the worst case scenario.

Well, I'm sure you'd be great. So you ready to hear the results of this crazy study? Absolutely. They also gave them a test to see their level of narcissistic attributes. And the people that had low narcissistic attributes improved their cognitive empathy after they practiced mindfulness. The group  People who had high narcissistic attributes, their cognitive empathy decreased after the mindfulness exercise by 15%.

Wow. They actually redid the trial. They were like, What? I mean, completely unexpected. They redid the trial with different people and got the same exact results. Decreased their empathy. Their cognitive empathy by 15 percent after practicing mindfulness. Okay, I can't wait to hear you explain what's going on.

Here's a quote from the study. Mindfulness backfired among those who seem to need it the most. I was going to ask you what you thought, why you thought that happened. Actually, my whole question through all this has been, would somebody who is a diagnosed narcissist be able to meditate, period? You know what I mean?

I think of this all the time with like, certain family members that I discuss exercise with. It's just not even on the menu of options for them. There's just no chance. I don't see a way in to get them to exercise, even though I know exercise is so important. Let alone mindfulness.  I'm like 0 for 30 on getting people to meditate in my life.

Maybe 1 for 30 on getting people to exercise. Here's my take on Donald Trump practicing mindfulness. Sitting on the cushions, and this is what he's thinking. He's thinking, sitting, quiet, noticing a thought. Genius! My thoughts are fabulous. Sitting, birds chirping. Wow, I'm so good at practicing mindfulness.

Sitting. Quiet. Noticing thought. Another, another genius thought. Yeah, that was like what I was thinking earlier. Like, they just think that they're really good at it. Like, I think I'm really bad at mindfulness every time I practice it, and I make all these reasons. But yeah, I guess somebody that's a narcissist must be like, wow, I'm really good at this.

It's just reaffirming it. That's so funny. I mean, it's not funny, but it is funny. As far as This idea of someone practices mindfulness who's got narcissistic attributes and then they essentially become more Narcissistic right because they have less empathy. It made me think of someone I knew who worked with Adjudicated youth in the wilderness and he would tell these kids that he worked with what I'm going to teach you is It's going to make you better at whatever you do.

Meaning if you're a drug dealer, it's going to make you a better drug dealer. If you steal cars, it's going to make you better at steal cars. Like whatever it is that you do, this wilderness training is going to make you better at it. So, so maybe it's kind of like that. Yeah, it might be, you know, I thought of that once I had somebody that I trained that was a convicted felon and it was a violent offense.

And I was like, okay, now I have a real moral quandary that this is someone that has been abusive. Towards people and I definitely can't train this person. Okay, if this is someone who is hurting people I can't improve someone's fitness level that is harming others. Then I confronted him about it. It was not true.

It turns out he was a very nice guy and he got into a bad situation. Like a, a martial arts gym would do the same thing. If someone came in and they had harmful intentions of harming other people, they would not train them. Yeah. It's a moral dilemma, right? It's like, yeah. You have to think it through. So if you have someone that you think is a narcissist, you can't work with them.

You have to turn them down and say, I'm just going to help you. Yeah. I based on this research. Yeah, I can see coming to that conclusion, but I'm also that forever optimist is I will be able to help this person turn this around. I'll tell you, I think that the secret is a micro dosing. That's now my recommendation for most things, but I think this would be one of those situations.

They've actually looked into that with people that are sociopaths. To literally to carve those neural pathways that they actually don't have and that's what that does. I think maybe we should make our official recommendation for Trump that he microdose instead of just mindfulness. Yeah, yeah, yeah. In this situation, you need some stronger medicine, my friend.

Yeah. Going back to that question, why did the narcissists decrease their cognitive empathy by 15 percent after they practiced mindfulness for 5 minutes? Obviously, I'm not an expert on this, I don't know, but my guess is, is that during that 5 minutes, They were focusing on their breath and they were, which is themself, it was their breath.

So they got very focused on themselves and who they are and their experience. And so then when they went to look at the pictures to Identify what those people were experiencing, I think maybe it acted as a hurdle for them to get outside of themself and connect with the people in the pictures, whereas somebody else who did not have narcissistic attributes and practiced mindfulness for five minutes, what that Five minutes of focusing on their breath did for them was to just quiet all the chatter and all the distraction in their heads.

So then when they looked at the pictures, they were able to tune in more with, with what possibly the people in the pictures were thinking and feeling.  I think Trump has every narcissistic superpower there is, and, you know, because there's all these different kinds of  narcissism. And so, therefore, I think he's probably already mindful, and I think that maybe if he learned mindfulness, it would make him even more narcissistic.

Do you think, though, that this would apply the same to loving kindness meditation, specifically? No. Maybe not. I think the study needs to be done with people that are diagnosed, to have them do, like, a very Intensive loving kindness meditation. I would be very curious to see the results of that study because this is just awareness in general It's not targeted towards compassion.

It's not having a goal of like trying to open your heart. You know what I mean? I would love to see that study be done. Yeah. I will look into that. Let's do that. Let's right now, I'm going to lead a loving kindness meditation  and I'm going to say, may I have joy.  May I have good health. May I have freedom.

May Trump have joy.  May Trump have good health.  May Trump have freedom.  May all beings have joy. May all beings have good health. May all beings have freedom.  For me, when we just went through that, I did alright, except for the freedom one. May Trump have freedom. That one was a struggle.  He's done so many things wrong.

If this person has these things that we mentioned, it's going to be better for everybody around, right? If this person has their needs met, they're likely to do less harm. It's a great Method, I think, for everybody to remember that we're all in this situation together and boy, some people are a little harder to use as your token of loving kindness than others.

If these people are in a good place, then that just helps us feel like we're in a good place. I think I struggled with the freedom one because I think on a deep level, I actually fear Trump and so that freedom line made me feel unsafe. If he's free, then I'm not going to be safe. There's a lot of psychology in there.

Interesting. This is interesting because I can just really feel how charged people can be around this topic. It's a tall order, but to me, I'm very competitive and I want to be the most loving person possible. But at the same time, I say all that and I'm like, I don't know, man. It seemed like there's this difficult order to just have love for somebody as a fellow human and then to hold somebody accountable are two separate things, right?

It's a struggle.  I will put a link in the show notes to a really good article that outlines each of these different types of narcissism because it's a little bit hard to follow. If you're enjoying our podcast and would like to help us out, you could please just give us a rating on whatever podcast platform you're using.