This is an iHeart Podcast.
Hey, just finished drawing up that quick one-page business plan for you.
Here's the link.
But there was no link.
There was no business plan.
I hadn't programmed Kyle to be able to do that yet.
I'm Evan Ratliff, here with a story of entrepreneurship in the AI age.
Listen as I attempt to build a real startup run by fake people.
Check out the second season of my podcast Shell Game on the iHeartRadio app or wherever you get your podcasts.
I'm Robert Smith, and this is Jacob Goldstein, and we used to host a show called Planet Money.
And now we're back making this new podcast called business history about the best ideas and people and businesses in history and some of the worst people, horrible ideas and destructive companies in the history of business.
First episode how southwest airlines use cheap seats and free whiskey to fight its way into the airlines the most texas story ever.
Listen to business history on the iheart radio app, apple podcasts or wherever you get.
What do you get when you mix 1950s Hollywood, a Cuban musician with a dream and one of the most iconic sitcoms of all time?
You get Desi Arnaz on the podcast starring Desi Arnaz and Wilmer Valderrama.
I'll take you on a journey to Desi's life, how he redefined American television and what that meant for all of us watching from the sidelines waiting for a face like ours on screen.
Listen to, Starring Desi Arnaz and Wilmer Valderrama on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.
On an all new episode of iHeartRadio's Las Culturistas.
Jennifer Lawrence is dishing from her hilariously awkward run-ins with A-listers.
I don't know what I was expecting, but he was just like...
Nice to meet you.
To her unfiltered take on beauty treatments.
I'm so upset I didn't get Botox before that.
And a jaw-dropping reveal you won't see coming.
I don't know if I can announce this, but I'm just gonna.
Open your free iHeartRadio app, search Las Culturistas, and listen to the full podcast now.
The Big Take podcast from Bloomberg News keeps you on top of the biggest stories of the day.
My fellow Americans, this is Liberation Day.
Stories that move markets.
Chair Powell opened the door to this first interest rate cut.
Impact politics.
Change businesses.
This is a really stunning development for the AI world.
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I'm Gemma Spike and welcome back to The Psychology of Your 20s, the podcast where we talk through the biggest changes, moments and transitions of our 20s and what they mean for our psychology.
Hello, everybody.
Welcome back to the show.
Welcome back to the podcast.
New listeners, old listeners, wherever you are in the world, it is so great to have you here back for another episode of The Psychology of Your 20s.
As we, of course, break down the psychology of our 20s.
Today, we have a listener requested episode for you all.
One that a couple of you actually wrote in and DM'd me about after our toxic friendship episode.
In that episode, we talked about the victim friend.
And it brought up a lot of questions about the victim, the broader victim mentality that we spoke about in that episode, and what psychology actually says about people who always play the victim.
I fell down such a rabbit hole of information about this, about this idea, this phenomena, this concept.
And so today, here we are.
We are going to dive into the complex psychology behind the victim mentality.
Now, I want to start with a very important note.
When I talk about the victim mentality.
I'm not trying to minimize the experiences of people who have genuinely been victimized by abuse, by systemic injustice, by trauma, by loss.
If you have been through something that's left your body and your brain on constant high alert, if you've learned through experiences that bad things do happen to you more than others, you are not a problem or the problem that we are unpacking today.
What we are talking about is a pattern of behavior or a psychological habit whereby people turn neutral situations or situations that simply don't go their way into something that they use to gain sympathy from others for their own gain.
We're talking about situations where people learn how to turn out natural sympathy into against us in a way that feels manipulative icky wrong, in a way that really lacks self-awareness.
So the question we're really asking today is how do we navigate these kinds of people, whether they're friends, family members, colleagues?
How do we navigate people who truly do believe that everything goes wrong for them, that everybody is out to get them, that they are the unluckiest person in the world, and why are they the way they are?
What made them this way?
Do they genuinely have any clarity about what they're doing?
And yeah, how do you go about it so that you aren't always in the firing line?
Without further ado, I am so excited for this episode.
Let's get into the psychology behind the victim mentality.
First of all, how does the field of psychology talk about this topic?
So in psychology the term victim mentality or victim mindset it's also known as that.
It basically refers to a habitual pattern of thought in which a person consistently perceives themselves as a victim of the negative actions of others or of fate, even when the evidence suggests otherwise.
That second half of that statement is the most crucial part.
The evidence statement suggests otherwise.
And, as one 2020 study put it across, all situations.
Even when outcomes differ, these people will still seek out an explanation where they are the victim.
That is the one constant in every situation.
They are always the one who is wronged, even when things change, even again when the evidence is stacked up against them, even when people tell them no, you're wrong.
The victim mentality is actually believed to be somewhat of a personality trait.
We all have the capacity to see ourselves as less or more as a victim, you know, regardless of actual circumstances.
But people high in this victim trait tend to again interpret neutral or ambiguous situations or events as hostile.
They tend to dwell on unfair treatment and ruminate longer than others.
And they really struggle to to move past what happened, meaning that everything that maybe does prove this mentality or does prove this state of mind for them gets held onto longer than any situations that don't.
It isn't that they're lying.
They do truly believe that the world is against them.
They're suffering from a delusion, a delusion of victimhood.
I used to have a coworker, Just like this.
I'm not going to give any more specifics than that because they do still work at this place.
But anytime, like somebody got a promotion, they would always turn it into about into about, like how nothing good ever happened to them.
Anytime someone gave feedback, they were bullying her.
They were ganging up on her.
One time one of our co-workers won.
Do you know those car giveaways that they sometimes have at supermarkets or like malls, where you can like win a Kia Carnival or like win a Suzuki Swift?
Like one time, one of our co-workers won one of those competitions.
And I remember she went on and on about how you know she'd won the car, which of course she wouldn't.
Probably, you know, it wouldn't even work anyways.
I bet it would be a scam.
This reality of her having won the car didn't even exist.
And yet she had turned a situation that had not happened, that was not real, into one in which she was still the victim.
And it wasn't even her life or her story.
And I remember like... that happening and being like, oh, I actually feel really bad for you.
Because imagine, like every possible scenario, even those that haven't occurred still end up in the same way, when you haven't even given them the opportunity to prove you otherwise.
It would be a pretty sad way to live.
There are a few key signs that someone you're dealing with has this kind of victim mindset.
Number one, the biggest of them all They externalize blame.
They attribute their struggles, their faults, their mistakes entirely to others, or to fate, or to bad luck.
In psychology, there is this idea that people either have an internal or external locus of control.
This was a theory that was developed in the 1950s by a psychologist called Julian Rodder.
Basically what he said is if you have an external locus, you see your life as being controlled by outside forces that you have no control over.
So you shouldn't bother trying to change anything because these forces are always going to win.
If, on the other hand, you have an internal locus of control, you basically believe that you make your own luck.
You can influence your life.
You can kind of guess everything, which mentality the victim tends to have.
The external locus right.
So that is why blame is never something that they take on.
It's always about the outside world, outside circumstances, things that they have no capacity to control.
Number two, and this might surprise you, but this mentality often makes the person feel morally superior and act that way as well.
So in that 2020 paper I mentioned earlier, researchers actually found that people high in victimhood also show high levels of moral elitism, which is basically a belief that they've been wronged and, as such, they have a moral high ground.
This can make them feel as though they're entitled to more from life.
They're entitled to more sympathy.
They're entitled to more leniency.
They are allowed to retaliate because they see themselves as fundamentally righteous because of what has happened to them.
In daily life, you know, how might this look?
It might look like someone who constantly is like well, you know, I'm going to steal that thing from the grocery store because when I was a kid, like I never, I never got much, or you know, I expect you to rescue me.
Like I, can't possibly be responsible for dealing with this situation, or they resist taking steps towards change.
They might say that they want help, but it has to be on their terms.
And anytime you try to suggest something, they normally reject it.
They feel entitled for more from you.
They feel entitled to your resources, your time, your energy because it's owed to them by their bad luck, by their bad circumstances.
The third sign someone has a victim mindset, they are also very self-centered.
They constantly bring the conversation back to them.
They lack empathy for other people's suffering.
In fact, they see other people's suffering as an inconvenience to their own ability to talk about their suffering.
And they also really do tend to dramatize overstate, maybe even lie about experiences or events that they've been through in order to get attention.
Although they see the world as controlling their fate, they also still have a lot and a deep sense of self focus, and they tend to think about themselves more than other people do and more than they think about others, which is honestly fine.
Like you really, you should be your number one priority, but for people with the victim mindset, it's the only priority.
Now this brings us to a big question.
How do people end up like this?
How do two people who have the same childhoods end up like this?
How do two people who grew up in the same city country, circle of friends and you know how do they end up, so that one of them takes accountability, one of them doesn't?
Some of us are able to celebrate successes.
Other people can't stop complaining about how hard done by they are.
The core truth is and maybe one that's a little bit uncomfortable is that it usually starts as protection.
At its core, the victim mentality reflects a psychological position of learned helplessness.
This was a concept first proposed by Martin Silkman in the 1970s.
We've mentioned it on the podcast a few times before, but essentially what he found was that when people don't feel like they can their bad circumstances, even when they are clearly given a route or an opportunity to do so, they still won't take it, because they have learnt that nothing they do matters.
They have no control because in the past they've had no control.
Let me be clear.
For many people, it's not an act.
It's not even necessarily a conscious act.
Instead, it's actually, you know, often a functional freeze response, a way the brain protects itself after prolonged helplessness, prolonged trauma, prolonged invalidation.
Through a trauma lens.
If we're having sympathy for these people, it makes a lot of sense.
When someone experiences trauma, chronic maltreatment, when they've experienced emotional abuse or neglect or repeated failure from their relationships in some form or from the system, their nervous system learns that agency is pointless and the body goes into what trauma therapist Stephen Porges calls the dorsal vagal state.
It's basically a state of shutdown dissociation freeze, and in that state, The message the brain is sending constantly is you're not safe and you can't do anything about it.
Don't fight.
Don't move.
Don't run away.
Over time, the physiological reaction can kind of crystallize into a psychological identity.
AKA, I'm the person who bad things happen to.
I can't do anything about this. here's where the story gets a little bit more layered.
Yes, it does start as a protective strategy most of the time, but it can also take on manipulative qualities, especially when it develops into what we call covert narcissism.
Covert narcissism.
It's also called vulnerable narcissism is a subtype of narcissistic personality disorder or narcissistic personality patterns that hides behind insecurity, shame and self-pity rather than arrogance.
So, unlike the classic grandiose narcissist who demands admiration, the covert narcissist seeks someone to rescue them and give them validation and reassurance through their suffering.
There was a 2024 paper published in the Journal of Social and Personality Psychology and it found that covert narcissists don't necessarily dominate rooms.
They don't come in hot.
They don't need people to think they're the best, but they do seek to elicit a caring response from others.
That actually inevitably ends up dominating the emotional undertones of a space.
Their pain becomes the currency through which they maintain control over over a situation, over their relationships, over how other people see them.
Now, because empathy is one of the strongest human instincts.
This strategy often works really well for a while.
People rush in to help.
We want to comfort.
We want to reassure this person.
We don't want them to suffer.
And this person loves that because it does feel amazing.
But soon those relationships do start to feel bad.
One way they start to feel like transactions and of course, naturally people are going to drop off.
People are going to leave that person's life.
That actually increases their attempts for victimhood and their idea of themselves as a victim, as somebody that people leave, as somebody that people can't love, not tracing it back to this pattern of behavior that they're exhibiting.
Still, it's important to note that even manipulative forms of victimhood usually began as legitimate pain.
The difference is that the person never learned how to self-soothe or regulate, so they just externalize that responsibility onto others.
They learned that helplessness gets them what assertiveness never did.
And this passive state is again.
It is reinforced by, by early experiences, early experiences of not being heard but noticing that actually, when you play up the powerlessness, when you exacerbate or, you know, really call in people to try and comfort you and help you, you get the same kind of love that you probably wanted all along.
Ultimately, I think knowing this helps us hold kind of two truths at the at the same time.
Some people live from a place of victimhood because life taught them to.
Others use victimhood because it gives them power.
Both need compassion.
I think the sentiment is that only one of them can truly heal.
The first kind, where it's really just because of an absence of love and an absence of feeling like they can take control of their life.
That one is something people can get over.
When they have crossed into the state of like This is actually a really great way to get what I want from people and get what I want from situations.
It's a lot harder, if not almost impossible after a while, to come back from that.
Now, I'm sure at this point, if you've listened this far, you probably have somebody in mind, who you are thinking of.
Maybe it's your mother.
Maybe it's a friend of yours.
Maybe it's a family member.
Maybe it's like a colleague.
Maybe it's even your partner.
The thing is, is that you can have sympathy for this person.
You can understand that this mindset was born from a deep pain and still be deeply frustrated by how it impacts you.
So what I really want to talk about next is what do we do when this kind of individual is in our life, sucking energy from us?
How do we handle this in a way that doesn't just further determine or prove their victimhood to them?
We're going to talk about that after this short break.
Stay with us.
I hadn't programmed Kyle to be able to do that yet.
My name is Evan Ratliff.
I decided to create Kyle, my AI co-founder, after hearing a lot of stuff like this from OpenAI CEO, Sam Aldman
There's this betting pool for the first year that there's a one-person billion-dollar company which would have been unimaginable without AI, and now it will happen.
I got to thinking, could I be that one person?
I'd made AI agents before for my award-winning podcast, Shell Game.
This season on Shell Game.
I'm trying to build a real company with a real product, run by fake people.
Oh, hey, Evan.
Good to have you join us.
I found some really interesting data on adoption rates for AI agents in small to medium businesses.
Listen to Shell Game on the iHeartRadio app or wherever you get your podcasts.
And she said, Johnny, the kids didn't come home last night.
Along the central Texas plains, teens are dying.
Suicides that don't make sense.
Strange accidents and brutal murders.
In what seems to be a plot ripped straight out Out of Breaking Bad.
Drugs, alcohol, trafficking of people.
There are people out there that absolutely know what happened.
Listen to Paper Ghosts, The Texas Teen Murders, on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.
What do you get when you mix 1950s Hollywood, a Cuban musician with a dream and one of the most iconic sitcoms of all time?
You get Desi Arnaz.
A trailblazer, a businessman, a husband and maybe, most importantly, the first Latino to break primetime wide open.
I'm Wilmer Valderrama and yes, I grew up watching him, probably just like you and millions of others.
But for me, I saw myself in his story.
From cleaning canary cages to this night here in New York, it's a long ways.
On the podcast starring Desi Arnaz and Wilmer Valderrama.
I'll take you on a journey through Desi's life, the moments it has overlapped with mine, how he redefined American television and what that meant for all of us watching from the sidelines, waiting for a face like ours on screen.
This is the story of how one man's spotlight lit the path for so many others, and how we carry his legacy today.
Listen to, Starring Desi Arnaz and Wilmer Valderrama, as part of the My Cultura Podcast Network, available on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.
I'm Robert Smith.
This is Jacob Goldstein.
And we used to host a show called Planet Money.
And now we're back making this new podcast called Business History, about the best ideas and people and businesses in history and some of the worst people, horrible ideas and destructive companies in the history of business.
Having a genius idea without a need for it is nothing.
It's like not having it at all.
It's a very simple, elegant lesson.
Make something people want.
First episode, how Southwest Airlines used cheap seats and free whiskey to fight its way into the airline business.
The most Texas story ever.
There's a lot of mavericks in that story.
We're going to have mavericks on the show.
We have plenty of robber barons.
So many robber barons.
And you know what?
They're not all bad.
And we'll talk about some of the classic great moments of famous business geniuses, along with some of the darker moments that often get overlooked.
Like Thomas Edison and the electric chair.
Listen to Business History on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever.
The Big Take podcast from Bloomberg News dives deep into one big global business story every weekday.
A shutdown means we don't get the data, but it also means for President Trump that there's no chance of bad news on the labor market.
What does a bacon, egg and cheese sandwich reveal about the economy?
Our breakfast foods are consistent consumer staples, and so they sort of become outsized indicators of inflation.
What's behind Elon Musk's trillion-dollar payout?
There's a sort of concerted effort to message that Musk is coming back.
He's putting politics aside.
He's left the White House.
And what can the PCE tell you that the CPI can't?
CPI tries to measure out-of-pocket costs that consumers are paying for things, whereas the PCE index that the Fed targets is a little bit broader of a measure.
Listen to The Big Take from Bloomberg News every weekday afternoon on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.
Here's something that we can all admit, I think, pretty freely being around someone who is always a victim is exhausting.
It is exhausting.
It's boring.
It's annoying.
Like, Yeah, we might not want to admit that, but it's true.
Even if you have sympathy for them, even if you understand why they are the way they are.
Relationships run on reciprocity.
Both people have to share emotional labor.
Both people have to take responsibility.
Both people have to feel like they are seen as much as they are seeing.
You know what I mean?
That doesn't change, even if you know that someone is incapable of doing that, even if you know why they are the way they are.
And over time, I think it makes us feel like we aren't family members.
We aren't friends with this person.
We aren't truly a partner to this person.
We are a caretaker.
There is this underlying dynamic of like you need me more than I need you that really can ruin a partnership and ruin a relationship.
Do you want to know something else really interesting?
Maybe, maybe not interesting, maybe kind of hard.
The closer you get to someone like this, the kinder you actually are to them.
The The more you do try to tolerate it, the worse their behaviors actually become.
In a lot of literature, including from psychologists like Judith Herman, who is a huge trauma expert.
She wrote the foundational work Trauma and Recovery.
What she describes is that trauma survivors who end up having a victim mindset do often oscillate between craving closeness and really fearing it.
And so they often will begin to victimize themselves as a victim of you, in your presence, as a way to push away the love that they so crave and also are so fearful of.
The more as well that they trust you, the less they will suppress these urges towards victimhood.
The closer you get, the more you see these patterns, the more you actually understand might not want to be around them, so you pull away.
The more it confirms to this person that they are in fact a victim, the more they ramp up the victim mentality.
It's a terrible cycle.
It's very unfair.
It's very messy.
And you know, for you it's really difficult because, no matter how much reassurance or patience you offer, it may never be registered as safety if the other person's nervous system is wired constantly to anticipate harm, or Or if this has in fact become a deeply ingrained part of their personality.
And you know what?
It also really sucks, let's just say it, to be trying really hard with this person.
To have endless sympathy.
And then occasionally to have them turn on you and blame you.
Blame you for their hurt.
Blame you for their circumstances.
Blame you or see your wins or your success as just something that further hurts them and proves that they are hard done by.
And you know, if you're somebody who is naturally optimistic and I know I am it honestly feels contagious to be around somebody like this.
Being around that kind of constant pessimism or that powerlessness can drain even the most empathetic.
Carefree grass is green where you water it.
Kind of individual, because empathy by nature involves emotional mirroring.
We feel what others feel.
So when you're sitting in front of somebody, there's a mirror up to your soul and all they're giving you is like this sucks, this is hopeless.
We have no control.
Life is hard upon us.
God, you're going to feel that despair almost as deeply as they do.
The work here for anyone on either side of this pattern is it's not about blame.
It's about awareness.
It's about an ability to recognize that reactivity and that negativity in those moments and know that it isn't about this relationship.
It's about the original relationships, the relationships with parents caregivers, with community, with the system.
It's really important to know that this isn't actually about you.
It has nothing to do with you.
You are just a proxy for so much other baggage and so many things that are going on behind the scenes that is just getting taken out on you.
Let's shift the focus a little bit.
I'm going to ask you to be completely honest and self-reflective with me for this next part, because it's one thing to talk about people who seem to live in the victim mindset.
It's another to maybe recognize the moments when we may or may not slip into that way of thinking ourselves.
It's normal to have certain periods where you're just like, this really sucks.
Life really sucks.
You've been through a breakup.
You got laid off.
There's been a string of disappointments.
Suddenly it feels like the world is stacked against you.
I've had this happen recently.
You know, I had a huge opportunity that I've been working on for years, fall through recently.
And, you know, it was really, just such a bummer and then I had a couple days where I'm packing up you know my life to move countries and things aren't going right and then you know someone is it's just like a bunch of things and you're just like god woe is me this just all sucks life is terrible and I was in the studio the other day recording with my friend Rasheen and she was like you know she really was just like tough love your life's not that hard and I was like yeah totally right thank you for saying that to me like thank you for just being like it could be a lot worse not in a way that was like meant to undermine but in a way that we're good friends and she could really see that like I was just getting into this spiral and it's comforting it's sometimes comforting to be like yeah you know life just sucks for me right now because it removes the burden of choice it removes the burden of having to change and this actually means that you feel a lot more free and you feel like you don't actually have to take responsibility and that's great.
That's actually quite a nice feeling when we're in our 20s, when we're in our 30s, and it just feels like everything is suddenly our responsibility.
Wouldn't it be nice if this, all these bad things that are happening to me, are just not in my control at all?
Psychologists actually have a name for this.
It's called self-handicapping and I wanted to include the original term for you guys.
I don't love The language of like self-handicapping.
I like to use the term self-sabotaging, but it basically refers to this idea that we create explanations for our setbacks that protect our self-esteem.
You know, this opportunity I didn't get, it's very easy to say like, well, it's because, you know, of this and that and outside factors and these people were biased and, you know, this person, that person.
It's a lot harder to say maybe because I wasn't prepared, maybe because I didn't put my best foot forward.
These stories aren't conscious lies.
Yeah, maybe the explanation is a lot more varied.
Maybe it's a combination of external and internal factors.
But when we only look at the external factor, we shield our ego, we shield our self-esteem.
We also don't have any way to grow and we don't actually learn the truth about what we could be doing, to ask for what we want, to change our lives, to see positive changes in our attitude.
If you notice that your inner monologue sounds like things never work out for me, people constantly let me down, nobody does for me what I do for them.
It might not mean that the world is against you.
It might mean that you're actually repeating patterns that are quite hurtful.
Sometimes our brain uses very global, wide-reaching statements to disguise a very specific kind of grief.
Saying everyone leaves me is easier than admitting you know someone has left me and it really hurts and this has happened before and I don't want to investigate why.
Saying nobody ever puts into my relationship what I put into it or nobody ever gives me what I give them.
You know it's a lot easier to say that than to, You know, get into a conversation of like am I people pleasing for others or for me?
Am I actually a nice person or do I expect things in return?
Maybe I should stop putting that resentment on others.
Hard truths, I know maybe they're not the thing you wanted to hear.
But personally, I just believe that we grow when we leave room for the truth and room for investigating and being honest with ourselves about why we feel the way we feel, about our circumstances.
And that doesn't mean blaming yourself for what's out of your control.
It means recognizing the places where you do have agency, even the tiniest bit, and using it.
It's really common for people to switch between two polar opposites, blame or shame.
It's either all their fault or it's all my fault.
The goal here is the middle ground.
We want to be able to recognize something hurtful happened, but I still have choices now.
Yes, I wish the hurtful thing hadn't happened.
I wish life had been different.
That doesn't change what's available to me in this moment.
It's very tempting to believe, on the flip side, that empowerment means pretending nothing bad ever happens.
But in the real world, Sometimes it does.
And we have to understand that we're allowed to move forward past that without making it our whole story.
We're still acknowledging like this terrible thing happened.
I don't want it to happen to other people.
I don't necessarily, I'm not grateful that it happened, but what are my cards now?
And that's so much harder to face than the very simple, simple explanation of I'm just a victim.
And these past circumstances are proof that I will continue to be a victim into the future.
And there's no point wasting my time, wasting my energy, trying to change that.
I hope you guys get where I'm coming from.
I hope you can understand this isn't victim blaming.
It's just a more nuanced discussion of whether a victim mentality actually helps you.
And when acknowledging circumstances and the role they play is valid and important, and when it becomes a way to completely shield you or turn any form of agency invisible in your eyes.
Okay, we've talked about ourselves.
We've talked about the self-aware people who are critical of themselves.
When they fall into this mentality, know when they are adopting a victim mindset.
Let's actually just turn back again to when that mindset is applied upon us by people beyond us, by parents siblings teachers, I don't know friends partners, colleagues.
What do we do when we encounter somebody like that?
When we have the self-awareness in ourselves to know that sometimes we do need a complaint.
But this is maybe a level beyond.
What do we do about it?
Okay, we're going to take another short break, but when we return let's talk about yeah, how to manage forever victims in your life.
Hi kyle, could you draw up a quick document with the basic business plan just one page as a google doc, and send me the link?
Thanks hey, just finished drawing up that quick one-page business plan for you.
Here's the link.
But there was no link.
There was no business plan.
It's not his fault.
I hadn't programmed kyle to be able to do that yet.
My name is evan ratliff.
I decided to create Kyle, my AI co-founder, after hearing a lot of stuff like this from OpenAI CEO Sam Altman
There's this betting pool for the first year that there's a one-person billion-dollar company which would have been unimaginable without AI, and now it will happen.
I got to thinking, could I be that one person?
I'd made AI agents before for my award-winning podcast, Shell Game.
This season on Shell Game.
I'm trying to build a real company with a real product, run by fake people.
Oh, hey, Evan.
Good to have you join us.
I found some really interesting data on adoption rates for AI agents in small to medium businesses.
Listen to Shell Game on the iHeartRadio app or wherever you get your podcasts.
She said, Johnny, the kids didn't come home last night.
Along the central Texas plains, teens are dying.
Suicides that don't make sense.
Strange accidents and brutal murders.
In what seems to be a plot twist.
Ripped straight out of Breaking Bad.
Drugs, alcohol, trafficking of people.
There are people out there that absolutely know what happened.
Listen to Paper Ghosts, The Texas Teen Murders, on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.
I'm Robert Smith.
This is Jacob Goldstein.
And we used to host a show called Planet Money.
And now we're back making this new podcast called Business History about the best ideas and people and businesses in history.
And some of the worst people, horrible ideas, and destructive companies in the history of business.
Having a genius idea without a need for it is nothing.
It's like not having it at all.
It's a very simple, elegant lesson.
Make something people want.
First episode, how Southwest Airlines used cheap seats and free whiskey to fight its way into the airline business.
The most Texas story ever.
There's a lot of mavericks in that story.
We're going to have mavericks on the show.
We're going to have plenty of robber barons.
So many robber barons.
And you know what?
They're not all bad.
And we'll talk about some of the classic great moments of famous business geniuses, along with some of the darker moments that often get overlooked, like Thomas Edison and the electric chair.
Listen to Business History on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get it.
What do you get when you mix 1950s Hollywood, a Cuban musician with a dream and one of the most iconic sitcoms of all time?
You get Desi Arnaz a trailblazer, a businessman, a husband and, maybe most importantly, the first Latino to break primetime wide open.
I'm Wilmer Valderrama and yes, I grew up watching him, probably just like you and millions of others.
But for me, I saw myself in his story.
From planting canary cages to this night here in New York, it's a long ways.
On the podcast starring Desi Arnaz and Wilmer Valderrama.
I'll take you on a journey through Desi's life, the moments it has overlapped with mine, how he redefined American television and what that meant for all of us watching from the sidelines, waiting for a face like ours on screen.
This is the story of how one man's spotlight lit the path for so many others, and how we carry his legacy today.
Listen to, Starring Desi Arnaz and Wilmer Valderrama, as part of the My Cultura podcast network, available on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.
The Big Take podcast from Bloomberg News dives deep into one big global business story every weekday.
A shutdown means nothing.
We don't get the data, but it also means for President Trump that there's no chance of bad news on the labor market.
What does a bacon, egg and cheese sandwich reveal about the economy?
Our breakfast foods are consistent consumer staples, and so they sort of become outsized indicators of inflation.
What's behind Elon Musk's trillion dollar payout?
There's a sort of concerted effort to message that inflation, Musk is coming back.
He's putting politics aside.
He's left the White House.
And what can the PCE tell you that the CPI can't?
CPI tries to measure out-of-pocket costs that consumers are paying for things, whereas the PCE index that the Fed targets is a little bit broader of a measure.
Listen to The Big Take from Bloomberg News every weekday afternoon on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.
If you've got a forever victim in your life, there's no one way to go about it.
But here is perhaps the kindest way that you can that also won't drag you down with them.
Obviously, it starts with this understanding of what's underneath.
If we look past the words, the complaints, the despair, the blame, what we usually find is fear.
For people whose victim mindset developed through trauma, this fear is learnt.
It's a nervous system reaction doing what it's always done for them, which is preparing for pain.
And that is why logic, advice, pep talks aren't going to help.
When someone's brain believes danger or disappointment is inevitable, that optimism that you would maybe use as a shield like that's just not going to help them.
The most powerful thing that you can do is in fact creating an atmosphere of regulation.
That means staying calm when they spiral, modeling steadiness, showing them through your tone and presence that maybe this idea they have of themselves as a victim is not true and also isn't helpful.
Compassion, you know, it doesn't mean that you have to just go along with it.
You can validate someone's pain without validating anything the hopelessness cycle or mindset that comes with it.
You can say something like that sounds so painful and I can see why that would hurt you, but I also believe that, like it's not always going to be like this, I also believe that there's a lot that we can do to change that.
I also believe that things are going to still turn out okay.
As a way to model that this isn't the end of the world and it also may not be what they think it is, giving them a hint of like Hey, I for one believe you have agency invites them into a new story, like a new version of seeing themselves that also accepts the past but doesn't tolerate this forever mentality that they can never change.
So I think it's like you're safe, but also you're capable.
In therapy, I think this approach really mirrors something that we call motivational interviewing.
Instead of arguing with somebody's self-defeating beliefs, you ask open-ended questions in this technique that help them discover their own reasons for change.
You ask them, you know, what do you think life would look like if this pattern started to shift?
What's one thing you wish you felt different about?
What's something small that you can do that you can control right now?
Yeah, these circumstances are overwhelming.
Yeah, it really sucks you didn't get that job.
Sucks that that person broke up with you.
Let's think bigger.
What's going to come for you next?
What's around the corner that you're excited about?
That second last one of what's something small you can control right now.
I love that.
I have a friend, Emma.
She is a social worker and one of the most beautiful humans alive.
But she uses this on me sometimes.
I don't think I have much of a victim mindset.
But sometimes, you know, I just sometimes I like to whinge.
She tries to be sneaky about it, but I know she does it.
She has such a positive way of being like, let's redirect here.
And it works.
She doesn't have to do it very often, but it's so funny.
I always call her out on it.
I'm like, you can't, you can't therapize me.
Like I know what you're doing.
And what these questions really do is like, if you're somebody who can and wants to change, it just allows you to see that the door, the door is open and it bypasses defensiveness and by really just being like, here's an invitation to take accountability.
Now, for those of us on the other side, it's also crucial that you set boundaries around emotional labor, especially if this is somebody who is a family member or somebody that you live with or somebody that you're very close with.
Of course, I'm sure you love the people around you.
You want them to feel great about themselves.
There is a point where you cannot change them and it's not your responsibility and it should not drag you down.
Endless sympathy does not work for people like this.
Let's be very, very clear.
And it doesn't help you either, even if you think you're being nice.
Boundaries are what keeps that relationship sustainable.
Saying things like I really care about you, but I cannot keep having this conversation because it's starting to hurt me too.
Or I'm here for you, but I need you to take the lead on what comes next.
I need you to really try and help yourself in this situation.
Even saying things like hey, I love you, but I can't be around this kind of negativity in my life because it's really starting to change how I see myself.
And I don't think that's good for either of us.
These phrases signal empathy, but also an expectation that you need to take charge.
If you want me in your life, if you want this to be a positive relationship, something needs to change.
I saw this beautiful quote the other day that said true empathy is not about absorbing someone's feelings, but witnessing them without losing ourselves in the process.
You know, it's very easy to think I'm being empathetic when actually you're just taking the emotion away from them and placing it inside of you.
It's easy to think I'm being empathetic when you're really, Maybe by accident, helping someone continue a cycle.
When we over-function for somebody else through rescuing, fixing excessive soothing, we actually reinforce their helplessness.
We teach them safety exists through us and us only.
And their sense or form of regulation becomes venting to us, becomes asking us to fix their problems, becomes complaining to us and knowing that we're going to be like yeah, like.
You're totally right about that.
You are a victim and you're going to stay that way.
Like that's not helpful at all.
When we model stability, when we model boundaries, we teach them something subliminally.
Now, sometimes despite all the empathy and all the listening, nothing changes.
You know, some people just aren't going to change.
And that is like a really hard truth about life.
Like they're not going to change and they're not going to change for you.
And that really sucks.
And it's a really hard thing to acknowledge.
But you have to take the situation from there and just think about hey, what's maybe best for me here?
You'll know when it's time to kind of maybe distance yourself from a person, maybe see them a lot less, maybe limit interactions, when compassion starts turning into resentment.
Resentment is your body telling you that your empathy levels are sinking and they are sinking fast.
When you dread the next conversation, when you feel your body tense every time you see their name pop up.
Those are the signals that your boundaries are being crossed repeatedly, that this victim mindset is becoming contagious and that you aren't feeling good about this relationship.
It is a signal that your genuine desire to help has swiftly entered the territory of maladaptive people-pleasing.
Sometimes, in these situations, walking away is the kindest thing you can do for both of you, or giving distance is also a kindness, so that this relationship doesn't end up just becoming a total dumpster fire that again makes them feel like a victim.
Giving yourself two weeks away from this person to see how your own life changes, whether you feel better.
It's just a little experiment, just so that you know your own limits and you are able to put healthy boundaries and distance between this person, so that you can recuperate and so that you do have the energy to be around them for the good times as well as the bad times.
If you need to distance yourself, do it with clarity.
Do it with the clarity of like, I care about you.
I want good things for you. right now this dynamic isn't healthy for me.
I hope you get the support you deserve.
I'm so excited to see you soon, but I'm just kind of busy for the next couple of weeks and I just really need to recharge.
I've got my own things going on.
I'll talk to you when I get the chance.
You know, it's harsh.
It's probably something that not everyone is going to be willing or wants to do, but it's probably important to learn that You are allowed to just not be in somebody's life if they constantly make you feel terrible.
And if you have done everything else on this list and this person does not change, brings you down, is using the victim mentality for manipulative purposes, you are allowed to change if they won't.
And you're allowed to exit the relationship for self-care purposes and so that you can heal.
The truth is, you know, this might sound like a simple situation.
I'm talking about it rather than doing it.
It's really complicated.
You really just have to determine what's right for you whether this person is a manipulative victim or a compassionate victim.
It's really complicated.
I feel like we like to just throw around these terms of like that person has such a victim mentality and not realizing like that these people also have friends and family members and coworkers whose lives are intertwined with them.
We need like a better way of dealing with it.
But sometimes, like in the cases of control, in the cases where they're trying to guilt you or use your empathy against you, like you can just be like.
This isn't what I want from my life.
And you can provide distance and give yourself the distance to move away from that person.
I'm giving you permission to say like, That's actually okay.
And the severity of the circumstances may actually call for you to do that.
You're not being cruel.
That is the kindest thing you can do for yourself, so that you don't turn into a victim who then ends up victimizing somebody else.
And it's sometimes the kindest thing you can do for them as well.
I hope this episode has given you a bit more to think about.
If you have made it this far, if you are a loyal all the way through listener, I want you to leave a little comment black heart emoji down below.
I think that's pretty symbolic somebody who has a victim mindset.
If you want to stay in the loop with other episodes that are coming out, you can follow us on instagram at that psychology podcast, and you can also follow us here, wherever you are listening.
Make sure you are subscribed.
Please give us a five star review if you feel called to do so, but if you don't, That's all right as well.
I also want to thank our amazing researcher Libby Colbert for her contributions to this episode.
We couldn't do it without her and all of her help.
But until next time, stay safe, be kind, be gentle to yourself.
Good luck with the victims you're dealing with.
And we will talk very, very soon.
Hi, Kyle.
Could you draw up a quick document with the basic business plan?
Just one page as a Google doc and send me the link.
Thanks.
Hey, just finished drawing up that quick one page business plan for you.
Here's the link.
But there was no link.
There was no business plan.
I hadn't programmed Kyle to be able to do that yet.
I'm Evan Ratliff here with a story of entrepreneurship in the AI age.
Listen as I attempt to build a real startup run by fake people.
Check out the second season of my podcast Shell Game on the iHeartRadio app or wherever you get your podcasts.
What do you get when you mix 1950s Hollywood, a Cuban musician with a dream and one of the most iconic sitcoms of all time?
You get Desi Arnaz on the podcast starring Desi Arnaz and Wilmer Valderrama.
I'll take you on a journey to Desi's life, how he redefined American television and what that meant for all of us watching from the sidelines waiting for a face like ours on screen.
Listen to, Starring Desi Arnaz and Wilmer Valderrama on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.
I'm Robert Smith, and this is Jacob Goldstein, and we used to host a show called Planet Money.
And now we're back making this new podcast called business history, about the best ideas and people and businesses in history and some of the worst people, horrible ideas and destructive companies in the history of business.
First episode, how Southwest Airlines used cheap seats and free whiskey to fight its way into the airline business.
The most Texas story ever.
Listen to Business History on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.
On an all-new episode of iHeartRadio's Las Culturistas, Jennifer Lawrence is dishing.
Jennifer Lawrence!
Her hilariously awkward run-ins with A-listers.
I don't know what I was expecting, but he was just like, nice to meet you.
To her unfiltered take on beauty treatments.
I'm so upset I didn't get Botox before that.
And a jaw-dropping reveal you won't see coming.
I don't know if I can announce this, but I'm just gonna.
Open your free iHeartRadio app, search Las Culturistas, and listen to the full podcast now.
The Big Take podcast from Bloomberg News keeps you on top of the biggest stories of the day.
My fellow Americans, this is Liberation Day.
Stories that move markets.
Chair Powell opened the door to this first interest rate cut.
Impact politics.
Change businesses.
This is a really stunning development for the AI world and how you think about your bottom line.
Listen to The Big Take from Bloomberg News every weekday afternoon on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.
This is an iHeart Podcast.
