xanyland Episode 10: This Is Not a Love Story- Julia and Her Narcissists
This episode of Xanyland is brought to you by narcissism. Honestly, I can’t believe it took us this long. Narcissism is everywhere—on timelines, in therapy sessions, in breakups, and it’s become one of the buzziest (and most misused) psychological terms in our culture. So, of course, this episode ended up getting more views than most. We’re all trying to understand it: whether we’re diagnosing an ex, checking ourselves, or recovering from the fallout.
My guest is Julia Jasunas, a brilliant and rising stand-up comic from Los Angeles who has opened for names like Theo Von, Tom Arnold, Bobby Lee, and Brad Williams. She also trained in musical theater at the University of the Arts, so she’s a performer in every sense—grounded, expressive, and sharp. Check out her Instagram for tour dates and clips; she’s one to watch.
She’s very funny and has very funny things to say. That being said, this episode was not funny.
It was deep, sobering, and unflinchingly honest. We talked about narcissism in its many forms—casual, clinical, cultural, and personal.
At the center of our conversation is Narcissistic Personality Disorder (NPD), a clinical diagnosis that gets misused constantly. The word “narcissist” gets thrown at everyone these days—bad dates, ex-friends, self-promoters—but NPD is a serious personality disorder, and it’s difficult to identify and even harder to treat. These are not just people who love themselves too much. Most of the time, the opposite is true. They lack a stable sense of self entirely and build their identity by absorbing, controlling, and draining the people around them.
Julia shared that she had been in two long-term relationships with narcissists. She named behaviors that many people with experience in this kind of dynamic will immediately recognize: gaslighting, love bombing, devaluing, being hot-and-cold, and breadcrumbing—a term I hadn’t heard before, but instantly loved. Julia described narcissists as spiders: lurking, watching, waiting for you to walk into their web. I said vampires, but she made a strong case for spiders. The image helped her create the psychological distance she needed in order to heal.
Julia’s view was clear. Narcissists do not change. They do not seek help. They do not self-reflect. Her advice was to go no contact, to dehumanize if needed, and to completely cut them out. For her, there is no healing for the narcissist…only for the survivor.
I understand that perspective. If you’ve been in a relationship with someone who operates from a narcissistic structure, you know how destabilizing it can be. They isolate you from your instincts. They erode your sense of reality. And eventually, you stop recognizing yourself. Even after you leave, the recovery takes time. You need support to recalibrate your nervous system and rebuild your trust in your own perception.
But I don’t fully agree that healing is impossible. True narcissism is often born out of trauma—emotional neglect, unmet needs, ruptured attachments. It’s not just a behavior problem; it’s an attachment and identity problem. A narcissist is someone stuck in a developmentally young state. They cannot hold other people as fully separate and real because they don’t yet know how to regulate their own internal world.
That said, it is not your job to fix them. If you think your love will be the exception—that you will be the one who finally breaks through—that is your own narcissism speaking. You’re not special enough to override someone else’s entire psychological defense system. No one is.
But I do believe healing is possible, not common, not easy, and certainly not guaranteed, but possible. With long-term psychoanalytic therapy, ideally combined with skills-based treatments like DBT, someone with an attachment-based personality disorder can begin to build internal structure. They can start to see others more clearly, and maybe even see themselves with compassion instead of shame. The process is long. The work is deep. The motivation has to come from them.
For the person on the other end of the dynamic, the echoist, the empath, the one who stayed too long—you need healing, too. Julia spoke powerfully about what I am referring to as echoism. Echoism is a term used to describe people who habitually shrink themselves to meet the needs of others. It’s often viewed as the “opposite” of narcissism, and it’s not inherently healthy. Echoism is a trauma response, just like narcissism. It’s how some of us learned to stay safe: by disappearing. Echoists avoid attention, suppress their needs, and often feel guilty for having boundaries at all. They’re not more evolved. They’re wounded in a different direction.
The truth is, there is narcissism in all of us. And there is echoism in all of us, too.That’s what makes these patterns so insidious. They’re not just clinical, they’re human. When we don’t understand them, we play them out over and over again without realizing it.
So yes, stay away from the person who manipulates you. Cut ties if you have to. Don’t try to heal someone who doesn’t believe they need help. But also know this: narcissism is not a death sentence. It’s a defense. Defenses can soften—if someone is willing to do the work. Also, maybe educate yourself on the difference between a person with NPD vs a sociopath vs a psychopath!
If you're someone who suspect you have a personality disorder? Or fears you might be? That doesn’t make you unlovable. It does mean you have a responsibility to face the part of yourself you’ve been hiding behind and your relationship patterns. Go to therapy with someone skilled in understanding transference.
Want to know more about NPD? Please reach out to us with questions you want answered on another pod episode!
Watch the episode below, or find xanyland on your favorite podcast platform.