"You Can See Everything". Is Elizabeth Holmes Manipulating Us ALL? A Psychologist Explains.

The name of the documentary is You Can See Everything. Do you think we actually see the real Elizabeth Holmes? I'm not so sure if we do. Hey, it's Natasha. Can I ask you for a quick favor? If you've been enjoying these conversations, hit the follow button wherever you found us. If that's YouTube, Spotify, Apple Podcasts, wherever you found us, that way you never miss an episode. And if you have 10 more seconds, can you leave us a review? Maybe even rate us? That way new people can find us. As always, thank you so much for spending your time with us. family gatherings, though. Painful. Almost like getting a colonoscopy. So come hang out and let's get into it together. Hey, everybody. Elizabeth Holmes, she fooled Silicon Valley, but why are we still under her spell? Joining us now to break it all down is psychologist Dr. Sabrina Romanoff. Great to see you. So great to be here. Thanks for having me. This is just like another Saturday between us talking about dating and Elizabeth Holmes and these crazy documentaries that are out so we just watched this movie over the weekend and it is smashing box office records it brought in 15 million dollars you can see everything in theaters it's opening weekend people love it there's some things about the picture the close-up shots that might even make it into like best picture territory it's absolutely incredible and the subject Elizabeth Holmes is just no shortage of content there. What is it about Elizabeth Holmes that makes her so fascinating to watch? So one just quick disclaimer is that I don't know her personally. I'm not diagnosing. Thank God. But there's something about watching her that it's almost like she's a magician and her face is the act. She has these big piercing blue eyes that don't seem to blink, a big grin, and it's almost like a fixed facial expression. It stays on her face regardless of the content that she's speaking about and so it's almost like a baby that's learned to kind of capture the attention of a parent and so she does this really brilliant thing where she joins with the other person she validates them and then she makes herself so we see her with nathan she compliments him or she makes him seem like they're very similar and then she sells which is usually in the form of her trying to get him to believe what she's saying and then she does this like rhythmic nodding after almost like a spell she's casting where she's like willing him to believe her so it's really like her body language is a master class in sales and even the audience is trying to kind of buy what she's selling is there a term in psychology for what she's doing because it is a disconnect in her eyes and she's maintaining this eye contact for so long that it's uncomfortable as an audience member just watching it and it's not connecting with the words coming out of her mouth yeah so we're seeing a dissociative gaze right and so in psychology we see a content affect split where the content you're talking about is very split off from the affect how the person is living in their body and i'll say too she does this thing where she's her reactions are not typical right so like anyone who's confronting her it almost seems like they're being cruel or they're overreacting so anytime she's confronted she responds with not defensiveness or anger which is typical instead there's confusion there's innocence even terror and so the audience is really pulled in we want to like give her a big hug the audience doesn't really have a lot of anger towards her I'm glad you said that because I actually I left the movie feeling a little softer towards Elizabeth Holmes I almost felt like she's being manipulated or controlled I can't I can't believe I felt that way well so she's manipulating us again I think there's and I think that's the beauty of the documentary is that we just don't know like on one hand we have if Elizabeth is the magician on stage Nathan is the one person in the audience who's like that skeptical audience member right he's saying I know that this is a trick but and I'm pulled into it but I know logically that it's not real and there's something really fun about watching them go head to head because Nathan his whole shtick is to be unemotional and unmoved and kind of stoic and we see in small ways that that cracks but it's really like a standoff between them both did you find that Nathan Fielder was falling in love with Elizabeth i think we see him feel very soft towards her so in the last piece we see him be questioned like are you protecting her right and i i think nathan is very much following the viewer's arc like we are nathan and i think he sets out very skeptical of Elizabeth she's a perpetrator and then very quickly we do a one eighty and all of a sudden she becomes his victim and we want to protect her yeah i want to play the trailer just so we could play it and i want to tell everybody too there are no spoilers so what i'm doing by playing the trailer is we can just see what kind of um parameters that we can speak within so let's just play the trailer i'd love to get your reaction to it too you really feel you did nothing wrong i did not so where did things get lost how are you where you are right I wish I knew. I don't know. I don't feel like I understand that. So I know you guys invited me to stay here. Does any part of you worry about me being here 24-7? I don't think so. Well, what if I see something that makes you look bad? I think this is the moment in time to capture this story before I'm gone. I fell in love in that first conversation. Before or after that she revealed she was the founder of Theranos? Probably before. I mean, weren't you worried she was sort of scamming you? 100%, but what did she have to gain from me? Well, isn't your family rich? Yeah, I think that there's like a lot of different levels of wealth. Come jump in with me. You're asking me to go? Yeah. You've never been suspicious that she's ever lied to you? No, never. I still have this weird feeling that there's some things that I'm not seeing. I know what you're talking about. No, you don't. It took me a really long time to be okay with letting Cindy cry. It's the crying on demand for me that's just, it is so eerie though, that look on her face and how she lures somebody in. her husband billy as we saw in there uh is he a protector or is he the puppet master again i don't know him so can't speak him directly but i can speak to the characters we're seeing on screen and so and i think on the surface he wants to operate as a protector but in practice we're seeing him as a controller and we see a few examples of that for example he's using her twitter account as her he's throwing out f-bombs left and right he is using ai to create videos of her while she's in prison and he's not really consulting with her on business decisions while she's away and so in many ways this fits her pattern, right? She's a well-documented pattern of connecting herself with partners who maybe act on her behalf, right? She gets to stay as this like innocent visionary, and I think Nathan kind of begs the question: are you a person who doesn't really care about money but then you attach yourself to someone who does and then you don't intervene on their behalf? So is it that they get to blame bad cop so you can be good cop or are you genuinely a victim here? It's almost like they're working together as a team and you get that feeling too, it's like they're working together as a team but you don't really have any evidence for that which makes it feel like you're a detective and you just don't get the answer. What I will say though is that we see a pattern in her in which she's recruiting these partners who maybe are doing the dirty work or who might be a little bit more controlling and I think when you see someone who's constantly recruiting partners it's like that's a role maybe that you are actually trying to fill in your life, and I'll say like almost anyone can relate to that if you have a type in dating or even like a friend that you constantly are attracting, and usually that's our shadow selves like it's the part of us that we don't feel like we're allowed to be in the world so we recruit other people to do it for us, wow that's a very interesting take. This idea, this the name of the documentary is 'You Can See Everything' do you think we actually see the real Elizabeth Holmes? I think that's the funny irony in this that like you can see everything and there's a really funny line where like she doesn't know the difference but or she's struggling with the difference between can and could, yes and so like 'you can see everything', like Nathan is living with her, and essentially we are too as the viewers throughout the documentary, we can see everything but I'm not so sure if we do, and I think there's more than meets the eye unfortunately that we just aren't able to fully tell, what do you think this documentary set out to answer? What was the central question I think the main premise is like who is Elizabeth and then who is the character and it's kind of this red thread that goes throughout the whole film from start to finish and it starts with that New York Times piece she's quoted saying i that this character this actress played me in a tv show and she played a character that i created not the real me she denies ever saying this she says she has the proof but she doesn't give it to us and so that's the real two questions the viewers have like is she being honest or not and is she playing a character or not and so the idea of the character of Elizabeth there's all these layers to it throughout the film yeah there's people tweeting on her behalf like throwing out f-bombs left and right that's not her and now that's kind of loaded into character Elizabeth or these AI videos that are made on her behalf while she's in prison and so i think unfortunately like there can be versions of us or even like in the world of AI or even like social media personas that all of us create and it's not necessarily like us in our purest essence but it's almost like multiplicity that we can have a lot of different self-states and maybe that speaks to like who we are in different contexts that's really interesting that you have different characters or personas that you play whether be social media or in certain situations yeah so Bromberg he's a brilliant psychoanalyst and his theory is on self-states and the whole idea is that like you are a very different person in your work context versus your self-state with family or friends or even like social media and it's not to say that one of them is false or true it's speaking to different aspects of your personality and like Elizabeth is that on a much higher level but I think almost anyone can resonate with that like their social media persona it's not your purest like essence but it's showing your values and maybe how you want to be seen and and what's really important to you wow that's like very deep conversation so next level of this podcast um i want to pull out a question that was really interesting so um paz is asking as a psychologist do you watch shows movies and automatically start analyzing the characters and their relationships if so how do you think you process stories differently due to this yeah so i think initially like i formally study the theory right and so just as i did like um like i can see where the theory lines up with what i'm seeing it in front of me but I think all of us like our best tool and we're taught this as psychologists is your body and like your emotional reaction to what you're seeing and I think that's why the film is so very compelling because it really pulls you in and like the magic is happening in front of you and I think we all were moved by it and it's hard to really read when like our body is telling us one thing and our mind is saying wait the facts are so contrary to this it is interesting can you genuinely feel empathy for someone and still recognize that they're trying to manipulate or deceive you I think that is really the biggest takeaway right and we see Nathan really struggle with that like Nathan's reaction in the documentary it's mirroring the viewer in which he throughout this throughout the documentary he's saying over and over like I think she's being honest I don't think she's deceiving me yet logically I know that the facts don't fit and so he uses this great analogy of David Blaine of his magic trick he stabs himself in the hand with a dagger and the thing is that it's not a trick he's really stabbing his hand and i think that's what we're seeing here like she can be both a victim and a perpetrator and in most cases people are that's the cycle of violence and abuse people who were once abused then become the abuser and so we can have immense empathy for someone like Elizabeth especially because she's so open and vulnerable we really soften when it comes to her and we even the viewer pulled in we want to protect her and at the same time we can know she did some things that really harmed people i want to talk about that because she did she's in prison for 11 years for a reason it wasn't just because a device didn't seem to work but there were real implications to what she did and i don't think that the documentary goes into the lives that she changed um and the reason why you know she's put into prison and i get it it might not be because it's just the days leading up to her prison she gets she reports to there um and maybe that's just what the point of the documentary was and how much can you fit in three hours like already there was so much to do and talk about in three hours but talk about the implications of what she'd done her actions i think that is the point of the whole documentary like it would be very easy to present a black and white case we'd walk out and no one would be talking about this yeah i think art is something that like evokes a feeling in you and that's what nathan did like no one left that theater feeling unmoved and so it's very easy to present the case of all of the people that she harmed and misled but i don't think that would be as compelling instead he's speaking to something bigger which is like the human tendency to want to put people in boxes and we do that even as a viewer throughout the whole film at first we think elizabeth is guilty and then she very much swings 180 to victim and billy too at first his first conversation with nathan is like didn't you think she was deceiving you and then all of a sudden he becomes the perpetrator and so even nathan at the end he's being questioned are you protecting her are you withholding any information that would make her not look so great and so i think it's hard to hold that we can have real empathy for people and they can betray us because it's much more mentally taxing. And it's true for virtually every relationship that we have in our lives. We can really love people and know they have the capacity to hurt us. It is mentally taxing. That's a great way to put watching this movie. It was a great mental exercise. I really felt, and it kind of bent a lot of different truths that you might have in your head and it changes. It forces you to view things in different perspectives also so i really enjoyed it um we have to take a quick break but when we come back we're going to talk about uh rubber band dating winter coding uh cuffing season i know that when all these dating trends that sabrina has been falling up on so stay with us a lot more after the break welcome back to talking with natasha i've got sabrina in the house talking dating and last time you hear we talked about alpine divorce all of these dating terms it's so hard to keep up with it. I've heard of cuffing season. I think everyone knows the holidays are coming. You got to find someone. You got to cuff yourself to someone for the holiday season. There's another term that you told me about, winter coating. What is that? Yeah, this is something that's so funny, but so accurate. So it gets cold out. You're going into your winter closet and you're pulling out an old coat. And at first you're just so happy to be warm and then you wear it throughout the day and you're like, oh my God, it's so itchy and it's suffocating. And it's exactly what happens when you're going back to an old boyfriend or partner out of desperation or the fear of being alone. The metaphor is that your ex is the coat that's itchy and suffocating. Exactly. Right. And so like you may feel good momentarily that you're not cold, but long-term it's not really the coat for you. And that's usually what happens. And I'll say like your fear your biggest fear shouldn't be alone in the winter your biggest fear should be wasting time with the wrong person because you have two choices of either going back or going forward if you go back you're maybe 95% likely to know the outcome right you're going to go on the very same merry-go-round unless a big thing changes versus if you were to go forward yeah you might go on a few bad dates but you're much more likely to meet the person who's really meant for you and i think it ultimately speaks to our tendency to go back towards what's familiar and just because something is familiar doesn't mean that it's really best for us. It almost feels like a quick dopamine hit and then you realize why this didn't work. Exactly and i think that people they're always teetering on the seesaw on one end it's like all the things that they want for their lives and then the other is the fear that's keeping them stuck and I'll say like if you use that loneliness or fear in a way that you can transmute it you can use it as like fuel and to actually go after the things you want and maybe it's picking up a new hobby or going to an event you normally wouldn't and that's actually how you're going to find your person cuffing season is it forcing us to lower our standards i think i'm just saying i'm just saying just it's just a question i think first we just have to validate it for human history pair bonding is literally how we survive the winter that's true it's not just like a momentary lapse of judgment but we don't have to live like that anymore we have heating systems and blankets we do but like the modern world is further compounding it so like thanksgiving and halloween and christmas and new years it's just like gauntlet of people popping out and saying like who are you bringing who's gonna be next to you and why aren't you married yet what's going on very good reasons to have someone next to you a seat filler asking asking for a friend that friend being me so we're incentivized to have a seat filler but that almost always backfires on us and it's almost like a rebound job you take the first job that's available because it's better than being unemployed or single but you end up worse off because six months down the line you're totally burnt out you hate the people you work with and then you don't even have the energy to search for another job so what what do you do if like you know if you've got it's getting cold x's are resurfacing how do you stay strong sabrina i again it's like reframing your biggest fear it is not being alone this winter the biggest fear should be like really being stuck or wasting 10 20 years doing the exact same thing with the people who really aren't right for you and so like not advocating for being a little bit more lonely this winter but if you sit in that loneliness it's gonna help you overpower that fear and it's probably going to help you break out and do the things that maybe are best for you sit in that discomfort exactly because i feel like if you sit in that discomfort great things grow out of it i'm a big believer in that like when you sit in that discomfort a lot for long enough you're actually going to propel yourself and you're going to realize the fear actually isn't that comfortable it's not really keeping you safe okay the new rules of breaking up you sent me bless and release what is that so we're not ghosting in q4 2026 yeah I so it's the anti-ghost text had a great time getting to know you we're not a match I wish you well and I think it's a response to virtually everyone right now in the dating world has been on both sides of ghosting you've been ghosted you've been the ghost and I think just putting this in context not too long ago we dated exclusively in community and so the person you were dating had a very high degree of overlap with your friends and your family and your co-workers and so everyone was on their best behavior when it came to dating and now dating is like the wild west with dating apps and just like globalization there's virtually no rules and no consequences and I think we're seeing like a pull towards more traditional dating practices but even better like we're evolving because in the past the community kept you accountable and now we're seeing people are keeping themselves accountable and so I think it's so important because how you say goodbye is really how you're remembered we don't always remember like the first few dates we remember like the ending and it says a lot about a person it's just being a decent person saying this didn't work out wish you all the best instead of ghosting it's being a decent person and I think it also it depends on the context right like if you've had a few dates with someone this is totally appropriate versus if you've been dating like four or five months a text maybe doesn't suffice like that's maybe when you should meet in person so it really is context dependent but I think people are really being told to have like a higher level of standards of how they're treating people this idea of filler friends what does it mean to be a filler friend so you have an empty space and that friend is filling it right in so for example you have an empty seat at your dinner party that friend is going to be invited or you have an extra ticket to something last minute that friend is filling in and so they're a friend that you're reaching out to out of convenience not necessarily because of the bond that you both share and so I'm seeing a rise in people feeling like their relationships are transactional I'm also seeing a rise in how our lives are just becoming way more convenient everything is coming to us and I think it speaks to how like we want a village but we don't necessarily want to be villagers and i think we're almost becoming a little bit complacent and lazy like everything is coming to us and we're treating our relationships the same way how do you recalibrate them i i think it's twofold one it's like be the change you want to see in the world and that might mean checking in on your friends and taking initiative and making plans but also see the response like check for reciprocity are your friends also pouring back into you I think we need to also have very like realistic expectations of our friends not every friend is going to be the 3am friend that you call some are just going to be the people that you have fun with and I think it's important to have an array of people in your life it is it's a harsh reality if you find out that you're someone's backup friend do you confront them or you just walk away from that situation do you keep showing up when they invite you last minute I think it depends on the person's capacity to really understand you and it depends on the history of the relationship if you've had years and years together you go back to elementary school that is probably worth a conversation but if it's someone new I would say start by testing the boundaries saying hey I'm not able to do this and see if instead they can come to you and meet you halfway and I think sometimes we get our answer in action over words no one picks up the phone anymore so then a lot gets lost in translation over text as well which is why it's so important to communicate we talked earlier about how fear inhibits us and i think it's important to feel like our relationships are safe enough to say the thing that we're worried or concerned about and oftentimes like that's how we get closer that the repair after a rupture is really what makes us feel like this relationship is solid yeah okay this dating term rubber band dating i get the idea feels like a boomerang is that right yeah so you are dating for a few months everything is great and then all of a sudden they pull away and then they come back very disorienting but i see it happen a lot in practice especially with the avoidant anxious dyad so avoidant and anxious attachment people they tend to find each other and so what's happening is an avoidantly attached person often finds closeness very scary and threatening it feels like they might lose their autonomy or they are going to become engulfed by the other person it's very overwhelming yeah and so it doesn't feel safe and what happens is they pull away not because they want to abandon the other person but because it's their way of regulating and then once that fear or overwhelm subsides then they come back but for the anxious person they're completely like blindsided they don't know what happened and so this is usually a co-constructed dynamic the anxious person as soon as their partner takes one step back they chase and that further makes the overwhelmed person run away and then the avoidant person their role in this is that they don't say anything often this is happening subconsciously they don't even realize it they think that anxious person is just too much yeah and so both people can correct for this the anxious person can stay still and say if this is my person they're going to come back to me and the avoidant person can say hey i'm feeling really overwhelmed i just need to take a break or i need to kind of spend some time on my own but I'm coming back this is temporary but if someone if you are anxious and an avoidant person leaves and then they come back how are you reassured that they won't leave again so it's about communicating this and like I know that's a word that gets thrown out there so much in relationships like almost every couple that comes into my office in the first session I say like I want them to tell the problem in their words and in some variation they say like we don't communicate with each other and then when you peel back the layers what they really mean is that it doesn't feel emotionally safe to be direct and honest without feeling like I'm going to lose the relationship and so that's essentially what you want to do you want to make the avoidant person feel like they can be honest and say hey I'm feeling overwhelmed I just need a break yeah and I'm coming back and same with the anxious person like I'm not being abandoned anyway but I know what to expect I know they're going to come back so when you can explicate that process it makes both people feel more safe and like the relationship is something that they don't have to run away from yeah it is really interesting and what we want to shout out everyone who's been in our um in our group chat as well we're running out of time i can't we only have like what 30 seconds left um 25 seconds where can people follow you sabrina you can follow me on instagram at dr sabrina romanoff amazing always great to have you, I love being here we got what are we gonna watch next we gotta figure it out we need another show we'll have the doctor back in to break it down. Okay, guys, thanks so much for joining me today. We will see you next week as always. Bye.