They have some suggestions of how to do that in the episode; one is just exhibiting behaviors that don’t fit the idealized image they want to project on you. (Taft: “It’s remarkably easy to break, at least for a little while, by just—you know—picking your nose or swearing or something. And if I notice someone doing [the idealization] - because you can tell when it’s happening—I just keep breaking it and breaking it and breaking it until it breaks, and then probably they’ll go away at that point if that was their goal, you know, ‘he was not who I thought he was’ and then they lose interest. But if they stick around after that, then they are probably seeing me quite a bit more for who I am.”)
Another thing that he mentions is that while you do want to maintain boundaries—don’t let crazy people call you at 3 AM—it’s also good if you can reduce distance and let people in close. If people stay distant and never meet you, then it’s easy to continue idealizing you, whereas meeting you in person makes it easier for them to see who you actually are. He used to invite anyone who was interested into his living room for his meditation class, and “while that was probably too much”, he says it was good for getting that distance down.
They have some suggestions of how to do that in the episode; one is just exhibiting behaviors that don’t fit the idealized image they want to project on you. (Taft: “It’s remarkably easy to break, at least for a little while, by just—you know—picking your nose or swearing or something. And if I notice someone doing [the idealization] - because you can tell when it’s happening—I just keep breaking it and breaking it and breaking it until it breaks, and then probably they’ll go away at that point if that was their goal, you know, ‘he was not who I thought he was’ and then they lose interest. But if they stick around after that, then they are probably seeing me quite a bit more for who I am.”)
Another thing that he mentions is that while you do want to maintain boundaries—don’t let crazy people call you at 3 AM—it’s also good if you can reduce distance and let people in close. If people stay distant and never meet you, then it’s easy to continue idealizing you, whereas meeting you in person makes it easier for them to see who you actually are. He used to invite anyone who was interested into his living room for his meditation class, and “while that was probably too much”, he says it was good for getting that distance down.