Music.
Welcome to Episode 70 of Waking Up to Narcissism. I am your host, Tony Overbay. I'm a licensed
marriage and family therapist, host of the virtual couch podcast, Murder on the Couch podcast,
and I am grateful to be here. So just the quickest amount of business that I could possibly do.
Go to the show notes and there is a link tree link that has a place to sign up for everything,
newsletter, Waking Up to Narcissism question and answer podcast. And if you want to take my
marriage workshop, sign up for the newsletter and you'll find out more about the marriage
course when it's coming out and a couple of other courses as well. So one of my daughters has been
putting out a lot of content on TikTok and now she started to put that out on YouTube shorts as
well. My content, the therapy, therapy content and some of the things that get the most attention
are narcissist jokes, which I think we all need a little bit of humor. We need some levity. So I
So I think I've told a joke or two on here, but if I take you on my train of thought,
I don't know why, but I felt like there has to be some good narcissist knock-knock jokes.
And maybe this is the dad humor in me, but I couldn't find any.
And so I woke up today and I don't know why, but I thought I would write a joke, something
that I have not done in the past.
And then this is not exactly where I thought the narcissist knock-knock joke would go,
but I am a horrible actor.
But if I now had the waking up to narcissism players, then they would enact this narcissism knock-knock joke.
Here we go. So this is the narcissist doing the knock-knock and then the who's there will be being played by myself.
And action.
Knock knock uh who's there you know uh you know who no like you know you you seriously like i,
can't even believe that you don't know who is there as a matter of fact you're actually the
one who initially told me who was there but okay um it sounds like apparently if you don't even
know who is there then i feel like i'm kind of going crazy and i'm just going to assume that
you are also probably going to tell me that you're not the one who told me who was there which is
funny because I was actually at my doctor's office earlier and my doctor was saying,
Hey, you seem a little bit stressed. And so then I told my doctor that I just had this weird
feeling that Tony is going to insist on me asking him a knock knock joke. And then here's the deal.
He's the one who told me, uh, who was there like, you know, and knock, knock who's there.
And then my doctor said, okay, tell me more about this because I'm hearing more and more of these
kinds of stories of, of these people that are just all of a sudden they'll tell you who's there.
And then they say, tell me a knock-knock joke. It's kind of crazy.
And so then my doctor, well, first of all, I said, thank you. I feel so validated.
So I shared a little bit more. And then here's the funny thing.
My doctor was like, Tony, is he on any kind of anti-anxiety or antidepressant medications?
Because I think he should really be taking one. As a matter of fact, probably about 10 milligrams of Prozac.
Sounds like that would do the trick.
Because I just, I really feel like he's not addressing the issues that probably led him to tell you who was there and then
to insist on you asking a knock-knock joke. Like, I'm even sorry you have to go through that.
So, so honestly, right now, can you, Tony, just give me a minute,
because I'm kind of feeling a little triggered by this entire exchange.
To at that point the kind person played by me in this scenario would most likely say I.
Okay I'm I'm sorry I seriously I I swear you're the one who said knock knock like I thought it
was just a knock knock joke but I don't know maybe I'm kind of making that up to which the
narcissist would have already confabulated the story of uh right because you literally told me
me to ask you a knock-knock joke, why on earth would I ask you one on my own?
And end scene.
So even a knock-knock joke in the world of narcissism or emotional maturity could cause
you to probably lose your own mind, and that's maybe why I couldn't find legitimate, real
knock-knock jokes about narcissism on the internet. So if you have one, if you find one, please, please submit them.
I have a tremendous amount now of poetry from the Women's Narcissistic Facebook group, and,
I had a guy, I see you, guy, submit a poem that I will share on an upcoming episode.
So I would love more of those, but man, I love humor.
So I'm telling you, if you ever think about writing a joke about narcissism and maybe the bounty is out there
for a knock-knock joke, then please submit that as well to contact at tonyoverbay.com.
If I'm gonna share some poetry, maybe it would be nice to share some humor
because inevitably we get to some really difficult topics as well.
So today I'm gonna use a couple of different articles as a reference point, I wanna talk about
the different types of narcissism.
And one of the, if I go back in the time machine on the virtual couch, and I think I've talked about this
in a little bit of the origin story of the Waking Up to Narcissism podcast,
if I would put out on my virtual couch, mental health podcast, an episode that had anything to do
with narcissism or gaslighting,
then those episodes would just really surpass or eclipse the number of downloads
and they would be shared more than any other episodes that I would do.
And then that led to just more and more of those episodes, which eventually led to me working with a large percentage
or a large part of that population of people that were waking up to their own narcissistic traits
and tendencies or the narcissistic traits and tendencies in their relationships.
And so now here we are, 70 episodes later in a very large private women's Facebook group.
And I should say this right now, I met with my wonderful assistant Naomi last week or early this week.
And she is now reaching out to the men who are saying, hey, maybe I'm more emotionally immature.
I'm starting to wake up to that.
And we're getting that group ready. And then we're also getting ready to go with the group
of men who are in relationships with emotionally immature, maybe narcissistic women.
So please reach out and those groups are gonna be starting soon.
So we have the numbers and I really wanna put those together so that we can get some support there as well.
But I also get a lot of questions around the types of narcissism, the subtypes of narcissism.
And going back to this story I was talking about more of the origin story was there was one where
it just talked about the subtypes of narcissism that I referred to often back in the day in the
in the virtual couch days. And I realized I've never really done anything like that here on the
Waking Up to Narcissism podcast. So I'm pulling from an article on psychcentral.com. This is
medically reviewed by Jeffrey Ditzel who is a doctor, a medical doctor, and it was written
by a person named Courtney Telleon. So I'm just going to refer to the author as Courtney
because it seems like I just feel so bad messing up someone's last name.
But we're going to talk about the five types of narcissism, how to spot each type, and
I'm also going to be referring to an article that I refer to so often that is called The
Truth About Narcissistic Personality Disorder. And this is from Eleanor Greenberg who's a
PhD, and this is off of Psychology Today.
And there's so much good in that article.
And I'll link to both of these articles in the show notes. And I think that you can never really have too much information,
when we're talking about breaking down the different types, subtypes of narcissism.
And then I'm going to talk a little bit more as well about the concepts around emotional immaturity while we're here.
So five types of narcissism and how to spot each. Again, this is written by Courtney on Psych Central.
So Courtney says, as a personality trait, narcissism can be overt,
covert, antagonistic, communal, or malignant.
But then as a mental health condition, there's just the one diagnosis of narcissistic personality disorder.
And so I don't think we talk often about the concepts around adaptive or helpful as a personality trait, narcissism as a personality trait.
And we really stay or we talk more around the maladaptive or the unhelpful versions or concepts around narcissism, which I think is going to play into what Eleanor Greenberg talks about so well in her article, The Truth About Narcissistic Personality Disorder.
So I'm going to jump back and forth a little bit.
So, when you look at narcissism as a trait in terms of how it affects your day-to-day
life and ability to form relationships, there are two types of narcissism.
So there's adaptive narcissism, which can be viewed as helpful, and there is maladaptive, which is unhelpful.
And so, Courtney says that some research suggests that it could be more accurate to view narcissism
on a spectrum from less to more severe narcissistic traits.
So that's where I want to jump in and say, as a matter of fact, I feel like there's the
the narcissistic personality disorder, which depending on what you look up, you can see
that people will say it's anywhere from 2 or 3% of the population to one article I found
today literally said 5.3% of the population.
It's very specific. So that would be the, you can diagnose from the diagnostic and statistical manual that
mental health professionals use to diagnose someone with narcissistic personality disorder.
But I feel like if we start with, we are all emotionally immature and we don't know what
we don't know. So then when we are given an opportunity to have some new tools, self-confront,
it's really about how do we show up with that discomfort? What do we do with that? Do we.
Want to just push it away and gaslight? Gaslight is a childhood defense mechanism. Were we.
Not given the tools to sit with discomfort in our childhood? Do we have to manage the
relationship or do we have to manage the emotional and mental health of our parents so that we
felt unseen and unheard as we were growing up.
And I feel like this is a absolutely bless the heart of parents because I feel like this is still the case for the majority of people now, because we're only now starting to talk really about what mental health even looks like.
But if you grow up with a secure attachment, what does that look like?
It means that it is not about you. It is really about you are there to help this
child that you have created to become the best version of themselves. Not a
reflection of you, but you are there. You are just who you are at that point. So
you don't have to get your validation off of your kid. And if they do something
different than what you want them to do, that doesn't mean that they have let you
down. It means that they are just becoming and being. So what a secure
attachment would look like is if your kid is out exploring the world and starting to understand what they like and what they don't like because all of
that is based on so many different things. It's based on their nature, their
nurture, their birth order, their abandonment, their rejection. It's based off of where you live. It's based off of their friend group. It's based off of the.
Things that you get excited about as a parent that you're not even aware that
they're paying attention to or the things that you push away, the things that are pushed upon them, the things that they are told don't ever do because
then that little reactionary brain says, then I want to do more of it.
So they are having their own experience. There are so many things going on in the human brain at any given moment,
especially when you're a kid that you're trying to find that sense of self.
So a kid gets their sense of self from external validation.
So if the parent is creating the secure attachment with their kid,
then their kid really believes that things are more about them.
Not in a narcissistic way, but in a healthy ego way. So instead of them continually having to
figure out how to manage the emotions of a parent, or I better not get my parent mad because if my
parent gets mad, they're going to take it out on me. And then as a little kid, that would be
terrifying to have this giant human being that I care about that is now telling me I'm a horrible
person. Or do you know how that makes mom or dad feel? And when a kid is trying to express
themselves and share their emotions, if the parent is not in the mood for it, if it's not a good time
right now, then the kid is learning a few different things at that point.
They ultimately want to survive, so they don't want to get someone mad at them.
And they worry now that it is now a good time to bring something up or not.
So they're trying to already feel, they already are suppressing their emotions because they're
told a lot of times, it's not that big of a deal, or don't worry about it, or get over
it, or how do you think that makes mom or dad feel?
And so then, as well as then, they don't want to get anybody mad.
They don't want to say the wrong thing.
So the kid, what it feels like to be them is somebody who is continually trying to figure
out a way to get people to like them and to make sure people don't get angry at them.
What a secure attachment looks like is the kid is going and doing, coming back to home
base of their parents, and their parents saying, tell me about it.
What was that like? Help me understand.
What can I do to support?
Not I can't believe you did that. I think you should do this.
Here's what you don't even understand, or here's, oh, I know exactly what you're going
through. Here's what I did when I was younger. Let me tell you stories because inevitably
those stories are going to be, and I was really amazing. I was really good. Don't you want
to tell me how great I am now? So the parent is getting that validation. They're looking
to their kid to validate them.
But we don't even realize as a parent what we're doing in that moment that now that kid feels like,
okay, I guess I'm not as good or I'm not enough. So if a kid has a secure attachment, now when
they move on into adolescence and adulthood, and I gave this example a couple of weeks ago,
and it could have been this podcast, I think I did on the virtual couch as well.
But having a client that was a computer programmer and she was in the dating world.
And in that moment, then she is talking about, hey, I'm a computer programmer,
and being on a date with a guy who says, oh, wow, that's kind of weird.
Isn't that more of a male-dominated industry? Like that's, I would worry that people
are gonna not take you seriously, or they're gonna make advances on you,
or whatever the guy was saying.
And I love the fact that this woman, I think, had a pretty healthy attachment,
secure attachment from childhood.
So she said, I don't really understand why we're having this conversation.
I'm telling you this is what I do. I feel like the next logical question would be,
oh, tell me more about that.
What do you like about being a computer programmer? What are you working on?
So going into adulthood with a secure attachment from childhood, then you're not even gonna put up
with someone that is trying to tell you how to feel or what to think or what to do,
because your experience growing up was, that's not even a part, I don't even understand,
because I'm who I am.
And so I want to know more about you, but when you start trying to tell me how I'm supposed to feel or think this, you know, check, please, that moment.
So without that secure attachment in that part of that secure attachment, then would create this, in essence, this adaptive or helpful version of a narcissistic trait, because now let me jump over to Eleanor Greenberg's article where she's talking about, she says, every once in a while, a new diagnostic label emerges into mass consciousness and people start to use it and misuse it as a synonym for bad behavior.
She said, this year's label seems to be narcissist.
So she said, I thought it might be useful to clarify what mental health professionals mean when they talk about narcissism.
So she said, narcissistic personality disorder is the name for a series of coping strategies that began as an adaptation to a childhood family
situation that left the person with unstable self-esteem, the inability to regulate their self-esteem without external validation and lower empathy.
And so then she goes on to talk about this concept of whole object relations and object constancy.
And I think those things are so fascinating. I know I've talked about those on other episodes, but here's where I want to get to.
She talks about normal versus pathological narcissism, and here's where I'm taking liberty
with what Eleanor has defined, and I'm taking some of that and confabulating my own narrative.
She says that, unfortunately, in the English language, the word narcissism has come to mean two entirely different things, depending on whether it's being used formally as a diagnosis, as a narcissistic personality disorder, or informally as a synonym for positive self-regard.
Now, how often are we looking at the term narcissism as positive self-regard? I don't know if that is ever being used.
She said, I'm often asked, isn't a little bit of narcissism healthy and normal? And she said, I would like to clarify that distinction before I go on.
And here's where I feel like the word narcissism, I think, it's almost like when you cut open a
pillow and the feathers go everywhere and then you're trying to go gather all the feathers and,
they've blown all over the world. So that the word narcissism is out there. It's out in the
conscious, the zeitgeist, and it carries with it a lot of feelings and a lot of emotion
and a lot of meaning. So I almost want to say, okay, I think we have to just accept the fact
that it is out there and people have a view of what narcissism means and I don't feel like it's
typically one of a normal, healthy version of confidence. I think that Eleanor talks about
normal, healthy narcissism and this is where I've taken her concept here and I want to call it
normal, healthy ego. So normal, healthy narcissism or normal, healthy ego, she says, is a realistic
sense of positive self-regard that is based on the person's actual accomplishments. It is,
relatively stable because the person is assimilated into their self-image, the success that came
as a result of their actual hard work to overcome real-life obstacles.
Because it's based on real achievements, normal, healthy narcissism—and it might
be easier to stomach if it's normal, healthy ego—is relatively impervious to the minor
slights and setbacks that we all experience as we go through life.
Normal ego causes us to care about ourselves, do things that are in our real self-interest,
And it's associated with genuine self-respect.
One can think of it as something that is inside of us.
So I love the thought or the concept around normal, healthy ego.
Now to give better examples of what that would look like, let me share then what she says
is pathological defensive narcissism.
So I'm kind of leaving that one as is, because I feel like pathological defensive ego, actually
that doesn't sound too bad.
But she said, this is a defense against feelings of inferiority.
The person dons a mask of arrogant superiority in an attempt to convince the world that he
or she is special, but inside the person feels very insecure about his or her actual self-worth.
This facade of superiority is so thin that it's like a helium balloon, one small pinprick will deflate it.
This makes the person hypersensitive to minor slights that someone with healthy ego, healthy narcissism, would not even notice.
Instead, somebody with this type of defensive narcissism is easily wounded, frequently takes any form of disagreement as a serious criticism,
and is likely to lash out and devalue anyone who they think disagrees with them.
They are constantly on the guard trying to protect their status.
Pathological narcissism can be thought of as a protective armor that is on the outside of us.
So from my own, my own life, my own example of this is I spent 10 years in the computer
software industry. It wasn't a passion of mine. I didn't come out of college saying I just want to
work in the computer industry. As a matter of fact, I applied for a few different jobs coming
out of school, but that's the one that I had an opportunity to work in. And I'm grateful for the
experiences because it did help me understand computers more and I had an opportunity to,
travel the world, literally, and speak in a lot of amazing places. But what I didn't know,
that I didn't know, was that I was operating more out of this place of pathological defensive
narcissism. Because again, let's break that down. A defense against feelings of inferiority. I
absolutely felt inferior because I'm in this world, this computer software world, where there.
There were people that were literally writing computer code and computer engineers. And
I was someone who had a mass communications degree with an emphasis in public relations
who my senior year was handed an email address. And I remember thinking, this is silly. I
don't know why we would ever need one of these. 1993 was the year at the University
of Utah. So I did. I felt inferior. And then she says, the person dons a mask of arrogance
superiority in an attempt to convince the world that he or she is special.
So when I would travel and I would go to these different trade shows and people would ask
me questions, and again, coming from a place of I didn't even know what I didn't know,
that I would take some of the information from our computer programmers or some of the
things that we had written, a press release, a marketing material, and I would then parrot those words.
And then I would try to say them so confidently because I felt so insecure because I truly
did not understand how to code, or how things worked, how we built things, how to solve
these problems in the computer software world. Little did I know that I'm interacting with
other people that did know, so I didn't even know that I was probably sounding silly, or,
I was proving that I didn't know what I was really talking about. But I said it with such
arrogant superiority because I was trying to convince the world that I really did know
that I was, as Eleanor says, special.
Inside the person feels very insecure about their self-worth, which I truly did because I felt like man people are gonna figure out that
I don't know what I'm talking about,
That facade of superiority is so thin like a helium balloon one small pinprick will deflate it,
So this makes the person hypersensitive the minor slights that somebody with healthy narcissism or healthy ego wouldn't even notice,
Instead someone with this type of defensive narcissism is easily wounded frequently takes any form of disagreement as a serious criticism,
And is likely to lash out and devalue anybody who they think is disagreeing with them,
So they're constantly on guard trying to protect their status.
It's thought of as a protective armor. So when I would have conversations, even with friends, and I would say,
oh yeah, I work in the computer software industry.
And if they would start talking about, well, what do you do?
I would say that we made these device drivers.
And then when I would try to explain, if I ended up talking to somebody that actually understood
and they started asking questions, then man, this facade of superiority was so thin that truly a pinprick would deflate it.
And at some point then I would just want to change the subject,
subject, which is kind of a form of gaslighting. It's a childhood defense mechanism that if
this person finds out who I really am, that then they're going to get mad at me or they're
going to leave. They're no longer going to want to be my friend.
Meanwhile, I start learning about the mental health space. I felt this almost calling to
go into therapy. And I loved knowing how people worked and how they ticked and how they operated.
And I would read every biography that I could, whether it was athletes or actors or politicians,
or I loved reading biographies. And I did a lot of traveling,
and so I would read a lot of books.
And one of my favorite magazine subscriptions was called Biography,
and just learning how people worked, what made them tick.
I was listening to the Dr. Laura Schlesinger Show. I was listening to Stephanie Doran, the Dream Weaver,
and trying to understand how we interpret dreams, or this question and answer, Dr. Laura,
or anything that I could that just got into the minds of other people.
And I would find myself at trade shows talking to people and the people helping set up our booth, or the people that would just
stop by and we could not talk about computer software and device drivers, then that's where I felt alive.
So I start heading back to grad school in my early 30s to become a therapist, having,
no idea of what I didn't know that I didn't know about what one could feel like if they
really enjoyed their career.
So at that point then, now I'm in. I got really good grades in grad school, 3.92 I think, and I did not have those grades in
in high school or college for my undergrad.
And at that point, then I'm eating it up and I want to do more.
I want to learn more as I'm starting to help men with addiction.
I recognize, OK, this is a series of coping mechanisms.
And so I identify these voids in people's lives. People are turning to these unhealthy coping mechanisms
when they don't feel connected in their marriage or is in their parenting and their health, their career or their faith.
And then if I can go find a nice evidence based modality in each one of those areas, now we can really help.
And so I can't get enough of that. I want to just talk to people more and get the reps in and spend time in the chair and start writing more,
And so now we get back to that normal healthy ego a realistic sense of positive self-regard that's based on the person's actual accomplishments,
It's relatively stable because the person is assimilated into their self-image,
The success that came as a result of their actual hard work to overcome real-life obstacles,
So in this waking up to narcissism podcast itself is I've set off and waking up to my own
narcissistic traits and tendencies, that journey of self-discovery, of self-confrontation, of learning to sit with that discomfort, of learning
mindfulness skills, of learning and practicing and implementing and
discovering and recognizing there's so much more that I must not know because.
You can continually learn more. And that gets exciting. And then the more that you
interact with people, then the more that you learn about them, and it gives you an
opportunity to self-confront. What a privilege. What a joy. So now, because it's
based on real achievements, this normal healthy ego or normal healthy narcissism is relatively
impervious to the minor slights and setbacks we all experience as we go through life.
Normal ego causes us to care about ourselves, do things in our real self-interest, and is
associated with genuine self-respect.
It's something that's inside of us. I can think about somebody that I really care about that I had worked with for quite some
time who then was going to go and take a break from therapy, they were trying to overcome
turning to pornography as a healthy coping mechanism, and they were going to go spend
a lot of money, thousands of dollars with a coach who said, I will, it will work. This
will work. And I knew from working on my own courses and programs that I, or I felt like
this coach was selling a destination. Do you want to be free of porn? Do you want to feel
like you're the man you've always wanted to be? Do you want to feel like you can confidently
spend time on your own and not have that siren song of temptation? So selling that destination,
my client wanted that desperately so they would pay anything for it. But knowing that
often we're buying that temporary fix or that dopamine bump, then I said, man, I
hear you and I want to support you on that.
And this person, I remember the reason I'm telling this story is they were saying.
I know this is hard for you, and I don't want you to feel like you've failed.
And this is where I realized healthy ego. Oh, I don't. I don't feel that way because I'm,
confident of the tools that I have because I know that I know how to help people and that I can
understand this is part of your journey. And they were saying, man, I know, but I know you're
frustrated. And in my mind, I thought, well, I'll see you in about a year. And the reality was that
yeah, we ended up getting a chance to work again. And then I worried. I felt bad that they felt bad
that they had spent a lot of money on this very expensive program. But what I loved about that
moment was I was able to self-confront and say, no, I'm okay. I feel confident in my ability,
so I don't have to defend my fragile ego to get somebody to like me. So this person can say
whatever they wanted to, and I appreciated that. There's something that's happening very
fascinating right now is my daughter is putting more content out on TikTok and on YouTube Shorts,
that there are a couple of the TikTok videos about mental health that are over a million views now.
And at first, I told myself, I don't care. I really don't. But it's fun. It's exciting. I
want to be really honest about that. But I was worried about the comments and the comments that
would come in. And on the one video that has 1.3, 1.4 million views, I think there's about
two or three thousand comments now. And honestly, I can't even, it blows me away. I would say 98%
of them are positive, but if you look at that many comments, that's still a lot that are not.
And I feel like that has also been a place where I've recognized the concepts around healthy ego,
because people that are saying, that's dumb, you're wrong, then I honestly feel like,
oh, bless their heart for real, because that would be hard if hearing this information,
whether it's about emotional immaturity, or whether it's about mental health, or whether
it's about people that I recommend go to therapy, if they're saying therapy's dumb, you don't know
know what you're talking about. I feel like in the past, if I would have been operating
from this pathological defensive narcissism, then I would have lashed out to defend my
fragile ego because it is as thin as a helium balloon. But because this is the work that
I love and that I'm passionate about and I'm willing to self-confront and I'm willing
to admit that there are things that I don't know that I know, then what comes along with
that is that I feel confident in the things that I do know. So now, like Eleanor Greenberg
is saying, then healthy ego, relatively impervious to the minor slights and setbacks we all experience
as we go through life, and those slights and setbacks are often done in the way of,
I think you're wrong. That is dumb.
So when I bring this together and those who are waking up to the narcissism or emotional
immaturity in their relationships, you're the one doing the work. So you're the one that's
learning to raise your emotional baseline and to get your PhD in gaslighting, to get out of
unproductive conversations and to set healthy boundaries. And there's nothing you will do to
cause them, that other person to have the aha moment or the epiphany. You're the one that is
now learning to sit in that healthy ego or sit with that discomfort and do a little self-confrontation.
Okay, what can I learn from here?
But then as the person across from you sits in their emotional immaturity or narcissism,
that they will push more buttons, bigger buttons. You're a horrible fill-in-the-blank.
You're going to ruin this. You will lose everything.
Those buttons are meant to get you back into enmeshment, back into alignment, back under this person's control.
So that's why I think it's so important to understand what healthy ego is.
Healthy narcissism, but we'll call it healthy ego because you are doing the work
You are understanding what your experience is and it is a real-life experience and we want these,
Accomplishments that you are having these aha moments you are having for yourself,
To become assimilated into your self-image because these successes come as a result of your hard work to overcome real-life obstacles,
You are waking up to the narcissism in your own relationships Maybe some of the emotional maturity in your own life, and that is powerful and that is what is starting to help you develop a healthy ego.
I'll take a breath because the con the content today was going to be more about these,
Types of narcissism, so let me get back to that. We just identified. There's adaptive which will be helpful
Which is the healthy ego, but maladaptive so some research,
Suggested it would be more accurate of you narcissism on a spectrum So we've covered that, that emotional immaturity.
And then she said, you might imagine that the different types of narcissism fit somewhere along that spectrum.
That spectrum. So in general, narcissism is closely tied to extreme self-focus,
an inflated sense of self and a strong desire for recognition and praise.
So Courtney says learning about these and other narcissistic traits and narcissistic types may
also help you understand more about the thought processes, the emotions, the behavioral patterns,
that tend to show up with narcissism. There's a little side note here that says narcissism is a
personality trait versus a personality disorder. When people talk about narcissism, they might be
referring to it as either part of someone's personality or as narcissistic personality
disorder or NPD. Narcissistic personality disorder is a formal mental health diagnosis
and there's only one type. This condition is usually diagnosed when narcissism extends beyond
a personality trait or symptom and persistently affects many areas of one's life. And there are
nine symptoms of narcissistic personality disorder. But researchers and other experts on
narcissism have found multiple ways narcissism can then show up as part of someone's personality on
the spectrum, which then I will refer to as emotional immaturity, including those with
with the formal diagnosis.
So how many types of narcissism are there? Courtney says that they've identified,
we go back to there's the two types of narcissism, adaptive and maladaptive.
Those are almost the overarching archetypes. So these show the difference between productive
and unproductive aspects. Adaptive narcissism refers to aspects of narcissism
that can actually be helpful.
And I'm gonna say back to the healthy ego, like high self-confidence, self-reliance,
and the ability to celebrate yourself based off of real life accomplishments and experience.
Maladaptive is connected to traits that don't serve you and negatively impact how you relate to yourself and others.
So maladaptive narcissism is about entitlement, aggression, the tendency to take advantage of others, emotional immaturity.
Those would be associated with the symptoms. A lot of those are associated with symptoms of the narcissistic personality disorder.
So she said when most people talk about narcissism, they usually refer to these types of narcissism under the maladaptive umbrella.
Researchers and experts typically work around five types of narcissism. So there's overt, covert, antagonistic, communal, and malignant. So overt narcissism. That's one that we hear about. I feel like we hear about overt and covert more often than any other subtype.
Overt narcissism is also known by several other names, including grandiose narcissism. This type of narcissism is what most people associate with a narcissistic personality or narcissistic personality disorder.
Somebody with overt narcissism might come across then as outgoing but arrogant, entitled, overbearing, having an exaggerated self-image, needing constantly to be praised and admired, exploitive, continually competitive, whether it's with kids or old people, you name it, their spouse, and then lacking empathy.
Empathy. So, some research connects overt narcissism with what they call the big five
personality traits of extroversion and openness. It also suggests that people with overt narcissism
are likely to feel good about themselves and less likely to experience uncomfortable emotions like
sadness and worry and loneliness. And this is where I feel like we start to identify the
differences between the just absolute narcissistic personality disorder versus the traits and
tendencies because a true narcissist doesn't feel those uncomfortable emotions like sadness, worry,
or loneliness because those have been shut off since childhood because they can't sit with that
discomfort that they are sad or that they worry that they did something wrong or that they they
are alone because that might lead to abandonment and death.
So, people with overt narcissism tend to overestimate their own abilities, their own intelligence.
One study published in 2018 also suggested overt narcissism might cause somebody to overestimate
their own emotional intelligence.
This is what starts the, why I go so big on the healthy ego versus pathological defensive narcissism.
You know, there's this concept called the Dunning-Kruger effect.
And I should do a, I should do an episode on that because the Dunning-Kruger effect
is if I go back to the, what I just read when we're talking about somebody will overestimate
their own emotional intelligence, where they will feel like, oh, no, I'm very intelligent.
I really do understand things better than most.
The reason I bring up Dunning-Kruger effect is it's a cognitive bias where people with
a low with low ability or low expertise or experience regarding a certain task or an
area of knowledge tend to overestimate their ability or knowledge.
So this is one of those things where the more that you start to learn, you start to learn
and understand the less you know.
As paradoxical as that sounds, the Dunning-Kruger effect is where the more that I know based
off of healthy ego, then absolutely the more I recognize there's so much I don't know.
Emotional immaturity or pathological defensive narcissism, that person tends to have an opinion about everything.
And in the women's Facebook group or people that come into my office, I mean, I have heard,
so many times of how much more that the narcissistic spouse knows than the therapist or than the
doctor or than the attorney.
So they are so special that they know more. They don't even have to understand the area of the medicine or the law or mental health.
They just know. They know better. What does that person know?
What does the therapist know?
He just wants money after all. Or what's the attorney? What do they even know?
What's the doctor know? He's just, he's outdated.
And so that is that emotional maturity that they know so much more, that they are so confident,
that they know more than even the professionals.
So that's part of that, overestimating their emotional intelligence.
Covert narcissism, also known as vulnerable narcissism, closet narcissism, covert narcissism
is the contrast to overt. So many people think of narcissism as loud and overbearing. People
with covert don't fit the pattern. Instead, some of the common traits of somebody with covert
narcissism will include expressions of low self-esteem. But I love the concept of expressions
of low self-esteem because this is where someone will play off in the victim in order to get the
person to engage, to get them into that enmeshment so then they can take control.
A higher likelihood of experiencing anxiety, depression, and shame, introversion, insecurity,
and low confidence, defensiveness, avoidance, and a tendency to feel or play the victim.
So while somebody with the covert narcissism will still be very self-focused, it's likely to
conflict with a deep fear or sense of not being enough. So this is where somebody will do whatever
they can to control another person because of that fear of just absolute abandonment and loneliness.
That if they if they allow this other person to be themselves then they will lose that person and
then they will be alone so they will just get they will play the victim they will go for control
over love and again you can have love or control in an adult relationship not both somebody with
covert narcissism likely has a very hard time accepting criticism but unlike a person with
overt narcissism somebody with covert narcissism may be more likely to internalize or take the
the criticism more harshly. This is that concept where if I if we go back up to the article
by Eleanor Greenberg, where she talks about whole object relations, which is the capacity
to see oneself and others in a stable and integrated way that acknowledges both the
person's good and bad qualities and object constancy. This is the ability to maintain
a positive emotional connection to somebody that you like while you're angry or hurt,
frustrated or disappointed by his or her behavior. So without whole object relations and without
object constancy, people with narcissistic personality disorder only see themselves and
other people in one of two ways.
Either they are special and unique, omnipotent, perfect and entitled, which we call high status,
or they are defective. They are worthless. They are garbage or low status.
So this means that a person struggling with narcissistic issues, so we'll go back to this, covert narcissism.
That either they that if they're struggling, they can't hold on to his or her good opinion and good feelings about someone once he or she notices that the other person has a flaw.
So the other person goes from being special and put on a pedestal to being devalued as nothing special.
Narcissist then often seesaw back and forth between these two.
So when they are feeling good about you or more accurately, you feel you make them feel good about themselves.
Then they see you as special, and then you do something that they do not like, such as
literally just as much as say no to a request.
And this is where you start seeing the, you know, it can be no to request of wanting to
just hang out, spend time with them, or if they're putting out a request for sex or intimacy
and you say no, then you all of a sudden are all bad and all worthless.
Later, you might do something that makes them feel good again.
They're back to seeing you as special, which is the part that I like to call, do you want to ride bikes?
They can call you horrific names because that gets rid of their discomfort.
It's an attempt to get you to control you. And now they feel better and you are left thinking, I don't know if I can hear what
I was just, what I heard, what I was called.
But then five minutes later, the person, the narcissist can come back out and say, Hey,
what do you want to do for dinner?
Meaning here comes the little kid after you got in a kick fight five minutes ago saying,
Hey, do you still want to go ride bikes?
And that can be just absolutely maddening. While somebody with covert narcissism will still be very self-focused, it's likely to
conflict with this, again, this deep fear or sense of not being enough.
A study on personality and covert narcissism published in 2017 found that it was most strongly
linked to high neuroticism, which is a tendency to experience unpleasant emotions and disagreeableness.
So the covert narcissist is so linked to a tendency to not want to spend any time with
unpleasant emotions or anybody that disagrees with them.
So somebody with covert narcissism is very likely to have a very difficult time accepting
criticism, but unlike a person with overt narcissism, somebody with covert narcissism
will be more likely to internalize or take in the criticism far more harshly than it
was intended.
Again, even if you just simply say no to one of their requests.
So research suggests that categories of covert and overt narcissism aren't always mutually
exclusive. And somebody with overt narcissism might go through a period where they show more signs
of covert narcissism. And this is where we're starting to learn that, in essence, I feel like almost everything
is on some sort of spectrum of behavior.
We have plenty more to go, and we're at the 45-minute mark, so I'm going to wrap things up for now, and we're going to continue with this in the next episode of Waking Up the Narcissim, where we're going to cover antagonistic, communal, and malignant narcissism, and I'll give you some more examples, maybe, of these.
So if you have questions or if you have an example that you want on this part two that will be coming in a week,
Feel free to send it to contact at Tony over Bay comm and I just appreciate you being on this journey
Because I see the work you're doing and that is starting to become part of that,
Healthy ego and your implicit memory or what it feels like to be you which is based on the slow residue of lived experience
Is you're putting in the work and that is starting to change and unfortunately
You're going to see the person that if you are in a relationship with an emotionally immature person and they are not doing the work as you start to step out of your role as caregiver fixer supply, then you're going to see more buttons pushed.
And I am so sorry for what you have to go through, but you are on the path of enlightenment.
Of enlightenment, you are on the path of self-discovery, and you are getting to that place where you
are going to be able to find this true sense of purpose, then lift those, lift yourself
so that you can also lift those around you, even your kids, who right now it may feel
like, I don't know if I'm doing the right thing, but they are getting their sense of
self off of external validation, and if you are in an unhealthy relationship, then it's,
likely that they are also starting to feel the pain of trying to manage their emotions
or read the room or manage the emotions of their parents.
So thanks again, send those questions, see you next time.
Music.