WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:07.760 Music. 00:00:07.759 --> 00:00:12.649 Welcome to Episode 70 of Waking Up to Narcissism. I am your host, Tony Overbay. I'm a licensed 00:00:12.649 --> 00:00:16.699 marriage and family therapist, host of the virtual couch podcast, Murder on the Couch podcast, 00:00:17.203 --> 00:00:23.209 and I am grateful to be here. So just the quickest amount of business that I could possibly do. 00:00:24.072 --> 00:00:30.247 Go to the show notes and there is a link tree link that has a place to sign up for everything, 00:00:30.508 --> 00:00:35.049 newsletter, Waking Up to Narcissism question and answer podcast. And if you want to take my 00:00:35.049 --> 00:00:38.729 marriage workshop, sign up for the newsletter and you'll find out more about the marriage 00:00:38.729 --> 00:00:44.409 course when it's coming out and a couple of other courses as well. So one of my daughters has been 00:00:44.409 --> 00:00:50.649 putting out a lot of content on TikTok and now she started to put that out on YouTube shorts as 00:00:50.649 --> 00:00:56.809 well. My content, the therapy, therapy content and some of the things that get the most attention 00:00:56.809 --> 00:01:01.609 are narcissist jokes, which I think we all need a little bit of humor. We need some levity. So I 00:01:01.609 --> 00:01:05.896 So I think I've told a joke or two on here, but if I take you on my train of thought, 00:01:06.058 --> 00:01:11.249 I don't know why, but I felt like there has to be some good narcissist knock-knock jokes. 00:01:11.249 --> 00:01:14.448 And maybe this is the dad humor in me, but I couldn't find any. 00:01:14.609 --> 00:01:20.329 And so I woke up today and I don't know why, but I thought I would write a joke, something 00:01:20.329 --> 00:01:21.884 that I have not done in the past. 00:01:22.189 --> 00:01:26.727 And then this is not exactly where I thought the narcissist knock-knock joke would go, 00:01:27.209 --> 00:01:28.321 but I am a horrible actor. 00:01:28.609 --> 00:01:35.029 But if I now had the waking up to narcissism players, then they would enact this narcissism knock-knock joke. 00:01:35.415 --> 00:01:44.219 Here we go. So this is the narcissist doing the knock-knock and then the who's there will be being played by myself. 00:01:45.029 --> 00:01:45.452 And action. 00:01:46.460 --> 00:01:54.841 Knock knock uh who's there you know uh you know who no like you know you you seriously like i, 00:01:55.350 --> 00:01:58.790 can't even believe that you don't know who is there as a matter of fact you're actually the 00:01:58.790 --> 00:02:05.430 one who initially told me who was there but okay um it sounds like apparently if you don't even 00:02:05.430 --> 00:02:11.172 know who is there then i feel like i'm kind of going crazy and i'm just going to assume that 00:02:11.590 --> 00:02:15.670 you are also probably going to tell me that you're not the one who told me who was there which is 00:02:15.670 --> 00:02:19.778 funny because I was actually at my doctor's office earlier and my doctor was saying, 00:02:20.030 --> 00:02:24.470 Hey, you seem a little bit stressed. And so then I told my doctor that I just had this weird 00:02:24.470 --> 00:02:29.190 feeling that Tony is going to insist on me asking him a knock knock joke. And then here's the deal. 00:02:29.896 --> 00:02:35.110 He's the one who told me, uh, who was there like, you know, and knock, knock who's there. 00:02:35.110 --> 00:02:39.670 And then my doctor said, okay, tell me more about this because I'm hearing more and more of these 00:02:39.670 --> 00:02:43.750 kinds of stories of, of these people that are just all of a sudden they'll tell you who's there. 00:02:43.750 --> 00:02:46.230 And then they say, tell me a knock-knock joke. It's kind of crazy. 00:02:47.046 --> 00:02:51.079 And so then my doctor, well, first of all, I said, thank you. I feel so validated. 00:02:51.511 --> 00:02:54.070 So I shared a little bit more. And then here's the funny thing. 00:02:54.070 --> 00:02:59.590 My doctor was like, Tony, is he on any kind of anti-anxiety or antidepressant medications? 00:02:59.590 --> 00:03:03.190 Because I think he should really be taking one. As a matter of fact, probably about 10 milligrams of Prozac. 00:03:03.190 --> 00:03:04.230 Sounds like that would do the trick. 00:03:05.275 --> 00:03:12.470 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 00:03:12.470 --> 00:03:15.910 to insist on you asking a knock-knock joke. Like, I'm even sorry you have to go through that. 00:03:16.780 --> 00:03:19.830 So, so honestly, right now, can you, Tony, just give me a minute, 00:03:19.985 --> 00:03:22.361 because I'm kind of feeling a little triggered by this entire exchange. 00:03:23.217 --> 00:03:28.663 To at that point the kind person played by me in this scenario would most likely say I. 00:03:30.256 --> 00:03:36.027 Okay I'm I'm sorry I seriously I I swear you're the one who said knock knock like I thought it 00:03:36.027 --> 00:03:40.427 was just a knock knock joke but I don't know maybe I'm kind of making that up to which the 00:03:40.427 --> 00:03:46.907 narcissist would have already confabulated the story of uh right because you literally told me 00:03:46.907 --> 00:03:52.467 me to ask you a knock-knock joke, why on earth would I ask you one on my own? 00:03:52.467 --> 00:03:53.536 And end scene. 00:03:54.427 --> 00:03:59.027 So even a knock-knock joke in the world of narcissism or emotional maturity could cause 00:03:59.027 --> 00:04:03.707 you to probably lose your own mind, and that's maybe why I couldn't find legitimate, real 00:04:03.707 --> 00:04:09.272 knock-knock jokes about narcissism on the internet. So if you have one, if you find one, please, please submit them. 00:04:09.398 --> 00:04:12.774 I have a tremendous amount now of poetry from the Women's Narcissistic Facebook group, and, 00:04:14.067 --> 00:04:19.947 I had a guy, I see you, guy, submit a poem that I will share on an upcoming episode. 00:04:19.947 --> 00:04:23.235 So I would love more of those, but man, I love humor. 00:04:23.427 --> 00:04:29.563 So I'm telling you, if you ever think about writing a joke about narcissism and maybe the bounty is out there 00:04:29.927 --> 00:04:33.787 for a knock-knock joke, then please submit that as well to contact at tonyoverbay.com. 00:04:33.787 --> 00:04:37.207 If I'm gonna share some poetry, maybe it would be nice to share some humor 00:04:37.305 --> 00:04:40.267 because inevitably we get to some really difficult topics as well. 00:04:40.947 --> 00:04:46.187 So today I'm gonna use a couple of different articles as a reference point, I wanna talk about 00:04:46.187 --> 00:04:47.721 the different types of narcissism. 00:04:47.927 --> 00:04:53.147 And one of the, if I go back in the time machine on the virtual couch, and I think I've talked about this 00:04:53.147 --> 00:04:56.633 in a little bit of the origin story of the Waking Up to Narcissism podcast, 00:04:56.723 --> 00:05:02.347 if I would put out on my virtual couch, mental health podcast, an episode that had anything to do 00:05:02.347 --> 00:05:04.978 with narcissism or gaslighting, 00:05:05.068 --> 00:05:11.107 then those episodes would just really surpass or eclipse the number of downloads 00:05:11.107 --> 00:05:14.458 and they would be shared more than any other episodes that I would do. 00:05:15.027 --> 00:05:20.507 And then that led to just more and more of those episodes, which eventually led to me working with a large percentage 00:05:20.507 --> 00:05:24.827 or a large part of that population of people that were waking up to their own narcissistic traits 00:05:24.827 --> 00:05:27.907 and tendencies or the narcissistic traits and tendencies in their relationships. 00:05:28.387 --> 00:05:32.957 And so now here we are, 70 episodes later in a very large private women's Facebook group. 00:05:33.207 --> 00:05:38.908 And I should say this right now, I met with my wonderful assistant Naomi last week or early this week. 00:05:39.107 --> 00:05:45.027 And she is now reaching out to the men who are saying, hey, maybe I'm more emotionally immature. 00:05:45.027 --> 00:05:46.461 I'm starting to wake up to that. 00:05:47.107 --> 00:05:50.867 And we're getting that group ready. And then we're also getting ready to go with the group 00:05:51.106 --> 00:05:55.148 of men who are in relationships with emotionally immature, maybe narcissistic women. 00:05:55.507 --> 00:05:58.167 So please reach out and those groups are gonna be starting soon. 00:05:58.167 --> 00:06:04.027 So we have the numbers and I really wanna put those together so that we can get some support there as well. 00:06:03.709 --> 00:06:09.336 But I also get a lot of questions around the types of narcissism, the subtypes of narcissism. 00:06:09.714 --> 00:06:13.399 And going back to this story I was talking about more of the origin story was there was one where 00:06:13.399 --> 00:06:18.869 it just talked about the subtypes of narcissism that I referred to often back in the day in the 00:06:19.139 --> 00:06:23.399 in the virtual couch days. And I realized I've never really done anything like that here on the 00:06:23.399 --> 00:06:28.119 Waking Up to Narcissism podcast. So I'm pulling from an article on psychcentral.com. This is 00:06:28.119 --> 00:06:32.519 medically reviewed by Jeffrey Ditzel who is a doctor, a medical doctor, and it was written 00:06:32.519 --> 00:06:37.378 by a person named Courtney Telleon. So I'm just going to refer to the author as Courtney 00:06:37.679 --> 00:06:41.996 because it seems like I just feel so bad messing up someone's last name. 00:06:42.653 --> 00:06:45.959 But we're going to talk about the five types of narcissism, how to spot each type, and 00:06:45.959 --> 00:06:49.839 I'm also going to be referring to an article that I refer to so often that is called The 00:06:49.839 --> 00:06:53.999 Truth About Narcissistic Personality Disorder. And this is from Eleanor Greenberg who's a 00:06:53.999 --> 00:06:57.199 PhD, and this is off of Psychology Today. 00:06:57.199 --> 00:06:58.992 And there's so much good in that article. 00:06:59.469 --> 00:07:04.105 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, 00:07:04.564 --> 00:07:07.814 when we're talking about breaking down the different types, subtypes of narcissism. 00:07:08.210 --> 00:07:12.792 And then I'm going to talk a little bit more as well about the concepts around emotional immaturity while we're here. 00:07:13.450 --> 00:07:18.302 So five types of narcissism and how to spot each. Again, this is written by Courtney on Psych Central. 00:07:19.099 --> 00:07:23.118 So Courtney says, as a personality trait, narcissism can be overt, 00:07:23.550 --> 00:07:27.115 covert, antagonistic, communal, or malignant. 00:07:27.808 --> 00:07:33.658 But then as a mental health condition, there's just the one diagnosis of narcissistic personality disorder. 00:07:33.858 --> 00:07:41.898 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. 00:07:42.059 --> 00:07:54.258 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. 00:07:54.329 --> 00:07:56.327 So I'm going to jump back and forth a little bit. 00:07:56.733 --> 00:08:00.818 So, when you look at narcissism as a trait in terms of how it affects your day-to-day 00:08:00.818 --> 00:08:04.618 life and ability to form relationships, there are two types of narcissism. 00:08:04.618 --> 00:08:11.010 So there's adaptive narcissism, which can be viewed as helpful, and there is maladaptive, which is unhelpful. 00:08:11.698 --> 00:08:16.218 And so, Courtney says that some research suggests that it could be more accurate to view narcissism 00:08:16.218 --> 00:08:20.391 on a spectrum from less to more severe narcissistic traits. 00:08:21.018 --> 00:08:24.058 So that's where I want to jump in and say, as a matter of fact, I feel like there's the 00:08:24.058 --> 00:08:29.058 the narcissistic personality disorder, which depending on what you look up, you can see 00:08:29.058 --> 00:08:33.738 that people will say it's anywhere from 2 or 3% of the population to one article I found 00:08:33.738 --> 00:08:37.198 today literally said 5.3% of the population. 00:08:37.198 --> 00:08:42.378 It's very specific. So that would be the, you can diagnose from the diagnostic and statistical manual that 00:08:42.378 --> 00:08:47.730 mental health professionals use to diagnose someone with narcissistic personality disorder. 00:08:48.478 --> 00:08:52.338 But I feel like if we start with, we are all emotionally immature and we don't know what 00:08:52.338 --> 00:08:58.794 we don't know. So then when we are given an opportunity to have some new tools, self-confront, 00:08:59.098 --> 00:09:02.674 it's really about how do we show up with that discomfort? What do we do with that? Do we. 00:09:03.338 --> 00:09:07.148 Want to just push it away and gaslight? Gaslight is a childhood defense mechanism. Were we. 00:09:07.738 --> 00:09:12.878 Not given the tools to sit with discomfort in our childhood? Do we have to manage the 00:09:12.878 --> 00:09:18.258 relationship or do we have to manage the emotional and mental health of our parents so that we 00:09:18.258 --> 00:09:22.898 felt unseen and unheard as we were growing up. 00:09:21.777 --> 00:09:33.627 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. 00:09:33.849 --> 00:09:38.627 But if you grow up with a secure attachment, what does that look like? 00:09:38.809 --> 00:09:44.346 It means that it is not about you. It is really about you are there to help this 00:09:44.627 --> 00:09:49.594 child that you have created to become the best version of themselves. Not a 00:09:50.026 --> 00:09:54.827 reflection of you, but you are there. You are just who you are at that point. So 00:09:54.827 --> 00:09:59.027 you don't have to get your validation off of your kid. And if they do something 00:09:59.027 --> 00:10:03.467 different than what you want them to do, that doesn't mean that they have let you 00:10:03.467 --> 00:10:07.967 down. It means that they are just becoming and being. So what a secure 00:10:07.967 --> 00:10:15.947 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 00:10:15.947 --> 00:10:19.427 that is based on so many different things. It's based on their nature, their 00:10:19.427 --> 00:10:26.267 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. 00:10:26.710 --> 00:10:29.907 Things that you get excited about as a parent that you're not even aware that 00:10:29.907 --> 00:10:37.135 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 00:10:37.467 --> 00:10:41.027 then that little reactionary brain says, then I want to do more of it. 00:10:41.681 --> 00:10:46.867 So they are having their own experience. There are so many things going on in the human brain at any given moment, 00:10:46.867 --> 00:10:49.927 especially when you're a kid that you're trying to find that sense of self. 00:10:49.927 --> 00:10:53.467 So a kid gets their sense of self from external validation. 00:10:54.113 --> 00:10:57.967 So if the parent is creating the secure attachment with their kid, 00:10:58.065 --> 00:11:01.909 then their kid really believes that things are more about them. 00:11:02.899 --> 00:11:07.309 Not in a narcissistic way, but in a healthy ego way. So instead of them continually having to 00:11:07.309 --> 00:11:13.789 figure out how to manage the emotions of a parent, or I better not get my parent mad because if my 00:11:13.789 --> 00:11:17.949 parent gets mad, they're going to take it out on me. And then as a little kid, that would be 00:11:18.032 --> 00:11:22.989 terrifying to have this giant human being that I care about that is now telling me I'm a horrible 00:11:22.989 --> 00:11:26.989 person. Or do you know how that makes mom or dad feel? And when a kid is trying to express 00:11:26.989 --> 00:11:32.429 themselves and share their emotions, if the parent is not in the mood for it, if it's not a good time 00:11:32.429 --> 00:11:36.429 right now, then the kid is learning a few different things at that point. 00:11:36.429 --> 00:11:40.385 They ultimately want to survive, so they don't want to get someone mad at them. 00:11:41.189 --> 00:11:44.598 And they worry now that it is now a good time to bring something up or not. 00:11:44.789 --> 00:11:48.269 So they're trying to already feel, they already are suppressing their emotions because they're 00:11:48.269 --> 00:11:52.469 told a lot of times, it's not that big of a deal, or don't worry about it, or get over 00:11:52.469 --> 00:11:54.041 it, or how do you think that makes mom or dad feel? 00:11:54.789 --> 00:11:59.069 And so then, as well as then, they don't want to get anybody mad. 00:11:59.069 --> 00:12:00.622 They don't want to say the wrong thing. 00:12:00.789 --> 00:12:05.589 So the kid, what it feels like to be them is somebody who is continually trying to figure 00:12:05.589 --> 00:12:10.470 out a way to get people to like them and to make sure people don't get angry at them. 00:12:11.269 --> 00:12:14.521 What a secure attachment looks like is the kid is going and doing, coming back to home 00:12:14.769 --> 00:12:18.942 base of their parents, and their parents saying, tell me about it. 00:12:19.169 --> 00:12:21.543 What was that like? Help me understand. 00:12:21.789 --> 00:12:23.269 What can I do to support? 00:12:23.839 --> 00:12:26.387 Not I can't believe you did that. I think you should do this. 00:12:26.769 --> 00:12:30.089 Here's what you don't even understand, or here's, oh, I know exactly what you're going 00:12:30.089 --> 00:12:34.029 through. Here's what I did when I was younger. Let me tell you stories because inevitably 00:12:34.029 --> 00:12:38.269 those stories are going to be, and I was really amazing. I was really good. Don't you want 00:12:38.269 --> 00:12:42.229 to tell me how great I am now? So the parent is getting that validation. They're looking 00:12:42.229 --> 00:12:43.869 to their kid to validate them. 00:12:44.553 --> 00:12:50.083 But we don't even realize as a parent what we're doing in that moment that now that kid feels like, 00:12:50.083 --> 00:12:57.123 okay, I guess I'm not as good or I'm not enough. So if a kid has a secure attachment, now when 00:12:57.123 --> 00:13:02.083 they move on into adolescence and adulthood, and I gave this example a couple of weeks ago, 00:13:02.083 --> 00:13:05.043 and it could have been this podcast, I think I did on the virtual couch as well. 00:13:05.816 --> 00:13:10.156 But having a client that was a computer programmer and she was in the dating world. 00:13:10.597 --> 00:13:14.297 And in that moment, then she is talking about, hey, I'm a computer programmer, 00:13:14.342 --> 00:13:18.883 and being on a date with a guy who says, oh, wow, that's kind of weird. 00:13:18.883 --> 00:13:23.963 Isn't that more of a male-dominated industry? Like that's, I would worry that people 00:13:23.963 --> 00:13:27.323 are gonna not take you seriously, or they're gonna make advances on you, 00:13:27.323 --> 00:13:28.643 or whatever the guy was saying. 00:13:28.643 --> 00:13:32.563 And I love the fact that this woman, I think, had a pretty healthy attachment, 00:13:32.563 --> 00:13:34.282 secure attachment from childhood. 00:13:34.683 --> 00:13:38.252 So she said, I don't really understand why we're having this conversation. 00:13:38.703 --> 00:13:42.528 I'm telling you this is what I do. I feel like the next logical question would be, 00:13:42.743 --> 00:13:44.256 oh, tell me more about that. 00:13:44.634 --> 00:13:47.146 What do you like about being a computer programmer? What are you working on? 00:13:47.785 --> 00:13:55.230 So going into adulthood with a secure attachment from childhood, then you're not even gonna put up 00:13:55.343 --> 00:13:59.407 with someone that is trying to tell you how to feel or what to think or what to do, 00:14:00.010 --> 00:14:04.853 because your experience growing up was, that's not even a part, I don't even understand, 00:14:05.474 --> 00:14:07.063 because I'm who I am. 00:14:07.063 --> 00:14:13.577 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. 00:14:14.774 --> 00:14:36.303 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. 00:14:36.303 --> 00:14:38.333 She said, this year's label seems to be narcissist. 00:14:38.990 --> 00:14:43.671 So she said, I thought it might be useful to clarify what mental health professionals mean when they talk about narcissism. 00:14:44.418 --> 00:14:50.432 So she said, narcissistic personality disorder is the name for a series of coping strategies that began as an adaptation to a childhood family 00:14:50.703 --> 00:14:58.624 situation that left the person with unstable self-esteem, the inability to regulate their self-esteem without external validation and lower empathy. 00:14:59.011 --> 00:15:03.823 And so then she goes on to talk about this concept of whole object relations and object constancy. 00:15:03.823 --> 00:15:08.783 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. 00:15:08.783 --> 00:15:12.983 She talks about normal versus pathological narcissism, and here's where I'm taking liberty 00:15:12.983 --> 00:15:17.637 with what Eleanor has defined, and I'm taking some of that and confabulating my own narrative. 00:15:18.726 --> 00:15:34.066 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. 00:15:35.020 --> 00:15:39.764 Now, how often are we looking at the term narcissism as positive self-regard? I don't know if that is ever being used. 00:15:40.430 --> 00:15:46.363 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. 00:15:47.011 --> 00:15:52.776 And here's where I feel like the word narcissism, I think, it's almost like when you cut open a 00:15:52.926 --> 00:15:56.296 pillow and the feathers go everywhere and then you're trying to go gather all the feathers and, 00:15:56.856 --> 00:16:01.896 they've blown all over the world. So that the word narcissism is out there. It's out in the 00:16:01.896 --> 00:16:06.960 conscious, the zeitgeist, and it carries with it a lot of feelings and a lot of emotion 00:16:07.347 --> 00:16:12.776 and a lot of meaning. So I almost want to say, okay, I think we have to just accept the fact 00:16:12.776 --> 00:16:17.656 that it is out there and people have a view of what narcissism means and I don't feel like it's 00:16:17.754 --> 00:16:24.616 typically one of a normal, healthy version of confidence. I think that Eleanor talks about 00:16:24.616 --> 00:16:28.616 normal, healthy narcissism and this is where I've taken her concept here and I want to call it 00:16:28.616 --> 00:16:33.656 normal, healthy ego. So normal, healthy narcissism or normal, healthy ego, she says, is a realistic 00:16:33.656 --> 00:16:38.360 sense of positive self-regard that is based on the person's actual accomplishments. It is, 00:16:38.936 --> 00:16:43.936 relatively stable because the person is assimilated into their self-image, the success that came 00:16:43.936 --> 00:16:46.984 as a result of their actual hard work to overcome real-life obstacles. 00:16:47.776 --> 00:16:52.016 Because it's based on real achievements, normal, healthy narcissism—and it might 00:16:52.016 --> 00:16:57.596 be easier to stomach if it's normal, healthy ego—is relatively impervious to the minor 00:16:57.596 --> 00:17:01.416 slights and setbacks that we all experience as we go through life. 00:17:01.416 --> 00:17:06.123 Normal ego causes us to care about ourselves, do things that are in our real self-interest, 00:17:06.816 --> 00:17:09.022 And it's associated with genuine self-respect. 00:17:09.516 --> 00:17:11.479 One can think of it as something that is inside of us. 00:17:12.476 --> 00:17:15.416 So I love the thought or the concept around normal, healthy ego. 00:17:15.416 --> 00:17:19.743 Now to give better examples of what that would look like, let me share then what she says 00:17:20.076 --> 00:17:21.896 is pathological defensive narcissism. 00:17:21.896 --> 00:17:26.996 So I'm kind of leaving that one as is, because I feel like pathological defensive ego, actually 00:17:26.996 --> 00:17:28.007 that doesn't sound too bad. 00:17:28.576 --> 00:17:31.725 But she said, this is a defense against feelings of inferiority. 00:17:32.216 --> 00:17:36.716 The person dons a mask of arrogant superiority in an attempt to convince the world that he 00:17:36.716 --> 00:17:41.835 or she is special, but inside the person feels very insecure about his or her actual self-worth. 00:17:42.825 --> 00:17:48.073 This facade of superiority is so thin that it's like a helium balloon, one small pinprick will deflate it. 00:17:48.803 --> 00:17:55.455 This makes the person hypersensitive to minor slights that someone with healthy ego, healthy narcissism, would not even notice. 00:17:55.675 --> 00:18:02.675 Instead, somebody with this type of defensive narcissism is easily wounded, frequently takes any form of disagreement as a serious criticism, 00:18:02.675 --> 00:18:07.365 and is likely to lash out and devalue anyone who they think disagrees with them. 00:18:07.932 --> 00:18:10.543 They are constantly on the guard trying to protect their status. 00:18:11.137 --> 00:18:15.875 Pathological narcissism can be thought of as a protective armor that is on the outside of us. 00:18:16.476 --> 00:18:24.195 So from my own, my own life, my own example of this is I spent 10 years in the computer 00:18:24.195 --> 00:18:28.635 software industry. It wasn't a passion of mine. I didn't come out of college saying I just want to 00:18:28.635 --> 00:18:32.555 work in the computer industry. As a matter of fact, I applied for a few different jobs coming 00:18:32.555 --> 00:18:36.955 out of school, but that's the one that I had an opportunity to work in. And I'm grateful for the 00:18:36.955 --> 00:18:40.602 experiences because it did help me understand computers more and I had an opportunity to, 00:18:41.195 --> 00:18:46.885 travel the world, literally, and speak in a lot of amazing places. But what I didn't know, 00:18:47.101 --> 00:18:51.115 that I didn't know, was that I was operating more out of this place of pathological defensive 00:18:51.115 --> 00:18:56.155 narcissism. Because again, let's break that down. A defense against feelings of inferiority. I 00:18:56.230 --> 00:19:00.137 absolutely felt inferior because I'm in this world, this computer software world, where there. 00:19:00.875 --> 00:19:05.875 There were people that were literally writing computer code and computer engineers. And 00:19:05.875 --> 00:19:10.921 I was someone who had a mass communications degree with an emphasis in public relations 00:19:11.235 --> 00:19:16.125 who my senior year was handed an email address. And I remember thinking, this is silly. I 00:19:16.278 --> 00:19:19.715 don't know why we would ever need one of these. 1993 was the year at the University 00:19:19.715 --> 00:19:26.755 of Utah. So I did. I felt inferior. And then she says, the person dons a mask of arrogance 00:19:26.755 --> 00:19:29.691 superiority in an attempt to convince the world that he or she is special. 00:19:30.355 --> 00:19:33.355 So when I would travel and I would go to these different trade shows and people would ask 00:19:33.355 --> 00:19:37.298 me questions, and again, coming from a place of I didn't even know what I didn't know, 00:19:37.675 --> 00:19:41.035 that I would take some of the information from our computer programmers or some of the 00:19:41.035 --> 00:19:46.543 things that we had written, a press release, a marketing material, and I would then parrot those words. 00:19:47.275 --> 00:19:51.315 And then I would try to say them so confidently because I felt so insecure because I truly 00:19:51.315 --> 00:19:57.355 did not understand how to code, or how things worked, how we built things, how to solve 00:19:57.355 --> 00:20:01.775 these problems in the computer software world. Little did I know that I'm interacting with 00:20:01.775 --> 00:20:07.699 other people that did know, so I didn't even know that I was probably sounding silly, or, 00:20:08.335 --> 00:20:13.195 I was proving that I didn't know what I was really talking about. But I said it with such 00:20:13.195 --> 00:20:18.960 arrogant superiority because I was trying to convince the world that I really did know 00:20:19.303 --> 00:20:21.346 that I was, as Eleanor says, special. 00:20:22.210 --> 00:20:28.300 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 00:20:28.300 --> 00:20:29.520 I don't know what I'm talking about, 00:20:30.357 --> 00:20:34.804 That facade of superiority is so thin like a helium balloon one small pinprick will deflate it, 00:20:35.426 --> 00:20:40.500 So this makes the person hypersensitive the minor slights that somebody with healthy narcissism or healthy ego wouldn't even notice, 00:20:41.106 --> 00:20:47.220 Instead someone with this type of defensive narcissism is easily wounded frequently takes any form of disagreement as a serious criticism, 00:20:47.957 --> 00:20:51.560 And is likely to lash out and devalue anybody who they think is disagreeing with them, 00:20:52.143 --> 00:20:54.457 So they're constantly on guard trying to protect their status. 00:20:55.141 --> 00:21:00.560 It's thought of as a protective armor. So when I would have conversations, even with friends, and I would say, 00:21:00.560 --> 00:21:02.370 oh yeah, I work in the computer software industry. 00:21:02.757 --> 00:21:04.560 And if they would start talking about, well, what do you do? 00:21:04.560 --> 00:21:06.560 I would say that we made these device drivers. 00:21:07.258 --> 00:21:10.560 And then when I would try to explain, if I ended up talking to somebody that actually understood 00:21:10.560 --> 00:21:17.560 and they started asking questions, then man, this facade of superiority was so thin that truly a pinprick would deflate it. 00:21:17.560 --> 00:21:19.560 And at some point then I would just want to change the subject, 00:21:19.861 --> 00:21:23.480 subject, which is kind of a form of gaslighting. It's a childhood defense mechanism that if 00:21:23.480 --> 00:21:28.360 this person finds out who I really am, that then they're going to get mad at me or they're 00:21:28.360 --> 00:21:30.754 going to leave. They're no longer going to want to be my friend. 00:21:31.753 --> 00:21:36.840 Meanwhile, I start learning about the mental health space. I felt this almost calling to 00:21:36.840 --> 00:21:42.800 go into therapy. And I loved knowing how people worked and how they ticked and how they operated. 00:21:42.800 --> 00:21:48.560 And I would read every biography that I could, whether it was athletes or actors or politicians, 00:21:48.560 --> 00:21:52.200 or I loved reading biographies. And I did a lot of traveling, 00:21:52.200 --> 00:21:53.259 and so I would read a lot of books. 00:21:53.880 --> 00:21:56.806 And one of my favorite magazine subscriptions was called Biography, 00:21:57.320 --> 00:21:59.993 and just learning how people worked, what made them tick. 00:22:00.600 --> 00:22:05.140 I was listening to the Dr. Laura Schlesinger Show. I was listening to Stephanie Doran, the Dream Weaver, 00:22:05.140 --> 00:22:11.460 and trying to understand how we interpret dreams, or this question and answer, Dr. Laura, 00:22:11.460 --> 00:22:15.760 or anything that I could that just got into the minds of other people. 00:22:15.837 --> 00:22:21.980 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 00:22:22.220 --> 00:22:28.089 stop by and we could not talk about computer software and device drivers, then that's where I felt alive. 00:22:28.908 --> 00:22:32.392 So I start heading back to grad school in my early 30s to become a therapist, having, 00:22:33.240 --> 00:22:38.840 no idea of what I didn't know that I didn't know about what one could feel like if they 00:22:38.840 --> 00:22:40.350 really enjoyed their career. 00:22:41.160 --> 00:22:47.920 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 00:22:47.920 --> 00:22:49.811 in high school or college for my undergrad. 00:22:50.820 --> 00:22:53.630 And at that point, then I'm eating it up and I want to do more. 00:22:53.630 --> 00:22:56.350 I want to learn more as I'm starting to help men with addiction. 00:22:56.842 --> 00:23:00.270 I recognize, OK, this is a series of coping mechanisms. 00:23:00.812 --> 00:23:05.510 And so I identify these voids in people's lives. People are turning to these unhealthy coping mechanisms 00:23:05.510 --> 00:23:10.950 when they don't feel connected in their marriage or is in their parenting and their health, their career or their faith. 00:23:11.273 --> 00:23:16.190 And then if I can go find a nice evidence based modality in each one of those areas, now we can really help. 00:23:16.746 --> 00:23:24.550 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, 00:23:25.046 --> 00:23:31.570 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, 00:23:32.212 --> 00:23:35.590 It's relatively stable because the person is assimilated into their self-image, 00:23:36.245 --> 00:23:40.010 The success that came as a result of their actual hard work to overcome real-life obstacles, 00:23:40.737 --> 00:23:46.050 So in this waking up to narcissism podcast itself is I've set off and waking up to my own 00:23:46.346 --> 00:23:53.650 narcissistic traits and tendencies, that journey of self-discovery, of self-confrontation, of learning to sit with that discomfort, of learning 00:23:53.650 --> 00:23:57.635 mindfulness skills, of learning and practicing and implementing and 00:23:58.004 --> 00:24:02.487 discovering and recognizing there's so much more that I must not know because. 00:24:03.290 --> 00:24:07.530 You can continually learn more. And that gets exciting. And then the more that you 00:24:07.530 --> 00:24:10.770 interact with people, then the more that you learn about them, and it gives you an 00:24:10.770 --> 00:24:15.410 opportunity to self-confront. What a privilege. What a joy. So now, because it's 00:24:15.410 --> 00:24:21.430 based on real achievements, this normal healthy ego or normal healthy narcissism is relatively 00:24:21.430 --> 00:24:26.090 impervious to the minor slights and setbacks we all experience as we go through life. 00:24:26.307 --> 00:24:29.650 Normal ego causes us to care about ourselves, do things in our real self-interest, and is 00:24:29.650 --> 00:24:31.186 associated with genuine self-respect. 00:24:31.990 --> 00:24:36.450 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 00:24:36.450 --> 00:24:40.510 time who then was going to go and take a break from therapy, they were trying to overcome 00:24:40.510 --> 00:24:44.230 turning to pornography as a healthy coping mechanism, and they were going to go spend 00:24:44.230 --> 00:24:48.434 a lot of money, thousands of dollars with a coach who said, I will, it will work. This 00:24:48.710 --> 00:24:54.178 will work. And I knew from working on my own courses and programs that I, or I felt like 00:24:54.385 --> 00:24:58.690 this coach was selling a destination. Do you want to be free of porn? Do you want to feel 00:24:58.690 --> 00:25:02.150 like you're the man you've always wanted to be? Do you want to feel like you can confidently 00:25:02.150 --> 00:25:07.350 spend time on your own and not have that siren song of temptation? So selling that destination, 00:25:07.350 --> 00:25:11.858 my client wanted that desperately so they would pay anything for it. But knowing that 00:25:12.110 --> 00:25:17.790 often we're buying that temporary fix or that dopamine bump, then I said, man, I 00:25:17.790 --> 00:25:19.501 hear you and I want to support you on that. 00:25:19.550 --> 00:25:22.436 And this person, I remember the reason I'm telling this story is they were saying. 00:25:23.516 --> 00:25:27.279 I know this is hard for you, and I don't want you to feel like you've failed. 00:25:27.432 --> 00:25:31.591 And this is where I realized healthy ego. Oh, I don't. I don't feel that way because I'm, 00:25:32.246 --> 00:25:37.046 confident of the tools that I have because I know that I know how to help people and that I can 00:25:37.046 --> 00:25:42.006 understand this is part of your journey. And they were saying, man, I know, but I know you're 00:25:42.006 --> 00:25:47.446 frustrated. And in my mind, I thought, well, I'll see you in about a year. And the reality was that 00:25:47.446 --> 00:25:52.326 yeah, we ended up getting a chance to work again. And then I worried. I felt bad that they felt bad 00:25:52.326 --> 00:25:58.006 that they had spent a lot of money on this very expensive program. But what I loved about that 00:25:58.006 --> 00:26:02.806 moment was I was able to self-confront and say, no, I'm okay. I feel confident in my ability, 00:26:02.806 --> 00:26:08.006 so I don't have to defend my fragile ego to get somebody to like me. So this person can say 00:26:08.006 --> 00:26:12.486 whatever they wanted to, and I appreciated that. There's something that's happening very 00:26:12.486 --> 00:26:18.304 fascinating right now is my daughter is putting more content out on TikTok and on YouTube Shorts, 00:26:18.799 --> 00:26:24.200 that there are a couple of the TikTok videos about mental health that are over a million views now. 00:26:24.714 --> 00:26:28.646 And at first, I told myself, I don't care. I really don't. But it's fun. It's exciting. I 00:26:28.646 --> 00:26:34.246 want to be really honest about that. But I was worried about the comments and the comments that 00:26:34.246 --> 00:26:40.326 would come in. And on the one video that has 1.3, 1.4 million views, I think there's about 00:26:40.326 --> 00:26:46.806 two or three thousand comments now. And honestly, I can't even, it blows me away. I would say 98% 00:26:46.806 --> 00:26:50.166 of them are positive, but if you look at that many comments, that's still a lot that are not. 00:26:50.883 --> 00:26:55.852 And I feel like that has also been a place where I've recognized the concepts around healthy ego, 00:26:56.375 --> 00:27:01.126 because people that are saying, that's dumb, you're wrong, then I honestly feel like, 00:27:01.126 --> 00:27:07.046 oh, bless their heart for real, because that would be hard if hearing this information, 00:27:07.046 --> 00:27:09.926 whether it's about emotional immaturity, or whether it's about mental health, or whether 00:27:09.926 --> 00:27:14.806 it's about people that I recommend go to therapy, if they're saying therapy's dumb, you don't know 00:27:14.806 --> 00:27:19.046 know what you're talking about. I feel like in the past, if I would have been operating 00:27:19.046 --> 00:27:22.566 from this pathological defensive narcissism, then I would have lashed out to defend my 00:27:22.566 --> 00:27:28.171 fragile ego because it is as thin as a helium balloon. But because this is the work that 00:27:28.246 --> 00:27:32.206 I love and that I'm passionate about and I'm willing to self-confront and I'm willing 00:27:32.206 --> 00:27:35.766 to admit that there are things that I don't know that I know, then what comes along with 00:27:35.766 --> 00:27:40.166 that is that I feel confident in the things that I do know. So now, like Eleanor Greenberg 00:27:40.166 --> 00:27:44.526 is saying, then healthy ego, relatively impervious to the minor slights and setbacks we all experience 00:27:44.526 --> 00:27:48.129 as we go through life, and those slights and setbacks are often done in the way of, 00:27:48.206 --> 00:27:50.109 I think you're wrong. That is dumb. 00:27:50.928 --> 00:27:54.538 So when I bring this together and those who are waking up to the narcissism or emotional 00:27:54.538 --> 00:27:58.938 immaturity in their relationships, you're the one doing the work. So you're the one that's 00:27:58.938 --> 00:28:04.058 learning to raise your emotional baseline and to get your PhD in gaslighting, to get out of 00:28:04.058 --> 00:28:08.058 unproductive conversations and to set healthy boundaries. And there's nothing you will do to 00:28:08.058 --> 00:28:12.378 cause them, that other person to have the aha moment or the epiphany. You're the one that is 00:28:12.378 --> 00:28:18.058 now learning to sit in that healthy ego or sit with that discomfort and do a little self-confrontation. 00:28:18.058 --> 00:28:19.483 Okay, what can I learn from here? 00:28:20.132 --> 00:28:24.948 But then as the person across from you sits in their emotional immaturity or narcissism, 00:28:25.191 --> 00:28:29.431 that they will push more buttons, bigger buttons. You're a horrible fill-in-the-blank. 00:28:30.133 --> 00:28:33.959 You're going to ruin this. You will lose everything. 00:28:34.688 --> 00:28:41.058 Those buttons are meant to get you back into enmeshment, back into alignment, back under this person's control. 00:28:41.058 --> 00:28:44.834 So that's why I think it's so important to understand what healthy ego is. 00:28:45.320 --> 00:28:49.938 Healthy narcissism, but we'll call it healthy ego because you are doing the work 00:28:50.280 --> 00:28:55.817 You are understanding what your experience is and it is a real-life experience and we want these, 00:28:56.538 --> 00:29:00.138 Accomplishments that you are having these aha moments you are having for yourself, 00:29:00.939 --> 00:29:07.698 To become assimilated into your self-image because these successes come as a result of your hard work to overcome real-life obstacles, 00:29:08.366 --> 00:29:18.578 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. 00:29:20.141 --> 00:29:24.480 I'll take a breath because the con the content today was going to be more about these, 00:29:25.731 --> 00:29:30.818 Types of narcissism, so let me get back to that. We just identified. There's adaptive which will be helpful 00:29:30.818 --> 00:29:33.938 Which is the healthy ego, but maladaptive so some research, 00:29:34.458 --> 00:29:39.578 Suggested it would be more accurate of you narcissism on a spectrum So we've covered that, that emotional immaturity. 00:29:39.578 --> 00:29:44.578 And then she said, you might imagine that the different types of narcissism fit somewhere along that spectrum. 00:29:44.578 --> 00:29:49.618 That spectrum. So in general, narcissism is closely tied to extreme self-focus, 00:29:49.618 --> 00:29:52.818 an inflated sense of self and a strong desire for recognition and praise. 00:29:53.809 --> 00:29:58.139 So Courtney says learning about these and other narcissistic traits and narcissistic types may 00:29:58.139 --> 00:30:02.154 also help you understand more about the thought processes, the emotions, the behavioral patterns, 00:30:02.622 --> 00:30:06.939 that tend to show up with narcissism. There's a little side note here that says narcissism is a 00:30:06.939 --> 00:30:11.179 personality trait versus a personality disorder. When people talk about narcissism, they might be 00:30:11.179 --> 00:30:15.019 referring to it as either part of someone's personality or as narcissistic personality 00:30:15.019 --> 00:30:19.979 disorder or NPD. Narcissistic personality disorder is a formal mental health diagnosis 00:30:19.979 --> 00:30:25.019 and there's only one type. This condition is usually diagnosed when narcissism extends beyond 00:30:25.019 --> 00:30:30.699 a personality trait or symptom and persistently affects many areas of one's life. And there are 00:30:30.699 --> 00:30:35.419 nine symptoms of narcissistic personality disorder. But researchers and other experts on 00:30:35.419 --> 00:30:40.299 narcissism have found multiple ways narcissism can then show up as part of someone's personality on 00:30:40.299 --> 00:30:44.699 the spectrum, which then I will refer to as emotional immaturity, including those with 00:30:44.699 --> 00:30:46.473 with the formal diagnosis. 00:30:46.659 --> 00:30:50.209 So how many types of narcissism are there? Courtney says that they've identified, 00:30:50.459 --> 00:30:54.341 we go back to there's the two types of narcissism, adaptive and maladaptive. 00:30:54.619 --> 00:30:59.539 Those are almost the overarching archetypes. So these show the difference between productive 00:30:59.539 --> 00:31:03.159 and unproductive aspects. Adaptive narcissism refers to aspects of narcissism 00:31:03.159 --> 00:31:04.468 that can actually be helpful. 00:31:04.579 --> 00:31:08.267 And I'm gonna say back to the healthy ego, like high self-confidence, self-reliance, 00:31:08.627 --> 00:31:13.236 and the ability to celebrate yourself based off of real life accomplishments and experience. 00:31:13.957 --> 00:31:19.807 Maladaptive is connected to traits that don't serve you and negatively impact how you relate to yourself and others. 00:31:20.006 --> 00:31:26.807 So maladaptive narcissism is about entitlement, aggression, the tendency to take advantage of others, emotional immaturity. 00:31:26.807 --> 00:31:32.807 Those would be associated with the symptoms. A lot of those are associated with symptoms of the narcissistic personality disorder. 00:31:32.807 --> 00:31:38.807 So she said when most people talk about narcissism, they usually refer to these types of narcissism under the maladaptive umbrella. 00:31:38.807 --> 00:31:55.807 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. 00:31:56.501 --> 00:32:06.807 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. 00:32:06.807 --> 00:32:24.807 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. 00:32:25.975 --> 00:32:30.087 Empathy. So, some research connects overt narcissism with what they call the big five 00:32:30.087 --> 00:32:35.847 personality traits of extroversion and openness. It also suggests that people with overt narcissism 00:32:35.847 --> 00:32:40.407 are likely to feel good about themselves and less likely to experience uncomfortable emotions like 00:32:40.407 --> 00:32:45.207 sadness and worry and loneliness. And this is where I feel like we start to identify the 00:32:45.207 --> 00:32:49.847 differences between the just absolute narcissistic personality disorder versus the traits and 00:32:49.847 --> 00:32:56.087 tendencies because a true narcissist doesn't feel those uncomfortable emotions like sadness, worry, 00:32:56.087 --> 00:33:01.207 or loneliness because those have been shut off since childhood because they can't sit with that 00:33:01.207 --> 00:33:06.567 discomfort that they are sad or that they worry that they did something wrong or that they they 00:33:06.567 --> 00:33:09.367 are alone because that might lead to abandonment and death. 00:33:10.455 --> 00:33:14.947 So, people with overt narcissism tend to overestimate their own abilities, their own intelligence. 00:33:15.205 --> 00:33:19.765 One study published in 2018 also suggested overt narcissism might cause somebody to overestimate 00:33:19.765 --> 00:33:21.150 their own emotional intelligence. 00:33:21.805 --> 00:33:27.388 This is what starts the, why I go so big on the healthy ego versus pathological defensive narcissism. 00:33:28.036 --> 00:33:31.585 You know, there's this concept called the Dunning-Kruger effect. 00:33:31.585 --> 00:33:34.806 And I should do a, I should do an episode on that because the Dunning-Kruger effect 00:33:34.860 --> 00:33:39.765 is if I go back to the, what I just read when we're talking about somebody will overestimate 00:33:39.765 --> 00:33:43.685 their own emotional intelligence, where they will feel like, oh, no, I'm very intelligent. 00:33:43.685 --> 00:33:45.636 I really do understand things better than most. 00:33:46.325 --> 00:33:49.545 The reason I bring up Dunning-Kruger effect is it's a cognitive bias where people with 00:33:49.545 --> 00:33:54.165 a low with low ability or low expertise or experience regarding a certain task or an 00:33:54.165 --> 00:33:57.429 area of knowledge tend to overestimate their ability or knowledge. 00:33:58.205 --> 00:34:02.725 So this is one of those things where the more that you start to learn, you start to learn 00:34:02.725 --> 00:34:04.684 and understand the less you know. 00:34:05.207 --> 00:34:10.325 As paradoxical as that sounds, the Dunning-Kruger effect is where the more that I know based 00:34:10.325 --> 00:34:16.485 off of healthy ego, then absolutely the more I recognize there's so much I don't know. 00:34:16.485 --> 00:34:21.132 Emotional immaturity or pathological defensive narcissism, that person tends to have an opinion about everything. 00:34:21.525 --> 00:34:25.804 And in the women's Facebook group or people that come into my office, I mean, I have heard, 00:34:26.299 --> 00:34:31.765 so many times of how much more that the narcissistic spouse knows than the therapist or than the 00:34:31.765 --> 00:34:33.123 doctor or than the attorney. 00:34:33.765 --> 00:34:43.295 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. 00:34:43.945 --> 00:34:46.945 They just know. They know better. What does that person know? 00:34:46.945 --> 00:34:47.787 What does the therapist know? 00:34:47.985 --> 00:34:51.385 He just wants money after all. Or what's the attorney? What do they even know? 00:34:51.385 --> 00:34:53.825 What's the doctor know? He's just, he's outdated. 00:34:53.825 --> 00:34:58.977 And so that is that emotional maturity that they know so much more, that they are so confident, 00:34:59.463 --> 00:35:01.372 that they know more than even the professionals. 00:35:02.265 --> 00:35:04.937 So that's part of that, overestimating their emotional intelligence. 00:35:05.828 --> 00:35:11.278 Covert narcissism, also known as vulnerable narcissism, closet narcissism, covert narcissism 00:35:11.278 --> 00:35:16.238 is the contrast to overt. So many people think of narcissism as loud and overbearing. People 00:35:16.238 --> 00:35:20.318 with covert don't fit the pattern. Instead, some of the common traits of somebody with covert 00:35:20.318 --> 00:35:25.358 narcissism will include expressions of low self-esteem. But I love the concept of expressions 00:35:25.358 --> 00:35:29.720 of low self-esteem because this is where someone will play off in the victim in order to get the 00:35:29.838 --> 00:35:34.095 person to engage, to get them into that enmeshment so then they can take control. 00:35:34.662 --> 00:35:39.278 A higher likelihood of experiencing anxiety, depression, and shame, introversion, insecurity, 00:35:39.278 --> 00:35:43.899 and low confidence, defensiveness, avoidance, and a tendency to feel or play the victim. 00:35:44.448 --> 00:35:47.918 So while somebody with the covert narcissism will still be very self-focused, it's likely to 00:35:47.918 --> 00:35:52.718 conflict with a deep fear or sense of not being enough. So this is where somebody will do whatever 00:35:52.718 --> 00:35:59.198 they can to control another person because of that fear of just absolute abandonment and loneliness. 00:35:59.198 --> 00:36:04.638 That if they if they allow this other person to be themselves then they will lose that person and 00:36:04.638 --> 00:36:08.798 then they will be alone so they will just get they will play the victim they will go for control 00:36:08.798 --> 00:36:15.598 over love and again you can have love or control in an adult relationship not both somebody with 00:36:15.598 --> 00:36:20.718 covert narcissism likely has a very hard time accepting criticism but unlike a person with 00:36:20.718 --> 00:36:24.958 overt narcissism somebody with covert narcissism may be more likely to internalize or take the 00:36:24.958 --> 00:36:29.278 the criticism more harshly. This is that concept where if I if we go back up to the article 00:36:29.278 --> 00:36:34.078 by Eleanor Greenberg, where she talks about whole object relations, which is the capacity 00:36:34.078 --> 00:36:37.516 to see oneself and others in a stable and integrated way that acknowledges both the 00:36:37.598 --> 00:36:41.738 person's good and bad qualities and object constancy. This is the ability to maintain 00:36:41.738 --> 00:36:45.825 a positive emotional connection to somebody that you like while you're angry or hurt, 00:36:46.038 --> 00:36:52.078 frustrated or disappointed by his or her behavior. So without whole object relations and without 00:36:52.078 --> 00:36:55.878 object constancy, people with narcissistic personality disorder only see themselves and 00:36:55.878 --> 00:36:57.195 other people in one of two ways. 00:36:57.938 --> 00:37:02.002 Either they are special and unique, omnipotent, perfect and entitled, which we call high status, 00:37:02.678 --> 00:37:05.801 or they are defective. They are worthless. They are garbage or low status. 00:37:06.638 --> 00:37:13.354 So this means that a person struggling with narcissistic issues, so we'll go back to this, covert narcissism. 00:37:12.886 --> 00:37:22.656 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. 00:37:23.211 --> 00:37:27.376 So the other person goes from being special and put on a pedestal to being devalued as nothing special. 00:37:28.199 --> 00:37:30.736 Narcissist then often seesaw back and forth between these two. 00:37:30.736 --> 00:37:35.016 So when they are feeling good about you or more accurately, you feel you make them feel good about themselves. 00:37:35.662 --> 00:37:40.116 Then they see you as special, and then you do something that they do not like, such as 00:37:40.116 --> 00:37:42.800 literally just as much as say no to a request. 00:37:43.596 --> 00:37:47.256 And this is where you start seeing the, you know, it can be no to request of wanting to 00:37:47.256 --> 00:37:52.356 just hang out, spend time with them, or if they're putting out a request for sex or intimacy 00:37:52.356 --> 00:37:57.690 and you say no, then you all of a sudden are all bad and all worthless. 00:37:57.906 --> 00:37:59.956 Later, you might do something that makes them feel good again. 00:37:59.956 --> 00:38:04.514 They're back to seeing you as special, which is the part that I like to call, do you want to ride bikes? 00:38:04.856 --> 00:38:08.655 They can call you horrific names because that gets rid of their discomfort. 00:38:09.196 --> 00:38:17.596 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 00:38:17.596 --> 00:38:20.259 I was just, what I heard, what I was called. 00:38:20.456 --> 00:38:23.676 But then five minutes later, the person, the narcissist can come back out and say, Hey, 00:38:23.676 --> 00:38:25.636 what do you want to do for dinner? 00:38:25.957 --> 00:38:30.459 Meaning here comes the little kid after you got in a kick fight five minutes ago saying, 00:38:30.854 --> 00:38:32.610 Hey, do you still want to go ride bikes? 00:38:33.969 --> 00:38:40.496 And that can be just absolutely maddening. While somebody with covert narcissism will still be very self-focused, it's likely to 00:38:40.496 --> 00:38:43.647 conflict with this, again, this deep fear or sense of not being enough. 00:38:44.133 --> 00:38:48.756 A study on personality and covert narcissism published in 2017 found that it was most strongly 00:38:48.756 --> 00:38:54.816 linked to high neuroticism, which is a tendency to experience unpleasant emotions and disagreeableness. 00:38:54.816 --> 00:39:01.996 So the covert narcissist is so linked to a tendency to not want to spend any time with 00:39:01.996 --> 00:39:04.469 unpleasant emotions or anybody that disagrees with them. 00:39:05.316 --> 00:39:10.276 So somebody with covert narcissism is very likely to have a very difficult time accepting 00:39:10.276 --> 00:39:14.836 criticism, but unlike a person with overt narcissism, somebody with covert narcissism 00:39:14.836 --> 00:39:19.764 will be more likely to internalize or take in the criticism far more harshly than it 00:39:19.996 --> 00:39:20.996 was intended. 00:39:20.996 --> 00:39:23.860 Again, even if you just simply say no to one of their requests. 00:39:24.301 --> 00:39:28.796 So research suggests that categories of covert and overt narcissism aren't always mutually 00:39:28.796 --> 00:39:32.696 exclusive. And somebody with overt narcissism might go through a period where they show more signs 00:39:32.696 --> 00:39:36.976 of covert narcissism. And this is where we're starting to learn that, in essence, I feel like almost everything 00:39:36.976 --> 00:39:39.137 is on some sort of spectrum of behavior. 00:39:39.875 --> 00:39:55.725 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. 00:39:55.725 --> 00:40:00.545 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, 00:40:01.246 --> 00:40:06.065 Feel free to send it to contact at Tony over Bay comm and I just appreciate you being on this journey 00:40:06.360 --> 00:40:10.025 Because I see the work you're doing and that is starting to become part of that, 00:40:10.483 --> 00:40:16.265 Healthy ego and your implicit memory or what it feels like to be you which is based on the slow residue of lived experience 00:40:16.265 --> 00:40:19.945 Is you're putting in the work and that is starting to change and unfortunately 00:40:19.945 --> 00:40:33.945 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. 00:40:33.945 --> 00:40:38.945 And I am so sorry for what you have to go through, but you are on the path of enlightenment. 00:40:38.945 --> 00:40:43.825 Of enlightenment, you are on the path of self-discovery, and you are getting to that place where you 00:40:43.825 --> 00:40:48.945 are going to be able to find this true sense of purpose, then lift those, lift yourself 00:40:48.945 --> 00:40:52.925 so that you can also lift those around you, even your kids, who right now it may feel 00:40:52.925 --> 00:40:56.405 like, I don't know if I'm doing the right thing, but they are getting their sense of 00:40:56.405 --> 00:41:00.040 self off of external validation, and if you are in an unhealthy relationship, then it's, 00:41:00.685 --> 00:41:05.165 likely that they are also starting to feel the pain of trying to manage their emotions 00:41:05.165 --> 00:41:07.872 or read the room or manage the emotions of their parents. 00:41:09.376 --> 00:41:11.959 So thanks again, send those questions, see you next time. 00:41:12.080 --> 00:41:54.494 Music.