Covert vs vulnerable narcissism - what's the difference?

hi everyone it's dr romini welcome back to this youtube channel on narcissism it's my hope that the content on this channel will help you make sense of what i consider to be the issue of our time and help you understand this personality style how it may be affecting your life and how to better navigate heal and recover from these situations so welcome back to this science series this is a series where i really do try to look at the science old and new and what people have written in the theoretical literature and bring it to you in a form that helps all of us better understand narcissism and be able to talk about it in a way that is as informed by the theory and science as possible so today i would like to look at some work that has really focused on the confusion around this term covert narcissism and vulnerable narcissism and i'm hoping today we can clear this up once and for all there is some good science out there about narcissism and it's my hope and in this series we'll address some of this so let's talk about this these two words covert and vulnerable are often used interchangeably to describe a form of narcissism that doesn't ascribe to the usual grandiose arrogant posturing preening pretentious validation-seeking entitled narcissist everyone that that's the original grandiose model of narcissism we learned and everyone feels pretty confident that they can see it from a mile away however as any of you out there who has ever experienced a vulnerable narcissist nose it can actually be even more psychologically draining and difficult than managing the shenanigans of a grandiose narcissist the concept of vulnerable narcissism is one that has been theoretically discussed for several decades now the dsm which is the diagnostic manual in the mental health world did not really until 2013 and the dsm-5 really take on this idea of vulnerable narcissism with any kind of you know impact and because of that even the sort of baseline modal therapist out there works from only understanding more of a grandiose narcissistic model as a result the vulnerable narcissism piece is often missed by most clinicians in some recent reading i was doing i was rereading a chapter i had read a while ago by researchers pincus and roche and this chapter that they laid out actually really makes clear and lays bare some of the inconsistencies and inappropriate interchangeable use between what we often call covert narcissism which is actually vulnerable narcissism so i'm going to try to make this clear so everyone is using these terms properly so let's take on two sets of words there's grandiose versus vulnerable and then there's overt versus covert okay so the error that all of us have been making is to talk about vulnerable and covert narcissism as though they are the same thing they actually aren't so let's start with the distinction very briefly between grandiose and vulnerable narcissism vulnerable elements of narcissism that pinkest and roche list include things like emptiness shame low self-esteem how anger is managed and social anxiety anxiety a hyper sensitivity to criticism and other things like just being very fragile and feeling chronically persecuted and that life just just isn't fair to them vulnerable narcissists tend to constantly blame shift they blame everyone for what isn't going right in their lives and they always find something to complain about they blame parents for spoiling them too much or they blame parents for not loving them enough or they blame parents for coddling them or they blame their parents for not coddling them or they blame their parents for giving them too much money or they blame their parents for giving them not enough money they blame their partners for helping too much or for not helping enough or for being too demanding or for not being demanding enough remember the mantra and it really is true with vulnerable narcissism you can't win now when we're talking about grandiose narcissism the grandiose elements of narcissism take in stuff like needs for validation grandiosity superiority manipulativeness egocentricity entitlement arrogance all that usual kind of big top of the line narcissistic stuff now when life starts going south for a narcissist for example a divorce or a public fall from grace or a professional failure their grandiose defenses can no longer do the job the shame comes up and the vulnerable themes particularly shame and neurotic symptoms such as depression and anxiety also pop out these theories that pincus and roche write about are much more elaborated in their chapter and and that i'm about to talk about they really do some really detailed theoretical work but the basic argument that people like pincus and other researchers like ronix dam make is that the narcissistic person has both of these themes within them when a narcissistic person's specialness gets questioned the vulnerable themes come to the surface and but most days for most narcissists they just sort of bang about with their grandiose defenses so they can walk around feeling special you're saying okay got it got grandiose got vulnerable so what's the whole thing with this covert overt part according to pincus and other researchers and theoreticians the overt part is the stuff we can see okay overt is visible stuff behaviors things that the person expresses like screaming rage or sharing their attitudes out loud the covert part are the internal experiences we can only infer but we don't know because they aren't manifested these are things like thoughts internal feelings their motivations or the things that they may need the challenge is that we see the overt stuff but we can only guess at the covert stuff and that may mean and pretty much guarantees that we're going to misinterpret stuff because we can't really understand the covert stuff and it really does come down to what we can see and what we can only infer or guess at because it's an internal process one of the great confusions as we know of the narcissistic relationship is the why people want to understand that covert stuff right so that means we can take on these two sets of things grandiosity and vulnerability on one side and overt and covert on the other side and then we get four possible combinations overt grandiosity overt vulnerability covert grandiosity and covert vulnerability does that make sense are you with me i hope so overt grandiosity is the grandiose stuff you can see the arrogant attitudes i'm better than you the arrogant words the jumping to the head of the line the constant posting on instagram the grandiose stuff you can see overt vulnerability is that vocalized victimized narrative that they may share how come everyone's out to get me god why is everyone so unfair to me or when they avoid going to a party or when they become really angry in the face of even a small criticism covert grandiosity would be the grandiose stuff that's going on in their own minds like believing that they never do anything wrong feeling like they are smarter than everyone else having internal fantasies about endless wealth and power and stuff and their over-the-top love story all of the internal narratives and dialogues and the stuff we can't see the stuff that may be driving that sort of overt grandiose behavior now overt vulnerability is the vulnerable stuff you can see things like them are here the the constantly saying everyone's out to get me actively blaming other people for everything bad that has ever happened to them vocalizing their chronic sense of victimization sitting in the corner at a social event with an angry glum look on their face that's sort of the overt you know um vulnerable stuff covert vulnerability are the thoughts and beliefs such as believing that people are always out to get them believing that nobody wants to be close or intimate with them feeling like a failure always feeling empty inside and feeling like life is always so pointless the covert stuff is what drives the train but when when we think about the deficits and self-reflection that we see in narcissism these covert processes are often not readily accessible to the narcissistic person or communicated they're not clear on their own motivations these covert things drive behavior and like i said we can guess that this may be driving their behavior but as in all human relationships there can be a real danger in making these presumptions and a narcissistic person may take tremendous offense or umbrage at us guessing at us guessing about their motivations and i'll give them that point it's fair nobody we we can't guess it's someone else's motivation but i also understand what is happening to the person people around the narcissistic person they're all trying to understand how is it that this person is being so callous and so invalidating and so dismissive everyone wants to understand their motivations but the narcissists aren't in touch with that covert stuff we base most of our clinical definitions of narcissism on the overt stuff the covert stuff is the stuff we know that underlies it such as their need for self-enhancement or the fear of their inadequacy being seen or a sense of envy for other people or their heightened state of threat their overt behaviors have their origin in that covert stuff a whole bunch of theoreticians pinkis akhtar ronning stam and many others would argue then that narcissistic people all narcissistic people will have all four themes running the covert grandiosity the covert vulnerability the overt grandiosity and the overt vulnerability if a narcissistic person is going through a tougher spell in their lives and things aren't going the way they want we may see more of the vulnerability picture emerge but if their lives for some reason turned around and stuff really started going their way the grandiosity would present more prominently the covert stuff is what leaves us guessing the overt stuff is what's in our face and honestly a narcissistic person can literally flip from vulnerable to grandiose in the same sentence someone saying i'm such a smart and curious and unique person it sickens me that nobody can see it and i'm so undervalued grandiose to vulnerable so when you are talking about a more anxious victimized irritable passive-aggressive sensitive narcissism it's appropriate to call it vulnerable narcissism the usual arrogant entitled look at me superficial validating seeking stuff that's the grandiose narcissism the overt and covert part only relates to whether it's manifested so we can see it or it's a sort of underground river that underlies all of this most people aren't clear on this that's the clarification thank you to pincus and others who have worked hard to teach us and write about this hopefully we can all use these terms more clearly it is sort of a fine measurement point that links to more theoretical stuff but the better we understand it especially for those of you watching this who may be clinicians the more clearly we can communicate it in a range of settings where it matters and because narcissism is an area in mental health that's still kind of getting its footing strangely enough in many ways getting the terms clear is really important i've i've misused the covert vulnerable distinction over and over and over again so that was another reason i also want to take ownership for that and make sure that we're using these terms clearly and me just kind of going back to the theoretical work and saying i don't think i have this right so hopefully this clarifies it thanks again

Channel: DoctorRamani

Views: 253,877

Keywords: yt:cc=on

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Length: 13min 19sec (799 seconds)

Published: Thu Aug 12 2021