How narcissists use *empathy* to their advantage

it's performance it's being Tactical about doing nice things when people are looking so you can put money in the manipulation bank and then so the narcissistic person can weaponize those nice things they did and use them against you in an argument or to silence you or Stonewall you or Gaslight you I'm a nice person look what I did do narcissists actually not have empathy or do they have empathy and choose not to use it let's start by breaking down the central sort of definition of narcissism or even narcissistic personality disorder and one of the key elements that comes up diagnostically sort of number one is that they lack empathy okay nowhere does it say that they don't have empathy it says that they have less empathy so right out the gate we know that they have some preserved capacity for empathy all right well that's troubling because anyone who's been in a narcissistic relationship will say it feels like my partner has no empathy or more problematic they'll say I feel like this person has empathy sometimes but not all of the time and that's probably a more accurate depiction I like to view narcissism as a pattern where there's diminished empathy but they are definitely not absent of it they've got it what is so problematic is that they have empathy they have the capacity for empathy but the fact of the matter is even armed with that they choose not to use that empathy that is a slap across the face so let's break that down first of all it's important to understand empathy has two pieces number one it's the piece of attempting to understand reflect and be present with the emotions or feelings of another person even if you're not experiencing them and perhaps even if you don't necessarily agree with them that you would understand that a person may be sad or angry or have some other emotional state but part two of empathy is being able to self-reflect on your impact on other people so in the simplest example empathy the self part of empathy the self-reflective part of empathy is taking a minute before you react to someone to think about how your words and how your actions could affect somebody else because narcissists often just say and do what they want without thinking that absence of empathy the problem is that they hurt a lot of people because it's not that they have no empathy they've got some they know they've done something wrong and two hours later six hours later 24 hours later five weeks later may come back to you to say yeah I can see how that made you upset or I guess I'm sorry I said that the apologies are kind of hollow but they are apologies because they get that they did something wrong but in the moment they're selfish impulsive need means that they're willing to throw all that empathy stuff out of the window to do what feels right and necessary to them at that moment but what a lot of people like to believe is that narcissists don't have any empathy and that's not true like I said they tend to have less but I would actually argue that a lot of narcissists actually have a fully normal capacity for empathy think about your early stage maybe in a romantic relationship with a narcissist and you are being love bombed or think about when you were on a job working with a very charismatic narcissistic boss or colleague and how attuned they were to you and remembering little details because they were trying to win you over on something or a narcissistic family member who is trying to get you on board with the thing that mattered to them they were so hyper attuned to you at that moment that obviously they were able to be open and aware to your emotional state one could argue that what narcissists do with empathy is that they weaponize empathy empathy when used correctly gives us a lot of information about the other person it teaches us the sorts of triggers for sadness the kinds of things that anger them or agitate them the things that they feel anxious about and any number of other situations or triggers that bring out strong emotions in a person if you study that carefully enough you better believe that you can then use that knowledge to manipulate that person if you know what gets a rise out of that person creates emotions out of them if you're the narcissist and you're aware which is empathy of the other person's emotional state when you need it you can turn around and use that as a weapon as a tool as a way of manipulating them as a way of getting a rise out of them and then turning around and gaslighting them and saying you're being too sensitive this idea though that a narcissist could have a capacity for empathy but then still be so uncaring and unfeeling is a really really difficult idea for people to get their head around because when it comes down to brass tacks at that point what it means is that they really really just don't care they're not able to reel in their own reactions their own responses their own manipulations even though you're feeling bad it's as though when they need you and want you they are hyper attuned to every feeling you have but when they're they've discarded you when they don't no longer need you when you're no longer a convenience for them then they have no problem just sort of stepping over your body even if it's lying on the street in front of them because with most narcissistic people in our lives there is at least one and probably many more than one time they showed what you experienced and likely was real empathy they were able to connect with you when that gets turned off and you're in the face of somebody who literally doesn't care that's absolutely chilling you wouldn't care if somebody in the grocery store wasn't aware of your feelings let's say I don't know you started crying in the frozen food aisle because it reminded you of an ex-partner and you were very sad if people just walked by you in the grocery store and maybe they wouldn't feel good but you wouldn't be hurt by it why because those people never showed you empathy or feeling before they're just going about their business they don't know who you are and maybe they think they're being empathic by giving you your private moment it's really unsettling to have someone sometimes get it and sometimes not you may Wonder at those times they don't get it that they don't care is it just that their empathy is turned off no is that they can't be bothered it's almost as though exerting their empathy muscle is effortful for them for a healthy person it comes naturally in fact for a healthy person if they were in that grocery store walking by that person in the frozen food aisle who might have been crying they might have actually stopped and checked in with that person and say hey are you okay just to make sure that's empathy and believe it or not sometimes narcissists can do pretty good with stranger empathy in fact that's something that throws a lot of people off they'll say I don't get it he is so awful to me invalidating and mean and discarding and cruel and disrespectful and yet every time we walk into that coffee shop he gives the person the homeless person in the street in front of it some money I don't get it because stranger empathy is actually not that hard it doesn't require anything more than a moment of recognition whether it's asking someone in the street if they're okay giving them five bucks that's actually quick and easy and for the narcissist it plays on that communal narcissistic muscle aren't I a great person I just gave five dollars in fact they often may Reserve those actions of giving somebody on the street five dollars for when they actually have an audience and somebody else is looking at them they might only do the big tipping when some they have an audience and other people are at the table so this disconnect between somebody who can sometimes have their empathy and use it and sometimes not use it is unsettling the empathy is always there it doesn't stop and start it's always there it's about implementation and narcissists are very very Discerning sadly about how they use it it's as though it's something they don't want to give away but more likely they can't be bothered if you're in a relationship with somebody any kind of relationship intimate close relationship marriage family relationship parents sibling friend co-worker and the empathy goes up and down and all around and it's there and it's not look alive because what it likely means is that many many times your feelings won't be considered and you want to be very very careful in those situations to be very very very mindful of not showing too many of the cards in your hand of being very very careful and guarded with your vulnerability because the most dangerous part as I said is the narcissist weaponizing empathy of saying of they have an unbelievable ability to study another person and get the information they need and turn around and use it to harm that person true love true respect that's shown when somebody shares a vulnerability and we don't use it as a weapon in fact we protect that vulnerability we're very careful to not bring up that topic an example could be let's say you're a woman and you have children and you have a friend who's going through terrible experiences with infertility you know that she is envious and jealous but happy that you have kids but it's hard for her and then you get pregnant again and you're very aware of what that conversation would do to your friend you would be very mindful of it you'd bring it up very carefully you would check in on how she's feeling but in the same breath too if you had a friend who was going on and on oh I hate kids I wish I never had kids and so on and so forth in front of this friend who is struggling with this you would be very careful to protect that friend maybe by changing the conversation maybe by taking that insensitive friend aside but finding a way to protect your friend's vulnerability that's respect that's love and so many people will say oh my God I was so open in this relationship with this narcissist I shared everything with him or her they made me believe I could share any everything with them and then when the relationship started going off the rails they took all of that information and they used it against me interestingly the original idea for this video came from somebody who had written me an email one of our YouTube subscribers part of our YouTube Community had emailed me I think from Germany and she was the one who actually said you know you talk a lot about the empathy deficits and narcissists and she was saying actually that's not what the Neuroscience shows that they actually have a fully intact capacity for empathy which led me to do this deeper dive and then I reflected on many of the conversations I've had with clients or doing seminars or workshops or even reading the research and it really really was such a good point it is actually worse to be in contact with somebody who has empathy and chooses not to use it then to be with somebody who simply lacks it a pattern we might see in something like for example psychopathy where they have absolutely no feeling for another human being so as you think about this and you're in a relationship with a narcissistic person guard your vulnerabilities once you realize that they turn their empathy on and off like a switch to their convenience and you also have to do engage you also have to engage in that radical acceptance that yeah they may actually not care about your feelings and to accept that is often a motivator to make some really powerful changes in how you conduct yourself in that relationship it's an incredibly painful thing to accept but once you accept it you're able to set better boundaries have more realistic expectations and be more self-protective in relationships that have tremendous potential to hurt you it stinks to think that somebody would choose to use their empathy at their whim when it's such a critically important human characteristic but it happens it's a classical characteristic of narcissism and if you encounter it it hurts just receive it as a wake-up call it is So today we're going to talk about the pseudo-empathy of the narcissist and I'm going to give you also a very lived example today on this one so what do you want to know about the pseudo empathy of the narcissist it's really important for you to understand this so when we think about sort of pseudo empathy this is something that many of you have experienced this pattern has been brought to my attention I've experienced it I've seen clients experience it many times but it was just done to me this past weekend so it is so fresh and it was really brought into Starker Focus like I was literally experiencing it real time hopefully because I just went through it I can make my point much more clear here as a result so let's talk again about this concept of the pseudo empathy of the narcissistic person what do I mean by that one thing we have to remember is that it's actually not completely accurate to say that narcissistic people completely lack empathy they actually have what's called variable empathy they turn it on and off to get what they need so it's not pure empathy but it's more of a transactional empathy and it turns on when they're actually having a good day it also tends to be more of a cognitive empathy saying things like I understand why you might feel that way but they really don't have emotional empathy oh my gosh I can see you're sad how can I be there for you cognitive empathy often doesn't leave us feeling much better or supported it looks like empathy but it isn't soothing it's soothing it's like Splenda instead of sugar there's also something else that narcissistic people have which I term macro empathy and some of this overlaps with what we call communal narcissism it's empathy for big groups of people from a distance so feeling bad for a group of people going through a bad time wartime refugees natural disaster survivors or even getting into sort of an intellectual polemic about people who do bad things for example being angry about all people who abuse vulnerable people this can also result in them berating the people who are actually around them in real life for complaining about the stresses of their lives oh how could you complain about your life when there is a war there or explosion someplace else or fires burning down this or that so when you are having real pain or real hurt in your life the narcissistic person will seem to have tons of empathy for a situation across the world but have no problem in validating diminishing or gaslighting the emotions or experiences of a person who's standing right in front of them but to the world they often look quite empathic because they're so worried about those people on the other side of the world in my most recent experience that I just had of pseudo-macro empathy this person was criticizing me for being too hard on narcissistic people and not giving them a chance and ironically after the call I reflected my life is a damn living Monument to giving narcissistic people too many chances and my messed up health and mind are the inscription on that stupid Monument but the person said that by me commenting on the rigidity of these relationships and the lack of change that we observe in narcissism or at least that I observe in narcissism and most of you do too that I am not giving the narcissistic people a chance then the person proceeded to say about 15 terrible unempathic things to me I know it was 15 because I wrote them down as it was happening the irony wasn't lost on me mercifully I was on the phone so I was sort of able to ruefully chuckle and roll my eyes without the person seeing me which would have resulted in 30 more minutes of Rage if they did I actually did not follow my own Dr Romney rules and I did the opposite of deep I defended I explained and I engaged but I will give myself some props for not personalizing I laid out statistics and other nonsense to this person it was a total waste of my Sunday morning and while in this case my providing evidence actually did shut this person down the conversation really made me reflect on this sort of moralistic empathy that this person had for all of the narcissistic people out there the absence of empathy this person had for me a person to whom they're very close to after the conversation I felt invalidated tired wrung out and as most survivors of narcissistic abuse do I fell into that thinking of what if this person's right what if I am some kind of monster for pointing out these patterns and not being nicer to narcissistic people maybe I should be an enabler and then I went to my inbox and read my emails and then I was reminded that yeah it's probably really important that I keep educating people about narcissistic and antagonistic patterns and the harm that it's doing to them I'm not sure if the person I was talking to is fully narcissistic I do believe that this person does dislike me even though they remain in my life so I think that they were just simply trying to find a way to hurt me but by a person does have a lot of narcissistic top notes and I gotta say this pattern of pseudo-macro empathy is one that cuts across narcissistic people and the conversation was exhausting and tiring so this pseudo-empathy is often very moralistic and self-righteous and it becomes a tool to minimize one person's experience a person who's right in front of you by weaponizing empathy weaponizing empathy is kind of awful right it's like weaponizing a cute teddy bear but for narcissistic people it's easy for them to have empathy for a concept or a struggle that they're not directly in and since other people only serve as tools for emotional regulation for them they can use this pseudo-empathy for a reason to bash the other people around them across the head and then feel better about themselves because well they're only caring about those people who are so far away the pseudo empathy also creates an environment of enabling just as in my conversation what this person is telling me Oh you're being so mean to narcissistic people and just as an aside listen I'm the first one the first one to say if anyone with a narcissistic personality wants to do the daily work be mindful in every interaction stop using other people to regulate be self-reflective recognize that they aren't any more special than anyone else and recognize the feelings of others and do that every hour of every day then yes change is possible the problem is that when life stress arises or disappointment happens as it always does because this is life for example not even being able to get the parking spot they want that's them off a lot of all of this all of these skills go out the window the measure of a person is not how nice they are in a good day but how graceful they are when the chips are down if a person with a narcissistic personality can commit to this daily work then change is possible it's a unicorn I'll own that and for the people who are experiencing narcissistic abuse waiting for the narcissistic person in your life to make substantial change while you keep enduring the abuse is like using the Powerball as your retirement plan it's probably not going to work out for you so the challenges though the challenge is that to other people who do not know a narcissistic person well okay they're just meeting them maybe they're more of an acquaintance if they hear the narcissistic person sort of yammering on about the plight of other people and how much they're worried and want to give their a game to worrying about these folks while continuing by the way to emotionally abuse the people who are living in the same home as them the pseudo empaths can look quite humanitarian and nice to people who don't know them well that ends up fostering more enabling by other people just like we see in communal narcissism and The Beat Goes On for survivors of narcissistic abuse who invariably are plagued by self-doubt these shows of pseudo-macro empathy can confuse the hell out of us and very quickly leave us feeling like we're the bad one resist that impulse that's idea that you're the bad one sit within a minute recognize that the person who showed you no empathy is showing it to a concept or an issue or people they've never met on the other side of the world but they're incapable of showing it to the person sitting right in front of them the capacity for narcissistic people to be empathic about things like issues or groups of people but not to real living breathing individuals is a signature characteristic and again something we see that is pronounced in self-righteous and communal narcissists my belief is that we can evaluate the kind of person someone is by how they treat the person who's sitting right in front of them it's the only place to start don't get snowed by somebody's empathy for other people they don't even know when they have a nun for the people right in front of them so this macro empathy of the pseudo-empathy is a big problem and it makes people say well it seems like the have empathy for everybody but me what they have for those other people I'm not even so sure that it's empathy but you're absolutely right they have very little empathy for you and then talk about something called performative empathy as you listen to this video I'd love it if you could drop in the video notes you're like oh my goodness I know what she's talking about maybe throw a few examples if you feel comfortable but I think some of you are going to really really get this when I talk about this it's something more and more clients have been bringing to my attention and I thought let me share this with you so we can actually have the word for what's happening in these relationships let's talk about this idea of performative empathy so let's start by talking about empathy empathy is the pivot right on which this entire narcissism thing turns isn't it the absence of empathy or at least a very inconsistent nature of the empathy is why narcissism and narcissists really aren't made for any kind of close relationships people who fall into relationships of any kind with narcissists though often have too much empathy right I would argue that overall there isn't enough empathy in the world that we live in right now and that fact if us not having enough empathy in the world has really had terrible effects on the world we live in but the problem is most people in those narcissistic relationship has have too much empathy if that's possible yet the narcissistic folks walk around the world believing that they are so empathic and other people actually believe it and why is that how is it that the least empathic people in the world have managed to trick other people into believing that they are empathic and that they themselves the narcissists actually believe that they are empathic how the hell did that happen well it comes down to something I'm calling performative empathy or we could even call it empathy light narcissistic folks are really good at doing things that can sometimes look to the world as being nice and empathic when there is an audience this is the kind of person who makes a great ceremony out of helping an older person across the street when lots of people are watching or loudly offers to take out the trash at a dinner party or rescues a bird and post it on next door and social media or keeps bringing Parcels of food to an elderly neighbor or brings home lots of takeout for everyone and even all of you are thinking doctor Romney damn you are cynical girl that seems empathic aren't those things empathic huh does it take that apart empathy is meant to be consistent so that bird rescuer or that food bringer over or that trash taker outer after the people leave the dinner party or when they are alone with their family or with their employees the real question is how do they behave then are they empathic then without an audience if the very same person who is nursing that little bird with an eyedropper is able to be invalidating and raging and demeaning and abusing the people close to them I'm sorry then that's just empathy for display that on display empathy that's what we call performative empathy performative empathy can also come out in behaviors like gift giving narcissistic people can actually be really great gift givers and gifts are really wrapped nicely they come at the right time they're actually right on point they're given with great ceremony can sometimes feel really gross to get these gifts because if after a person has treated you so badly and left you confused or consistently flaked on you and then shows up with a gift it's sort of like pouring concrete on that trauma Bond lots of people get really thrown off by this gift giving got to tell you just earlier today I ripped a check sent to me by a narcissistic family member that was meant to be a gift it was felt it felt great to rip the check I got to tell you I needed the money but I needed the self-respect more but many people when they get a gift from a narcissist they see the gift and then feel guilty and they start down that justification highway I don't know it's a nice gift maybe they aren't so bad or maybe I'm being unrealistic and my standards are too high maybe maybe maybe and then you Pawn off your sense of well-being for a 50 gift card your soul is worth more than whatever that gift cost I can promise you that right now now performative empathy really also plays on the self-blame dynamic people will often say maybe I'm the bad person the narcissist is uh walking around rescuing all the neighborhood Grasshoppers and giving food to the neighbors and I'm not doing those things so maybe I'm the narcissist maybe I'm the one who doesn't have empathy and they're actually the good person like they said of course that leaves out them many years of psychological abuse they Unleashed on you now performative empathy is a quick and dirty way for the narcissistic person to brand or position themselves as a good person to other people we really do get played when we see people do nice things in the Moment Like emptying trash or driving people to the airport during rush hour but the fact is that if they manipulate you afterwards and hold that Airport Drive over your head for years not so empathic but doing the ostensibly nice thing get the narcissistic person the validation and the admiration they need the world sadly doesn't really understand what empathy really is and misses the depth of it and so they think taking the trash out or saving a neighborhood Critter qualifies as empathy empathy is about being present with a person truly present with all of a person and being able to respond to their emotions and attempt to understand them and their emotions listen animal rescue and trash emptying optional empathy is a much more deep reciprocal state now remember that empathy is also about like I said self-reflection not just how we treat and be with others it's about thinking about how our Behavior our words our gestures how they impact other people it's a constant state that we just don't engage in when we want validation or admiration but rather it's always there to maintain and sustain healthy and reciprocal social connections putting out the trash or saving a lizard is not empathy they're nice things to do but it's not like a carbon credit you can't put out the trash to cancel out verbally abusing someone yet in the little tiny transactional brains of the narcissistic person that's exactly how it works for them which is why they're shocked when you think they're not empathic the notion of performative empathy really reinforces the narcissist's self-perception that they're really nice people and so when you tell them that they aren't being nice not only does it activate their inadequacy but also their shame and then they lash out at other people and they lash out at you if you perceive them as being anything but a Humane and good person and so they keep doing these performative acts to foster a perception of they themselves as empathic which they will then hit you over the head with over and over again not so empathic now I know some of you are thinking that what I am talking about here sounds like communal narcissism and you're spot on right this is definitely the core Dynamic of that communal narcissistic pattern doing good things to get admiration and validation but not being a nice people not being a nice person saving things saving people giving people elaborate gifts donating money buying everyone's dinner especially when it's expensive putting out the trash at a party whatever gets them praised and seen as an empathic savior but grandiose narcissists do this as well and certainly self-righteous narcissists do it all the time performative empathy is part of all forms of narcissism performance of empathy is actually really confusing so I'm giving you a word for it so you don't put it into the bigger empathy bucket it's a really important distinction performative empathy is sort of doing an empathy dance for show it's not even empathy it's Showmanship or show personship it's performance it's being Tactical about doing nice things when people are looking so you can put money in the manipulation bank and then the so the narcissistic person can weaponize those nice things they did and use them against you in an argument or to silence you or Stonewall you or Gaslight you I'm a nice person look what I did at best at best it's empathy light at worst it's turning pretend kindness into one more tool of abuse and the enablers all see it as look what a nice person they are so I say beware narcissist bearing gifts or favors or rescuing or putting out the trash that performance may not only leave you gaslighted by other people it muddies the waters and makes those trauma bonds even stronger once you see these sort of pseudo-empathic moments as performative you can break out of the cycle of seeing these narcissists as being oh so empathic and seeing yourself as bad for not seeing them as empathic there's nothing to see it's not empathy it's theater recognize the difference and for those of you who got this far in the video please if you if you've ever had this experience of like oh my gosh yes they would do all these things that other people would say see and everyone's like they're so empathic and I'm not now you understand the difference and it helps you see like ah this is just that sort of performative dance they do but it's not the real thing the real thing empathy is a lot quieter it's a lot more gentle it's a lot more private and it's something that's not done to get all that validation and all those likes but something we do from that connected space within us to protect and take care of people we care about and even people we're just getting to know so I think I'm going to take on such an interesting question today because it's something that's come across to me a few times and I'm actually really looking forward to hearing the comments on this one or reading comments on this one because it's a question and it's a quest basically just the question is do narcissists really believe when they walk around thinking and saying that they're empathic and kind and compassionate do they really believe it when they walk around saying that I'm such a great person that's the question so what do you think do you really think that they believe it have you ever had a narcissistic person come up to you and say I am so empathic do you think they really believe it you want to know the answer yes they do so one of the more galling and frankly gaslighting experiences that can happen when we are with narcissistic people is not just when they are emotionally abusing the hell out of us but when they actually feel and say that they're wonderful kind generous patient and my favorite is when the narcissistic folks say that they're empathic and they really mean it so if you were to look at them and laugh or sort of look at them sideways like you think they're joking they will rage at you because they don't see themselves as bad they actually see themselves as all of those wonderful things so how many of you have tolerated this how many of you have had the narcissistic person around you talk about how great and nice and patient and compassionate they are drop that in the comments it helps to see that we are not alone I have had that happen so many times now you all may be thinking Dr Romney what about all that talk you make about narcissistic people being insecure that that stuff is so deep and unprocessed for them because obviously if they were actually in touch with being insecure then they could be engaging in the healthy and vulnerable work and understand that their antagonistic mean and cruel behavior is a defense and then they could lean into the vulnerability and not be unkind and let me tell you that is a very very very rare sequence and if you've ever seen that happen a narcissist getting in touch with their vulnerability then basically you're holding a moon rock now what happens more often is if they behave badly and that bad behavior is judged badly by other people that bubbles up those feelings of inadequacy and then the shame and then a likelihood of lashing out at the person who brought the shame out of them and then Shifting the blame onto that person rather than owning it you know this whole narcissism shame blame sequence right so instead narcissistic people maintain a very rigid and self-unaware thought process that they're great people this drives and is driven by the grandiosity and it looks like a staggering lack of insight which it is because if they don't walk around touting their wonderfulness then the alternative that they are mean and unkind and unempathic and demanding well that's too destabilizing for them to get on board with if you say something to yourself often enough you believe it for better or worse and that is the case for them they walk around saying look how empathic I am the issue is that the entire experience of them touting their virtuousness or their patience or their empathy and compassion can feel like a massive Gaslight for the people around them who may feel confused at how this person who is actually very unkind yet holds on to the party line that they're such a great person it can even lead the people around the narcissist because the narcissist is so insistent on saying that they are such a great person the people around the narcissist actually start doubting themselves and wonder if maybe they're the bad people for viewing the narcissistic person so uncharitably since the narcissist themselves is so convinced that they're such a great person it's a big mind you know what this effectively ends all communication with the narcissist because there's no way to give a narcissistic person feedback it's like pouring water onto like a really hard surface I don't know like granite or something and expecting it to get absorbed it doesn't it just sort of rolls off in fact if you do give feedback to The Narcissist you'll be met with rage at a conscious level you are telling them what they truly believe is untrue they do believe that they are good patient kind people at an unconscious level you are activating their inadequacy and their shame but all paths take you to the same destination which is uninhibited rage I have worked with many couples over the years where there was clearly one narcissistic person in the relationship the narcissistic member of the couple would often hold their ground on just what good people they were and how nice they were how devoted to the relationship that they were just a great person I would often see the other person sort of twitching and shaking their eyes and making their eyes so wide and at some level welcoming that there was a witness in the room now to provide a realistic framing I would sometimes bring up and talk about the behavioral patterns that were showing up and that the other person the not narcissistic person in the relationship might have experiences not being particularly nice or kind and try to help the narcissistic person in the relationship understand at a minimum the experience of their partner even if we couldn't get into the buy-in of the idea that no they are not empathic or kind right we were never going to get there now nine times out of ten nine times out of ten I would be faced with deflection blame shifting be accused of splitting hairs taking sides ultimately the narcissistic person would never end up taking ownership of what was happening and wouldn't budge on that that self-concept of them being such a great and kind person even when the behavior didn't line up and typically would then stop showing up to therapy I long ago stopped doing couples work where narcissists are involved I had this happen in a recent dealing with a narcissistic person in my life I'll share that with you this is a person who on a standard level is quite angry egocentric arrogant they're very accustomed to always getting their way very frustrated when they don't get their way very Gruff very impatient the person's impatience was causing problems for somebody else and that person doesn't tend to speak up so I I said I want to talk to you and I hinted at the difficult persons impatience and said they may want to work on that because the situation at hand was going to require lots of patience oh my oh my goodness the narcissistic person just went off on me I mean I mean they went off I wasn't even calling them out as an awful person or anything which they really are an awful person I merely was suggesting that given the situation that they and all of us needed to up our patients game and I then received a Litany of texts about how they were the most patient person in the world the most tolerant person in the world the most generous person in the world none of which was true and I could literally come up the top of my head of hundreds of Behavioral examples supporting how untrue it was and then they attacked me for being hostile and making a difficult situation worse and for being a rotten person it was so stunning because this person is so impatient so selfish and their conception of themselves they really believed that they were patient and giving and kind it was a complete Distortion and that right there is so much of what the experience of narcissism is right it's all a big distortion it meant that the difficult situation was going to require workarounds on the narcissist and reminded me for about the 10 000th time that these folks do not change and do not respond well to feedback that function or that sort of that punctures their distorted sense of what great people that they are a reminder that any form of feedback or conversation in this case in this particular case for me with this impatient narcissist was pointless it just caused me more grief and perhaps I had a tiny glimmer of hope not that this person would change but rather that maybe there was a smoother path forward to solve this larger problem that was looming I should have known there wasn't and I should have just simply recognized that and that I knew that I should have known that I'd have to walk around work around this person all along it ended up costing thousands and thousands more dollars and hours I had wanted to avoid that obviously but it was unavoidable having narcissistic people in our lives is not only painful and heartbreaking but it can also be quite expensive now the reactive sensitivity to feedback or criticism that narcissists have is a cardinal quality that we see across narcissistic folks obviously because it flies in the face of their of their self-schema of being such great people right they're convinced of that now listen as recently as a month ago I was still trying to go in and give the gentle feedback and it's a mess it doesn't work it doesn't work what's interesting is that there is research showing that narcissistic people have been found to have an inaccurate assessment of themselves they tend to view themselves as being better people than they actually are as more successful more empathic and their self-esteem is actually kind of off-kilter in terms of the kind of people that they actually are so while the rest of us typically walk around with our distorted our own distorted sense of self typically because we devalue ourselves we speak badly about ourselves narcissistic Folks at least when they're asked about it will share the most glowing assessments of themselves I have to say without exception every narcissistic client I have ever worked with clinically has viewed themselves as great humanitarian generous people who are empathic and who don't get a fair shake from the world and that the world doesn't see how great and generous that they are and that the world always takes advantage of them without exception I've seen that and their self-concept was so inaccurate they were so unempathic and they thought of themselves as empathic it was so inaccurate it almost bordered on delusion now some of you may be thinking but the vulnerable narcissist Dr Romney they don't think of themselves as great do they it's an interesting sort of a twist ostensibly a lot of vulnerable narcissists May sometimes speak of themselves in devaluing terms nobody likes me I haven't done anything great with my life nothing is really going the way I want it to but then they twist it into I don't deserve this because I'm so nice so it still comes back to the idea of how good and wonderful they are and the sense that the world is not equipped to see how great they are and they're doing unkind things to other people and still walk around thinking that they're so kind now communal and self-righteous narcissism are also based on the sort of distortion the communal narcissist engaging in their humanitarian and charitable behaviors to bolster their sense of being so giving and so great and not integrating this idea that they are abusive to people emotionally the self-righteous narcissist proclaims their moral goodness not recognizing that the Judgment that they hold over everyone is so toxic and damaging both of these types of narcissists just think that they are the bee's knees and the best righteous rescuing people around this pattern of them thinking they're so great and empathic it really messes with our minds because the narcissistic folks are fiercely holding on to a self schema that is so inaccurate and so we have to recognize that there's going to be no hope of progress or change but it also means that we have to be careful to not be talked out of our experience of the person either just because a person tells you that they're just the nicest person out there that doesn't and shouldn't negate the difficult and invalidating experience that we are having with them and when someone is proclaiming to be such a great kind person I mean first of all it's bizarre that they'd be proclaiming that but look for the deliverables are they actually doing nice things most of us frankly undervalue ourselves so it's actually quite easy to be swayed by The Narcissist confidence and resoluteness and commitment to how great and nice and empathic and giving that they are hard as it may be we have to commit to not letting their self-proclaimed greatness to mess with our heads and when the narcissistic people in your life are talking about how great and giving that they are do everything you can to get that ironic smirk off of your face because trust me it's not worth their rage and I'll tell you most people when the narcissistic person is talking about how empathic that they are a lot of people are saying what am I missing you're not missing anything that Distortion that distorted self-esteem that distorted sense of self that is drilled down so deep in them that they really seem to believe it can mess with your head Yep they're going to walk around and say it just because you say something doesn't mean it's true thanks again

Channel: DoctorRamani

Views: 61,560

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Id: g5Qq0OSvM4U

Length: 52min 7sec (3127 seconds)

Published: Wed Jun 07 2023