How to Reason with a Narcissist | Can they be Persuaded?

welcome to my scientifically informed Insider look at mental health topics if you find this video to be interesting or helpful please like it and subscribe to my channel hello this is Dr Grande today's question is is there any way to persuade someone who's narcissistic I've heard other versions of the same question is there any way to reason with somebody who's narcissistic is there any way to encourage behavioral change so kind of this theme here this idea that you could talk to somebody who's narcissistic and maybe convince them to do something that they're not doing to elicit or facilitate some sort of positive change so the example I'm going to use here is going to be in a professional setting this would likely also apply to a social setting but not necessarily a romantic setting that's a little bit different if somebody's in a romantic relationship with somebody who's narcissistic I think that would take on a different quality than what I'm describing here in terms of the tactics it's important to note here that narcissism of course is on a Continuum so if we say somebody's narcissistic that doesn't necessarily mean anything we'd have to know what traits they have and to what extent so it goes on a Continuum from healthy normal and adaptive on one end all the way over to pathological on the other end and one of the pathologies that's associated with narcissism would be narcissistic personality disorder but somebody wouldn't necessarily have to have that to have narcissism that's interfering in their life or to have narcissism that's making it difficult to interact with them or to elicit change so we see that there are two types of narcissism both are self-centered and both involve self-deception which we think of as protective so we have grandiose narcissism we see here a sense of entitlement arrogance social dominance being confident somebody who has grandiose narcissistic features genuinely believes they are superior so they believe they have accomplished something that makes them Superior it's not something they have to guess about or wonder it doesn't really have insecurity it has confidence so when somebody approaches them and says hey you know I have thoughts about how you could change they devalue that person and whatever they say so somebody who has grandiose narcissistic features doesn't need or care about feedback unless it's positive and this is one of the keys I'll get to later now with the other type of narcissism this is called vulnerable narcissism and here we see again I mentioned the self-centeredness and self-deception but also hyper sensitivity to criticism which of course could be a problem if you're trying to elicit change in somebody we see insecurity anger aggression and a lot of Shame so somebody who has vulnerable narcissistic features doesn't fully believe that they are superior they are trying to believe they're superior but they don't quite buy the self-deception so another way to think about this is their self-deception is just not as good so in a sense somebody who has vulnerable narcissism is a little more realistic than somebody who has grandiose narcissism because they're not fully buying into the idea that they are superior so somebody who has vulnerable narcissism devalues a person just like what we see with grandiose narcissism but they overvalue what they say and work to contradict it work to prove that it's not true so if you criticize somebody who has vulnerable narcissism they're going to be kind of aggressive or at least assertive right they're not going to be happy with that criticism whereas somebody who has grandiose narcissism will likely ignore the criticism and it won't phase them or hurt them they're not hyp sensitive like we see with vulnerable narcissism so somebody who has vulnerable narcissism does care what somebody else says and they do need positive feedback so with both of these types of narcissism we see what people with these traits do is they reject useful advice this is part of being passive aggressive which of course is also associated with narcissism they won't admit fault which of course stops learning when we stop admitting that we're making mistakes we're not learning anymore and being wrong to somebody who's narcissistic means they're bad it hurts so so it's not something that they can really accept and this of course is a problem when you're trying to facilitate change in somebody with narcissism so when criticism is taken off the table in terms of trying to negotiate change with somebody that's a real problem constructive criticism is a very valuable tool for helping people to change only people that are secure and have normal or low narcissism are able to really accept that type of feedback and the way it's intended people are narcissistic of course as I mentioned have trouble with that they have trouble with criticism so if we use an analogy here imagine that you're in an abandoned city and you're driving a car but the car will only turn right it won't turn left maybe a little bit but not enough to make like a left turn you could go anywhere in that City but just not as efficiently right so if you think about this analogy in terms of narcissism we're cut off from an important communication tool but we're not cut off completely so we can still turn the car right we just can't turn it left now you might say with extreme narcissism a better analogy would be that the car tires are almost flat right so it's uncomfortable and slow and you may not get to where you're going because one or more of the tires could just completely fail but either way we have some types of communication available and other types aren't really as available so what we really see here is a narrow band of well-received communication of course you can say anything to anybody you can criticize somebody who's narcissistic but that won't be well received the narrow band includes two pretty important types of communication negative information about others because of course that makes somebody who's narcissistic feel good about themselves and positive information about them that's all you really get with narcissism in terms of what I'm looking at here today in how to reason or persuade that somebody's narcissistic those are really the two most effective types of communication again those are the types that are well-received so as we can see here with narcissism criticism is worse than useless it'll actually Propel somebody toward the undesired Behavior so we have to think about what types of communication are in that narrow band and can we use them to facilitate change so the scenario I'm using for this video in terms to illustrate these methods of change these tactics will involve a work setting let's say it's an office setting and there are different types of workers in the office and one of those types would be maintenance workers individuals who fix things that are broken who paint who clean things like that some people might refer to them as janitorial staff but either way you have this type of worker in the office and then you have somebody who's narcissistic and the problem here that you want to change is is the individual who's narcissistic is condescending toward the maintenance staff and of course they're not condescending toward anyone else so it really kind of stands out that they are believing that they're in a higher status level right so this would be the behavior that I'm going to use as the example for these strategies and I believe that these strategies to the degree that they are effective are really equally as effective with grandiose and vulnerable narcissism you could make certain an argument that one might be a little better with grandiose and the other better with vulnerable but I haven't really seen much of a difference so these two strategies really involve the two types of communication I mentioned before something negative about other people and something positive about the person who's narcissistic I think the positive route which I'll get to second here I think this is a better strategy but I want to cover both so I'm going to start with the negative information about others how this can be used to facilitate change now before I get into this too much it is important to realize that this isn't about clinical change this isn't about techniques that a counselor would use with a client with the second one I'm talking about there could be a little bit of overlap but I don't really see much overlap at all in this first scenario where we're using negative information about others to facilitate change now with this strategy of course like all strategies this requires care so the strategy here what would be done would be to pick someone else this wouldn't be a real person with the same behavior as the narcissist so you want to keep the parallels there but a little bit distant because you don't want to be exactly like what the person is doing so for example you could pick someone on a TV show that's condescending to other people someone in a movie something like that a fictitious character that's manifesting a similar Behavior but not exactly similar and what you do is you discuss this third party with the narcissist kind of trying to get them to agree with you to agree that the behavior manifested by this character is unacceptable and really they should be referred to or thought of as narcissistic and I think in most situations it's okay to actually use that word so really what you're saying is this fictitious character is narcissistic because they're engaging in behaviors similar to what the narcissist is doing so really here there's an opportunity for the narcissist to learn without being confronted or embarrassed so in a sense this is bypassing the narcissism but in another sense it's actually using the narcissism in order to communicate now the shortcomings with this tactic of course is the narcissists could actually agree with the fictional characters Behavior right they could identify with that behavior and think there's nothing wrong with it so that would lead to a bad outcome and sometimes they could figure it out they could realize you're really talking about their behavior and that would mean they're going to get very defensive and all progress is going to stop at that point so again it's crucial to have different details but still retain the moral of the story so to sum up with this tactic find a fictitious character engaging in a similar behavior and try to get the individual who's narcissistic to identify with that story and kind of come on to your side in agreeing that that behavior is unacceptable now the second effective way to communicate with somebody who's narcissistic is to say positive things about them I like this method a lot better but it's tricky for other reasons right the problem I've noticed with this tactic is that people who are not narcissistic don't want to say things about somebody who is narcissistic right there's kind of a repulsion there so somebody's not narcissistic and they're told hey here's a person with narcissism go tell them how great they are the non-narcissistic person is really not going to appreciate that and probably not going to buy into it too much right so I think this one is tricky just like the other one but in a different way I Think It's Tricky for a different reason but either way we know that individuals who are narcissistic they're attentive to this they want admiration so saying something positive about them will get their attention and really there are two strategies that you could put under this main strategy of positive information about The Narcissist the first one is to give them positive feedback with a small twist at the end right so I'll illustrate this so the example of being condescending to the maintenance workers you could say something like you really like how they treat the administrative staff you like how they treat people who have the same job as they have you like the way they treat the customers and you're excited to see how they're building the same skill and compassion with the maintenance staff or will build it so really with this strategy you're presuming change or you're assuming there's an intent to change at some point right so this one's a little presumptuous but notice here there's no negativity actually you're demonstrating trust you're trusting a narcissist and really looking forward to what they can become looking at their potential so I like this one because it's positive and I think it can connect here with the fantasy and admiration pieces we see with narcissism right so another way to use it would be you know you're really popular now imagine how popular you would be if you could get along with maintenance staff so kind of building on what they already want they want to be admired they have a fantasy of success and power so this can really be used to fit in with those components of narcissism the second strategy under this positive feedback strategy is going to them and saying can you show me how you built such a positive and productive relationship with the maintenance staff so this one becomes maybe a little disingenuous which is one of the problems I have with it but essentially here you're taking whatever is positive and productive about that relationship and you're complimenting them on it and you're really asking them for advice how did you accomplish this the idea here is that they'll like this admiration and they'll want to give you advice and they'll become more productive and build a more positive relationship with the maintenance staff to fulfill again the potential that you're kind of seeing in them so you're really saying to them I need to learn from you I want your advice I sometimes worry that I'm not getting along with people as well as I could can you show me how to do that now the problem here of course other than this strategy may not be effective is that it could be used against you right so you're kind of highlighting potential flaws without being specific in order to help facilitate change someone who's narcissistic particularly if they're melanistic which is related to narcissism they could use this against you later on so all these strategies have pros and cons but I think the positive feedback strategy in my opinion I think works a little bit better than the negative but technically both are ways to communicate they kind of again both bypass and utilize the narcissism so for both these strategies there are some negatives right so it's kind of like manipulation which we don't want to get involved in can you stay authentic and still use these techniques well I think it's possible but a lot of caution must be applied here you don't want to say something inauthentic or disingenuous you have to be careful with these strategies and they might in real life be a little harsher than I've explained there might have to be a little bit of a critical component in there but again I would emphasize trying to avoid criticism because that's when the narcissist is usually going to shut down and be defensive so in order to communicate the point depending on how much time you have and how serious the behavioral change is how necessary it is that would really dictate how much criticism would be used how urgent is a situation now remember these techniques may not work at all narcissism is challenging particularly if it's pathological so whenever you're talking about a personality trait you just have to be realistic about how much change would be expected and how long that change will last the positive of these techniques well the key positive here is they avoid resistance so that's really I think the main positive attribute that we can see in both of these techniques they're kind of going around the resistance and at least giving you an opportunity to facilitate change now I know whenever I talk about narcissism and change right there's going to be a lot of different opinions you may agree or disagree with me or have other opinions please put those thoughts in the comments it always generates a really interesting dialogue as always I hope you found this description of how to facilitate change in a narcissist to be interesting thanks for watching

Channel: Dr. Todd Grande

Views: 108,834

Keywords: persuade a narcissist, manipulate a narcissist, reason, encourage behavioral change, narcissism, narcissistic personality disorder, grandiose, overt, vulnerable, covert, sense of entitlement, arrogance, social dominance, confidence.superior, grandiose narcissism, vulnerable narcissism, hypersensitivity to criticism, insecurity, anger, aggression, shame, self-deception, mental health

Id: 1r2kMWeePIU

Length: 16min 43sec (1003 seconds)

Published: Sun Apr 07 2019