Is Narcissism Mostly Unconscious?

as you learn about the narcissistic pattern it's also wise to reflect on the much healthier Alternatives now below you're going to find a link to my new extensive course called Ready Set connect IT addresses both the mindset and the skills involved in gratifying relationships and I hope you'll find it to be quite therapeutic [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] let's begin with a certain assumption and that is I hope that you're trying to apply some good reasoning and thought and logic to the ways that you engage and interact with other individuals and as you interact with those narcissistic people you want to try to have reason and logic leading the way there and yet you keep getting this blowback from them where they cannot be reasoned with they want to control you they have lots of manipulations and they are ridiculously defensive and then you can start asking the question exactly how deliberate are these narcissistic individuals in their manner of life especially when strains and tensions come along do they know specifically how off base or how inappropriate they are or is their way of life so driven by forces beyond their awareness that they just can't stop themselves it's kind of like they're so on automatic pilot that they just keep doing it and they they just don't know how to regain some semblance of control in a healthy kind of way now there's no fixed black and white answer to those kind of questions but I I think it's safe for us to say that much of the narcissistic pattern of life is indeed driven by unconscious forces yes as adults these individuals do have choices presumably they know the difference between right and wrong and you'd like to think well do they understand that they're choosing wrong their sense of logic is so impacted by a lot of Unfinished or strain and tension that as they enter into their adult years what you as a normal or a healthy or a growing person would assume is not something that they can access they simply don't have good self-reflection skills now in order to understand how the unconscious mind works I want to focus on three different terms that we use in Psychology one is the term suppression another is the term repression and another is the term Arrested Development when we talk about suppressing your emotions or your perceptions this can be a very conscious kind of thing how many times have you been engaged with somebody and you thought you know I don't want to get into it and I'm not going to talk about it you may have some frustrations or tensions and you think you know I think I'd be better off just not getting in now not speaking into it so you suppress it you hold it in uh you you kind of know it's there but it's like there's nothing good that's going to come from me bringing it out into the open repression though is something that's much more fundamentally powerful than suppression when you have a pattern of repressing your emotions or your perceptions this is a very very strong defense mechanism that people use when they and and it begins very early in life when they have very painful or unacceptable or confusing experiences and those those experiences are so powerful that their their defenses will cause them to drive their emotional reactions out of their conscious Arena and this is extremely common with individuals who have narcissistic characteristics now sometimes we have a natural inborn tendency towards control and stubbornness and all some people are more inclined that way toward others but many times we can have such reminders during those development mental years that it's not okay to display your humanness it's not okay to come against someone who might be in a position of Authority or there are experiences or disasters or pain or our calamities have come in your life and you're so young it's like I don't know what to do with it and so your psychological self develops such a thick and defensive shield around oneself that literally as you grow and age you don't even really know what's going on except that you know you're feeling uncomfortable and so you look for ways to compensate but that's repression now Beyond suppression and then beyond repression then we can zero in on the term Arrested Development and basically what we're saying is when a person is in Arrested Development they have both suppressed and especially repressed their memories of painful circumstances where they don't grow emotionally or relationally their capacity to mature their capacity to get in tune deeper understanding and logic and reasoning is stunted and as a result they don't adjust they don't blend they remain in a childish State and I know that many of you will shake your head and say oh yeah I've tried to talk with that 48 year old person who's highly narcissistic and I feel like I'm dealing with a six-year-old kid that's throwing a temper tantrum or that person won't that won't even talk to me when we're mad because they just go into shutdown mode basically narcissists had such early on experiences of confusion with respect to do with what to do about their emotions and perceptions and they learned to hide it and they learn to to re-charge their redirect their energies in other directions that they no longer know how to address or even recognize what's driving them from the inside out their defenses have become impenetrable and the result is that they endure they do indeed operate with a type of automatic pilot in in charge and that's why they tend to go into high control mode they tend to compensate with their confusions with other individuals by trying to maintain an attitude of superiority over others they're unable to to tune into others feelings because like No And tuning in is not something that I learned and it doesn't get me very well they concoct their own or alternate reality it's important for you to remember that so much of this repression and the uh the Arrested Development that goes along with it began at an early age in their life when their reasoning was so shallow and so uh and they're just so incapable and they never did get out of that childish sense of reasoning they can age and physically in their functionality on certain skill sets can that can grow and they can be quite good there but they remain in childish ways they remain as raw reactors which is what little children do and intuitive thinking and insightful questions are just something they don't want to have to deal with for example when you have that anger when you have that worry or when you have that insecurity healthy individuals will say let's talk about that why do I feel this way and what's the root of this and and uh how is it that I might be transferring my experiences from this person over into this individual and I'm doing some displacement what's going on there narcissists can't go into that space they're just raw reactors they fear collaboration because early on they began to to draw the conclusion I can't trust I can't be open I can't be vulnerable that's going to get me in a lot of trouble and so they bring that into the adult years but again true to the nature of repression it's like they don't even access where the beginning point of that is and then interestingly because of their own immature behaviors other people are going to respond to them with frustration and so these people who are interested development will say see look how inappropriate those other people are and they don't even realize well maybe they contributed to that and maybe they're set in the state age for it it's outside of their realm of consciousness that being said this explains why they do indeed remain childishly committed to inappropriate anger like little kids that throw temper tantrums and they don't have a monitor on themselves they're very prone towards blame Shifting the world has done me wrong and that in in their childishness maybe there was some truth of that but now they just generalize that to anybody and everybody they're stuck inside a a victims complex and when I say stuck I mean in a major kind of way they're emotionally needy because their needs were not addressed well and serviced well as as children and yet they're not emotionally prepared as adults to go into the give and take that would allow them to compensate for some of the needs that were not earlier addressed they don't understand what love and respect is because they didn't receive that in a in a seminal kind of way they're too fragile to say I was wrong I need to change uh they base their quality of life on right externals as opposed to well-developed internals in other words they haven't really learned how to apply emotional competence that just simply wasn't established so we still go back to that question well do they choose to be this way and we can say well some at some point somebody will say well let's see you have goodness and you have deviousness you have respect you have disrespect you know which would you choose they know the right answers to those questions but they're so into the blame shifting they're so unaware of their own hidden inner drivers that they can come up with correct answers and then they can blame it on whoever happens to be in front of them that's what we mean when we say that there's an unconscious element that's there and they remain stuck uh wouldn't it be nice if we could sit down with that narcissistic person that you engage with and and say hey look we've got some adjustments that need to be made and if that person would come back and say I'd like that I know that there are times when I respond poorly and I frustrate you I frustrate myself let's do it let's go inside and let's take a hard look and and I I look forward to the growth that's going to result you ever tried that with a narcissist it'd be nice if they could come up with that excuse but their repression their Arrested Development is so in charge that they're not able to do that they are unable to access their own Humanity because they have been so tainted by shaming and a lack of trust a lack of proper emotional confidence built into it that that's just a space that they're not able to go into there's a psychological math that they operate with and that is a very low self-reflection equals very high accusation it's all about the people in front of them they can't go inside because it's too scary to them and it's something that they have so shut off that they can't go into that space the you see the problem that we have is these individuals are unable to fix what they're too ashamed to see or examine and that being the case the more you realize that and what you're up against I'm hoping you can decide well if you're in Arrested Development if there's a subconscious drivers that are pushing you I'm not going to get pulled into you being the one who sets my Pace that's a that's a formula for disaster and I hope that discussions like this can give you some good awareness of what you might be dealing with if you've not already hit that subscribe button I would encourage you to do so hit the like button and uh the notification bell all the rest that goes with it we'll keep more videos coming your direction if you have a need for therapy and many of you know that I've been sponsored for years now by the people at betterhelp.com uh there's a link below that will take you to their website there's a whole team of licensed professional therapists that you can select from just a few things that you have to fill out to get there and then you make your selection please seek the help that you uh that you could use and deserve uh it's affordable it's accessible and I've had good feedback there likewise I have my therapeutic courses it's like signing up for an online class it's very extensive good work on your part if you're into that kind of thing we have three different courses that they each have multiple videos written documents guided questions we have Ready Set connect about making good connections this is me about your boundaries free to be finding yourself despite those controllers we also have my my webinars that have already been presented but you can continue to purchase those as well as my podcast our website with many articles my books lots of resources for you you know here you are you're trying to bring a conscious awareness of the fact that you have your Humanity we all have a need to grow and adjust and you're wanting to bring that kind of thinking to a narcissist who has so many unconscious elements that they just simply cannot access because of who knows what from their background be aware of that don't let them establish your pace I have a certain pity for that I'm sorry that they're not in that place but consciously I know who I want to be I want to be a person of dignity respect and Civility and in doing so you can seek peace that unfortunately may not be accessible to that narcissist but I'm hoping you can indeed find your peace foreign 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Channel: Surviving Narcissism

Views: 47,654

Keywords: self esteem, narcissism in relationships, gaslighting, covert narcissisim, NPD, Dr. Les Carter, surviving narcissism, anger, passive aggressive, psychology

Id: bitX--GNk5E

Length: 14min 27sec (867 seconds)

Published: Sat Jun 03 2023