Low-grade narcissism

so do you ever wonder if the person who you are in a relationship with or work with or a family member is narcissistic or are they just really immature and selfish maybe a little superficial let's break this down because this is confusing to people by looking at how narcissism is on a continuum of severity so this series is really going to break down the sort of continuum of narcissism and how to manage narcissistic relationships at different levels of severity it's very very clear that narcissism is on a continuum from sort of low-grade superficial egocentric attention-seeking narcissism all the way up to manipulative exploitative menacing coercive terrifying malignant narcissism the diversity of subtypes and severity can sometimes leave people trying to figure out how to cope in their particular situation and feeling as though their story is actually quite different than someone else's who is in a narcissistic relationship a person who is coping with or who is raised by or working with or whatever in a relationship with a low-grade narcissist no low-grade narcissists sort of seem like immature baby adults they're managing something quite different than the terror and fear of someone who is managing a malignant exploitative and at times seemingly dangerous narcissistic person these two sets of people may feel as though they are in entirely different situations and require different tools and may leave one group wondering am i actually in a narcissistic relationship because their story is real different than mine because there's variability many people aren't even clear if the model of narcissism actually applies to their situation this is going to be a brief three-part series that takes the spectrum of narcissism and i'm going to sort of break it down into low medium and high these three classifications result in different experiences for the people in relationships with these folks different types of coping and different sets of expectations and may help you understand like oh i see why my situation is a little bit different so let's start with the low-grade narcissist it seems like a nicer place to start these are folks who you may experience as superficial attention-seeking shallow immature egocentric mildly entitled a brick grandiose at times kind of needy and these are folks who never really quite evolve into full-on adulthood there's a personality style out there that you know i don't like the name of it but it's a thing it's called histrionic personality that personality style really takes in a lot of the territory of the lower grade narcissism these are folks who are emotionally shallow dramatic who consider relationships to be closer than they really are who are very attention-seeking and who are quite uncomfortable when they are not the center of attention or aren't getting all the adulation and compliments they tend to use their appearance to draw attention to themselves and may often be quite flirty handsy and sort of seductive-y they tend to live in a low-grade fantasy world all the time you may want you may see them seeking out sort of their fantasies of fame and fortune and talking about their fantasies a lot the big house i'm gonna have the hit record the influence or fame who knows maybe some of them will make it but they talk about it so often that it almost becomes their narrative that they're living in it but they're not and then they sometimes get quite frustrated as a result in a word low-grade narcissistic people are often experienced as annoying they aren't scary like the malignant folks or even that good at being manipulative there is an immature annoying and again at times needy quality to them they sort of run their lives as baby adults they look like adults but they maintain rather childlike inspiration which some level is fine but they may try to do this on other people's backs and get resentful when their pursuit of fame or fortune or their whatever their big next big thing is isn't realized the low-grade narcissistic folks think famous people or famous adjacent people are so cool without really getting to know them hip cred really matters to them but again they aren't the mean gaslighting manipulative cut you to your soul narcissist this is your 45 year old friend that still cares deeply about the number of likes they got on their sunset picture or ask you to retake the picture of them 27 times with them holding up the wine glass or the person that still talks about how they are just about to make it big this is the next big thing wait till i tell you who i just met or the family member that monopolizes the holiday table conversation and makes everything about them again it's annoying but it's not cruel relationships with these low-grade narcissistic folks can actually sometimes be really fun especially if they're sort of a fun friend to go out with or in the early dates of a romantic relationship when it may be exciting sex public dep displays of affection lots of social media love displays loud laughter fun nights out and feeling as though you are with potentially the most attractive and charismatic person in the place over time as life happens and it isn't just happy hour or a dinner party or a music festival and you actually have to do real life stuff like budgets or compromise these low-grade narcissistic folks will start wearing thin the conversations are rarely deep the intimacy can feel quite shallow and when you have adult when you have adult needs that may require them to be emotionally regulated or make a sacrifice or perhaps you need to work or need space to just get a deadline met they may sulk like a spoiled petulant child that wants to go to the park instead of you working you will feel like a parent and be the one who has to ensure that the bills get paid on time and that stuff gets done around the house and at times you may burn out and having to be in the sort of adulting role in this relationship invulnerable narcissism when it presents at lower levels it really looks like sullen adolescence petulant bratty why do i have to do this and nobody else does kind of 15 year old who won't empty the dishwasher kind of stuff if you are in a relationship with someone like this you may want them to put their big kid pants on and take some responsibility help out a little bit act a little bit more like an adult and less like a solemn teenager and when you call them out on their patterns you may get a bit of a sneer and some irritability when they do not get their way so in the long term you may wonder how am i supposed to cope with a low-grade narcissist if you are in a relationship with a low-grade narcissist you i guess your expectations have to be around a more shallow superficial kind of immature relationship and yes it will be annoying at times you're not going to encounter the malevolent antagonistic and manipulative abuse that we tend to see in the higher levels of narcissism but instead you may feel like you're in a relationship with sort of an a an overgrown adolescent they may may not step up and adult in ways like putting things away around the house getting the tax stuff together that kind of stuff and you may see some angry tantrums when you do call them out on their immaturity or their pie in the skyness you may also see some neediness and that they want to spend more time together when you actually may have to do your adult stuff like work now some folks may find a relationship with a low-grade narcissistic person to actually be quite workable they may find that even though they're in a relationship with this low-grade narcissist that their own deeper intellectual needs maybe they're being met at work or in school that their emotional needs are being met with other friends or family and recognize that for example they may just simply be very physically attracted to their partner who is a low-grade narcissist or still have lots of fun with them or have some shared hobbies with them or may not actually even mind being in a parental role with a partner because it works for them because they're like yeah i just sort of like to be the one who's in charge gaslighting and other toxic themes may pop up in a light way from time to time but like i said likely in a more adolescent and lighter manner rather than the more targeted campaign that's designed to dissemble your sanity in the way we might see in a more severe hardcore narcissistic person low-grade narcissists may do immature sort of shady things like liking inappropriate pictures on social media or posting inappropriate things to get attention again it's annoying right as always with any narcissistic style this is also not a cell that is it's not likely to change that much there may be some patchy empathy here and there maybe it's just enough to get you by there is not likely to be much self-reflective capacity or awareness of how their behavior is affecting you you may pick up the same towel off the ground 365 days a year and no matter how many times you point it out or you ask they just don't remember not to stick it to you but because it just doesn't matter to them that your environment is being affected and they don't care that the towel is on the ground a person with a low-grade narcissistic style may not take the time to learn about or participate in things that matter to you unless they interest them again only you know if that disinterest actually matters to you enough to bother you but the bottom line is is that this relationship it's probably never going to be that deep sharing parenting duties with a low-level narcissistic person is a bit of a mixed bag in some ways their childishness can make them a fun parent for the kids however it would be damn near impossible for them to balance the demands of work and parenting they may for example resent you if you ask them to help with children after a day at work or on the weekend where they'll say i've been working all week when they do step up for the children they will not be the parent who is good at rules routines limits boundaries making dentist appointments filling out school forms all of that kind of killjoy keep the trains running on time stuff but the low-grade narcissistic person might very well throw a hell of a birthday party or be fun at that birthday party at least might dress them up like minnie me's they may be the one who cheers the loudest at the soccer game and as the children come up into adolescence and adulthood will want to be a friend more than a parent the low tolerance for frustration may mean that in lower grade narcissistic people they may not do well with children who are misbehaving or are difficult to soothe or who are mouthy in adolescence you have to be the parent times too if you have children with someone like this or without honestly any narcissistic person this is really sort of your classic prototypically disneyland parent now here's a question what if you had a parent like this what if you had your own parent when you were growing up was a low-grade narcissist this wasn't always an easy way to grow up but it wasn't impossible and it may not have been the wasteland of invalidation and rage that those with narcissistic parents further up the severity spectrum had to endure it may even have been fun at times but there's also an anxiety to having a low-grade narcissistic parent children need routine structure rules expectations and someone who is compassionately keeping the trains running on time these are the parents who may not stay on top of things or who may just minimize things and leave the child feeling that they have to be on top of everything which can really be an anxiety inducing for a child the low-grade narcissistic parent may be superficial in a manner that leaves the child feeling as though things are slipping through the cracks and the parents egocentricity and sort of selfishness can mean that as long as the child's needs or interests are aligned with the parents needs or wants at those times the kid will get lots of attention and so if you have a low-grade narcissistic parent you might sort of try to excel at the sport that the parent likes or join the pageants that the parent wants the child to join or pursue some attention-seeking activity and really try hard at it i don't know like performing of some kind so the parent will be interested in them if you have only one low-grade narcissistic parent you may remember your other parent running in circles to get everything done since your narcissistic parent didn't really do much of the heavy lifting but your other parent may have also made excuses for your low-grade narcissistic parent which could add to your confusion now having a parent like this means that you kind of grow out of them pretty fast it's sort of a frustrating not very caregiving parent you may feel a bit lost since your parent isn't helping you navigate things or you get really good at navigating them yourself you may become a bit what we call parentified you actually become more start taking more of a parental role having to step in to make sure younger siblings needs are met or that they don't have the same struggles that you did you may find yourself in the role of having to reassure your narcissistic parent or even having to be the cheerleader for your low-grade narcissistic parent or be there for your parent in the way that they should have actually been there for you in essence you spend a childhood and perhaps even a lifetime basically managing a relatively selfish parent because social media is new this may not have been part of your childhood because most obviously most of you are adults but nowadays a parent a low-grade narcissistic parent will often use their child as a social media pawn and accessory and put their children in all kinds of pictures and position themselves as the world's most fun and attractive hot and loving parent now we're about to find out in the next 10 to 20 years what happens to a generation of children who were ass who were basically supply seeking tools for their narcissistic parents who plastered them all over social media for validation as you go into adulthood this parent you might find may want to be your best friend over involved in your life you may find yourself at times having to babysit the parent they may want to spend time with your friends and sort of be one of your gang which can sort of feel boundary uncomfortable and again again i keep coming back to this the toxicity of this style isn't on par with more severe forms of narcissism but rather it can feel like them having overly permeable boundaries and you experiencing a sort of low-grade exhaustion around their immaturity coping with a parent who has this low-grade narcissism like this can mean needing to have realistic expectations and recognizing that they will still sometimes hurt your feelings when you tell them that or actually you will have hurt their feelings when you tell them that you and your friends or your own family may be doing your own thing these low-grade narcissistic folks are very needy and they always want to be along for the ride in the workplace this style may not feel toxic just sort of ridiculous and attention seeking but it may seem that that people who are at this lower range of narcissism are better at the grandiose grandstanding they're more political at work and they may expect other people to do the work and are happy to take the credit they may also behave inappropriately in the workplace which can include things like being sort of overly familiar with people overly flirtatious overly loud overly boisterous bosses like this may be more concerned with how the brochure looks even while the performance results are lackluster and maintain a sort of college age environment in the workplace which can diminish sort of the seriousness that the job may require and also mean that stuff isn't getting done this can mean that the more serious people in the workplace once again have to step up be the grown-ups and take up the slack so that the low-grade narcissistic baby people can be childish ultimately the low-grade narcissistic folks can be managed by a realistic expectations patience a willingness not always a willingness to take up the slack and giving up in this relationship on any kind of substantial depth empathy or intimacy the question for you is whether that superficial level of engagement is sustainable and i think everyone has a different feeling about that which is fine for many people it depends a friendship a collegial relationship at work or in school even a family relationship of some kind these are potentially sustainable with the low-grade narcissist they just may just be a little bit annoying a long-term intimate partnership is going to be a little bit more difficult but it's definitely not going to be as impossible when we compare it to people with the higher levels of narcissism so those of you who are with these folks who are sort of superficial needy attention seeking kind of feel like they're on an eternal sort of 16 year old life or sometimes 10 year old life that's what this feels like definitely not as manipulative definitely not as difficult yes it still qualifies under that that sort of narcissism piece but yeah i hear you because i know some of you feel like my experience isn't as bad as some of the stuff you talk about on this channel but it still can make leave you wondering like am i being mean by thinking this person's so annoying nah they probably are and only you know whether you're going to be able to engage in the kind of acceptance and expectations that allow a relationship like this to sustain it's up to you hope that helps and thanks again

Channel: DoctorRamani

Views: 68,900

Rating: 4.9628401 out of 5

Keywords: yt:cc=on

Id: JjUAzw5reZA

Length: 19min 35sec (1175 seconds)

Published: Sat Sep 18 2021