Repelling a Vulnerable Narcissist | Borderline, Histrionic, & Dependent Traits

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 oh this is dr. Brown day today's question asks how can one repeal a vulnerable narcissist so now that long ago I did a video about how to repel essentially a grandiose narcissist and here in this video I'm looking at the vulnerable side so sometimes what happens with narcissism is people find that they want to avoid a romantic relationship or even minimize a work relationship with a narcissist and there are a variety of reasons why this is the case and I'll get to some of them in a moment of course using strategies to repel a narcissist could work in some other contexts as well so first I'll talk briefly about narcissism and then we'll take a look at how to repel a narcissist so again we're looking at the vulnerable side here and not the grandiose I'll cover both of them briefly so both of them have self centeredness entitlement a need for admiration and disagreeableness grandiose narcissism specifically is characterized by having a high level of extraversion and low neuroticism again in addition to at low agreeableness we also see social boldness being arrogant condescending overly self-confident having superficial charm being unemotional and having externalized anger we also notice that this type of narcissist is resistant to criticism now we move over to vulnerable narcissism we see again of course that low agreeableness but here we also see low extraversion and high neuroticism and we see other traits like not trusting people being resentful being insecure having a lot of shame being socially awkward cold and distant having internalized anger and being hypersensitive to criticism so the grandiose narcissist is resistant to criticism and the vulnerable narcissist is sensitive to criticism so why would somebody want to repel a vulnerable narcissist well this is a matter of personal choice of course in the video about grandiose narcissism I listed some of the reasons why people would want to avoid a grandiose narcissist and here I'll look at those and then compare them to how they would be with vulnerable because again grandiose and vulnerable are different in so many ways and the reasons that somebody may want to avoid each type of narcissist may be different the grandiose narcissist has a lack of interest in forming close relationships this usually isn't considered a positive thing especially for romantic relationships or even friendships a vulnerable narcissist actually has a high interest in forming close relationships but they're not able to trust so they really can't form those relationships too well now we also see with grandiose narcissism more conflicts they tend to seek revenge and there's no forgiveness vulnerable is similar except I would add there are a number of guilt trips that's a common tactic we see with vulnerable narcissism with grandiose we see a tendency to be selfish lack respect not have tolerance of other people and I have empathy specifically in long-term relationships we see the same with vulnerable narcissism with grandiose we see a devaluation of partners I would say the same thing occurs with vulnerable narcissism covert narcissism as it's called sometimes except we also see an over evaluation as well so this makes it seem a little bit more like borderline personality and I'll talk about that in a moment so we also see with grandiose low emotional intimacy love and trust I would say with covert narcissism we see more of a capacity for emotional intimacy but a much lower level of trust with grandiose or overt narcissism we see a higher risk of infidelity and divorce with vulnerable narcissism it's actually a high risk but not as high so it's still higher than if no narcissism was there at all but not as high as overt narcissism now with both types of narcissism we see aggression but again with vulnerable it's more internalized but of course that can be destructive to a relationship and with both types of narcissism we see no relationship satisfaction and lo relationship quality so a number of reasons that somebody may want to avoid or repel the vulnerable narcissist now whenever somebody is using strategies to repel anybody it's important to keep in mind that identification of the type of person you want to repel is important so in this case the covert narcissist because of course the problem would be that strategies that would repel a narcissist would repel anyone so identification again is really kind of a key step and kind of looking for the signs of narcissism and knowing that somebody would probably be narcissistic would be more of a risk is something you want to know in advance you don't want to get into these strategies and then find out that they weren't narcissistic at all so why is repelling a narcissist difficult why would there be a list of strategies wouldn't it be something that people would automatically know well I think a lot of people know that they would want to repel a narcissist the tricky part is that narcissism is associated with romantic success in the short term I talked about this with grandiose narcissism but it's also true for vulnerable narcissism the reasons are a little different with grandiose narcissism it's really the superficial charm that aids in success short term success in relationships with vulnerable narcissism the short term success is really high because of the intense emotional and physical intimacy that the vulnerable narcissist attempts right so the vulnerable narcissist seems deeper and in many ways really is more emotionally complex than a grandiose narcissist and that is attractive for some people in the short run people really feel like they make a connection at a deep level with a vulnerable narcissist so really again with a high attraction level rappelling becomes more important if that's what somebody wants to do so we can see from all this that vulnerable narcissism is quite different than grandiose grandiose has a mental disorder that is connected with it so extreme grandiose features might qualify as narcissistic personality sorter vulnerable narcissism doesn't have any psychopathological classification associated with it but it has substantial overlap with borderline histrionic and dependent personality disorders and this knowledge this overlap between vulnerable narcissism and these other personality disorders or personality traits can be used to develop strategies to repel the narcissist so before I get into these strategies just a word on repelling the vulnerable narcissist I'm offering thoughts not advocating deception and not really even advocating doing these things really have to talk to a counselor to get specific advice about your situation if you're worried about a narcissist these are just general strategies that seem to make sense based on the research literature and my clinical experience but again there's no way to know how they would perform in any given specific situation another important point here is and this goes back to identification is that some of the strategies that would repel a vulnerable narcissist might actually attract a grandiose narcissist so you do have to know what type of narcissist you are dealing with and what type of narcissist you want to repel so now taking a look at these strategies these strategies are really grouped into some different categories and you'll see in some sense they line up with the overlap between vulnerable narcissism and borderline histrionic and dependent personality features so the first strategy is do not do things for the vulnerable narcissist that they can do for themselves when we look at the dependent personality angle we see specifically in the symptom criteria for a dependent person is order someone urgently seeks another relationship as a source of care and support when a close relationship ends so if you do things for a vulnerable narcissist but they know how to do in essence you're supporting them and that will attract them if you don't they will move on and find someone who will just like with always see and that symptom criterion if they don't find the support they're going to move on and try to find it somewhere else that's a key feature dependent personality another similar strategy is do not allow them to volunteer to help you if they are inauthentic about helping you right so what's this getting at well again if we look at dependent personality sweater we see it at people with this disorder volunteer for unpleasant activities in order to get access to support in order to build relationships so you don't want them volunteering to help you if they're not really serious about if they're not really genuine about it because they're going to have an ulterior motive and they're gonna act on that motive you do not want to be the person that the vulnerable narcissist goes to to make decisions for them we see that people who have vulnerable narcissism can be indecisive again just like people who are dependent so don't offer them those definitive answers don't make decisions for them encourage them to make decisions on their own and if they're a vulnerable narcissist that would likely repel them this next strategy is similar to one we see for grandiose narcissism don't move a relationship into a physical level quickly right so never express an interest in a short-term relationship or if they express interest in that type of relationship appear to be uninterested right just move away from that topic again the vulnerable narcissist tends to want to advance a relationship quickly they use their strong abilities with intimacy and affection to try to get somebody attracted to them again this can be very very effective so to overcome that you want to avoid the areas where they're strong right you want to play against their weaknesses not against their strengths so in the short term relationships that are very effective that intimacy can be really quite attractive so you want to avoid expressing any interest in that type of relationship so really it comes down to making it clear about what the relationship really is setting the boundaries is it a romantic relationship if so at what level if you have a work relationship with somebody what's the boundary they're the same thing for other types of social interactions this belief that the vulnerable narcissist hat the idea that relationships are more intimate than they are really comes from the histrionic Personality traits that overlap with vulnerable narcissism so a few other strategies around maintaining distance and boundaries I think an important part is letting somebody kind of know where they stand in terms of rank or status so not necessarily like in an organization or something like that but how you rank them right how you view someone's position their level of importance to you their rank in your life now some of these strategies around maintaining distance and boundaries can seem a bit unkind if they're not handled correctly so one strategy would be like in an office setting say someone comes into the office and they're looking for help and you have a few different co-workers that could help them and one of them is the vulnerable narcissist you could refer that person to one of your co-workers and then to the vulnerable narcissist it's like a secondary referral right so say that the non narcissist person in the office is named Norman and the vulnerable narcissist is named Victor right because it's like normal and vulnerable right Norman and Victor so you might say well Norman can really help you with this problem so they have a problem with IT like something with computers or operating a machine or whatever Norman really be a good choice to help you with this you could also talk to Victor right kind of dismissive kind of letting Victor know that is really an afterthought right he's not really in the forefront of your thinking kind of putting them to the side so again if not handled properly that could be a bit unkind another strategy here would be don't seek assistance from the vulnerable narcissist don't let them do you a favor you don't want to feel like you owe the narcissists anything and as importantly you don't want them to feel like they're owed something so this just keeps any type of debt balanced at zero right there's no debt either way if a vulnerable narcissist refers to as a friend again with other people around you could hesitate and say well really it's more like an right kind of pushing them back a little and to take it a step further again I think this is almost just down I mean you could say well maybe acquaintance is a little strong right you could take a second step back okay but I think that's unnecessary in most situations right if somebody says in front of other people that they're your friend and you back away from that even one step I think that drives the point home pretty well you could use a similar strategy with romantic relationships the narcissist refers to you as someone who they are dating and you could say well we went out a couple times it's nothing serious you could talk about a future that doesn't involve them even when you're in a romantic relationship with them so like changing jobs moving to a new area finding a new romantic partner right so this would of course be in the initial stages of some sort of dating relationship if this were later on there'd have to be a more in-depth conversation about how your plans kind of deviate from what's going on that romantic relationship but either way what's really doing here is you're telling the narcissist where they fit in the picture and that's nowhere good from their perspective so what's tricky here too is if you're trying to repel a vulnerable narcissist you have to wonder if you should even be in that early stage romantic relationship with a vulnerable narcissist so it's not like these strategies can find a narcissist and push them away you have to like I talked about before identify them and then use the strategies so that's why I think these appear a little mean because it's like leading somebody to one point by engaging in some level of a relationship with them and then pushing them back so it's not about surprise or deception or like tricking them or ambushing them or something like that it's just about rappelling and rappelling is better to do before there's any relationship form there but still if you were gonna use these strategies a kind of similar technique would be to seem pleasantly surprised if they talk about leaving right so you're in the initial stages of relationship and you want to repel them maybe a less than straightforward way so they talked about how they might have other plans and you say that's great for you I'm happy for you they're looking for you to say the opposite of course right they're looking for you to say please don't go what about us what about our future so this would be a way to repel them right being happy for them if they're going to leave would tend to push somebody away if a vulnerable narcissist offers friendship especially connected to activities right they say what can we go see a movie or go out to eat but not in a romantic way which you again have this object of repelling them you could say I like things the way they are now that's a fairly harsh rejection even one that could be considered a narcissistic depending on how it's delivered so if it comes across narcissistic of course that might draw in the grandiose narcissist so some caution has to be used there as I mentioned before a few times it really does go back to knowing what type of narcissist you're dealing with so the bottom line here is that most expressions that convey rejection will repel a vulnerable narcissist as well as potentially draw anger so caution is required with the vulnerable narcissist it's really about failure to create a relationship in the first place because it's through the relationship that the narcissistic characteristics are expressed a grandiose narcissist can directly harm you you don't have to know them well for them to harm you the vulnerable narcissist usually harms in the context of a relationship so these strategies are really about denying them that relationship not even getting in a little bit in terms of any level of intimacy or friendship in a sense this is where we see the overlap with borderline personality sweater individuals with borderline personality sorter typically don't have difficulty with people when there was never any closeness when there was no relationship and this is largely how vulnerable narcissism functions without the context of that relationship there's really less room to do damage once you let them in side once you let them close they can really cause a lot of harm the grandiose narcissist can harm at a distance the vulnerable narcissist typically likes to harm up-close-and-personal so we know whenever I talk about topics like repelling a narcissist there'll be a variety of opinions people who agree with me who disagree with me who have a variety of experiences with vulnerable narcissist please put your opinions and thoughts in the comments section on this topic it always generates really interesting discussion as always I hope you found this description of how to repel the vulnerable narcissist to be interesting thanks for watching

Channel: Dr. Todd Grande

Views: 607,814

Keywords: Repel a narcissist, narcissist repellent, repel a vulnerable narcissist, Narcissist, Narcissism, narcissistic, narcissistic abuse, manipulation, low neuroticism, resistance to criticism, superficial charm, callous, unemotional, shame, anger, aggression, extroverted, grandiose, vulnerable, narcissistic personality disorder, romantic relationships, mental health, counseling

Id: qzsbviqDEx0

Length: 18min 25sec (1105 seconds)

Published: Tue Jun 25 2019