Tales from Therapy: Where Is Your Spite Toward The Narcissist Leading You?

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 [Applause] [Music] I've spoken with you before about how narcissist can have strong and when I say strong I mean very strong inclinations toward anger and their anger can be so ratcheted up especially when you let them know I don't want to play your games anymore I don't want to be your enabler I don't want to be the receptacle for all of your Venom when you pronounce that to the narcissist the anger that they already carry inside is going to go into the direction of spitefulness uh they'll take your message and they'll think I'm going to make you pay nobody comes against me like that and uh they feel injured as part of their uh their hurt ego because you're you're not giving them the praise and adoration that they want and when narcissists have their emotion of spite it leads them down the path towards destruction I want to destroy you I want to make you hurt I want to make you feel as miserable as you're making me feel right now now let's flip the page here and realize you know the narcissist isn't the only one that has issues with anger you too can have your moments where it's like well you know it's not exactly a Bowl of Cherries here trying to deal with this angry individual and sometimes you can have spiteful feelings in Reverse toward the narcissist go ahead and admit it you can have that right there can be times when you think I did not sign up for this the treatment that I've received from that individual is so egregious it's so inappropriate that I can't stand it I don't like that person's presence so my question to you is where is your feeling of spite leading you now like I say a narcissist when they feel that emotion they go straight into the destructive mode I'm hoping that even as you have that emotion you can recognize well I can do better than that and I'm going to take my emotion in a much different kind of Direction now what I'd like to do is I'm I'm going to give you a share with you about a case that I worked with and I had the the privilege of seeing this woman 10 years down the uh the the way after I had counseled with her in a public setting the situation is this uh I'm going to call this person Jane Jane had grown up in a family situation where the father was the ultimate Tyrant he was the kind of individual that he had he was in a professional position and he uh was well regarded in his in his professional field but so publicly people thought what a nice fell but at home he was just miserable he ruled the family with lots of anger and harshness and tension and the entire family just was afraid of him Jane was sexually molested by another family member during her teens and it it of course devastated her she attempted to talk with her mother about it but the mother was so afraid of the father's potential reaction that her response was just leave it alone that's the way people are and I don't want to hear about it and Jane wound up having all of this strain and tension on the inside uh in her words what she said when she came to counseling was it made me feel very small it made me feel unheard I already had been violated by this other individual and now the people that I had you ideally would have entrusted to help and to be my protector they failed me and of course then there was this silent rage and this silent disgust that she carried on the inside and was only magnified by the harshness of her father's um uh strong anger so here she is sitting in my office and she makes a confession and what she said and I know that she was very afraid of how I might respond because she wanted to be you know a proper kind of individual but she said I hate my parents especially my father he was the meanest person that I could possibly be and that at the time when I needed him most he failed me and he failed me miserably and she had some very harsh words for him and thoughts and feelings and I know she was just waiting to see what I was going to say in reverse and my response was have you ever thought about how your emotion right there that strong anger that Spite that contemptuous feeling that you have have you ever thought about how that emotion is tied to your desire to be significance significant and she paused and she she didn't get the scolding that she thought she was going to have my response to her was well if you didn't feel that strong emotion that would be very strange but for her to to ask you mean my emotion is tied to something that could be potentially good and my response is exactly do you see that strong anger is tied to your craving for significance well that was a lie bulb moment for her in fact it was it was rather interesting 10 years later and I mentioned that I had seen her in public she said that very statement was the was the turning point for her she didn't have to apologize for the fact that she felt strong anger well of course she felt strong anger look what happened to you uh she had uh she had all her life felt embarrassed by the experience that she had she felt embarrassed by being in the family that she was in she had a sense of self-loathing because she didn't know what to do and how to get out of it in inadequacy so what we did is we went through a series of discussions where we talked about the meaning of her loathing the meaning of her spite towards her family and then the challenge that I gave her was let's see if can take your emotion and turn it into something that's going to be beneficial The Narcissist they just want to destroy that's that's where their spite leads them let's see if we can go in a different direction so we wound up coming with a series of of realizations first we recognized you were wronged uh you were violated at its most fundamental level and uh in your anger this is your way of saying I don't want to be exploited anymore I don't want to be treated in an inappropriate kind of way your anger is your way of strongly saying no no no I don't want to be on the receiving end of a narcissist condescension and gross insensitivity I reject that message categorically that's a good message likewise we discussed how uh this was her way her her anger was her way of saying I don't want to ever again continue in the assigned role of a nobody that's what my family seemed to think about me way back when I'm a somebody and my anger is is my way of reminding myself you don't have the right to to pronounce a nobody status upon me in addition we also acknowledge that her anger was tied to her craving for justice and her craving even for Revenge now uh this is where you have you get to that proverbial fork in the road I want Justice I want revenge like I say narcissist they'll just come after you with revenge and it's it's a mean-spirited kind of thing in her mind she began realizing I can go towards Vengeance but then what that does is it makes me just like the person that I'm angry toward and I don't want to be the next person that takes upon themselves narcissistic characteristics where I have to be superior and I'm going to I'm just going to Pummel anybody and so um what she said was when I realized I want revenge my best revenge is a healthy me and so she went down uh the path towards asking what does that mean and she came up with multiple uh conclusions we discussed that in my counseling office first I matter that's what it means second I was made for love I was made for affirmation they didn't understand understand that properly but I understand that and I have worth worth and my worth is a uh is a Birthright it's a Birthright it's not something that's uh uh subject to debate it simply is and then uh the the further Jan went down the path towards her own personal healing the more she realized the narcissist is certainly not interested in myself self-preservation and in fact she found out that as she began speaking up inside her family she continued to get scorn at a much later date in her life and she was reminded you're supposed to stay inside the cage of disregard and the narcissist could even say I built that cage and you're supposed to stay inside that cage but in her anger and in her strong emotion to that her self-preservation urge prompted her to think and say out loud I reject that condescension I'm moving in a very different path and and then as we continued in our work uh we focused on what her Alternatives would be uh what priorities do you want to embrace Jane what makes sense to you so she came up with all sorts of healthy kinds of things uh I want to be committed to love I want to be committed to goodness that little girl back then deserved to be treated well and I want to be somebody that says I get it and I I'm going to love myself and then I'm going to seek other individuals who have their yearning and have their craving to be loved that's what she wanted to be and that's what she wanted to lean into and then she wanted to be the kind of person that says I want to show curiosity and inquisitiveness towards other people's pain I felt it and the people that I wanted to be there with me and for me uh weren't there for me but I'm going to be the kind of person that can and she wound up um devoting herself to all sorts of service projects and and helpfulness towards other individuals she was known as a person of kindness and good goodness you see what Jane did with her spite with her hard anger was so completely different from what a narcissist does when they go into destruction her thing was I want to be a person of peace I want to be somebody who has firmness but I want to be respectful and dignified in the way that I maintain it and I I'm going to be that kind of person and no amount of History to the contrary and all the messages that went well with it is going to dictate my today that's what a healthy person can do when they experience Spite and harsh anger now the narcissist narcissist is going to stay in their destructive State go ahead and just um uh acknowledge that they're inside that cage that they constructed but I'm hoping you can decide I'm going to listen not to the narcissist and I'm not going to mimic The Narcissist I'm going to listen to my own Spite and the self-preservation message that it uh is sending and uh the uh the hate and the contempt that I could Embrace and make my own is going to be secondary and uh from here on out I'm going to be a person of decency and goodness and love I love a story like that I hope it can be your story now if you've not already hit the Subscribe button I would encourage you to do so we're going to keep more videos coming in your direction I know sometimes like Jane uh you might need some therapy and it might be good for you to seek out someone who can help you sift that out uh you know I've been sponsored by the people at betterhelp.com there's a link below here I'm a retired therapist now but obviously I believe strongly in the power of of a good Psychotherapy please as the need is there it's so helpful for you to know that there's somebody that can be loving and kind towards you as you sift it out and give you some good guidance get the help that you would deserve in addition I have courses that I've put together and they're very extensive and they're meant to be uh you it's a it's a longstanding effort on your part it's like signing up for an online class uh they're meant to be very therapeutic I have each course has 25 videos with written documents guided questions Ready Set connect is the one about making healthy connections free to be finding yourself despite those controllers this is me um establishing your boundaries I also have webinars that are 90-minute presentations you can still look back into along with articles access to my podcast my books plenty of resources on the website this this case that I'm telling you about about the one who uh had the the real strong anger but took hers in a very uh different healthy direction uh as opposed to The Narcissist in her life she was able to get uh go through her adult years uh with much more of a sense of joy that says I I've tapped in now to what that that Spite was leading me towards it was leading me towards goodness I hope that can be your message and I hope that can be your effort uh that's what we stand here stand for here on team healthy and as you make that effort then I'm hoping it takes you legitimately into your place of peace

Channel: Surviving Narcissism

Views: 15,070

Keywords: anger, trauma bonds, self esteem, narcissism in relationships, gaslighting, covert narcissism, passive aggressive

Id: VGE0P8nSguo

Length: 14min 14sec (854 seconds)

Published: Thu Mar 21 2024