The #1 Reason A Narcissist Has Power Over You

[Music] I want to talk with you today about a concept that I speak with individuals about in my counseling office as they're trying to come to terms with the difficult people in their life now most of these individuals can say the thing they are engaging or in interacting with individuals who have this real high control low levels of empathy the dominance the invalidation they're thin-skinned and defensive and it just makes for a really lousy kind of relationship and then as they educate themselves they can look they can look at the whole definition of narcissism and say you know what that's what I'm dealing with I had no idea what it was and so they come to me and they're thinking how did I get hooked into these relationships that have been so dysfunctional and there's one huge thing that that tends to come to the forefront when they're trying to answer that question and that is in the very beginning of your relations with these individuals you didn't know what you didn't know you know so many people come into their adult years not really understanding things like narcissism and character disorders taking it further most people don't have a real deep history of learning how to manage their own emotions or understanding the nuances between the differences and temperament types and how to handle conflicts etc and so there's a there's a term that I use that that can describe a lot of individuals who are struggling with these difficult people and it's the term trained in competence trained in competence you're trained in competence is the number one reason that a narcissist can continue to have power over you now by that I mean you never really learn how to manage these individuals in a successful way now let me let me see if I can go back and give you a little bit a quick primer in developmental psychology way back when you were a little kid you know six seven eight years old and going beyond that you had the need to learn how to have and identifying how to identify your emotions and how to identify some of the strains that you were having with other individuals so that you could learn how to speak into them in a in a fairly honest kind of way for example if you're seven years old and you're having difficulty with some kid out on the playground someone needed to talk with you about how you felt and what you think would be a better way to handle that and what you'd like to do that would be different and over and over I mean there would be hundreds of times during those years where you would need to have discussion about what you feel and what you know to be the wise way to manage things and most people when I talk with them about that they'll say well that all sounds real nice and good but we didn't do that when I was a kid let's take a little bit further as you age and you begin entering into the adolescent years then you begin developing abstract thinking patterns and that becomes very important to build upon you know when you're that younger kid you need to learn how to at least identify your emotions but as an adolescent you need to learn how to identify the values and principles and standards that would go into the making of your better strategies for handling all of that for example if you're 16 years old and you're angry at someone you would need somebody to sit down and say let's talk about what's healthy about anger what's not healthy about it where it ties into your need for respect and how you can do it in such a way that would be most beneficial for everyone involved what do you think the options would be and you teach a child to learn how to think through things like that and again most people when they're in my counseling office they'll say well we didn't do that either and as a result people can go into their adult years not having much training at all about the deeper matters of the soul and the emotions and your relationship skills I mean they know some things but not down to a real deep kind of level and then along comes the narcissist they're on the prowl they're looking for people that they can devour and bring into theirs year of influence and there are times when you think well there's some things that they say and do that no I'm not comfortable with but not having had the the familiarity with all the strategies and all you become easy prey you didn't know what you didn't know and that's that when I refer to trained incompetence it's like you were trained to do all the other kinds of performance and task oriented kind of things but not really getting deep into the weeds with respect to your emotional kinds of things now whenever you finally try to address issues of a relational nature with that narcissist as an adult there tend to be two things that we and I do that show that that training competence is still in play the first thing we tend to do is we put pressure on that other person to change you know when that narcissistic individual is being difficult or argumentative or overbearing or stubborn then you can go into the coercive or pleading kind of mode why are you treating you this way you're knocking off or I hate it when you do this and you try to get them to see the light and make the adjustments so that you can walk away and feel better now let's just pause on that one how successful is that and the narcissist is over there thinking I don't care about your emotions but with you not having that that inner sense of strength you're putting it on that other individuals life but I've got to get you to change so that I can be okay that's a mistake a second thing that tends to happen when you have these strains with the narcissus as an adult is you start believing some of the garbage they put into your brain you know they speak words of shame and condescension and they they speak poorly about who you are and over time to say well maybe I'm maybe I am the problem and so you become defensive or you accept guilt are you being you having a deep hidden insecurities to come into play and and as a result you really don't feel like you're being very effective so I think an interesting question for you right now is to think well am I just going to be kind of stuck in the pattern that that is there because of my trained incompetence or can I go into a different direction now I want to ask a couple of questions here question number one is exactly who appointed those narcissist to take control over you and the answer is the narcissist appointed themselves they're over there thinking okay you don't seem to know where you're going exactly in your relational and emotional direction I'll take charge and so they appoint themselves as being the authority over you now a second question that I have for you and that is knowing that they have have swooped in and they've tried to have power over you are you ready to take yourself back because you see the fact that you weren't really trained to be competent as a kid with respect for relational and emotional things doesn't mean that you don't have competence it just means you weren't trained in it yet and as a result I'm hoping you can learn to have certain determinations on the inside of your mind that are going to take you to your place of competence so that the narcissist is going to is going to no longer have the ultimate power over you for example there are certain things I'm hoping you can reconsider about truth and how it applies to you and the first truth is you have a free will and you get to decide who you're gonna be and it's not the narcissist who gets to decide that for you a second thing we're going to say is you also have competence and because if you don't have confidence then you're screwed now you haven't really learned how to manage your confidence necessarily but the competence is in there and we're going to tap into it and figure out where you can go with this in addition we're also going to acknowledge you have inherent worth part of your and a sense of competence arises from the sense that says I know that I have dignity and I I deserve to have right things happen to me let's hold on to that the narcissist doesn't want you to know that because they want you to think of yourself as a nobody that's inaccurate you you have worth you are somebody and then if it if the narcissist keeps coming at you with the insistence that they still have to have the power over you we're gonna acknowledge they're operating from an errant mindset they're wrong it's not their place to do so in addition we're going to say that there are other individuals in your world who don't really feel the need to be narcissistically controlling over you in other words you can find fellow sojourners you'll say you know what I'm in the same boat as you why don't we encourage each other so I'm hoping that there's going to be a part of you that says I'm going to look those folks up and there are many accountability groups there's counseling there's there's online videos such as this that you can watch for that says I'm going to connect with individuals who are moving in the same direction as I am and then I'm hoping that you can anchor down and strongly in one huge truth and that is I'm able to break down and understand emotions like pride and egotism and fear and guilt and shame and and anger I think I can learn how to understand the meaning of those things and as I do I can learn how to apply right principles so that I manage those kind of emotions in myself and coming from other individuals in a clean kind of way think of yourself as having that capacity and then I'm hoping that that you're going to also say but you know as I claim my competence and I claim all of the healthy kind of thoughts that go along with it I'm in this for the long haul this is not going to be something that's going to happen overnight but you know I have the willingness and the determination to take this this building sense of competence that I'm committed to and I'm gonna work on it to the day I die I'm not going to stop this is an ongoing kind of process that I'm committed to in the meantime I'm going to continue to search for and live into the ingredients that I know are non narcissistic I'm gonna live in two characteristics like goodness and decency and responsibility I'm gonna figure out what it means to have boundaries and self care and kindness and conscientiousness and fairness and self-restraint that's who I'm gonna be and that's how I'm going to define myself and if the narcissist wants to pull being back in and say no it's my job to stay in control over you your response I'm hoping that's going to be this and that is I'm strong I'm capable I'm determined I'm ready and I'm hoping that you can see that even if you didn't have that competence trained inside of you in those early years it's never too late to claim it and to build upon the competence that already exists and so if a narcissist illustrates that they want to keep coming back at you and they want to keep being dominant over you I'm hoping that you're also gonna think toward them shame on you it's not your place to keep me down who in the world do you think you are treating me is I have no time I have no confidence that's a commentary about where you are and it's no longer a commentary that I'm going to take upon myself and live in agreement with so I'm hoping that as you move forward and as you see maybe I didn't have the competence trained inside of me as a little child but here I am at this stage of my life I'm gonna move forward and build upon a competence that I can claim this bone I'm gonna be my own thinker I'm gonna be my own planner I'm gonna be my own doer and if that narcissistic individual still wants to have power over me the the power switch for them has been turned off I'm building my life from here on out from the inside out that's trained competence and I'm hoping you can live into that I do hope that you don't find videos such as this to be insightful and stimulating and if you've not already done so I would encourage you to hit that subscribe button I really want you to know that I and dedicated helping people such as yourself learn how to make adjustments from the inside out and so we're going to have more videos that keep coming if you have the need to unpack this with a licensed professional counselor right now people are looking for online counseling it's become very popular we have a link below that will help guide you towards some people that can help you in that regard and if you want to have some online counseling and you feel the need unravel this please not take care of yourself and do so in addition we have links below to my my books my online video workshops and we've met some coffee mugs also we have our video we have our other websites an arson judge surviving narcissism TV and dr. les Carter comm know that I believe that on the inside of you is a competent person waiting to come out if I didn't believe that then I would have no business doing the kind of work that I do but I believe it and I want you to believe it and I want you to build from the inside out the skill set that it's going to take you to a life of goodness steadiness decency and I want you to be able to live consistently in confidence and peace [Music]

Channel: Surviving Narcissism

Views: 209,497

Rating: 4.9499955 out of 5

Keywords: narcissism, narcissistic personality disorder, Dr. Les Carter

Id: 5bY9wS5G3ww

Length: 14min 25sec (865 seconds)

Published: Thu Jul 02 2020