Understanding Narcissism and Narcissistic Traits with Dr. Craig Malkin | Being Well Podcast

hey everyone welcome to being well i'm forrest hansen if you're new to the podcast thanks for joining us today and if you've listened before welcome back it feels like one of the worst things you can call someone these days is a narcissist and while none of us want to be narcissists except maybe for actual narcissists the truth is that narcissistic traits exist in all of us and we can think of these traits the same way we would other traits like extroversion they're like a slider that people have inside of them from feeling very special and unique on the one hand to having no particular sense of their own uniqueness on the other and having some degree of narcissistic traits isn't just normal it's actually psychologically healthy the problems start when people go beyond normal levels and become addicted to or dependent on feeling special in this episode we're focusing on narcissism including identifying the different forms it takes dealing with narcissists and figuring out if there is such a thing the right amount of feeling special to help me do that i'm joined today by dr craig malkin craig is a lecturer in psychology for harvard medical school a licensed psychologist with several decades of clinical experience and the author of rethinking narcissism the secret to recognizing and coping with narcissists craig also has a great youtube channel so if you're watching this on youtube right now you'll probably really enjoy it so craig thanks for doing this today how are you doing i'm terrific thanks for having me yeah so happy to be doing this with you um we talked a little bit before the recording started and i think this one's going to be really great and in the introduction i mentioned that narcissism is a trait and that having some degree of narcissistic traits can actually be psychologically healthy and that sometimes takes people a little bit by surprise and there are a lot of different terms in this whole area we've got narcissistic traits and sort of generally using the word narcissism and then we've got narcissistic personality disorder and i'd like to just start by giving you an opportunity to kind of flesh this out in more detail absolutely you gave a nice overview and intro so thank you for that because i think the easiest way to understand what narcissism is based on all the research is you want to start with the definition of narcissism as a pervasive universal trait uh the drive to feel special exceptional or unique compared to the other eight billion people on the planet and with eight billion people even if you're a star even if you're out there a lot and people know you our time on this planet isn't that long and not to get too depressing about it or sort of flickering lights in the in the universe so already being able to hold on to some sense that that we would matter a lot more is helpful and it turns out that's supported by the research the idea that is at the core of the construct or the concept of narcissism really goes way way back to something the research we call self-enhancement or positive illusions uh it was a it was a revelation to a lot of people when this popular book came out by uh an author named shelly taylor a psychologist and she compiled all this research for the longest time we had this belief that the key to mental health and happiness and being well adjusted was having a realistic view of things and she blew all of that out of the water because she took this vast amount of information from all these studies and she sewed that happy healthy people don't view themselves the world or the future in realistic ways at all they have a slowly slightly overly positive view they have rose-colored glasses on self-world and future this is what she called positive illusions in it and that is really the heart of what healthy narcissism is um it's not self-confidence it is not self-esteem people like to believe that those are one and the same and they aren't they might be gifts of healthy narcissists but it really is a moderate self-enhancement a slight feeling slightly more unique special or exceptional than average so what's the difference between those more healthy narcissistic traits the ones that you outline uh viewing the world through rose-colored glasses maybe viewing yourself a little bit through rose-colored glasses as we all do in in perfectly normal ways and the more disordered forms of narcissism and again you gave this beautiful intro to that because it is really i can tell you've done your reading and your research because the big difference is one of flexibility and rigidity um if you think of feeling special as a kind of habit you know it may even potentially self-soothing that we turn to from time to time like nobody wants to think they don't matter in the grand scheme of things even though that's kind of true that's part of what healthy narcissism is it's kind of playing with the illusion but not getting hung up on it so people who start to tip into extreme narcissism it's like they are addicted to that experience at the expense of love and expensive connection and expressive all other considerations it becomes the one way of feeling good of feeling good about themselves of maintaining any sense of self and that's when it becomes a problem so if you think of healthy narcissism as feeling a little special moderate self-enhancement extreme narcissism that starts to get into disorder is addictive self-enhancement people who are so invested in feeling exceptional in whatever way they do and there's lots of ways to do it that i'm sure we'll get into um that they demonstrate the core of pathological narcissism which i call tripoli exploitation entitlement and empathy impairments it doesn't matter what kind of narcissism if it's disordered it's it's characterized by tripoli yeah so to delve into those a little bit further because i've looked at that framework i think it's a great one exploitation is basically using other people entitlement is the idea that people should bend to the will of the narcissist and then you articulate empathy impairments which basically means that they're not motivated by empathy or they're so so preoccupied with what's going on inside of them that they can't really demonstrate it toward other people and one of the articulations inside of that that i really like is that you've emphasized in in some of your work that some people think that narcissists are incapable of empathy but there is a fair amount of research that suggests that that's generally not really true they're capable of it they're just not motivated by it would you mind talking about that a little bit it really comes from our understanding that's clear from research there's research neurological research doing brain scans looking at what's happening in the brain that is and with in psychopathy it's clear that there's there's all kinds of problems going on in the brain and people with psychopathy might actually be born with less of a capacity for empathy and some other biological substrate or biological mechanisms that non-psychopaths don't have but when it comes to somebody who is narcissistic we don't see we don't see evidence like that and what we know about humans human beings is that in order for us to survive we need people we need to be connected we need to be parts of groups so in terms of our wiring and evolution we need empathy we need to be able to understand others so most of us are most of us are born with that capacity including people who are narcissistic what happens is people who become extremely narcissistic uh it becomes blocked that we also know from the research doesn't doesn't mean zero empathy so if somebody is if even the most extremely narcissistic person if they're motivated enough if it actually is going to be helpful then to to be empathic they can be empathic and they can be genuinely pathopathic what what's clear is if if understanding another person's point of view and their feelings gets in the way of getting ahead getting their needs met feeling special that that's where the the blocks really come out where this person is so invested in having that those they're not just rose-colored glasses it might be just i don't know if we could say bright red that they're blind blinds the needs and feelings of other people uh but that empathy can be activated in all the the most disordered narcissists by switching on the parts of the brain devoted to relationships caring connection communal considerations there's some studies that show if simply using communal language like saying we are and us makes somebody who's narcissistic uh more capable of empathy more focused on relationships so that's some of the evidence that it's not so all or none and for those of us who are helping somebody who wants to change who's narcissistic it's really about tapping back into that and removing those blocks one of the things that came up for me when i was starting to do prep for this conversation is uh this kind of fuzzy border between somebody who has overblown narcissistic tendencies maybe like let's say somebody who's kind of grandiose they're self-centered they maybe they've got a little bit of empathy impairment going on and frankly they're just generally kind of a jerk um versus somebody who has actual narcissism or full-blown mpd and would you mind kind of explaining what the difference is here if somebody is i think what you're describing we we could call high trade narcissism yeah all right so as long as long as we're talking about narcissism the drive to feel special exceptionally unique that's the heart of it you can imagine a spectrum as you were alluding to earlier from zero on one end to ten on the other and at zero this is somebody who fails to self-enhance they have no sense of feeling special exceptional they probably are afraid to that maybe we can get into all of that at 10 that's where people earn the diagnosis narcissistic personality disorder their narcissism is so disordered rigid and flexible they they have that they demonstrate triple e short of that if we're talking about high trait narcissism you won't see so much of that these are people who can be jerks they can be arrogant but they will also have moments where wow that person was you know it was kind of he or she was kind of nice to me just then um they they can slide up and down as you were saying what what character difference between somebody with disordered narcissism and the high trait narcissism is first of all with narcissistic personality disorder it is pervasive it does not come and go it is a pervasive impairment in their ability to maintain relationships work functioning go about their business in the world without the narcissism getting in the way that's a very simple way of thinking about somebody with high trait narcissism uh it may not seem that bad at times what high trade narcissism looks like is say something big happens in this person's life like they lose their job and suddenly where they were arrogant at times before and just kind of a jerk now they're absolutely intolerable absolutely awful the actually interesting story about this one of the developers of our understanding of narcissism was a guy named heinz kohut and heinz kohut introduced us to uh the understanding of vulnerable narcissism he didn't call it that then and hopefully we get into that but this is this is the not loud obnoxious version but one that feels more insecure or seems more insecure he he talked about that he elaborated on the idea of healthy narcissism and it's a good example what happens with high trait narcissism people liked him they thought he was brilliant they loved listening to him a lot of people had wonderful relationships with him and then he got terminally ill and he became apparently a miserable jerk absolutely awful all the time and what happens there is kohut and this is for people with high trait narcissism they face a loss or something shakes their sense of feeling special where their environment usually maintained it and they have to get entitled to kind of refuel acting as if the world should bend to our will kind of turns people and the world into a drug for us that we can take whenever we want so it's a way of siphoning off that feeling especially without having to risk asking for it and being rejected i'm just owed this treatment and this is what happened to heinz kohut it's a fascinating little footnote to the history of the development of the ideas no doubt he had a bit of a narcissistic character and that's why he was so good at understanding it well that's really interesting i didn't i mean i'm generally familiar with kohut's work but i i wasn't familiar with that particular story that really puts kind of an interesting spin on a lot of it there and and you mentioned a second ago this idea of more vulnerable or covert forms of narcissism so we have kind of a stereotypical image in our head of what a narcissist looks like right um but the truth is that narcissism is kind of sneaky and narcissists take a lot of different forms would you mind uh explaining some of those forms and breaking down what they look like in practice absolutely let's go through the the whole range beginning again just reviewing think of narcissism as the drive to feel special exceptionally unique as soon as you hold on to that as an idea then it becomes clear that there are lots of ways to do that and the one the one that everybody knows is the extroverted or grandiose or sometimes called over narcissists they're loud chest thumping braggarts reality tv stars are a great illustration of this brand of narcissism and they feel special by virtue of their looks their money they're striving for over ranking compared to other obvious ranking that is obvious in the world you can see it it's very visible that's the over and that is what i often refer to as the narcissist we all know and loathe that's what most people think of as narcissism the second most commonly discussed these days and misunderstood is covert narcissism and covert narcissism unlike overt narcissism these are people who are introverted it correlates most highly with introversion that's why i prefer to call it introverted narcissism because what people hear the term covert and they think what it means is oh these are the people who are nice when they're out in public with you if you're going on a date or they're nice at the office of them they mistreat you at home if anybody who can be nice and charismatic is likely an overt narcissist and that's not what covert narcissism is covert narcissism is about um feeling special exceptionally unique by virtue of negative qualities often so covert narcissists agree with statements like i'm more temperamentally sensitive than most people and few people understand my problems uh they feel special and unique because their pain is greater than other people's they're uglier than other people they've suffered more they've been passed over more they are a misunderstood genius there's the grandiosity so covert or vulnerable or introverted narcissism and again i prefer introverted these are people who feel grandiose on the inside they still have dreams in fact a recent study showed the difference between overt and covert narcissism they both are grandiose overt narcissists believe they have succeeded in all their grandiose ideas they are winners and covert narcissists feel failed so their grandiosity remains on the inside but outwardly they're insecure they're shy they're socially anxious they're often withdrawn so that is the difference between overt and covert narcissism and we can go into the third but you know i want to give a pause so you can jump in totally um one of the the phrases that rick uses sometimes is negative grandiosity the idea that somebody is unique in their own badness um and i think that it's great that you're you're highlighting that as a really important way that this drive to feel special or entitled or unique or however we want to frame it can show up for people uh because we might when we have a word like covert there's an association where somebody's trying to hide or disguise themselves like you were saying um and there can be an element of that maybe like a shrinking away because i'm just such a flawed person that no one would possibly want to interact with me um that's not the primary presentation of it it's more about that inner feeling of of worthlessness that's exactly right yeah with the one thing that the public discussion gets right about covert narcissism is it it's harder to spot not because not because uh people who are covertly narcissistic or introverted narcissists are hiding it in any active way but because they're so shy and often quiet and shut down you don't get much information in fact one in a release study on dating a speed dating study where they had people ranked are you familiar with this where they have people ranked who are extroverted narcissists and introverted narcissists no i don't think i've heard of this one this sounds really cool yeah it's probably about 10 or 15 years old now maybe 10 years and um whereas daters who were paired with somebody who ranked high and extroverted narcissism were like oh yeah this person is totally narcissistic the the daters who met matched with an introverted narcissist they really couldn't tell much yeah there just wasn't enough information yeah how much of that do you think is about our um our public understanding of narcissism like just because we have this image right that existed out in the culture of what a narcissist looks like and like you were saying it is the grandiose narcissist it's the uh the reality tv show star the politician the the ceo of the company whatever and we don't really have as much of like a popular con conception of introverted narcissism it's maybe becoming more well-known but it's just not really out there in the in the space when people are aware of it do you think that they become better at recognizing that or do you think it's inherently hard to see i think if people are aware of it because you and i are going to talk i think about some tells i i think them as for for narcissism particularly extreme narcissism regardless of type and if people are aware of the kind of patterns that show up i think it would be easier to spot early on this is one of the things i help people with you there are things that you can see in those early interactions even with somebody who's quiet and shy and withdrawn just patterns of thought that come out yeah so you mentioned a third form that narcissism takes it's referred to as communal narcissism um i actually first bumped into it i think from watching your videos and through your work so i would love to talk about it a little bit here because i think that it's a form that narcissism takes that is probably particularly prone to showing up in self-help and personal growthy communities like the ones that i run in so we should probably spend some time on it so again you have to have a little of a sense of being able to standing out being able to stand out from people in some way having something special enough to say that so we can go on youtube or do podcasts or we can put ourselves put ourselves in a position where we're trying to help people right so it's that it's bound to show up in helping communities communal narcissism is people who feel special or exceptional and unique by virtue of their capacity to help to be altruistic to be caring to be giving to be connected to the community to um to be benevolent it really is defined by one item that i often trot out when i'm talking to people and they want to know what communal narcissism is communal narcissists agree with the statement i'm the most helpful person i know now this is that distinction between healthy and unhealthy again some of that is obviously going to fuel people who are giving on a large scale people who are philanthropic people who want to rally community causes and be at the head of them uh where it becomes a problem in somebody is obviously disordered in their communal narcissism is if it's all that matters to them and we see this happen all right this is on the small scale this is the friend who's always involved in some kind of cause for giving and this is the friend who if you say you know what i'm sort of thinking about giving to some other charities this year or can i hear more about this they act like you're the most selfish person on the planet for not rallying to their particular cause or even more common if you don't seek them out and you saw some other friend now when you were having trouble they're going to be upset they're going to feel irritated they're they're going to be spurred feel spurned by and so that is extreme communal narcissism because of course that shouldn't matter if you care about someone so what if they went to somebody else for support uh this distinction i think is really important and i would love your help with unpacking it a little bit to be really clear here having some aspect of these beliefs or maybe aspiring to be the most helpful person you know or the most caring person in your community or the most positive influence on other people whatever can be a perfectly healthy like aspiration you know these are not bad things to want for ourselves or for the world and um i think it's probably pretty normal for people to have an aspect of themselves that wants to receive praise when we do something good right we really did go to do a good deed out in the world and there's part of us that's like well you know it's not about receiving the uh the positive feedback but i wouldn't hate to receive some while we're at it you know that seems perfectly okay to me as well yeah but there's this there's this differentiation right between all of that and it being the primary thing that somebody's trying to get out of it when at the center of someone's character is it's the drives feel special and that's what organizes every part of them and how they relate and who they are that's when it's disordered if we've got a touch of it and we and we rely on it sometimes to kind of get things done or you know relate to people you know that's normal yeah and there we've spent time on the podcast in the past referring to a variety of profoundly exploitative gurus and cult leaders and personal growth personalities that are out there in the world who are difficult to talk about because there might be an aspect of something that they're teaching or something that they're doing that that really does have an element of truth or support or that has really helped people or whatever it might be but you see once you delve you know certainly a foot below the surface if not a mile below the surface that underneath that is all of this bad behavior that's manifesting itself and often the roots of that bad behavior are this this sense of entitlement invulnerability exploitation all the things you named earlier you're touched on something so important too when we were talking about the distinction between healthy and unhealthy narcissistic traits um and i'd like to say a little bit more actually about the measures too because they they're such a clear illustration of what those healthier traits are um but what we know both from working with people who are narcissistic and also measuring the trait and seeing how it operates internally is that healthy and unhealthy narcissism don't rise in perfect step with one another but they're moderately correlated they're somewhat related but somebody can be super high in healthy narcissism and have no unhealthy narcissism and someone can be super high in extreme or unhealthy narcissism and have no healthy narcissism but what very often happens is you get this combination so this is where you see these grand characters who have wonderful ideas and inspirational um precisely why they can become gurus or rally people to their cause or or create a whole movement in psychology like like kohut did right and so they have all those wonderful qualities and alongside that they also have these exploitative entitled empathy impaired behaviors but they but they are not one in the same and we know this for a fact because you can also look at just the history of politics and and leaders like presidents uh psychologist ron deluga and another psychologist scott lelinfeld applied the measure of traits for narcissism to presidents and politicians what they found is most presidents of the united states rank high enough in narcissism to be called narcissists and this this was one of the this is one of the empirical demonstrations which is not a surprise yeah if you feel special enough to lead an entire country you you might have a dose of that um what we hope is they have none of the unhealthy qualities sometimes that's true sometimes that's not yeah one of the uh lines that i heard to to badly paraphrase it to something along the lines of um wanting to hold political office should be a disqualification from holding it because you have to be a little crazy to want to be the president on a certain level i suppose um it's certainly not on uh on my list of of preferred preferred jobs and uh one of the things that you've done here in giving all this information craig is you've already given us some of the stuff to look out for right you've done a lot of identification you've named different traits different ways this can show up and then underlying all of those um different presentations is is that triple e framework that you named early on uh and then the overriding drive to like we keep on saying feel special or unique but particularly on the milder end of the spectrum so we're not talking full-blown pathological polygonal narcissism but some of the ways that it can show up in people that certainly can cause a lot of harm to personal relationships might make the person a complex romantic partner or just kind of a moment when you're in the office with somebody else and you go huh maybe i should sort of watch out for this person in a certain kind of way what are some of the early red flags that you teach people to watch out for one thing to bear in mind we're trying to think about these flags is what drives unhealthy narcissism the heart of it is that narcissists are insecurely attached yeah i want to explain that because not everybody who's an insecure attachment is common unfortunately and narcissism when it's used as a coping strategy either consciously or unconsciously is just one way to cope with attachment and security but that's what leads the way to our being able to to spot problems early on say when you are at that first date and that somebody is of the covert or quiet or introverted narcissistic variety or somebody who's communal and they come in and they you know you're blown away by all the wonderful things that they've done for the community and it may not be apparent that there's some darkness stirring under the surface one of the easiest ways to tell is to look for the flavor of narcissistic coping with attachment and security that comes out in these kinds of situations so one of the most common is what i call playing emotional hot potato well let me back up so attachment insecurity is um briefly a discomfort truly depending on other people putting ourselves in their hands emotional it's an inability to engage in what attachment researcher john bolby called effective dependency so if i'm sad scared lonely blue i can turn to one special person or persons and trust that they'll be there for me push comes to shove that's attachment security people who are extremely narcissistic are insecurely attached what that means is they don't trust themselves in other people's hands they don't trust that kind of mutual vulnerability in in connection so they look for ways consciously and unconsciously to bypass it playing emotional hot potato is one of those ways so playing a mushroom hot potato is if you meet this person early on for a date you're talking about different uh experiences on the job and you're saying to them i have this co-worker they're so hard to get along with but i think i'm planning on doing this and the person you're dating said nah you know i i i wouldn't i wouldn't go that way i think you're going to run into trouble with that let me tell you what i think about it and they immediately sort of shift to all the ways why that's going to go wrong for you this is a situation where somebody is propping up their sense of feeling special by portraying themselves as having the knowledge knowing how to do things uh and diminishing your sense of your own knowledge or wisdom that might have been a more obvious way i described it i could probably come up with subtler ones but the idea here is that somebody's narcissistic doesn't want to experience those feelings if i'm not sure what to do if the person doesn't say oh my gosh i don't know what i would do either that's a caring that's a mutual moment of vulnerability right if instead if instead they shift immediately to sort of this knowing perspective not not a great sign if they can't show any of that because it then that's about bypassing any feeling of vulnerability by saying i don't want to feel like i don't know what i'm doing here here you take it saying and doing things to make you feel like you're the one who doesn't know what's going on that's playing emotional hot potato um a more extreme example i had a client who was dating a guy and she was applying to graduate school and he would look over her shoulder and say are you sure that place is the best fit i mean i can think of places that play more your strength i'm just concerned that you wouldn't be happy in a place like that right it sounds caring it sounds like he's trying to help in some way but he was he didn't know what he was doing for his life he was completely lost he never talked to her about it this made me sit up and take notice a moment like this because like ah you know she was already feeling all kinds of self-doubt now i'm like this is one of those moments where he's passing off that feeling to her and he's the one who knows the right way through this just kind of speaking from the perspective of somebody who might be listening to this right now i can think of plenty moments in my life where that i'm looking back on and going well i didn't really think that this person was uh operating in a way that made a lot of sense for whatever reason and i had some questions about it or some concerns about what they were doing and like oh maybe i i didn't love how they were answering the question on the test or whatever it was what sort of differentiates that from the more problematic forms that you're describing here is it just the level of empathy and consideration and willingness to to drop into my own uh not knowing or insecurity and so on okay all right yes oh my gosh that sounds like such a hard situation with that guy you know i i'm sorry you've been going through that gotcha i i love what you said about this i just had some other concerns about how it might invite reactions that you don't want to face i love how you were thinking about you know talking to the boss first or something like that where you're where you're at least acknowledging there's no right or wrong here um it's an uncomfortable situation i get that um and giving some credence to the fact that person has some wisdom and understanding of their own even if it's a little bit so yeah it's bringing the empathy if if what matters most is me showing that i've got a good idea you've kind of lost sight of the fact that this person is in pain totally and some of them that again is just popping up for me as we're having this conversation um is that there are a lot of people from cultural or social backgrounds that involve a lot of power dynamic particularly between men and women i'm thinking of a friend of mine in particular who came from a background that was what i would describe as like a pretty traditional conservative background in terms of you know men are generally positioned as the knowers all of that and he had some tendencies for a period of time to uh really kind of forward and center his own view particularly when interacting with women um in this sort of way that you're describing but i would not describe him as somebody with particular super high narcissistic tendencies he was just kind of raised in this tradition and over time this actually sort of broke down and it was revealed that he was a very empathic guy and he did some personal development work and it all smoothed down and was good to go and again i'm wondering like are there good ways for people to determine the difference between those sorts of styles of communication versus somebody who actually has like a narcissism issue such a another great example because remember the difference is flexibility the difference has to do with rigidity so your your friend who softened his stance over time what i love about that example is it's like it's a specific area of narcissism that's taught yeah that there's love yeah men have a special knowing and authority that women don't and it was folded into his upbringing and his cultural his his cultural uh understanding and it was part of his connecting to a larger group it wasn't simply for him so he he took it on in part because it was a way of being with all the other people being close to people who had shared similar beliefs this happens all the time yeah great clarification yeah but if he had capacity for empathy and a woman said to him you know i really like you um and i'm so enjoy spending time with you and that's why it's so hard when you talk to me in this way like i don't have ideas of my own i feel like you you are looking down on me and really don't think much of me and you're someone i think a lot of and it's really hard to have somebody i think so much of seem to think so little of me my guess is that might have softened him in the moment for sure absolutely yeah no totally and i i love how you're um you're kind of flipping my example because i i said i think uh actually slightly incorrectly with the benefit of hindsight like this this was not an art this was not done for narcissistic reasons it actually was he was just taught them yeah he was just taught them that the culture was a narcissistic culture in a way where there was an establishment of hierarchy between different people and how certain people's views should be valued more than others and that is inherently a narcissistic viewpoint um so there's a difference between maybe being raised in that tradition versus having those traits and that you're kind of describing here or it's certainly going all the way over to pathological narcissism so i just think that that's like a really good really helpful clarification actually one of the things that i want to spend a little bit of time talking about here is working with people who struggle with these different issues because of course you do that as a clinician and narcissism is sometimes referred to as a treatment resistant condition in that a lot of people think that narcissists are somewhere between very very very difficult to improve and actually can't be improved at all and i'm wondering what your view on this is they well they can be improved and i say that and know that because i work with people with narcissistic personalities sort of helped people repair relationships who have narcissistic personality disorder help people reunite with estranged partners um it takes a lot of work you've got to roll up your sleeves emotionally as a clinician someone who's helping them and they have to as well but it is possible for some and i want to i want to do put a caveat out there because for survivors people have been hurt by somebody who has narcissistic personality disorder people who have been abused even and not all people with narcissistic personality disorder abuse many do not all do many people who are abusive don't have narcissistic personality disorder but enough do that there are people who are abuse survivors who've encountered someone like this in their life and they're very understandably attuned to some kind of implication that there was something that could have been done and it kind of it kind of turned into a kind of implication of self blame that there was hope there and i didn't do something right that's what he's saying and that's not what i'm saying it is particularly in the case of abuse that is 100 on the shoulders of the abuser to change no one else we can relate to people who are abusive and have character or personality disorders and healthier ways for us but it is and i hope people do that too but it's up to them and the key to helping anybody with narcissistic personality disorder begin to change uh is to teach them to relate in securely attached ways it really is that simple the the approach is the idea of the approach is simple the work is hard how do you do that but it that is what helps people with narcissistic personality disorder to change to the extent that you're depending on feeling special addictively you cannot depend on people if you're truly depending on people you're in touch with real needs real feelings bringing them to relationships hearing from others and being able to connect in them that's what attachment security is and we know extremely narcissistic people aren't securely attached for lots of reasons and they will tell us so if you ask somebody who's extremely narcissistic would they prefer some a loving caring partner or a trophy wife or husband they will pick trophy wife or husband they will say that this is about the definition of being insecurely attached right they're looking for somebody who props up their sense of feeling special not somebody who helps them feel close and connected so when i'm helping somebody with narcissistic personality disorder even high in traits i'm trying to create opportunities for them to have embodied emotion with me and even in imagine interactions between them and others and them and maybe even their younger self embodied emotion and connection um and i will give i will give a clear example of that please when i first start working with somebody who comes to me and there's a bias there's a selection bias here right not everybody this is where the treatment is resistant problem comes in if somebody is grandiosely extroverted narcissistic narcissist enough that their world is working fine and supporting them and they've got tons of fans and followers maybe they're a celebrity and it's perfectly intact they're probably not going to show up on my doorstep there's lots of ways that can happen and if that's all they want they're not going to show up they have to at least feel like there's a problem so the people who come to me have some capacity to say i think something's wrong even if it's just i keep blowing out relationships i've had but it can be more extreme i've had people call me up and say i i feel like a monster i feel like i've been a monster all my life and i've had people come to me that way so but they have to say something and then they come in and i start with them along the lines of so tell me what are the what are the patterns that happen concerning you like when does it go wrong they might tell me a story it's like oh it sounds like you had in your with your with your wife she was feeling like you were talking down to her you're being condescending is that right yeah do you agree with that yes i do so you've got a part of you that gets condescending let's start to introduce parts language right you've got a part of you that gets conduct spending yeah i really do um and i can really tear into people i can i can rip them to shreds okay you're not you're not doing that with me right now no i'm not okay so it's a part of you not all of you that's right i'm what i'm doing there is i'm trying to alienate them from the bet from the behavior that we want to change like it's not the core of you this is an adaptation a survival strategy it's changeable and i often will say something like that and then i ask them to do something simple when can you first remember experiencing an interaction where either you were feeling like looking down on someone or they were looking down on you viscerally when can you first viscerally call that inevitably it's something like my my dad used to say to me talk to someone who cares and i like oh my gosh like how old were you then i get an age and you know not to draw to draw it out i'll be brief but i will i want to vividly portray that in fact these are called portrayals in the research uh where were you where was he were you in the kitchen standing sitting i want let's make it as vivid as possible and then and then i will ask them how do you feel towards that little six-year-old you who's who's crying who was crying and upset and dad said talk to someone who cares now i'm i'm starting to evoke empathy i'm starting to evoke attachment security repeat that a thousand times and you have changed yeah yeah yeah well that was a fantastic outline of your working progress process by the way craig i found that totally interesting and we also have a good number of clinicians that listen to the podcast and sometimes we get questions about modalities so how would you describe the modalities that you use in therapy with people if you don't mind just really quickly here i heard at least a little like there was a little allusion to ifs there for a second in terms of identifying parts um i also heard some maybe some cbt sounding things somewhere in there in terms of intervening around different thoughts or beliefs uh how would you describe that sure sure i i'm very i've had a lot of training in different modalities not surprisingly so i integrate whatever is going to be helpful in the moment but my primary approach as a baby clinician that i grew up i grew up with what's called relational psychoanalytic thinking which is best captured by one of my favorite quotes by an author named christopher bolas character is the trace of relationship i love that it captures yeah absolutely who we are is shaped around what we were permitted to experience and be in relationship that's what forms our character that could be changed and part of that is opening up new ways of relating um so relational analytic is instead of freud's idea it's we believe in an unconscious but instead of freud's idea that we're made up of sex and aggression relational and relational analytic thinkers believe the court we are made up of people yeah you know that as part of being in the human race we're motivated to figure out how do i stay connected to even the most unhealthy person in my family and maybe it's my mother or my father so that might mean i just need to leave out parts of myself and feelings states of mind that drew me further away from them or grew criticism and then those become buried in the unconscious this is relational analytic thinking um and i do it experientially that's what you're hearing ifs is experiential what that means is that you're not so much doing a lot of talk talk talk you're trying to help the person have an experience particularly embodied and the approach that i use is something called accelerated experiential dynamics psychotherapy by diana foscia adp but i also have had training in eft another experiential mode and yes a touch of ifs emdr i mean all of these things anything to create an experience to the change that was super interesting uh and i really appreciate the breakdown there and uh one of the things that you mentioned for just a second is how is essentially staying in relationship with people that we find difficult to stay in relationship with i think that the example that you gave was staying in a relationship with a mother or father where there's some content that's built up over time and you see this inside of family structures sometimes with a narcissistically involved parent or a narcissistic child or whatever it might be where you have a real heart connection on at least some level or another with this individual you want to stay in relationship with them but as you were saying it's the responsibility of the person with the problem to go and do something about it at the same time we want to improve our own experience when we are forced to be around that individual whether they're a boss or a parent or a kid or a partner whatever to whatever extent possible so what are some of the things that you help coach people with that can maybe allow them to uh stay in a relationship but a happier healthier kind of way whether it's things to do or not do with this person or just different ways of thinking about it there's um a consistent theme throughout all of this in our conversation of attachment security because it won't surprise you to hear me say i try to help people speak in a way that helps them with their own difficulties with detachment security and to overcome their own barriers and their own blocks because that is the best way to invite somebody into a healthier interaction if they're capable and it also dovetails with some research on what kind of helps people who are narcissistic come out of a more narcissistic mode of operation which is called communal activation that's the area of research i i mentioned it earlier but it's basically um using communal language like we are and us lighting up the parts of the brain of somebody who's extremely narcissistic that might be blocked or muted that are devoted to attachment considerations needing each other mattering being valued just because i i care about you and you matter to me those are all attachment considerations and those are the things that get blocked um what i usually recommend and another caveat this is not for people in abusive relationships um i like to assess whether or not there's abuse and then really again it's on the abuser to change it's on those of us being abused to seek help and support either protecting ourselves in the relationship and or leaving it that's it um but if you're not being abused you can try what i call empathy prompts that are drawn from this communal research and also understanding of attachment and an empathy prompt contains two parts the first part is a statement of vulnerable feeling uh sad scared lonely blue these are these are attachment feelings feelings of insecurity or fear um as opposed to the way we usually protect ourselves when we're in a vulnerable state it's either we withdraw we shut down we pull away or we get angry and attack even those who aren't narcissistic will do that because anger is a great way to protect ourselves um so but neither of those actually offer a chance of repair uh in an interaction with someone when we're feeling disconnected or disappointed in an empathy prompt you go to the vulnerable feeling and you highlight the importance of the relationship this is what draws on communal activation right so i gave an example of it earlier without naming it mom you matter so much to me you're one of the most important people in my life which is why it's so devastating when i hear criticism from you i feel like a person i hold in such high esteem holds me and none i feel like nothing in the eyes of my mother that's an empathy prompt if somebody's capable of experiencing empathy for someone like that they melt when they hear a statement like that precisely because it reminds them of what narcissists need to know which is that it's not about their performance how smart they are how what a brilliant amazing parent they are uh it's about uh how special we are to each other that in other words it's replacing special for like special for the world special for work special for my friends special four with special two which is an attachment consideration and the nice thing about empathy prompts is there is a possibility that you won't be received if somebody even if somebody isn't abusive if they are so defended they might get angry they might shut they might shut down they might attack and say i'm the mother might say why are you always criticizing me i can't do anything right right a projection right this is where they're the ones who are criticizing and now they're accusing you of criticizing you might get something like that but stay with empathy prompts because they're good for you i mean you're going to be vulnerable in a negative interaction anyway but what the empathy prompts do is they put you in touch with your deeper needs and feelings and if the other person can't receive it that's a tragedy it's a tragedy for the relationship it's extremely painful for us when we have to face that but our practice of being able to know really what it is that's missing what it is that's affecting us and be in touch with that helps us change and heal regardless of what the other person does just for my own curiosity here uh you're probably more familiar with this than i am but in behaviorism there's this thing that's sometimes known as an extinction burst which is when um a behavior is being forced to change in some way or begins to change and um in response to the attempts to change that behavior there's this burst of even worse behavior essentially like an example of this is a dog learns that it pushes a button to get a stake you take the steak away from the dog the dog starts pushing the button over and over again they start barking at you maybe they try to bite you because they don't get their steak when you push the button whatever it is so that's an extinction burst and i'm wondering when you're doing either work in general with somebody with narcissistic tendencies or particularly if somebody finds themselves in interaction with say a relationship partner and they start doing this sort of empathy prompting or empathy pulling or trying to access those more vulnerable layers do you sometimes see people almost exhibit a kind of extinction burst where their their behavior becomes more defended or more intense absolutely absolutely that's kind of funny again extinction burst is a great way to describe it we can also think of it in terms of protective or survival strategy defenses what you're doing in that moment is you're inviting that person to be vulnerable to feel feelings that they're their uncomfortable feeling to share feelings that they're not comfortable sharing and that's going to create anxiety and whenever somebody's anxiety goes up their defenses go up and particularly if you're opening up a kind of interaction as i often do with people i get i will get reactions like that and and if you're opening up a reaction uh an experience like that with somebody you're going to raise anxiety and it's going to kick in those old defenses in clinicians us for us as clinicians that's an opportunity right that's for where i can say something like oh what just happened there what was that right i'm not going to get into the content at all like your whole face changed did you what what are you feeling in your body right i want to i want to locate the anxiety so so that they can say like they're buzzing or whatever and often people can if they're coming to this work they can at least identify that something happened physically um if you're an interact you know what i'm helping people have to interact with someone like that i don't put any i'm not gonna teach someone to be a therapist i i give them i give them that i give them the perspective is they may or may not be able to receive it in fact even if it's working they may not receive it at the time but it's good for you and even if you decide to end this relationship it's still good for you sometimes even if you get the wrong response it doesn't mean you're doing it wrong yeah no i think that's a really really important reminder at the end there just because you get the wrong response doesn't mean that you're doing something wrong so for for couples or partnerships that i'm sure that you've worked with um where there was a partner who had some narcissistic tendencies but there was also a a feeling of mobility they weren't totally entrenched inside of those tendencies they weren't being abusive but you know they had an issue here what do you think really differentiated the couples that got better from those that didn't they have a capacity to repair inevitably i have this saying that we can't get close enough to touch without stepping on each other's toes that can happen intentionally can happen unintentionally but it's bound to happen it doesn't matter that you stepped on someone's toes i mean it matters because it hurts but that's not the issue the issue is what comes next it's always what comes next you say oh that must have hurt i'm so sorry or do you just act like what are you doing you're dancing wrong like why are you why are you so close right it's it's what matters is what happens next and it's it's in cup and repair is an important part of attachment security being able to acknowledge pain nothing is more powerful and healing to a partner than seeing their partner's pain register in their eyes like more than any words so if i can help people do that it's not about words i give an example of the repair that actually helps in this relationship in rethinking narcissism with my own kids where we have these moments where you just completely up right where i'm outside was working on a fountain and the kids have been messing around and they and they're four years three years old and they've stuck stones in it and and now it's dead i mean it that destroyed it actually but i was out there trying to fix it and i'm getting angrier and angrier yeah and then my then then my girls come home and they come out onto the deck where i'm where i'm trying to fix it and i'm so wrapped up in it i don't even say hello that was an awful moment for me actually like as oh my god what are you doing this is like this fountain is so unimportant and i kind of came to my senses and i went inside and i did a redo with them where i said like well i screwed that up but it's not too late i went inside and said girls i didn't say hello hi anya hi devin how are you i made a big show of it now they're not going to remember i'm especially that age that in the way dad screwed up or like the hurt that that caused what matters is what i did next and in an adult level when you're in a relationship with someone for you to be able to share in from a vulnerable way that i teach in empathy prompts and have it received that's the possibility of repair well i love that and we also i love that you mentioned that because we talk about that on the podcast all the time where you know nobody's perfect everybody makes mistakes everybody screws up in relationship the most important thing is can you repair with your partner and if somebody's not willing to repair a lack of repair in the relationship in general that's a major leak red flag where it's just very very difficult to get to a place where you're going to feel fulfilled and seen inside of that relationship because you can't have that moment at the end where you get back to empathic relating and craig it was awesome to do this with you today i feel like we could do a whole other one on all other forms and presentations and functions here um but i think that this was a fantastic overview of this topic and i just really appreciate you taking the time thank you again for having me i've really enjoyed it too i really enjoyed today's conversation with craig malkin where we talked about narcissism we covered a variety of topics including the difference between narcissistic traits and more problematic or even pathological forms of narcissism the different ways that narcissism can show up in people and also craig outlines some of the ways that he works with people who are dealing with their own problematic narcissistic tendencies we started by talking about what narcissistic traits are and this sometimes takes people by surprise but the truth is that most of us have narcissistic traits of one kind or another and it's actually healthy for people to have some degree of narcissistic traits as craig said during the beginning of the conversation it's actually healthy for us to view ourselves and the world around us through rose-colored glasses at least to an extent the problems emerge when people become addicted to or depending on their unique feelings of specialness and then fall into this framework that craig refers to as triple e and the three e's are exploitation entitlement and empathy impairments narcissists use others for their own ends they believe that other people should bend to their will that's entitlement and then they have empathy impairments they're not motivated by empathy or they're so preoccupied with and attached to and dependent on the constant fulfillment of their own needs that they can't really demonstrate it very effectively toward other people and it's helpful to think of narcissism as a distribution you've got people on the one hand who have no sense of their own specialness and that has its own problems and then you've got people on the other hand who are on the total far end of malignant narcissism they are intractable in their narcissistic beliefs and behaviors and these people are very very very hard to treat and there are important differences between people who are overly entitled or are too puffed up on themselves or whatever else and people who have full-on narcissistic personality disorder npd is a pervasive pattern of behavior that is present all over somebody's life if somebody is just really into their appearance or something they have maybe one particular area of their life where these tendencies show up that doesn't mean that they have narcissistic personality disorder it has to be pervasive and generally speaking it's really helpful to keep in mind that npd is normally thought of as a defense mechanism against a deep reservoir of shame and feelings of worthlessness that a person has this means that full on narcissism is essentially overcompensation they're so insecurely attached they're so uncertain that they can be loved just for who they are they don't know if other people will actually show up for them inside of a relationship they aren't sure that there is anything truly stable inside of themselves and because of this they have to constantly fill themselves up with reassurance and if those sources of reassurance disappear for even a moment they can fall into some really problematic behaviors we then talked for a while about the different forms that narcissism takes people are generally familiar with what are known as overt or grandiose narcissists this is the uh conventional patrick bateman version of a narcissist right they present as having high self-esteem and a sense of personal superiority they're overconfident they're willing to exploit other people for their own gain and they're very hostile and aggressive when they're challenged by other people then there's this other form of narcissism known as covert narcissism that we spent a little bit of time talking about and this is generally more associated with introversion and it often occurs when people feel that they are unique or special in the bad things that have happened to them they are extremely woe is me they think that nobody could ever understand their own suffering maybe they feel like they are truly special and unique but they have been really stymied in their ability to give that specialness and uniqueness to the world you know there are a lot of different forms that this one can take but it's often a bit more challenging to recognize particularly right off the bat in something like a dating environment we have a really strong cultural conception of what grandiose narcissism looks like but we don't really have one as much for covert narcissism and that's why education around it is so important then there's this third form of narcissism that if i had to bet i would say has probably been on the rise since the social media era began and it's known as communal narcissism and these are individuals that promote themselves through a supposed commitment to communal goals they regard themselves as especially nurturing and understanding and empathic and they make it very clear to other people often that your concerns and problems are really shallow while mine are deeply meaningful i am supporting all of these important causes while you are just wrapped up in your own problems and they might strongly agree to statements like i am the most helpful person i know i am a very positive influence on others i'll make the world a much better place i am uniquely trustworthy and to be clear here because this can get a little confusing having some aspect of these beliefs or at least aspiring to some of them might be good or useful or even accurate i mean in any given room somebody is actually going to be the most caring person in that room and it can be okay to acknowledge that if it's really true and we also alongside that might have aspects of ourselves that want to receive praise when we do something good but for the communal narcissist this personal aggrandizement is the primary motivation they are involved with the cause so people compliment them not because they actually deeply care about what's going on another way to put it maybe is that they're mostly concerned with appearing a certain kind of way rather than actually being that way and we've talked pretty often about the problems that can emerge inside of personal growth or mental health communities around these various exploitative gurus who show up every once in a while and what you see over and over again is this difficulty where sure there might be some element of this person's teaching that is really actually valuable and and people do really get a lot out of it but at the same time if you drill just a little bit beneath the surface you see all of these problems and particularly that triple e framework that craig laid out craig then talked about some of the early warning signs that people can look for if they're concerned that somebody they're interacting with might have some of these problematic narcissistic tendencies and one that he named in particular is this idea of emotional hot potato where narcissists in general are extremely insecurely attached and they're very uncomfortable with emotional vulnerability they're also really uncomfortable with appearing like they don't know so you might see examples of somebody who is constantly correcting you or who always believes that only they know the right way to do things and when you talk about the way that you figured out to do something well they always poke 10 000 holes in it but maybe more so than any one red flag what to look for here is an overall pattern a unwillingness to be emotionally vulnerable a desire to control and influence other people a persistent need for [Music] soothing and emotional validation from others and alongside that really a general discomfort when they aren't the center of attention and this can also be true for covert narcissists because what gets centered is their own problems their own badness their own whatever we then spend some time at the end talking about how craig works with people who have narcissistic tendencies and maybe alongside that ways where in your own life if you feel like you're dealing with somebody who has these tendencies you could move into forms of interacting that might support them and becoming a little bit different over time now it's really important to name here that there are lots of abusive relationships that include somebody who has narcissistic tendencies but not all relationships with somebody who has narcissistic tendencies include abuse and we focus during this conversation mostly on relationships where there is not abuse happening craig really focused on the relational aspects of an interaction because narcissists are inherently insecurely attached doing things to pull them into a more secure form of relating can help fight some of those narcissistic tendencies and craig did a lot of modeling during the conversation that i found just mega interesting when he was doing it about how we can talk in interaction with a narcissist in order to slowly pull them into a more relational framework where things become more centered on empathy and appreciation and mutual growth and understanding as opposed to constantly armoring against our own anxieties i hope you enjoyed today's conversation if you were interested in these topics you'll probably love craig's youtube i've included a link to it in the description of today's podcast and if you're watching this on youtube right now you can find it really quickly just by searching for his name i bumped into it when i was doing some research on narcissism for a different episode and i just thought it was fantastic stuff craig is also the author of rethinking narcissism the secret to recognizing and coping with narcissists it is a great book i've included a link to that as well if you've been enjoying the podcast for a while we'd appreciate it if you would take a moment to subscribe to it wherever you're listening to it now on maybe even leave a rating and a positive review if you can do that and hey tell a friend about it it's one of the best ways we have to reach new people and if you'd like to support us in other ways you can find us on patreon it's patreon.com being well podcast and for the cost of just a cup of coffee or two a month you can support the show and you'll receive a bunch of bonuses in return until next time thanks for listening and i'll talk to you soon

Channel: Forrest Hanson

Views: 28,349

Keywords: Mental Health, Personal Growth, Self-Help, Psychology, Forrest, Forrest Hanson, Being Well, Being Well Podcast, Rick Hanson, Resilient, Understanding Narcissism and Narcissistic Traits, Craig Malkin, narcissism, NPD, narcissistic personality disorder, narcissist, narcissistic traits, narcissistic, covert narcissism, introverted narcissism, emotional hot potato, Triple E, EEE, exploitation, empathy impairment, entitlement, extinction burst, emotional power dynamics, communal narcissism

Id: flc3WZH0FyA

Length: 70min 46sec (4246 seconds)

Published: Mon Sep 05 2022