What Happens When A Narcissist Goes To Therapy?

so maybe you're here because you have somebody in your life who you believe might be a narcissist and you really would like them to get help you really would like them to change they're likely causing you a lot of pain their actions don't really make sense and you know they're not totally happy so it would make sense for them to go to therapy to change so today I want to give you a therapist's point of view about what happens when a narcissist actually does get to therapy now I'll primarily be speaking from my 20 years of experience as a therapist and the people I worked with and the experiences I had but I also spent a fair amount of time in the supervision groups we call them and that's where you meet with other therapists to talk about your more challenging cases and you get feedback it's done on a confidential basis but it can be very helpful so you can share your experience but then I also learn from a lot of other therapists plus I also LED some some supervision groups and then also overall training and research and expanding my knowledge base so that's the background from which I'm speaking so in my two decades of experience when somebody came to therapy with me there were about three different ways it would go and I'm gonna share that with you and I also want to say here that I am talking about somebody who qualifies for narcissistic personality disorder and narcissistic personality disorder does exist on a spectrum so there are people who are really pretty extreme with the narcissistic traits and then those that aren't as extreme but there are some or underlying principles of how somebody with narcissistic personality disorder navigates the world that impacts therapy so let's start there pretty much anywhere on the Spectrum as long as they do qualify for the narcissistic personality disorder they have these traits one they cannot take responsibility for the their actions they almost can't now they don't and they won't but it's not even clear that they could and in one of my short videos I do talk about how the underlying kind of inside of somebody with narcissistic personality disorder is somebody whose ego is actually not developed enough to take responsibility for the mistakes that all of us humans have so while they often appear as if they have these overblown egos they actually don't have the ego strength to acknowledge what they're doing wrong number two which goes with number one they blame all of their problems and other people's problems on the other person number three they manipulate other people in general kind of a core element of someone with narcissistic personality disorder is that they really kind of see other people as tools as tools to accomplish what they need they don't actually see them as full human beings so they are very skilled at navigating the world through manipulation and number four very tied to the manipulation is that they can lie as if yeah no problem like you're looking at them and you like know they're lying if they're so convinced and they're so convincing you're like wow am I nuts here but in any case they lie completely straight faced without all of the kind of facial expressions that the rest of us might make if we do lie right most of us show it in one way or another and often narcissists can be Masters at it so if those are four traits that underlie somebody who qualifies for this personality disorder again no matter where they are on the Spectrum whether they are on the extreme end or on the least extreme end of that Spectrum those four things underlie how they approach the world so there's no way therapy can work right because if you go to therapy you have to be willing to look at okay I can't change the other person what do I need to do to change you need to be able to somewhat trust the therapist to guide you right doesn't mean you always do which I understand as a different topic and also sometimes you're with a therapist not right for you you may not trust them so I'm not saying that that alone and also I've noticed with my narcissistic videos is that if I give a list of treats if people have one of them they're like oh maybe I'm narcissistic no no it's a pervasive personality disorder it's a pervasive pattern of behavior in many many situations that qualify somebody for a personality disorder so if you do one of these things I'm talking about no does not mean you're a narcissist okay just had to get that out of there because I get a lot of comments on that but pretty much for therapy to work you have to be willing to take responsibility for your own behavior actions even thoughts right and be willing to do something about it and again this doesn't mean that you don't complain about other people everybody does in therapy or a lot of people and can take a while to be able to get to the point where you're like okay yes I'll take responsibility for this and I'll do something about it but that doesn't happen with somebody who fully qualifies for narcissistic personality disorder and I'm going to give a little caveat on that a little bit later because I also am getting comments from people who say I think I have NPD and I do want to change I'm going to go back to that one hey so I'm in the editing phase of this video and I realized I had to jump back in here to re-explain something because I'm talking about taking responsibility in therapy and given some of the other comments I've had on my videos about narcissism I really want to clarify something so if you're in a relationship with somebody with narcissistic personality disorder and you go to therapy my guess is it will be a fairly extended period of time where you will be talking about the narcissist's behavior and you will be blaming your problems on this person because to be honest this person has caused a lot of problems for you so I just need to clarify a little bit what that's like from the therapist's point of view because when my clients would come in and talk about somebody in their life generally usually they did not have the person diagnosed but they would be very confused they would be very upset at the person's Behavior they would look for my validation that yeah this behavior is not okay which it wasn't right but then as soon as I validated that they usually would backtrack and then question themselves and maybe I'm being too harsh maybe I did do something wrong right there was a little bit of a self-doubt that usually came in so the quality as a therapist the discussion is totally different than it is with somebody with narcissistic personality disorder who is blaming people except a little bit hard to explain but I did want to make that clear and the other thing I want to make clear when I talk about taking responsibility in no way am I saying you are responsible for what the narcissist did you are not responsible for the problems in the relationship you did not cause this Behavior so the responsibility for you is simply to make your life better by hopefully eventually being able to refocus on what do you need to do to improve your life with or without this person so to help you both validate what you've been through validate how horrible it was validate that yeah that behavior is not okay but you can't change it and therefore what do you want to do so I really just needed to come in here because that term responsibility has created a lot of discussion and I just want to make sure that's clear if that's not clear let me know in the comments I do read them and often respond like this okay I'm gonna head back to that video so narcissists also know how to manipulate therapists and therapists are not mind readers they're really not so they can be manipulated for a while if somebody is very good at what they do very convincing it can take a while to figure out that you're working with somebody who has NPD and if the person is sorting the truth and you are seeing them alone you have no way to check it right and if they're with a spouse or partner and they're lying and distorting the truth you generally figure it out a little bit quicker it can still take a while so those underlying traits really mean it's unlikely that the narcissist is going to take enough responsibility and take action and change and I do want to come back and do a video specifically on couples therapy when one person has NPD so if you're interested in that leave me a comment because that's helpful for me to know and if you have a specific question about that leave it for me so I know what it is I'm going to talk about it a little bit now because most of the people with narcissistic personality disorder who came into my practice were part of a couple ship now pretty much the only other people with NPD that I saw would be people who were court ordered or hmm no mainly court ordered so court ordered or some kind of complete ultimatum from somebody they were reliant on or a spouse or partner yep I think that encompasses the whole thing in terms of when I had a private practice so so the person comes into therapy because they have to or they think they have to right and there's an ultimatum but they'll be very good at convincing the therapist that this other person is really unfair judges them harshly or they might start with attack of yep that person's unfair judging them harshly and has their own problems but yes they do want to change they might start there because that's a great thing to say to a therapist and they know it also the thing about empathy with narcissists that I've mentioned in a couple of other videos but is important because people don't necessarily really understand this piece is that somebody with narcissistic personality disorder has cognitively the ability to understand empathy so cognitively they know what other people feel they just don't feel it so they don't have the full spectrum of empathy but they have a working knowledge of what other people feel in different situations they just don't care too much but having that working knowledge again means they can use it to accomplish their ends so generally what is it they want to accomplish when they come to therapy with an ultimatum they want to meet the requirement that the other person is setting they want to convince the therapist that they're a wonderful person which is pretty much what they want to do through their whole lives they want other people's admiration and positive feedback that's what they're looking for that's what they live off of and they will look for that from the therapist and then the other thing they want is they probably want therapy to end pretty quickly so those will be their objectives and their behavior in the therapy room will reflect that now as therapists we are taught to empathize really and to put ourselves in other people's shoes plus most people who go into being therapists are naturally empathetic so it's very normal for us to have a new client and we we're with them right so yeah you don't always pick up immediately whether the person's there alone or in a couple ship that the person has narcissistic personality disorder and sometimes you listen to what the person has to say you let them talk they give you history that might take a couple of sessions and then when you begin to work and to do interventions recall them which are like suggesting a different way to see something or suggesting they try a different Behavior or questioning something that didn't quite make sense and then as soon as that starts to happen in general that's when you begin to see the narcissistic personality disorder shine through because if you ever suggest that somebody with NPD is doing something wrong they will attack so therapy was somebody with NPD would generally go for say three to five sessions and I tended to be a therapist who really got pretty quickly to the point that I was looking to help the person change what they could change I was not great at listening to people for a long time if they were complaining about somebody else and didn't want to do anything differently themselves and didn't want to accept the other person's Behavior so I would often say Well they're not in the room I can't help them and I can't help them change and they don't seem to want to change what about you so with most people over time that works with somebody with NPD the second you go there you don't know what you're dealing with you don't know how horrible these other people are in their lives they really they should be arrested they should be put in jail they should be analyzed themselves they're the ones who should be in therapy whatever it is you will get pushed back you will get aggressive pushback if you are too pointed about it so the way therapy would end is sometimes the narcissist would come in and be like you know what this was super super helpful thank you so much I've really learned a lot and I really think I can Implement all of your suggestions without a problem thank you so much and oh by the way will you sign the letter for court or my spouse or whoever I'm doing this for that's why one option second option is that they get really PO'd at you and question all your credentials and tell you you must have lied on your resume to get into the schools you went to or put the schools you went to down or whatever it will do they will question the therapist's qualifications basically tell them they're lousy right and then quit and then convince everybody at home or whoever was requiring them to be there that that therapist was lousy and then they'll go look for another one if it's for court and then option number three if the person was there with a spouse they might be like you know what you've really helped me and I have begun to implement all these changes and my partner really hasn't so I really think my partner needs to spend more time with you and I think you guys should work one-on-one together and I'll see you later so yeah those were pretty much the three ways that therapy with somebody with NPD would progress or not progress you could say and that's how it would end let me know if you have a different experience let me know know if you were in there be with somebody with NPD either you were the therapist or you were the partner if you saw a different result let me know and I do want to talk about briefly for those people who say they feel they have NPD and they do want to change and a number of people have reached out to me on this and I do want to do something more extensive on it but generally if somebody is saying I think I have NPD and I want to change my guess is they don't fully qualify it probably is because they have a real trauma background that has caused a cut off in their ability to empathize with others and it has caused a real sense of like I have to do only for me to survive but the difference there is that the person generally is not manipulating others for almost sometimes gain that doesn't totally make sense I don't know if that made sense to you but narcissists might manipulate people to just for fun just to watch just to see what happens just entertaining so my guess is that most of those people who are saying I'd like to change your aren't that kind of full-blown person with NPD in which case finding somebody who works with complex trauma who can understand that extensive complex trauma can cause us to shut down our feelings our empathy our care because of the amount of pain we have and if that's the case then yes I think therapy can help but for those of you who are listening to this for somebody else these issues are so complicated and everybody online wants like one minute give me the answer here I want to give you the information in a comprehensive enough way that you can navigate your life right it's not like boom do this boom do that it's like okay these are the things to consider so if you're here because you have somebody in your life with NPD and you want them to go to therapy I think you can trust the first part of this video that it is unlikely to go well now I think many of you know I don't do therapy anymore I do not do one-on-one therapy I'm doing this online Channel try to bring information around the world and by the way if you support what I'm doing here please do subscribe to my channel give the video a like it's a big help very motivating I do appreciate it so I don't do therapy directly I do have two programs and each one could be helpful for the person who is in the relationship with NPD and they're both on my website I'm just going to mention right here the one on boundaries because really learning about boundaries is learning about who you are it's not just like following a set of rules it's doing some deep work on what are your values what are your goals in life what do you want because a lot of times the people who get into a relationship with somebody with NPD or if you grew up with somebody with NPD you were not allowed to explore what you really want it was not validated you didn't learn to validate it for yourself that all has to happen within the context of boundaries so yes it's about you knowing yourself you validating your own emotions and you looking at what you can and can't change and lots of other things so it's just it's a program that goes way deeper on the topic of boundaries than pretty much anything else I've seen online so check it out I'll put the link here and there's also a link underneath let me know what you think let me know if you want me to cover other topics and I look forward to seeing you next week foreign

Channel: Barbara Heffernan

Views: 31,212

Keywords: barbara heffernan, What Happens When A Narcissist Goes To Therapy, Do Narcissists Go To Therapy, narcissist dynamics, toxic relationships, healing from narcissism, empath traits, narcissistic behavior, codependency, setting boundaries, healthy relationships, emotional healing, narcissistic abuse recovery, self-care, ending toxic patterns, creating boundaries with narcissists

Id: E0yLiVJg3ag

Length: 17min 59sec (1079 seconds)

Published: Tue Aug 29 2023