Why Narcissists Can't Admit Being Wrong, featuring Dr. Guy Winch

[Music] hey team healthy I'm so pleased to be with you once again here today and we have a special guest so you may be very familiar with him already Dr Guy winch he's in New York City and uh has has a very strong presence in uh in the the public media and the public eye now you have a practice guy first of all welcome and thanks for being a part of our surviving narcissism podcast here thank you for having me it's my pleasure to be with you okay and uh you have uh roots in both the UK and in New York City and you have a private practice of counseling right there in New York am I right in saying that yes I have a a practice that it's a small practice given the other things that I do but it yes I do have a private practice in New York City okay and then on the side uh then you written books uh the squeaky wheel emotional first aid I love those titles and and then you've given multiple TED talks and those have been received by literally millions of people that's why I'm I suspect that quite a number of people in our audience already know who you are you have a podcast deer therapist uh it's sounds wonderful and then uh you you've actually been a part of some advisory councils um with respect to how to make mental health more accessible to the public and all like that multiple articles on psychology today and other periodicals and of course you have guy win.com so I mean you're out there and you do quite a bit in in your spare time I'm sure exactly all of my spare time yeah well let's do this um I'm always interested in knowing how how did you get into this field field of psychology and the therapy and then all of the speaking and writing that goes along with it what's what's the backstory with that well the backstory was psychology I just was one of those people I consider myself fortunate because I always knew what I wanted to do I didn't have to go to college or figure out if I wanted to and what I do afterwards I always was interested in the human mind so it was psychology for me and I started out um I got my PhD at New York University here in New York and then I did a post and some more training and then I started out just as a regular therapist and um I at some point started uh had an idea for a book so I kind of pitched it to an agent of the party literally and uh just like a Bare Bones idea and she said oh I can sell that why don't you write a proposal and then I did and then I wrote another book and then I had an opportunity to do a TED Talk and just one thing rolled into the other none of it was like this is my plan yeah world domination it's just kind of you know you know evolve organically unfolded and you also have a twin brother too that's in Psychology right I do I do my first Ted Talk uh why we need to practice emotional first aid is about our relationship as Twins and and and because you know the the premise there is that our physical health and our emotional health are twins but we don't treat them like twins and you know as a twin I'm offended and yeah well and I I read that as part in one of your articles and it's just like yeah that's such a great Insight W and wisdom that goes with that um today I'm going to want to talk with you about something that I know you've written on and you know that we're constantly looking into our Channel we're constantly looking into why narcissists are the way they are and it strikes me that um one one of the things you've mentioned is there are simply some people who cannot and will not admit they're wrong you remember the the Happy Days uh with the the fs and all those guys the TV show I yeah yes okay and then Fonzi was the uh was the tough guy and he at some point he had to actually say I was wrong and they have him just stammering I was wrong and he couldn't get it out uh it's it's a it's a big joke and all but there literally are some people who are like that they cannot say I was wrong I blew it I made a mistake would you forgive me uh now let's let's just kind of start with a very basic question and that is why is it even necessary for anybody to admit when they're wrong well first of all um it's necessary for two reasons it's necessary for the other person who they might have wronged or offended or might have had some kind of consequences as a result of them being wrong it's important to validate especially when the evidence is quite star if they were wrong um that you know yes I take responsibility for my actions we we're taught as kids you know like you see plenty of four and 5-year-olds get marched into a room look somebody and go like I'm sorry I didn't did something wrong in other words we teach kids that adult responsibility or just basic human responsibility is to admit when you're wrong it has a value for the person who's admitting they're wrong because by knowing what your mistakes are by taking ownership of them you have the chance to avoid them going forward and perhaps improve if you can't admit you're wrong you also can't admit to yourself that you're wrong and therefore you can't fix mistakes and and avoid them in the future and there are some individuals uh who will say uh doc you got it all wrong there wrong there there's no way that I'm going to just put myself out there and let people take pot shots at me so there there's some individuals that'll take up very basic thought like what you just said and flip it and say no that that won't work because uh and there's a cynicism that seems to go along with that the implication being um you don't seem to understand people the way I understand people and you you can't put yourself out in a vulnerable space like that I mean what would you say to that really you can't even do that with your spouse you can't even do that with your best friend you can't even do that with somebody you really trust and are close with who if you have a relationship you're both bound to be making mistakes throughout it as it not feel good when somebody else takes ownership of theirs in other words that idea of if we admit we're wrong we are suddenly vulnerable to the slings and arrows of everyone around us is quite misound you know people usually respond to somebody saying I'm sorry with like well thank you for saying that it's usually a way to repair a relationship and it actually creates a bridge uh from one person's heart to another oh you did something wrong I've done something wrong too we have something in common it's like no I can't do that now I'm obviously I know this for a fact but a person doesn't turned 21 and now I'm an adult and um I think from this point point forward I'm not going to admit being wrong this this is something that that's been on the inside of them for a long time it's U it's not a realization that they just uh snapped upon and just made it their Mantra but it's been building for quite some time what tends to be kind of a a broad if you will history of uh in in the making of This inability to be vulnerable I mean how far back are we talking about and what factors tend to be in place you could probably track it back all the way in other words the parents of someone like that or the older siblings will say they were always extremely stubborn they were always somebody who blamed everyone and everything around them for their mistakes rather than take ownership they were much more likely to go no it's your fault or you know and be oppositional or you know like the signs of that are there from the beginning um in usually one form or another and if you know someone like that and you've known them their entire lives truly with childhood then you you saw Sparks of it early on you know uh one of the things I talk about relative to narcissism is narcissists tend to think competitively one up one down and if I were to say to you hey guy um I blew it I did something wrong I'm making the assumption that you would be a healthy person and I would be a healthy person and I don't think either one of of us would think oh this gives me an advantage or now that I know something about you I can use that against you but apparently that's what's going on in some of these individuals um talk about the competitive nature uh that seems to be in play the two things uh the two implications of what you just said one is the competitive nature and the other is paranoia because the idea of if you just admit being wrong about something that you were wrong about and that that will present a liability that people an opening for people to attack you is slightly paranoid again if you're admitting you're wrong to someone who's close to someone who matters to you or if you're admitting you're wrong because it was so obvious and blatant that that's the expectation of everyone around you people would actually put the matter to rest once you do that the idea that then they will pile on because now you look weak is a distortion on that person's in that person's thinking because in fact it requires emotional strength to admit that you're wrong rather than weakness it's a sign of strength the weakness is the person who can't admit they're wrong because they cannot tolerate it and so many of these individuals uh wouldn't couldn't see that to save their life could they well when somebody has they wouldn't own it they wouldn't admit it because the the the structure of somebody who's like that internally this the defensive coping structure of somebody who's like that is such that the threat of admitting that they're wrong is to their ego yeah they might project that externally and say no the threat is that I will then be attacked but the threat is their own self-esteem is too brittle yeah to sustain that quote unquote wound because it's unpleasant to admit you're wrong if it weren't everyone would be doing it it's actually unpleasant it's you know it's a big boy thing to do and so if you can't do it literally constitutionally because you're too fragile to take on that that admission because it will it means you're a terrible person or something then it's a sign of how fragile you actually are and the people who can admit their wrong are much stronger in that sense because they can absorb that it doesn't shatter the their self-esteem it doesn't shatter their perception it doesn't in their eyes make them vulnerable to the whole world now it makes them more of a standup person it makes them more of a humanist there there are people that um listening to your words you just use the word for example fragile and there might be someone that uh that will take that as a judgmental word and uh obviously I don't think that you were being judgmental whatsoever it's just a description you know each one of us has a certain amount of shakiness on the inside or uncertainty or you know Frailty but when when the narcissist in particular hears a word like fragile uh they're going to be thinking and going back to your word paranoia you're trying to do me in aren't you and they they hear judgment where it's not necessarily there which then tells me they they had to learn to think that way at some place in their life the what is fragile is their defenses their defense mechanisms or their ego rather because if their ego is fragile our ego is the thing that that gets hurt when we're attacked or when we admit that we're wrong it's it's a it's a bit of a wound to the ego because we're owning that now when you have something that's very fragile you need to put a lot of defenses around it if it weren't fragile you don't need so much defenses around it because it can sustain blows and the narcissist's ego is extraordinarily fragile there are no small assaults or small insults everything gets that gets through does damage and because their defenses are so fragile and that's the thing that's fragile about them their defensive structure around this ego and and it's it's a an identifying feature I mean it's just a part of who they are yeah it begs the question what are they so afraid of what are what are they defending against well shame primarily um this this this experience of again if you need to make yourself as to be much more much bigger much you know like more impressive than you actually are if you need to put out a front that reflects inaccurately who you are why do you need to do that why isn't it why isn't who you are sufficient why isn't it okay to be a member of the human race who makes mistakes because we all do and we make many of them that's just nature everyone knows we all make mistakes refusing to admit yours sets you apart it doesn't you know make you a member of the human race it supposedly tries to keep you above it but it tries to keep you above it because you can't take it yeah and that's the problem you know with it that it it will sabotage their relationships because it's not an equal reciprocal thing I want to mention that I want to read a thing that I pulled from one of your articles you made a comment that says these people are not just choosing to stand their ground they're compelled to do so and I thought that was a very U poignant point that you were trying to make there and that's such an essential distinction that we can make that they're not just choosing they're compelled toh to say no you got the wrong person here you can't say these things uh what's the compulsion there the compulsion is the inability to tolerate the idea and the experience of them being wrong because it's too damaging to them it's too devastating to admit now if you think about that we're all wrong all the time it's not that much of a big deal but if it's that devastating to you to admit you said one wrong thing or did one wrong thing if it's that devastating that you have to avoid it at all cost including by the way distorting the reality that you perceive and that you project outwards to others the people if it's that big a deal that's what I mean about the fragility you must really not be able to handle much uh I want to share a story and uh it it's a it's a positive story that uh it was one of these light bulb aha moments that I had when I was a teenager um to set it back um education was a big deal in my family uh my father has his Doctorate and then my mother wound up with a master's degree in education and I heard all of my life your mother was so smart that uh she she skipped the third grade and then her birthday was in September which meant she would have graduated from high school at age 17 but your mother was so smart she finished high school when she was 16 and so I heard how smart my mother was and and she was and the grades were very important I always made good grades and and then um and this is important to the story uh she wound up in her early adult years typing doctoral dissertations and this is back when you had to to type everything up on the typewriter and and she was very good at super fast one day I came home from school and I had I I made the the first and only d uh on my report card that i' had ever made and and I was humiliated it was a class I didn't I didn't like I didn't like the teacher and I was being lazy and rebellious and so I thought I'm going to have to go and tell the smartest person in the world about who I am and so I when I went inside I handed my report card to my mother and I just blurted it out it's like you're going to see a d on there and I know it was it's terrible but that that's what that's what's there my mother uh looked at me and said um I made a d once and I almost fell over and then she said I said well what you make a D in she said typing and here she was this genius typist and it was like so you're not going to ground me and you're not going to go get a baseball bat and hang me up and all of that it's like no you can do better than that why let's figure out how we can do that and it was such an enormous relief now I'm assuming that there are a lot of individuals when they make a d or they do something wrong or there's a moral failure or they slip up on a project it's like oh no uh if I if I expose that it is going to be curtains for me I'm assuming there's a huge compare and contrast there between the way healthy people do it versus unhealthy people do it yes but it's also Al important to note that when we're talking about adults and not children who are coming home or adolescent who are coming home to you know get tell their parents about a bad grade when when it comes to adults who are trying to do this and it's not about being screamed at or being it's just taking responsibility it's just taking ownership that's part of the adult contract we have this unspoken contract we have in the world we expect people to take responsibility for their mistakes and that's where them and then it ends in most cases but we expect people to take responsibility we note when they don't we don't knowe as much when they do because that's the expectation uh when U when it's obvious that you have somebody that just cannot and will not say I blew it or I'm wrong it it leaves me wondering do they think that other people are stupid uh you know I I can I can get away with this and nobody's ever going to know I mean what what's what's in their mind relative to that they're not admitting it to themselves either that they're wrong in other words that defensive structure can't take their own self- admission that they're wrong so it's not that they're knowing like well I made the mistake but I'm not going to admit it they start to weave a different version of reality in which they were the victims in the situation there were all these external things and someone's actually just trying to put the blame on them when they're not accounting for all these other things that happen and then these distortions start to kick in and there's just an entirely different Narrative of what happened happened in which their behavior is excused whatever it was or their conduct is excused and everyone else is to blame again the pattern of not admitting you're wrong comes with a pattern of externalizing blame for everything in your life to other people and Circumstance rather than yourself you're just a lack of ownership all around yeah and that's a few minutes ago you mentioned that uh when you have to appear strong uh then that's when you're weak and so one of the the elements of strength is to be able to say yeah there's times when I I'm just I'm not on my game or I'm not I'm not there today and uh I do think of it as just as in a more humanistic way as in we are humans we make mistakes there isn't a human who does not it's just part of our experience of our existence of our ability to multitask and the bandwidth and all of those things it happens the question is like why is it such so difficult for you to just own it when it happens or to learn from from it when it happens because again I said that earlier if you don't admit it to yourself you can't learn what the mistake was you'll repeat the mistake at nauseum yeah it's almost as though these individuals have a um a commitment to their own dishonesty would that be a an appropriate way to put it but they don't perceive themselves as being dishonest they perceive themselves as being victimized okay talk a little bit more about that how does that narrative play out if you spend your life looking to justify what wrong for you by external reasons well that person tripped me up and that wasn't fair and this person had it in for me anyway and they should have considered this but they didn't if you're constantly pushing responsibility for anything that goes wrong out from you then you can never change your behavior so that you avoid mistakes because there's never Behavior to be changed it wasn't your fault in the first place okay so these are people who will repeat their mistakes till the grave they will do the same things over and over one thing about narcissists they are extraordinarily predictable yeah in fact I have people that write comments are these people just all drawing out of the same Playbook and it's kind of yeah yes because if you can't because certain things follow if you can't admit you're wrong if you can't identify you we the mistake you can't correct it you'll keep doing it and doubling down each time you do yeah yeah when you mention uh that they they have this victim's mindset that goes back to what you mentioned a few minutes ago about the parano uh you're going to do me in aren't you that kind of thinking they it's it's what I refer to as assumed hostility uh they assume it's going to be there before it even shows up right and it comes with a grandiosity sometimes because the idea that everyone is out to get me implies that you're important enough for everyone for them to make you a Target in the first place okay yeah exactly yeah you you all are probably out there just wondering how can I bring this guy down okay let's let's let's bring this down to uh to the level where so many people in our audience actually live okay let's suppose you have a a family member and you're at a large family gathering or it's the person you live with or it's the person you work with and you're saying hey this didn't work out well or my opinion doesn't match with yours why don't we talk and then you keep having this sense that says I'm I keep running into a brick wall um when you're the person who is observing this and you're getting sucked into all of the frustration that goes along with it what does it do to that individual who sees it but can't get that other person to see it well it's very frustrating to be with someone like that because if you're not someone like that then you'll admit that you were wrong hey we had an argument maybe I shouldn't have said X and maybe you shouldn't have said y no y was fine I could have said y but you shouldn't have said X in other words you you're it's very very frustrating you you're not dealing with with the same set of rules and so they can constantly go outside the rules to quote unquote win or not engage or feel like they're winning and that's a very frustrating experience and when you try and say to them hey say one thing you did that was wrong like why do you always have to hop on that why do you always have to be right and then the projection begins you always have to be right that's your thing you always have to and suddenly the attack is on on the other person and that's the way they do it and that's why it's so it's like Mercury you can't pin it down it's just so slippery and glib and it just gets out of the way and then if you really corner it and go here's black on white how you were wrong why are you against me all the time why do you attack me so now the now the conversation has shifted to feeling victimized and attack you you can't get there yeah you can almost feel the hair on the back of your neck just standing up it's like oh I've been through that so many different times um one of the biggest mistakes that I tell folks that you can make is um you can make the mistake of thinking that this person is going to think normally you know I know I I can admit it surely you will be too you'll be able to do the same and what you're saying is no there's um a very common theme that goes along with narcissism and that's the uh the absence of self-reflection and I guess going back to your talk about defenses that's all a part of that isn't it correct and look the the the the the other really frustrating you know thing for you know dealing with somebody who you know who's like that is that you people fall into this trap all the time they think okay but this person is not stupid they have reason so I can convince them if I keep trying I will be able to convince them and get them to see the thing that they don't want to see and energies are invested and attempts are made well well mostly on the person who you know is getting so frustrated but look but I'll show it to you but I'll prove it to you but I can but you can't show it by reason when somebody isn't reasonable and you certainly can't show it by fact when somebody distorts the reality so you're not sharing the same facts so let's suppose then that you are that family member who's trying to uh to you know talk some sense into that other family member who's just not having it where does that leave you uh how how do you how do you respond without pulling your own hair out well you you you shouldn't go down the rabbit hole each time and trying to you know launch a campaign to to to convince somebody of something they're not willing to be convinced of the best thing you can do is say one thing and then disengage and say like I completely disagree I know you never admit that you're wrong but in my book you were and I'm not discussing it and then you walk away yeah because you you know like or they'll probably get the last word shouted after you but you're not going to convince them the best you can do is minimize your losses by not going to so much effort and aggravation to try try and do it when it's not going to work yeah one of the things I talk about is sometimes brevity is your best um way to speak into that when that person is stubborn and they want to aim at you and and tell you you're the you're the problem here not me uh sometimes like you say well I guess we think differently don't we right and then I I I always say look I always suggest the use of an imaginary eject button like the fighter jets have you know you press it and the canopy goes up and if you go with your parachute that's what you need for conversations with people like this the minute you start getting frustrated it's not going to work eject right you know what sorry done with the conversation my last thought is this I'm sure you'll shout one after me but I'm done yeah um when you say this to people that you work with what what kind of rejoinders or uh comebacks do you get from them it's like well doc I guess that sounds okay but oh yeah because I know that people are bargaining with folks like you and me thinking yeah but I just I can't deal with that because it leaves so many Loose Ends out there uh how do you speak into that well usually I say to people how many have you ever been successful in convincing them to change their mind on something when they were wrong about it or to take responsibility and if you never have it's a Fool's errand and yes it's incredibly incredibly frustrating and sometimes you can disengage from the person entirely but often it's a friend it's a family member it's a colleague it's somebody that is in your life and you can't disengage from them and also they might be very nice and pleasant other than those kinds of of moments there but what I say is that the only thing you can control is you know when they lay out the Trap or when the Trap is there the only thing you can control is whether you're going to wander into it and get your leg ins snared or not and that's what you can control so don't get ins snared and leave yourself the option to walk away yeah and the person who refuses to take responsibility is in super high control mode and then I go back to that comment about how competitive they are it's like oh I I am GNA win and so it's almost as though they want you to go ahead and enter into that argument with them because I'll show you and so I'm what I'm hearing you say is well what if I don't enter into the argument well yes I mean you it's difficult to never enter into the argument because something just aggravated you that you would like an apology for so there's something going on there but don't get into the argument which requires them to admit it or to own it that you won't win you can get into the argument okay you know what you don't think you were wrong I think you were wrong but next time you have to make dinner regardless you can bypass it yeah sometimes in that way you know uh one of the things that most of us like is we like to have at least emotionally we like to have things tied down and neat and in its place but um what I'm hearing you say is well sometimes it's pretty loose ended and we're learn to live with that loose endedness yes well look living with somebody who's a narcissist is a isn't endless exercise and frustration and compromise um but um certainly you need to Marshall your own resources and not you know get yourself too miserable or too aggravated you know and people ruminate about these things and stress themselves out for hours afterwards self-c care requires you to disengage as well okay um as as you um work with these individuals who just it's like you're not going to get me to say anything wrong are we to just assume well I guess they're just not workable and you just kind of let go and let them be and and just like hey good luck see you see you some other time and I mean because it's it feels defe us and yet where does it leave us so look when when narcissists come to therapy for all kinds of common reasons that you know everyone else does it might take a therapist a while to spot primarily because they're going to be very Curative in the information that they give you they're going to tell you a story in which they were indeed AG grieved and wrong you might maybe sus it out and go like wait that doesn't make sense but then you did this thing so how do you you know you might spot it but it'll take a while because they're going to tell you a story of all these terrible things that happened to them and your job as a therapist is to be you know compassionate and validating and supportive and all of that but once you do you can start to challenge it a little bit if you see that it goes nowhere I mean when I work with narcissist which is not often because you know they don't they usually my perception online at least people is that I'm I'm I'm blunt and I'm a you know like I I I say things directly it's not appealing to narcissist to go to someone who will say things directly it's opinion to go to someone who will just be very comforting and supportive so that not many come to me and if somebody ends up with me by mistake then they leave quickly because they're not getting from me what they're looking to get get the validation I'm constantly trying to redirect them to where's your piece and what about you and so it's not the therapy they want and they won't stay long yeah I I I tell people all the time well the best way that you can um be in a therapeutically appropriate mindset is to individualize your efforts in other words I can be a a person of Peace even if that person in front of me is not or I can be somebody that manages my anger reasonably even if you choose not to join me in that effort and that's that's so hard because we're we're kind of hardwired to want to to engage well with one another but sometimes you just kind of have to let go of that ideal and and say well I guess it comes down to me being responsible for me which is kind of the whole point of what you're saying here they won't do that but then can you and I take that mindset nonetheless right and then since it's not going to be fair play then you have to either figure out if that's something that you're willing to be in because it's not going to be reciprocal then same rules will not be applying to both of you in this relationship whatever it's about is it something you want to walk away from or if you cannot walk away how do you minimize the damage to you yeah and I mean even your word relationship you almost kind of have to think well is this is is this really a very deep relationship or is this just a transaction is that all we're dealing with here or uh is this just some you know an agenda we're all supposed to read off of and just do that and and sometimes you have to um resign yourself to the fact it's not going to be very deep and whatever relationship we have it's going to be of a minimal kind of level I mean is that appropriate to say that uh it's going to be again narcissists can be when they're not triggered when they're not feeling defensive um then the pathology doesn't come into play as much they can be fun and they can be interesting and they can be nice and they can be warm and they can be very loving in their way at least verbally in terms of what they express they can love bum even even like really you know engulf you with all their efforts at certain times so it's not that they don't have anything to offer it's that when course Corrections need to be made when as any relationship there going to be some you know uh issues some ruptures that occur in the relationship some problems to address that's when you're going to be very limited in what you can achieve but if you can keep it to the fun times and try and avoid those you can get a lot of out of it yeah in other words know who you're dealing with and then adjust your expectations accordingly correct Dr Guy winch you've given us so much to think about I so appreciate you being here with us here today and uh you know I guess it's there's a challenge for each one of us and that is going back to your comment uh we each need to take responsibility for who we are and rather than me trying to make that other person see well you need to do it too it's like well that's where they are but bottom line is I still have my own mental health that I'm I'm working on and if they're not I'm I'm I'm heading on a good path anyway exactly ex L thanks so much and I appreciate you taking time out of your busy schedule you've got a lot going on and I appreciate you being here with us here at Team healthy anything else you want to say before we wrap well first of all it's been my absolute uh pleasure I hope it's been helpful and people can find me as you said at guy win.com but it was it was a pleasure talking to you and I like um unpacking things like thank you and we're going to have some of your contact information below the video here so people can know who you are and and uh just getting that much more informed thank you so much thank you okay and hope to see you again again thanks

Channel: Surviving Narcissism

Views: 47,694

Keywords: gaslighting, passive aggressive, covert narcissist, anger, NPD, psychology, Guy Winch, mental health, Surviving narcissism

Id: 4u80YLGxWzc

Length: 34min 35sec (2075 seconds)

Published: Tue Mar 19 2024