Understanding Narcissism

Narcissism is both necessary and pathological. Every individual needs some narcissism for the Ego to develop, but too much can become a personality disorder. Understanding narcissism can help us recognize the difference and better understand ourselves.  https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/peaceful-parenting/202205/how-narcissist-manipulates-the-love-language-concept Transcript: you're listening to psych with mike for more episodes or to connect with the show with comments ideas or to be a 0:06 guest go to www.cyclicmike.com follow the show on twitter at psych with 0:13 mike or like the facebook page at psych with mike now here's psych with mike 0:19 [Music] welcome into the psych with mike library this is dr michael mahon and i am here 0:25 with mr brett newcomb good morning it is the dog days of summer uh yeah so 0:31 second or third longest day of the year or no they're starting to shorter starting shorter yeah yeah 0:37 like a couple days ago was was equilateral 12 and 12 right 12 hours a day like 12 0:43 hours it was the summer solstice yeah that's where for for your wiccans out there yeah 0:49 so i have an acceleration of stonehenge for that we just yes they do we just uh 0:54 read the news about the supreme court and roe v wade uh do we want to comment 1:01 at all about that or wait and see what happens um i don't know what that has to do with 1:07 providing clinical services or being a better therapist so i think that 1:13 i would withhold comment at this point all right uh how are you 1:19 i'm good i just wanted to say that um we had uh michelle stieg here last time 1:27 with us and that i thought that the 1:33 material the information that the the quality of the show 1:38 was fantastic with her you're trying to say she clashes up yeah i thought she i 1:44 thought she did a great job but then who wouldn't yeah yeah well i mean there are a couple of people i could 1:49 think of but uh you know so i don't know that michelle listens to this on the regular if she 1:55 does i just would like to say i i thought she did a great job i thought she really added something to it she's 2:00 always welcome i will be sending her the links to the shows that we did with her and i hope 2:07 that maybe we will see her again sometime all right well reach out touch someone 2:13 oh you get in trouble for that nowadays yes you do so uh one of the things that 2:21 was i think not was is misunderstood i think 2:26 is hugely misunderstood in the field of psychology 2:31 is the concept of narcissism would you agree or disagree i i don't know i 2:38 i think everybody kind of has an understanding from mythology of the 2:44 intense self-focus of the narcissist and then you know i i don't know i can 2:50 separate myself out from my education yeah we were all taught that everyone has 2:56 traits of narcissism uh but that those who have 3:02 complex organized traits that are that predominate in their life pattern have a personality disorder 3:08 the challenge is always where do you make the distinction how do you determine if what you're looking at is just a narcissistic trait or if it's a 3:16 if was intense and organized enough to be a personality disorder and when 3:23 you talk about our education if you go all the way back to the early psychodynamic theorists we're 3:31 really into otto kernberg and heinz kohut if people want to look those people up and 3:36 people like that said that it is imperative to have a 3:42 healthy amount of narcissism for the ego to be able to form you you awesome yeah exactly and and so you're exactly right 3:50 is where is that line between what is healthy and necessary for good ego 3:57 development and where does it become pathologic so do you have an idea about where you see that line 4:04 uh when i look in the mirror if i'm looking at me or if i'm looking at others 4:10 you are or are not pathological you know since it's a yes a radical 4:17 shift in the conversation the question is what constitutes pathology and is a behavior pathological or an 4:24 attitude or a presentation i think that i would answer that question by saying how much damage does 4:31 it do to you or the people in your environment that's are you behaving in ways that are 4:37 counterproductive painful destructive uh or not and i would say that those 4:44 behavior patterns are the indicators of pathology 4:49 so the point at which it makes it impacts your life is the point at 4:55 which where pathology would begin yeah and so when you do therapy you 5:02 beat around this bush until both you and the client have somewhat of the same viewpoint 5:08 perspective for what you're looking at and then you ask the questions how painful is this 5:13 how problematic is this what's it costing you to behave this way 5:19 and if you had an option to make changes that were 5:24 options uh to make changes that were at affordable levels would you want to change 5:31 and so then you have a discussion about what's an affordable change right you know i cut off my if my eye offends me 5:37 do i pluck it out or do i change jobs because working at this job is causing me so 5:43 much stress at home that there's confrontation there's distress 5:48 my children are not being attended to i'm not doing the things that i want to do to be a good husband or father uh 5:56 because i'm so focused on being a good employee for this company that i think is probably corrupt 6:02 so i'm in i'm in pain i'm in distress it's pathological or if you have a behavior habit like an 6:09 addiction like alcoholism do i drink to the point that it causes 6:14 me to get traffic tickets to get arrested to get into fist fights that it causes me to have a wife that says i'm 6:21 gonna uh take you to court and take your kids away from you because you're irresponsible and dangerous 6:28 how much problem is it causing me right and do i if i could change it would i change it 6:35 because sometimes i have behaviors that other people say oh my god i can't believe you're that way and i'm like you 6:40 know what i don't really care yeah i i like being this way right uh and so well do you know what it cost you 6:47 i have a reasonable estimation and i'm okay with the price i don't i don't 6:52 build my life around whether or not you approve right i build it around something else and and 6:57 i think that's a legitimate point of view and i can say that it would it would that would it depends 7:03 on who's saying that to you though because if that's your special judge or the police or your spouse is different 7:08 than if it's just an acquaintance yeah so you know that level of 7:14 cost to you personally right i've always said that a person who uses substances 7:20 is going to use substances until the cost of that to them to the person who abuses is no longer acceptable it 7:28 doesn't matter if it's not acceptable to a judge or to a spouse it's got to be unacceptable to them so if if you had a 7:35 person so narcissism is a profound focus 7:40 on the self to the extent it comes from the greek mythology uh the the myth of narcissus yeah 7:46 who saw his reflection in a pool of water and loved it and loved it so much that he froze there just staring at 7:52 himself until he died yeah uh then there's a segway from that 7:58 narcissus had a cohort 8:03 called echo whose job was to listen to everything that narcissus had 8:08 to say and accept it embrace it without challenge 8:15 uh so one of the things when you work with narcissists is you try to determine is 8:20 there an echo in your life who is that how does that work how's it paying off for both of you 8:26 because it's a symbiotic relationship one has to have the other to survive although a person could function as 8:34 their own echo well that's the argument that gets made sometimes yeah i don't know that i agree with that okay okay but so 8:42 if a person were narcissistic let's assume for the sake of argument that they they were and 8:48 that would make it difficult for them to be in meaningful sustainable relationships 8:54 and so they're alone and you say to them okay you're alone and they say well that's okay with me 9:00 so then is that pathologic or not pathological how disturbed is their life how satisfied with the balance of their 9:07 life are they it kind of goes back again to childhood development theories if you talk about 9:13 the grandiose narcissism of the infant the newborn infant hasn't a perspective vocabulary 9:21 awareness of other even they just have awareness of self and everything is totally consumed with self 9:29 gratification so the argument the presumptive persuasion is 9:35 that grandiose narcissism is a natural artifact of child development 9:41 but that as the child matures develops control over his body learns to go through separation 9:48 individuation in eight or nine months and recognizes that there are others there is an other and then there are 9:54 others uh he realizes he's not the only object in the universe and so then he begins to 10:00 experience frustration because those objects in the universe don't perfectly meet all of his needs but you can't 10:06 articulate it eight months because he doesn't have vocabulary so if he screams and yells in rage or hunger or 10:12 frustration or disappointment then mothers and dads are like what is it what are you hungry are you does your 10:19 stomach hurt what's going on and baby can't tell them so they try to do things they run through a gamut of behaviors 10:25 and say well is this better you know and moms will learn what certain cries mean the total 10:31 quality of the cry they'll say oh he's just wet or oh he just woke up or oh he needs to take a nap 10:38 and dad's like huh because they don't spend typically as much time around the child 10:44 um so if we all have grandiose narcissism in that kind of way which theoretically 10:51 it's positive that we do as we mature and encounter these other 10:56 reality points we begin to bob and weave we begin to recognize that 11:02 there's a relationship dance that has to be done and so we become seductive we try to seduce people with happy smiles 11:08 and gurgling laughs and cute little things that we say or do you watch those kids grow up and and they go through 11:15 stages where they're trying to tell jokes and develop humor and make people laugh and initially they don't have a sense of 11:21 humor and so they're really into slapstick stuff prep falls and and knocking things over uh they 11:29 learn a joke and they understand they're given to understand oh that's a joke then they repeat that joke 75 times 11:35 straight and finally you have to teach them the concept of funny wants just tell me that i joke one time after 11:42 that it's not funny yeah uh so so it's all developmental but for narcissistic personality 11:48 disorder someone who is in adolescence or beyond 11:54 who has a more complex map of where they fit in the world but who still holds 12:00 onto that narcissistic focus of i'm the one that has to always get his way i'm the 12:06 one that's always right i'm the one that should always be pleased then that starts to disrupt other relationships 12:13 and destroy them so do you do you conceive narcissism as a pathology as a 12:20 developmental artifact so yes this individual lived in an environment where that narcissism was 12:28 fed by the other the you know projected or by the intensity of his demand his 12:33 rage uh oh so the narcissist could have created that responsibility 12:39 you know like the the uh seymour 12:45 in the little uh shop of horrors you know feed me yeah no matter what and 12:50 i could be cute he could sing songs he'd be seductive he could tell jokes but if you got in his way he'd eat you 12:57 yeah and so then when that person gets to 13:04 the therapist's office do you see the therapy for that as we've 13:10 talked about the narcissist that comes to the therapist's office yeah is 13:16 manipulating yeah they didn't come to therapy because they're in pain or because they want to change they came 13:22 to therapy they didn't have any participation of some kind incoming therapy and it's 13:28 very often uh their boss or their wife says you have to go to therapy you don't want more of people and so they think 13:34 okay i'll go dance this dance learn to say some of the right words or persuade and spend a lot of time persuading you 13:40 all the other people in my environment are unreasonable and they're they're not very smart because they just don't understand or 13:46 they don't see and don't you sympathize with me they want you to become their echo 13:51 so they recruit you as a clinician you have to be aware of that and know how to resist it 13:58 but still invite the engagement so you have to dance with them uh 14:04 and hope that there can be an epiphany if you can get them to feel their 14:10 emptiness and kernberg says you can't do that until they're in their late 40s early 14:16 50s there are too many other places where they can be fed and so they just like they'll get a 14:22 divorce and they'll go marry somebody else that'll be echo for him and then maybe they'll get that divorce and go marry another echo and then they'll 14:28 generalize about the quality of women or the quality of men and typically more men are diagnosed as narcissistic than 14:35 women yeah and women are diagnosed borderline uh so 14:40 it's uh extremely difficult to do access to personality disorder therapy 14:48 but consistency in those situations is key consistency 14:53 on part of the therapist yolim says you have to do supportive expressive 14:58 psychotherapy with them that's the only thing that will work which means you have to give them enough 15:04 encouraging support and allow them to express and vent their 15:12 frustration in their world view but then give them some feedback about where walls and boundaries are that 15:18 they're going to come up against and what's the cost of trying to break through that wall or that boundary 15:24 so that you can make a judgment now you have to realize narcissists are 15:30 very typically brilliant and they will convince themselves there has to be array around this block 15:38 and they'll recruit you if they can to help justify or build an argument or 15:44 explain a rationale for why they should be allowed to get around the block 15:49 so let's go to our break and when we come back i'm going to ask you another question is it about politics no 15:56 okay hey guys dr michael mahon here from cyclic mike and do you think that you 16:02 have a story to tell i know that when we started cyclic mic 16:08 the things that we really wanted in a podcast hosting 16:13 company was that they knew what they were doing and libsyn has been around since the 16:19 very beginning they're the oldest running consecutive still existing podcast hosting company 16:26 in the entire world i think but certainly in the united states so they've been around since people started 16:32 uploading things to the internet and so they have a lot of experience but we also needed a service 16:40 that was easy to use and libsyn is just so intuitive and even 16:46 though they've got all of this experience they just keep on upgrading so they just recently went through a 16:53 major renovation a major upgrade to libsyn5 and made the service even more 16:59 intuitive and user-friendly than it was before and it was so user friendly before that i was able to figure it out 17:07 and get site with mike up on the surface so we've been using uh libsyn since the very beginning of 17:14 psyc with mike for over two years now we love them and as a friend of the show if 17:20 you go to libsyn and start a podcast right now you get your first month free 17:26 so you go to libsyn.com and use the code f r i e n d so friend of the show friend 17:34 that's l i b s y n dot com and use the code f r i e n 17:43 d and you get your first month free and as always if it's friday it's 17:50 okay we're back so one of the things that 17:57 i try and conceptually wrap my head around and i actually have an answer for 18:02 this but i'm going to ask you first is what is the difference between narcissism and sociopathy oh i 18:10 don't know you do too hi mike norton are you listening 18:17 no he didn't ask me that he asked me what's the difference between a psychopath and a sociopath oh yeah yeah 18:23 i love when people say that yeah well first off psychopath isn't a diagnostic term so 18:29 so what's the difference between a sociopath and a narcissist yeah 18:38 as i understand it the sociopath has no 18:44 moral foundation or concerns about consequences other than 18:50 victory so they don't have they're not going to have biological components for empathy exactly yeah 18:56 that's the difference okay and so when you're doing therapy 19:02 if you get to a point and you're thinking about a differential diagnosis 19:07 and because a lot of narcissism can look very sociopathic 19:12 but the difference is that a narcissist does have the ability to experience 19:18 empathy and they may not they may not it may not appear that way but as a therapist hopefully you'll be 19:25 able to sense that that they have the ability to feel the emotions of other so what i say 19:32 is that in in you know sociopaths are like a black hole like they just absorb all of the emotion in the room and they 19:39 don't give you anything back with a narcissist you might get really frustrated with the way in which they're 19:47 relating the story about their relationships and why it has to be like you were saying they have to find a way 19:52 around the block but you can kind of sense that they have some empathy they 19:59 understand that other people do have emotions so they 20:04 they do because it uh it gets that awareness that knowledge gets 20:10 incorporated into their manipulation strategies narcissists are 20:15 incredibly attractive exactly uh and seductive and often very very bright 20:21 and determined and if something becomes too expensive they'll abandon it 20:27 and move to the next opportunity 20:33 but without changing their strategy or their approach to life so they burn through relationships you 20:40 know they they use them up when your container is empty i'll discard you and get another container that will give me 20:46 the things that i need applause accolades money 20:51 power sex whatever it is and then when i use you up i'll discard you and get me give 20:58 me another one i'm not changing i'm not changing my approach i'm not changing what gratifies me i'm not changing my 21:04 payoff i'm changing my provider and the sociopath won't do that the 21:09 sociopath is going to they may very may be very manipulative but they're going 21:16 to be very on track with their agenda and they're probably not going to be 21:22 dissuaded from that yeah so we had read an article about uh 21:27 how manipulative narcissists can be especially in terms of the love languages chapman's love languages 21:35 and the articles postulated that they can learn 21:41 sorry i said postulated i posited i i heard the word and i liked 21:46 it oh okay they can learn by observing acutely what your love 21:54 language is and then they can provide that to you 22:00 as a feeding source for manipulation so if your love language is acts of 22:07 service right the exactly for you they'll cut your grass they'll wash your car they'll cook your dinner 22:14 and then say to you well why are you beefing on me because i did all these things for you so you 22:21 should be happy with me right and you should do whatever i want mm-hmm yeah yeah and 22:26 if you don't it's on you but i've been so nice to you and i've done the things that you define oh this is nice uh or or 22:34 this is love i've been very loving to you and now you're not being loving to me loving to me is give me my way now 22:41 i think that it's important to make sure that we are recognizing that 22:48 so first off let me start a different way so chapman's five languages of love it's important to understand your love 22:55 language but it's more important to understand your partners yes so it's not about you knowing what your love 23:01 language is and being able to tell the world yeah it's about sometimes ask people what is yours i know i don't know 23:06 yeah and well i i say to people all the time once you're partners i don't know i know mine but i don't know well then 23:12 that's that's you're missing the whole point but you're also into checklists you know i mean i'm supposed to remember 23:18 all these things yeah i'd have to look it up every time so uh 23:23 but you could get into a situation where you are actively trying to understand your 23:29 partner's love language speak to them through that love language if their love language is acts of service then you're 23:35 you know you're doing the dishes and doing things like that and then your love language is words of affirmation and they're not giving you any kind of 23:42 positive feedback for that it's okay for you to say hey i am doing all these things for you i 23:48 would like reciprocity yeah but that's not what the narcissist is doing the narcissist is keeping score right yeah 23:55 and and so they're using it specifically as a tool of manipulation that's what the [ __ ] so then the foundation of that 24:01 is the degree of empathy yeah of which they are capable oh okay yeah that's i hadn't thought of it that way but i 24:07 think yeah i see that go ahead no i just really say it if they don't have 24:15 empathy then they don't really feel what you feel and so then it's just a manipulation 24:21 it's just a strategy it's cosmetic yeah and so uh 24:26 for the partner who may be in that relationship where 24:31 they feel the first few times they're like oh okay he gets it he's really crying and they back off 24:38 from their level of distress but when it becomes repetitive and they 24:44 recognize well we always get to this point and then you confess and say you're going to change 24:50 and then i back off and then nothing changes so you just bought some more time and eventually they'll say i'm not 24:58 backing off anymore yeah either either you make a change or we're done and then the narcissist will say i can't believe you treat me this way this is horrible 25:05 uh see what you've made me do see what you've done you're wrong uh 25:12 what was me but what i would encourage the partner who gets up to that point who recognizes 25:19 the manipulation and wants to try and change that you have the right 25:24 to ask for that in the relationship i don't believe that's going to be very successful because as you point out the 25:31 narcissist is going to use up the tube of toothpaste and then get another toothpaste 25:37 in those situations i really encourage you to elicit a third party there are other toothpastes on the shelf saying pick me 25:43 pictures yeah yeah so it's easy to get another one yeah i was talking to a friend of mine the other day about someone who has these issues in their 25:49 lives and she was saying well this particular partner they've attached themselves to 25:55 isn't going to put up with that they're just going to leave and then the narcissists will be sorry i said no no 26:00 they'll just get another volunteer to do the same thing same different day same stuff right because 26:06 they're not changing and so the partner has to understand has to be empathic 26:13 towards the narcissist and understand that the narcissist is not going to be 26:18 sorry you may want them to be but that's a projection of yours on to the partner that isn't real i 26:26 think in those situations it's a really good idea to elicit a third party and so clinically yeah the challenge for the 26:33 clinician is not to chase the rabbit right because if i'm talking to the narcissist who 26:39 wants to talk about why his or her wife and children are inadequate and why they behave this way and why don't they 26:45 understand what they see we're talking about there and then stuff right those people over there why are they behaving 26:51 that way instead of the person in front of me as the client said why are you behaving this way what are you getting 26:57 at is what's your payoff uh same thing happens if echo comes in and you're talking to the wife and she's like why 27:03 doesn't he change and you have to come back to uh charles townsend's book on boundaries boundaries 27:10 excellent uh reference because it's about developing and having boundaries 27:15 you start with a premise you have a right to have a boundary and then you have to learn how to assert that boundary in a non-aggressive 27:24 non-destructive way but a healthy boundary can be to say no 27:29 i won't be with you anymore because you're not good for me uh my choice i'll 27:35 pay the price right so well but but that's the rub yeah is being willing to 27:40 pay the price yeah i mean you're absolutely right that you have the right to say 27:46 okay this is my choice i'll pay the price but a lot of people say that and they don't recognize 27:53 the difficulty with actually consistently following through with that which goes back to which is why the 27:59 initial boundaries yes the cost of your choices and you can choose to do this you can 28:04 choose to stay with this person all you're ever going to get out of them is glass half full so if you if you're 28:09 content if you can build a life with a half full glass that's okay that's your call 28:15 but you know he goes don't go sit in the corner and stare at your nail and say well it's me saying hey i like having a 28:20 half full glass because he's charming he's witty everybody else likes him i get to take 28:26 nice trips because you know we live at this level and if there are 28:32 needs in the relationship that are not being met you have to take responsibility for either accepting that 28:38 and owning that or finding other ways to get those needs met right and that's a part of living with the glass half full 28:45 and that's where therapy has to go you have to do the here and now work with the client that's in the room 28:52 about what they are experiencing what their goals and cost choices are 28:59 and you know i think that it is fair to say 29:04 that narcissists because they are really intelligent because they are very charming they can be good in 29:12 relationships up to a point there's going to be a limit to how much they can give back and so if you're the 29:19 partner of somebody like that and you're going to try and remain in that relationship and you accepting what 29:28 those limitations are then you have to be honest with yourself you 29:33 have to accept that you if you're saying i'll live with him or her long enough for them to change 29:42 that's probably a delusion right probably yeah absolutely yeah yeah 29:47 but i think that people you know they think oh i'll be a martyr and i'll live with it but they're still talking about 29:54 how to manipulate a change in someone else's life and the only person you can change is you is you that's exactly right now so 30:01 and i don't want to go down this tangent but but but i do want to ask you a question you know the as we're talking about this one of the 30:08 things that i sometimes think is that people are too quick to separate the 30:15 couple i hear all the time people say oh these people came in for couples therapy i told them they need to go do 30:20 individual and then come back yeah and and i don't i don't know i mean do i 30:25 think that there's ever a point where that is therapeutically sound advice absolutely sure and i'm not i'm not even 30:31 judging anybody if you've ever said that but i think we're too quick to separate 30:37 the couple if the couple comes to you as the identified client i think it's okay 30:42 to treat them that way it may be frustrating because you may be saying to them hey could you do this and they 30:48 could say no or they could say yes and then not do it but i think it's okay to treat the couple 30:54 as the client to to to work with that and and to try and make that 31:01 the reality of the therapy do you agree if you come from that perspective as your approach 31:07 to doing therapy then you should probably educate yourself about virginia's tears and family systems 31:16 i tend to believe that the therapists 31:22 shouldn't be driving the bus from a power position i think you need to spend enough time 31:28 getting to know people and listening to what they have to say that you can then 31:34 help them steer but they have to make the decisions about i want to there may be a situation where 31:40 you say i want to see you individually because you suspect there's some abuse or something exactly that's not going to 31:45 come out in a power complex but i agree with you i wouldn't break up the couple's therapy yeah 31:53 per se and you probably need to walk through the legalities of confidentiality if you've come as 31:58 couples and you're coming for a single or small series of individual sessions 32:04 about privacy and confidentiality and you probably should also talk about if this goes to a divorce and i get 32:11 called in as a witness in the divorce none of this stuff uh is retained under 32:16 the the right of confidentiality so we need to discuss that before we make this decision 32:22 and i think all those are fair and valid points to make but if you're in that 32:28 situation where you're seeing a couple and you as the therapist are frustrated and don't know where to go that doesn't 32:35 mean you go to supervision yeah yeah that doesn't mean split them up and say hey you guys go to individual therapy 32:40 that means you exactly go to supervision and try and figure out ways of being able to interject more energy into and 32:47 how am i getting in my own way here what am i not seeing yeah yeah okay so hopefully that was 32:53 good for everybody the music that appears in psych with mike is written and performed by mr benjamin the clue we 32:59 are always asking people to go to the apple podcast and 33:04 find site with mike leave us a review and a rating that is super helpful but the most important thing is going to the 33:12 youtubes and finding psych with mike and subscribing to the show and as always if 33:18 it's friday it's psych with mike