How do you know if you are an narcissist?
Like does a narcissist know they are one?
Is there a narcissist test one can do?
I don't, there's about five to six tests out there that are designed to detect narcissism in its various ways.
All of them have flaws, like I said, and it's not even fully the fault of the test because this is a very difficult thing to measure, right?
We're trying to measure things that are not socially desirable, right?
That's really tough to measure.
So a lot of the narcissism tests will measure things like, as in some entitlement, assertiveness, self-importance, that people may not find as offensive, but the research actually shows that narcissistic people overestimate their empathy and underestimate their negative effect on other people.
They do not have a clear look at themselves.
They really have an almost deluded sense of who they are and how they go through the world.
So when a person says to me, I think I'm narcissistic.
I always say, hold the presses.
You need to tell me a little bit about you because there's a lot of people out there who think of themselves as narcissistic because they're in relationships with narcissistic people who have told them over the years, you are such a selfish person because this unfortunate person is doing simple things like saying, hey, could we go where I want to go for dinner ones
or I want to talk about my feelings and then they're narcissistic, partnering, oh my gosh, you're so selfish.
And they're really sort of indoctrinated into this idea, gas-lighted into this idea that there's something narcissistic about them.
Once we clear the decks of that, is there a subset of people out there who are narcissistic and are kind of in some awareness like this might be who I am?
Yes. And we call them self-aware narcissistic people.
They're out there. Some of them view narcissism as their superpower.
They say, don't take this away from me.
This is why I've got the edge.
This is why I close the sale.
This is why I'm the man. I had one client who was like, I'm the man.
I'm like, oh my gosh, you sound like a six-year-old, but okay.
The people, men come to you, women come to you and say, I am a narcissist.
Yes, I've had that happen.
It's not common. I can count on one hand the number of times it's happened.
And did you agree with them?
I did about an hour, yeah.
What were they? How did they figure out they were a narcissist?
What were they saying? They might have read my books or more likely saw YouTube video.
They might have, you know, sort of, again, seen my content.
Someone might have called, said that to them and then they looked it up on Google and they're like, that is kind of me.
But they did in many ways rationalize it saying, this is why I always close the deal.
This is who I am. Like, you know, what was it?
Don't hate the player. Hate the game.
They would try that kind of stuff with me.
And I'd say, but your behavior is offensive.
Like this is not okay. What you're doing.
You're doing on an ongoing basis to your spouse or partner is not okay.
And so they would have that awareness like almost like from a checklist.
Yeah, like, yeah, I don't care that much about people's feelings.
And yeah, I guess I kind of think the rules don't apply to me.
They'll have that awareness.
It's pretty uncommon. Like I said, most narcissistic people veer into this idea of they overestimate their goodness and generosity underestimate how negatively they're viewed by other people.
So let's talk then about the impacts of narcissism on relationships, particular.
What kind of people do narcissists attract in relationships?
And what kind of people are attracted to narcissists?
So it's such a good question.
I'm so glad you asked it.
What kind of people do they attract?
Everyone's attracted to narcissistic people.
They're charming. They're charismatic.
They're confident. They're in research has shown they're often rated as more attractive than other people.
They take good care of their bodies.
They know lots of interesting things.
They're so concerned about hip-cred that they are like they know the cool restaurants.
All of us have been indoctrinated to think that these people were supposed to be dating.
Right? Who says no to charm charisma and attractiveness?
Me maybe, but just if nobody else would do that.
So we're all attracted to them.
Right? Until even with the vulnerable narcissistic folks, you'll say really someone's going to be attracted to Sullen and Risenfold.
Let's know how they come up when you first meet them.
Many times a vulnerable narcissistic person looks like a vulnerable child who needs to be rescued.
So if you like rescuing people or puppies or any small vulnerable creature, that's going to seem actually very attractive to you.
So we're all attracted to them.
What about what are they attracted to in us?
What they're attracted to in us is our supply.
Now, supply can mean different things to different narcissistic folks.
Classical sorts of supplier are we attractive?
If we're attractive, if we have some form of social status, if we have resource, if we have connections, the things that would get them supply, here's where it gets wonky.
Because the question that attractiveness is what attracts people?
It's almost the wrong question.
The more deep question is what gets people stuck in narcissistic relationships?
Because narcissistic relationships start strong.
These are people who are running their fastest miles in the beginning of the marathon.
They're just like, go. These can often feel like a fairy tale.
It is glamorous and it's exciting and the dates are really interesting and they're very attuned.
They may be very attentive.
They focus on you and they figure what's going to work for you.
If they really want to keep you close, they want to get you and they want to get you quick.
Because then you're like a butterfly under glass.
Then they've got you captured.
Because after all this good stuff happens, you've bought in.
It might even be dubious for a while saying, it seems to be too good to be true or I don't know.
But then people, after about, I always say it's somewhere between six weeks and six months, the devaluing stage starts.
Then they've got you. You might get the passive aggressive digs, the minimizations, the lack of empathy, the withdrawing, the withholding.
People say, where did that first six weeks go?
Like, wait a minute, we had such a good time and as the devaluing begins, people start to blame themselves.
So people who are more empathic, more forgiving, more optimistic, these are the kinds of people who get stuck because they're making allowances for this.
They're saying, I mean, they were lovely and they did say they're having a really stressful time at work, but their behavior is consistently dismissive and rude.
So you keep making excuses, excuses, excuses, excuses.
But then there's a few good days sprinkled in there.
So one of the interesting things is a lot of people are trying to figure out if they're partners and narcissists.
Do people in relationships, especially long term relationships, tend to know that they're dating an narcissist or as the narcissist gaslighted them to the point that they don't know?
Until recently, most people did not know because it feels like a disloyal thing to know about your partner.
Many people say, I love my partner, we have built a life together.
There are enough good days that leaves them thinking like there's something here.
They're confused. People in these relationships are confused.
They blame themselves for everything that goes wrong.
They're walking on egg shells.
They've in essence modified themselves to be exactly what the narcissistic partner wants.
But it's a slow burn. It's a very slow process of indoctrination.
I always say these relationships are death by a thousand cuts because it's just, each of these things happen slowly over time.
It's almost as a one day you wake up and you're like, what have I become?
I'm literally like living in service to this other person.
It's only in the last 10 years, I'd say, that there's so much more content and the internet is more robust with making this.
And I'm sure people type it in.
My partner has no empathy and is really entitled and yells at me a lot.
Bing! And the narcissism pops out at you.
I think this really created the revolution of people saying, what is this?
And even when I wrote, should I stare, should I go?
That was 2015, I think it was.
We're still in the beginning phases.
We're just maybe about a dozen books out there taking this on.
And so it's a, as more information gets out there, more people are clear that this is happening in their relationships.
The hope is that earlier you identify it, the less indoctrinated, the less what we call trauma bonded you become.
And then the easier it would be to make clear headed decisions about how you want to proceed.
You talk about the three hours that are the hallmarks of negative relationships in your books.
What are the three hours?
So the first is rumination, okay?
That the rumination is, it's an obsessive thinking about the relationship.
And it's usually in an attempt to either say, what did I do wrong?
What happened? What is going on?
It's a trying to fix it. So these are the three things that someone that's in a relationship with an narcissist will do.
Yeah. I mean, they do a lot more, but these are three common ones.
So the rumination is a whole marquee characteristic of a person in a narcissistic relationship.
In essence, you're just trying to make sense of something that makes no sense.
The next R is regret. And that regret links to bigger themes like grief.
People having regret that this is the parent I have, and I will never have a close loving relationship with them.
The regret that this is the marriage I created and my children will never get a healthy model of marriage.
The regret that I've spent 20 years in this relationship and really all I have to show for it is a whole lot of nothing except that it's harmed me.
So the regrets play out even big ways and even small ways like, why did I say that?
Why didn't I say it that way?
And then the last R is, it's really euphoric recall, the R being for recall.
By euphoric recall, I mean that people in narcissistic relationships have an uncanny ability to sort of cherry pick the good things that happen in their relationship to keep rationalizing it and justifying it to themselves.
So they might be in a narcissistic relationship, but the person has really treated them heinously for a month.
But on one day of that month, the narcissistic person, when they went to the grocery store, for the first time, remember to bring home two muffins so that you could have a muffin.
And the person was like, they brought me home the best blueberry muffin.
So what's that thoughtful?
They brought me home a muffin.
We had muffins together.
So the euphoric recall is the over focus on those good experiences as a way in essence to create this sort of psychological buy-ins so then you can maintain the status quo for people in narcissistic relationships.
It's not as though they're breaking up saying, this is a hellscape I want to get out.
They're getting up saying, I'm so confused.
I feel like I'm never enough.
Nothing I do is ever enough.
Nothing I say is ever they're not listening to me.
What is going on? Maybe I'm not being clear enough.
Maybe there's something wrong with me.
So that's the confusion element.
So it's not like everyone's saying, I want to get out of this.
There's a lot of history.
There's a lot of experiences together.
So people again, and they're also confused because there's good things that happen and bad things that happen.
And that's what creates, like I said, this thing called the trauma-bonded relationship.
So people might even be able to say like, there's something about this that isn't okay and might even be able to articulate.
These are the problems in the relationship, but the idea of leaving this relationship fills me with an absolute sense of panic.
Would a narcissist play to that insecurity and that history?
Well, the narcissistic person created the insecurity and they will because the narcissistic person is an expert tactician, right?
Because that's what they bring to relationships is tactics.
And so they are very expert at knowing like, ah, your room is a bandiment piece of cake.
So if you say, I can't do this anymore, I'm out.
The narcissistic part.
And I'll say, okay, cool.
Let's call it a quiz. You'll be like, that's not what I wanted them to say.
I wanted them to say they were going to fight for the relationship.
You see what I'm saying?
It's so interesting because part of the reason narcissistic people are so successful is because they're so socially perceptive.
They have no empathy, social perceptiveness and empathy are not the same thing.
Social perceptiveness is kind of being aware of reading the room, understanding what people need, understanding what makes them tick and what they want, and then strategically giving it to them to keep them on the chain or keep them in the position you need them in.
That's not empathic. Can you cure narcissism in your opinion?
No, I don't because I think that would imply changing a personality, which I don't think we can do.
Is there any evidence? Have you ever seen in your 20 years of working with narcissists and their survivors any sign of a narcissist becoming a not-narsacist or a non-narsacist?
I've not seen them become a not-narsacist.
I've seen them make microchanges because I measure and monitor and make my notes in therapy.
So I'll see. Interesting.
They're no longer trying to mess with coming in 10 minutes later and asking me to keep them for the whole hour.
They are honoring the therapeutic frame.
They're paying the bill when they decide not to show up at the last minute.
I'll see tiny tweaks. I'll see people who'll come in and say, I screamed at my girlfriend again last night and that wasn't cool.
So I was like, whoa, whoa, that's inside.
I'll run with it. But here's the rub.
These microchanges, and they are microchanges, but they are changes and they're in the right direction.
Not much water on the under the bridge for the family members and partners and other people that have been harmed.
They're saying, you want me to stay in this relationship because this dude, remember to say thank you once this week?
I think not. To me, the thank you is progress.
To the people in their lives who've been harmed, that one thank you is not going to be enough.
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