August 19, 2022 • 29 mins
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We may not identify as a narcissist but unknowingly, we may have narcissistic traits that are off-putting to others and can lead to unpleasant and unfavorable situations. The same goes for the people who we have close relationships with that display narcissistic tendencies. It can become a struggle to be with them when they can only see themselves and think they’re above everyone else.
In this episode of On Purpose, Jay Shetty shares the different signs and traits of a narcissist and what can we do to still have a pleasant and lasting relationship with them.
Want to be a Jay Shetty Certified Life Coach? Get the Digital Guide and Workbook from Jay Shetty https://jayshettypurpose.com/fb-getting-started-as-a-life-coach-podcast/
Key Takeaways:
- 00:00 Intro
- 03:04 1 in 200 people has narcissistic personality disorder
- 05:27 Sign #1: They struggle to talk about others for too long
- 07:28 Sign #2: They crave attention
- 11:25 Sign #3: They don’t accept responsibility
- 12:20 Sign #4: They make you feel you’re wrong
- 18:27 Sign #5: They have superiority complex
- 19:50 Sign #6: Everything feels like a threat to them
- 21:04 Sign #7: They switch the conversation to themselves
- 22:01 Sign #8: Taking credit for everything
- 22:31 Sign #9: Reclaiming difficult moments as yours
- 25:00 Sign #10: Love bombing
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Where do you excel? Where do you truly shine? I
want you to be so aware of that, and I
want you to know that because when you know you
have strengths and then you know your weaknesses, you can
live between acceptance and assessment. But often we don't live
in acceptance. We live in criticism because we only know
our flaws. We know our flaws deeply, and we know
(00:20):
our strengths weakly. And because we don't have a deep
understanding of our own strengths, that's where a lack of
self esteem and self confidence comes from. Hey, everyone, welcome
back to our Purpose, the number one health podcast in
the world. If you're listening, you're investing in your physical, mental, emotional, financial,
(00:46):
and spiritual health. On Purpose is the space, the safe
space where we create conversations, dialogue, insights, research on how
you can simply, practically and in a focused way, create
change in your life. If you want to change habits,
you're in the right place. If you want to change
(01:08):
and transform patterns of thought, you're in exactly the right place.
And if you want to create change in the world,
affect change in the world, you're in the right place.
Thank you so much for joining me. My name is
Jay Shetty. If you've been here before, I am so
grateful to you. You mean the world to me. If
you've never been here before and this is your first episode,
(01:29):
I want to thank you for being here. I am
so deeply committed to this community that we have, and
it has been astounding to me at how many of
you are listening to episodes on the daily now, and
the feedback I hear from you all is that the
more you listen, the more you grow, the more you change,
the more you're able to affect change in your lives
(01:50):
and the people that you love. And that fills me
with so much joy. It fills me with so much
excitement and happiness. So thank you so much for doing that. Now.
Today's topic is something I've been thinking about for a while,
and it's because it's something that's come up with my
clients now. As some of you know, I'm a life coach,
a relationship coach, and I work with different people. All
(02:13):
of my clients also have a therapist. I really believe
in co serving with a therapist because I believe that
therapists fantastically help people entangle their past and really makes
sense of the thoughts and patterns that they've developed, and
as a coach, it's really about building forward. But this
was a theme that kept recurring in some of my sessions,
(02:37):
and I would talk to a lot of my therapist
friends about this a lot as well. And it's all
about narcism. And I started to find out that a
lot of people that I was working with may have
been dating a narcissist at one point in time, may
have come up with someone or being with someone at
some point in their life who had narcissistic personality disorder.
(02:58):
And so I became more interesting did in this space.
And so I've been researching learning about the space, and
I wanted to share it with you today because I
think it's important. Today you will discover that approximately zero
point five percent of the United States population, or one
in two hundred people, has narcissistic personality disorder. And this
(03:19):
is study from the Recovery Village. And so when you
hear that number, you think, well, that's not a lot
of people. I'm not likely to bump into someone. But
we realize that there are a lot of people that
are on that spectrum, and so some of us may
have dealt with someone who's in an extreme case and
some people less so. But we start to recognize that
(03:42):
there are also significant gender differences when it comes to
the prevalence of the disorder. Says Recovery Village that seventy
five percent of people with narcissistic personality disorder are men,
and the demographics go on to give a bit more detail.
Two to six percent of those seek help from mental
health clinics, six percent of forensic analysts, twenty percent of
(04:05):
people in the military, and seventeen percent of first year
medical students. Now, a lot of what I'm going to
share with you today are more signs that you can
notice in people. And even if that person doesn't have
narcissistic personality disorder or MPD, they may have certain traits.
(04:27):
And it's important for us to be mindful of these
traits in people we meet and even in ourselves, because
a lot of these traits can create a lot of
challenges moving forward for us and for our relationships. So
sometimes when I reflect on this list, I actually find
that there are elements of this in a lot of people, right,
(04:49):
and it's just valuable for us to be aware so
we can actually navigate our relationships better. So here are
the ways to know if you're with the narcissist dating
in our this may be married to one. Maybe you
have elements of this in yourself. And I want to
do this in a safe space of acceptance and non
judgment and encouraging us to find help and support, whether
(05:12):
it's through therapy in the beginning and of course through
coaching long term, to just encourage you to move towards that.
Whether you're with someone that way, you know a friend
who's in that scenario as well, because sometimes we find
out too late and act too late. So one of
the first simplest ways that we start to notice that
someone has narcissistic tendencies is that they struggle to talk
(05:37):
about others for too long. The conversation has to constantly
shift back to talking about them. So if they start
a conversation, it will often be about them. If they
start a conversation, it will often reflect on everyone talking
about them. They enjoy the idea of plant hunting the
(06:00):
seed of a problem in a group of people and
hearing what everyone has to say about them, And so
we start to notice that if the conversation veers off,
if the conversation goes in another direction, they will want
to drag the conversation back to them. Now, often when
we're around these people will say things like, oh, well,
(06:21):
they're so selfish, or they're so self centered, or we
don't enjoy being around that kind of person because we
always feel unheard or we feel like that person's unaware
of us. And this can stay in relationships for years
before someone asks for help or someone even knows that
they have this trait, and it takes a lot of
(06:44):
courage as a friend to share this with them. And
often we're not the right person, we may not be
close enough, we may not have the trust of that individual,
And I think we have to be aware of that
that if you're going to say to someone that you
know that they are self centered or selfish, or the
conversation is always about them, it's important that you also
(07:04):
do this in a compassionate, loving way. It's very easy
to assume that they should know and they should realize,
but making them aware is extremely healthy if you're the
right person, And of course doing it through the right
person is even more important. Someone that that person trusts, respects,
maybe even looks up to is what's truly needed. Now.
(07:27):
An extended part of this Number two is that this
person craves attention. Right, They crave attention. They want everything
at the party to be about them. They want everything
at the event to be about them. They're not great
at celebrating others. They struggle when someone else is the
center of attention. Think about proposing at someone else's wedding,
(07:50):
think about announcing something at someone else's birthday. These are
all methods to crave attention, and the Mayo Clinic says
that although the cause of narcissistic personality disorder isn't known,
some researchers think that in biologically vulnerable children, parenting styles
(08:11):
that are overprotective all neglectful may have an impact. Genetics
and neurobiology also may play a role in the development
of narcissistic personality disorder, so we start to recognize it's
not that that person doesn't have a choice and you're
feeling sorry for them, but it is understanding the context
(08:31):
of how they got there. The Mayo Clinic also says that,
as with personality development and with other mental health disorders,
even though the cause is complex, there's three areas that
it can be linked to. The first is environment mismatches
in parent child relationships with either excessive adoration or excessive
(08:52):
criticism that is poorly attuned to the child's experience. I
found this fascinating. Right, So, this idea that someone craves
attention is because they received so much attention growing up
for every tiny thing they did that they're now looking
for everyone to give them the same thing. Or it
was the opposite. They were given no attention for anything
(09:14):
they did, and so there's this natural movement towards it. Now.
I'm sure as you're listening to this, you may be thinking, Jay,
I feel like that a bit. There's times when I
want attention because I didn't get any, or there's times
when I want attention because my parents always gave me some.
So you can start to notice how we all have
different aspects of this within ourselves, within the development of
(09:36):
our own personality. Now, whether we notice it is one thing,
whether someone else notices it is another, and whether it's
a recurring pattern is another. So we start to see
how the prevalence of this in our life is dependent
on how obvious it is and how repetitive it is
to the people around us. We often find that we
(09:57):
can be self aware about something, but most people are
round us don't notice it, or we're self aware and
someone notices it. And not only are we self aware,
not only does someone notice it, but it is a
repetitive cycle. Us being aware of it ourselves is really
powerful because self awareness is where all change begins. But
(10:17):
at the same time, there are lots of people in
our lives, including us, who we sometimes miss this. We
miss the understanding because from our perspective, we think we're right. Well,
of course I crave attention. Everyone craves attention, and we
assume that because we crave attention, everyone must be craving
the same thing. So now it makes it a competition.
(10:38):
So we can find that in MPD and in terms
of being a narcissist, that becomes this craving of competition.
The other cause that comes up by the Mayo clinic
is genetics inherited characteristics. Of course, if family members had
aspects of this, we start to mirror it, we start
to replicate it. And then it is neurobiology, the connection
(11:01):
between the brain and behavior and thinking. And of course
the biggest area of negative impact this creates is in
relationship difficulties, because we start to recognize that people really
struggle to connect deeply with someone who has narcissistic tendencies,
or we connect for a certain period of time, but
(11:22):
then often people feel exhausted and drained. The third way
to know that you're with a narcissist is that they
don't accept responsibility if they make a mistake. They're not
vulnerable enough, they're not open enough to accept that they
are part of the problem. And I think in relationships
(11:43):
this often becomes a big, big, big issue because when
someone doesn't take responsibility, sometimes we can take it all
on ourselves and we think it's all our fault. We
think it's all because of us, and when that person
doesn't take responsibility, we can often start to feel like
we're the only ones responsible. All the opposite happens. We
(12:07):
know we're not the only ones responsible, but we keep waiting,
maybe even forcing, for them to take responsibility. But the
penny hasn't dropped for them yet. They haven't had it
click yet that they are a part of the challenge
that exists. The fourth way of knowing is that they
make you feel like you're wrong. That comes from the
last one. When someone doesn't accept responsibility. A big part
(12:30):
of that is they make you feel like you're wrong.
Now iver clients who've been in this space of being
made to feel like they're the ones that are wrong,
they're the ones that are responsible. And whenever they've been
in this position, the thing that I found is that
they internalize it. If you're sincere, if you're genuine, you
(12:51):
start to internalize this, and this starts to play on
your own self worth and your own self esteem. And
this is why I'm doing this episode because I believe
that where we want to get to is this perfect
balance of assessment and examination of ourselves but acceptance of ourselves. Right,
(13:15):
you've got assessment of yourself, but you've got acceptance on
you of yourself. That's where we want to live between
those two words, when often what we live between is
perfection and completely pulverizing ourselves. Or we live between criticizing
ourselves or falsely cheering ourselves on, or we live in
(13:38):
between judging ourselves or trying to boost ourselves up. And
what I find is that acceptance and assessment are healthier words.
For example, should we assess whether we're improving and growing?
Of course we should. Should we examine whether we've grown
since last year and developed? Of course we should, but
(14:02):
when we do that in a critical way. So the
question is, how do you assess yourself without being critical?
How do you examine yourself without being judgmental? Here's a
way to do it. The way to do it is
be more regular and consistent with assessing yourself and having
clear criteria. For example, let's say I'm really committed to
(14:29):
become more organized. Right, Let's say that's a personal commitment
for me, and so today I'll say, on a scale
of one to ten, how organized do I think I am?
And let's say I give myself a five. This is hypothetical,
by the way, I consider myself to be very organized.
And now I come up with a plan to be organized,
and in a month's time, I ask myself the same question,
(14:51):
how organized do I think I am? And I may say, well,
I'm at six. Now I'm measuring progress, and because I've
done that month on month and now twelve months, I
could say, oh, I'm out a seven and a half.
That's amazing. I've gone up two and a half points
done when I started, and now I feel really confident
about this area. The mistake we make is what we
kind of just think about in our head, but we
(15:13):
don't have a scale. We make it subjective. We ask
ourselves randomly on any given day when something goes wrong,
how we feel about ourselves, and of course we don't
rate ourselves highly. We've been getting so many amazing reviews
for The Daily Jay, my new daily guided meditation series
on the car Map. You might have heard a couple
of snippets on the podcast for a few weeks, so
(15:35):
in case you haven't had the chance to check it out,
I just wanted to share this review from Caitlin, an
elementary school teacher from New Jersey. He's what she had
to say. I have over nine years of experience in
the American public school education system, including teaching throughout the pandemic.
Over the past two years, I've seen extreme cases of
anxiety and my students like never before. Many of these
(15:56):
children have never experienced these feelings before, and a most
are not even sure of what they are feeling. My
school district has spent a great deal of time focusing
on social emotional learning sel through this school year. We
try to teach coping skills and focus on teaching kids
how to deal with their feelings and become the best
version of themselves. As someone who has also been experiencing
(16:18):
the many anxieties of the world today. I have recently
downloaded the car mapp thanks to my mom. My mom
and I are big fans of yours, and once she
heard that you will have seven minutes of Daily Jay
each day, she encouraged me in doing this. Your meaningful
ideas and meditation have quickly become part of my daily routine,
so much that I've begun incorporating some of them into
(16:39):
my sel morning meetings with my third graders. If you've
ever wanted to meditate with me, join me on the
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as clear with yourself about your strengths as you are
(17:22):
about your weaknesses. I find that a lot of us
are unable to name our strengths, but we find it
very easy to reel off a list of weaknesses. What
are your strengths? What are the parts of your life
that you feel really confident about? And if you struggle
with this, I want you to ask a colleague, I
(17:42):
want you to ask a friend. I want you to
ask a family member, and I want you to ask
a parent. Where do you excel? Where do you truly shine?
I want you to be so aware of that, and
I want you to know that, because when you know
you have strengths, and then you know your weaknesses, you
can live between acts seputance and assessment. But often we
don't live in acceptance. We live in criticism because we
(18:05):
only know our flaws. We know our flaws deeply, and
we know our strengths weakly. Let me repeat that, we
know our flaws deeply, and we know our strengths weakly
or shallowly. And because we don't have a deep understanding
of our own strengths, that's where a lack of self
(18:25):
esteem and self confidence comes from. Number five is superiority complex.
Apart from making you feel like you're the one that's wrong.
There's a way of making you feel inferior. You don't
work as hard as them, you don't work as fast
as them, you don't work as smart as them. Right,
if your partner always compares themselves to you or you
(18:47):
to them, you start to notice that this isn't a
healthy trait. Now, what do you do in that case?
What do you do when your partner does this? The
first thing is to make them aware that you don't
think it's fair, you don't think it's clear, that you
don't think it's the right way to feel encouraged. We
have to give the person the opportunity to become aware. Now,
(19:08):
if they still don't change, chances are they will need therapy,
that they will need support. And as I go through
this podcast, I'll also add that you have to set
boundaries because a lot of the times this person is
using you as a punching bag in their journey to perfection, right,
and they're never going to get to perfection, so they're
(19:29):
going to keep punching trying to release that pressure. And
so you have to be really careful that you don't
allow yourself to become a punching bag to be made
to feel inferior consistently, which it takes people years to
recover and rebound from things like this. To this group
(19:50):
number six is everything feels like a threat to them.
Everyone you mentioned, any person, any idea, It starts to
feel like a threat. And the reason why I'm making
you aware of that is because I don't want any
of you to get caught in the act of feeling
(20:12):
like what you're doing is wrong. I think a lot
of people live in this fear in their relationships that
I'm doing something wrong and my partner is upset. Now,
it's different if you cheat on someone, is different if
you lie, it's different if you steal. But often we
think we're doing something wrong because they make everything feel
(20:32):
like a threat. You're meeting up with a friend you
care about, you're meeting up with an old friend, you're
starting a new job, you're applying for something new, you're
getting advice from someone, and you might start to say, well,
you know, everyone has these traits. Of course we do.
We all have this because of how we were raised,
and it's good to be aware of these things in people.
Because we are, they're not surprised. I think so much
(20:54):
of the time we get surprised. We think, oh, but
they loved me. But then we unpack it and we go, oh,
wait a minute, I saw all those things. I just
ignored them, right, I just ignored them. The next one
is they switched the commode to themselves. Whenever you say something,
they switched it back to themselves. And this was something
I had to train myself out of. I found that
I always thought it was a way of building rapport,
(21:16):
and I started to realize how it wasn't effective lessening.
So if someone says to me, oh my gosh, I
just went skydiving this year, rather than me saying how
was that experience for you, my reaction was like, oh, yeah,
I went last year as well. It was amazing. And
So I found that actually being a better listener, actually
asking better questions, has allowed me to reduce some of
(21:37):
these tendencies by me saying how is that experience for you?
Like what was your favorite part about it? What was
the worst part about it? And then me sharing my
experience actually builds up a much healthier bond. So even
if you're listening to this, and I hope you are
noticing some of these traits within yourself that you start
to recognize that you don't want to treat yourself this
way either. Sometimes we take out our nasism on ourself. Now.
(22:02):
Number eight is taking credit. Often the narcissist wants to
take credit for everything, whether they did it or not,
and they will find a way to scoop up the
credit whether they did it or not. Something to be
very wary of. And as you can notice, some of
these are very normal. And when you're first starting a relationship,
it's so easy to be blinded by love. It's so
(22:22):
easy to think, oh, yeah, no, that's fine, and then
as time goes on, we start to go, oh, I
knew this. I noticed this, so I wanted to flag
that one to you. And number nine and ten. Number
nine is a really subtle one, and I found that,
you know, there were elements of this that I did
as well in my relationship that I had to really
work on. This was reclaiming difficult moments as yours. So
(22:46):
if your partner says I had a really long day
to day, you'd say, we'll tell me about it. Had
a longer day, right, or oh my gosh, I'm really
stressed about this week and you're like, well, tell me
about it. I've got so much I'm stressed about this week.
Someone says I've got a lot of planning to do
for this meeting, and you say, well, I've got ten
of those meetings this week. So you're reducing the other person.
(23:08):
This is almost accumulation of all the other areas where
you reduce the other person's efforts because you're reclaiming difficulty
as your badge. You've honor. And I have spent a
lot of time noticing this in myself, and when I've
done that, because again, I want a little bit of attention,
and you know all of us do, and so being
(23:30):
able to accept that and say okay. There were times
in my relationship with Radi where she would tell me
she's stressed about something and I'd be like, well, I'm
more stressed than you. I imagine what I've got on.
And then you start to realize, well, why am I minimizing?
She wasn't comparing her stress to me. She wasn't trying
to say that her stress was bigger than mine or
greater than mine. But because I'm not feeling heard myself,
(23:55):
and because I'm not vocalizing how I feel myself, I
want to use her vocalization as my opportunity. If you
use someone else's opportunity for vulnerability as a chance to
vocalize your own feelings, you are reducing their voice. You're
(24:16):
reducing their vulnerability. Take a moment to reflect on yourself.
It's so easy for us to listen to these and
think about other people, but it is important to see
some of this in ourselves and again to safely assess
and accept ourselves for how we are. We're not bad people.
We've adopted some poor habits and patterns. Right. If you
have a bad diet, it doesn't make you a bad person.
(24:37):
It just means you picked up some unhealthy habits along
the way that have become your normality. If a car's
driving through the mud and it gets muddy, it doesn't
make the car mud. It just means that it rolled
in some mud. It picked up some mud along the way.
But it can be washed, it can be cleansed, it
can be detoxed if you like, it can be purified.
(24:58):
And that is the same with us. And number ten
is a term called love bombing. This is probably the
hardest one. It's when people are overly loving in the beginning,
they're treating you, they're complimenting you. They're going all out
telling you how special you are, how important you are,
(25:19):
how amazing you are. They're excessively intense. They put you
on a pedestal, they give you extra gifts and positive compliments,
and it just gives you so much energy. And if
you're one of these people, I hope you hear this
because it makes other people feel like they are going
crazy right when you exaggeratedly fall in love with someone,
(25:42):
and the reason you're doing it is because you want
them to think you're amazing. You overlove in the beginning,
because you want someone else to think you're amazing. You
want them to say you are the best thing that
ever happened to me. You want them to say you're
the most incredible thing that ever happened to me. And
then all of a sudden, when you run out of that,
you dropped them, and you say, hey, I don't think
(26:02):
we had anything real. I don't think there was anything
between us. I didn't really feel the spark, I didn't
really feel the chemistry. I tried my best I overloved
you. You You didn't love me back enough. And that's another
thing we loved in order to be loved back but
the other person can't keep up with that exaggerated, inflated flattery,
and so then we go, oh, well, you never love
me the same as I loved you, And so how
(26:24):
many of you have ever experienced that in your life
where someone is so excessively, exaggeratedly in love with you,
you feel like this is going somewhere promising, and then
they lean away. If you've been through that, I just
want you to understand that that is a challenge for someone.
That is something they're dealing with. And I know everything
about you makes you want to think you did something
(26:46):
wrong or you messed up, and chances are it was
a trait that made them do that, especially if you
were just happy and going along. And I just want
you to take a moment again to assess what happened,
but accept yourself to where you are. If you've experienced
any of this, what have you got to learn? What
do you do? One of the biggest things is developing
(27:08):
this understanding of your strengths. Your self esteem not based
on what someone sees in you, but what you see
in yourself. That is self esteem. Self esteem is not
based on what others see in you. It's based on
what you see in yourself. Self confidence is not what
other people notice, it's what you wear, and naturally, whether
(27:29):
people notice or not, it's always there. I want you
to thank you for listening to this episode. I really
hope that it helped. I want you to share it
with a friend because I want people to be aware
that sometimes the people that they're with, the conversations that
they're having that often it's really really important that people
find help and support and therapy. That we don't just
(27:50):
allow them to be this way and just keep dealing
with it and think, oh, yeah, we're trying to help
them and we can help them out of this. We
need talented, skilled experts and professionals to support people out
of these Do not put that pressure on yourself. I
think so many people in relationships are trying to be
their partner's therapist. It's really tough to do that and
it isn't your role, it's not your job, but helping
(28:13):
them to find help is an amazing thing you can do.
And I want to end by reading some amazing reviews
and I thank you so much. We're growing every week
in reviews. We're nearly at the twenty thousand goal for
the end of this year, so please, please, please, It
would mean the world to me if you left a review.
This is a review from Sarah. She says I've resisted
podcasts for some reason, but realize now that it can
(28:35):
be just like a breath of fresh air in a
world with such high demand. Listening to your guidance is
a wonderful way to slow down and make the most
of moments we have. Thank you so much. This is
from Krista Jay. Your podcast has changed my life for
the better. I was going through a tough time with anxiety, depression,
and panic attacks when I came across your book Think
(28:55):
like a Monk. The book helped me so much, and
I tell everyone I know to read it. I started
listening to your podcast while I was reading the book,
and I haven't stopped listening since. You always have had
such good wisdom and helpful advice. I take something away
from every single one that makes my life better. Thank
you so much for everything you do, and I'm going
to read one more because there's so many beautiful one.
(29:17):
This one is from Courtney. I've started my work day
with you for the past couple of months. Something about
your voice an unbiased advice brings me such peace and
energy to greet the day ahead of me. I love
learning something new with your guests, and I just want
to thank you for bringing me calm, wisdom, and happiness
each day. Thank you all who've left a review. Thank
(29:39):
you to everyone who's listening. I hope you're enjoying this
week's episode as soon
Where do you excel? Where do you truly shine? I
want you to be so aware of that, and I
want you to know that because when you know you
have strengths and then you know your weaknesses, you can
live between acceptance and assessment. But often we don't live
in acceptance. We live in criticism because we only know
our flaws. We know our flaws deeply, and we know
(00:20):
our strengths weakly. And because we don't have a deep
understanding of our own strengths, that's where a lack of
self esteem and self confidence comes from. Hey, everyone, welcome
back to our Purpose, the number one health podcast in
the world. If you're listening, you're investing in your physical, mental, emotional, financial,
(00:46):
and spiritual health. On Purpose is the space, the safe
space where we create conversations, dialogue, insights, research on how
you can simply, practically and in a focused way, create
change in your life. If you want to change habits,
you're in the right place. If you want to change
(01:08):
and transform patterns of thought, you're in exactly the right place.
And if you want to create change in the world,
affect change in the world, you're in the right place.
Thank you so much for joining me. My name is
Jay Shetty. If you've been here before, I am so
grateful to you. You mean the world to me. If
you've never been here before and this is your first episode,
(01:29):
I want to thank you for being here. I am
so deeply committed to this community that we have, and
it has been astounding to me at how many of
you are listening to episodes on the daily now, and
the feedback I hear from you all is that the
more you listen, the more you grow, the more you change,
the more you're able to affect change in your lives
(01:50):
and the people that you love. And that fills me
with so much joy. It fills me with so much
excitement and happiness. So thank you so much for doing that. Now.
Today's topic is something I've been thinking about for a while,
and it's because it's something that's come up with my
clients now. As some of you know, I'm a life coach,
a relationship coach, and I work with different people. All
(02:13):
of my clients also have a therapist. I really believe
in co serving with a therapist because I believe that
therapists fantastically help people entangle their past and really makes
sense of the thoughts and patterns that they've developed, and
as a coach, it's really about building forward. But this
was a theme that kept recurring in some of my sessions,
(02:37):
and I would talk to a lot of my therapist
friends about this a lot as well. And it's all
about narcism. And I started to find out that a
lot of people that I was working with may have
been dating a narcissist at one point in time, may
have come up with someone or being with someone at
some point in their life who had narcissistic personality disorder.
(02:58):
And so I became more interesting did in this space.
And so I've been researching learning about the space, and
I wanted to share it with you today because I
think it's important. Today you will discover that approximately zero
point five percent of the United States population, or one
in two hundred people, has narcissistic personality disorder. And this
(03:19):
is study from the Recovery Village. And so when you
hear that number, you think, well, that's not a lot
of people. I'm not likely to bump into someone. But
we realize that there are a lot of people that
are on that spectrum, and so some of us may
have dealt with someone who's in an extreme case and
some people less so. But we start to recognize that
(03:42):
there are also significant gender differences when it comes to
the prevalence of the disorder. Says Recovery Village that seventy
five percent of people with narcissistic personality disorder are men,
and the demographics go on to give a bit more detail.
Two to six percent of those seek help from mental
health clinics, six percent of forensic analysts, twenty percent of
(04:05):
people in the military, and seventeen percent of first year
medical students. Now, a lot of what I'm going to
share with you today are more signs that you can
notice in people. And even if that person doesn't have
narcissistic personality disorder or MPD, they may have certain traits.
(04:27):
And it's important for us to be mindful of these
traits in people we meet and even in ourselves, because
a lot of these traits can create a lot of
challenges moving forward for us and for our relationships. So
sometimes when I reflect on this list, I actually find
that there are elements of this in a lot of people, right,
(04:49):
and it's just valuable for us to be aware so
we can actually navigate our relationships better. So here are
the ways to know if you're with the narcissist dating
in our this may be married to one. Maybe you
have elements of this in yourself. And I want to
do this in a safe space of acceptance and non
judgment and encouraging us to find help and support, whether
(05:12):
it's through therapy in the beginning and of course through
coaching long term, to just encourage you to move towards that.
Whether you're with someone that way, you know a friend
who's in that scenario as well, because sometimes we find
out too late and act too late. So one of
the first simplest ways that we start to notice that
someone has narcissistic tendencies is that they struggle to talk
(05:37):
about others for too long. The conversation has to constantly
shift back to talking about them. So if they start
a conversation, it will often be about them. If they
start a conversation, it will often reflect on everyone talking
about them. They enjoy the idea of plant hunting the
(06:00):
seed of a problem in a group of people and
hearing what everyone has to say about them, And so
we start to notice that if the conversation veers off,
if the conversation goes in another direction, they will want
to drag the conversation back to them. Now, often when
we're around these people will say things like, oh, well,
(06:21):
they're so selfish, or they're so self centered, or we
don't enjoy being around that kind of person because we
always feel unheard or we feel like that person's unaware
of us. And this can stay in relationships for years
before someone asks for help or someone even knows that
they have this trait, and it takes a lot of
(06:44):
courage as a friend to share this with them. And
often we're not the right person, we may not be
close enough, we may not have the trust of that individual,
And I think we have to be aware of that
that if you're going to say to someone that you
know that they are self centered or selfish, or the
conversation is always about them, it's important that you also
(07:04):
do this in a compassionate, loving way. It's very easy
to assume that they should know and they should realize,
but making them aware is extremely healthy if you're the
right person, And of course doing it through the right
person is even more important. Someone that that person trusts, respects,
maybe even looks up to is what's truly needed. Now.
(07:27):
An extended part of this Number two is that this
person craves attention. Right, They crave attention. They want everything
at the party to be about them. They want everything
at the event to be about them. They're not great
at celebrating others. They struggle when someone else is the
center of attention. Think about proposing at someone else's wedding,
(07:50):
think about announcing something at someone else's birthday. These are
all methods to crave attention, and the Mayo Clinic says
that although the cause of narcissistic personality disorder isn't known,
some researchers think that in biologically vulnerable children, parenting styles
(08:11):
that are overprotective all neglectful may have an impact. Genetics
and neurobiology also may play a role in the development
of narcissistic personality disorder, so we start to recognize it's
not that that person doesn't have a choice and you're
feeling sorry for them, but it is understanding the context
(08:31):
of how they got there. The Mayo Clinic also says that,
as with personality development and with other mental health disorders,
even though the cause is complex, there's three areas that
it can be linked to. The first is environment mismatches
in parent child relationships with either excessive adoration or excessive
(08:52):
criticism that is poorly attuned to the child's experience. I
found this fascinating. Right, So, this idea that someone craves
attention is because they received so much attention growing up
for every tiny thing they did that they're now looking
for everyone to give them the same thing. Or it
was the opposite. They were given no attention for anything
(09:14):
they did, and so there's this natural movement towards it. Now.
I'm sure as you're listening to this, you may be thinking, Jay,
I feel like that a bit. There's times when I
want attention because I didn't get any, or there's times
when I want attention because my parents always gave me some.
So you can start to notice how we all have
different aspects of this within ourselves, within the development of
(09:36):
our own personality. Now, whether we notice it is one thing,
whether someone else notices it is another, and whether it's
a recurring pattern is another. So we start to see
how the prevalence of this in our life is dependent
on how obvious it is and how repetitive it is
to the people around us. We often find that we
(09:57):
can be self aware about something, but most people are
round us don't notice it, or we're self aware and
someone notices it. And not only are we self aware,
not only does someone notice it, but it is a
repetitive cycle. Us being aware of it ourselves is really
powerful because self awareness is where all change begins. But
(10:17):
at the same time, there are lots of people in
our lives, including us, who we sometimes miss this. We
miss the understanding because from our perspective, we think we're right. Well,
of course I crave attention. Everyone craves attention, and we
assume that because we crave attention, everyone must be craving
the same thing. So now it makes it a competition.
(10:38):
So we can find that in MPD and in terms
of being a narcissist, that becomes this craving of competition.
The other cause that comes up by the Mayo clinic
is genetics inherited characteristics. Of course, if family members had
aspects of this, we start to mirror it, we start
to replicate it. And then it is neurobiology, the connection
(11:01):
between the brain and behavior and thinking. And of course
the biggest area of negative impact this creates is in
relationship difficulties, because we start to recognize that people really
struggle to connect deeply with someone who has narcissistic tendencies,
or we connect for a certain period of time, but
(11:22):
then often people feel exhausted and drained. The third way
to know that you're with a narcissist is that they
don't accept responsibility if they make a mistake. They're not
vulnerable enough, they're not open enough to accept that they
are part of the problem. And I think in relationships
(11:43):
this often becomes a big, big, big issue because when
someone doesn't take responsibility, sometimes we can take it all
on ourselves and we think it's all our fault. We
think it's all because of us, and when that person
doesn't take responsibility, we can often start to feel like
we're the only ones responsible. All the opposite happens. We
(12:07):
know we're not the only ones responsible, but we keep waiting,
maybe even forcing, for them to take responsibility. But the
penny hasn't dropped for them yet. They haven't had it
click yet that they are a part of the challenge
that exists. The fourth way of knowing is that they
make you feel like you're wrong. That comes from the
last one. When someone doesn't accept responsibility. A big part
(12:30):
of that is they make you feel like you're wrong.
Now iver clients who've been in this space of being
made to feel like they're the ones that are wrong,
they're the ones that are responsible. And whenever they've been
in this position, the thing that I found is that
they internalize it. If you're sincere, if you're genuine, you
(12:51):
start to internalize this, and this starts to play on
your own self worth and your own self esteem. And
this is why I'm doing this episode because I believe
that where we want to get to is this perfect
balance of assessment and examination of ourselves but acceptance of ourselves. Right,
(13:15):
you've got assessment of yourself, but you've got acceptance on
you of yourself. That's where we want to live between
those two words, when often what we live between is
perfection and completely pulverizing ourselves. Or we live between criticizing
ourselves or falsely cheering ourselves on, or we live in
(13:38):
between judging ourselves or trying to boost ourselves up. And
what I find is that acceptance and assessment are healthier words.
For example, should we assess whether we're improving and growing?
Of course we should. Should we examine whether we've grown
since last year and developed? Of course we should, but
(14:02):
when we do that in a critical way. So the
question is, how do you assess yourself without being critical?
How do you examine yourself without being judgmental? Here's a
way to do it. The way to do it is
be more regular and consistent with assessing yourself and having
clear criteria. For example, let's say I'm really committed to
(14:29):
become more organized. Right, Let's say that's a personal commitment
for me, and so today I'll say, on a scale
of one to ten, how organized do I think I am?
And let's say I give myself a five. This is hypothetical,
by the way, I consider myself to be very organized.
And now I come up with a plan to be organized,
and in a month's time, I ask myself the same question,
(14:51):
how organized do I think I am? And I may say, well,
I'm at six. Now I'm measuring progress, and because I've
done that month on month and now twelve months, I
could say, oh, I'm out a seven and a half.
That's amazing. I've gone up two and a half points
done when I started, and now I feel really confident
about this area. The mistake we make is what we
kind of just think about in our head, but we
(15:13):
don't have a scale. We make it subjective. We ask
ourselves randomly on any given day when something goes wrong,
how we feel about ourselves, and of course we don't
rate ourselves highly. We've been getting so many amazing reviews
for The Daily Jay, my new daily guided meditation series
on the car Map. You might have heard a couple
of snippets on the podcast for a few weeks, so
(15:35):
in case you haven't had the chance to check it out,
I just wanted to share this review from Caitlin, an
elementary school teacher from New Jersey. He's what she had
to say. I have over nine years of experience in
the American public school education system, including teaching throughout the pandemic.
Over the past two years, I've seen extreme cases of
anxiety and my students like never before. Many of these
(15:56):
children have never experienced these feelings before, and a most
are not even sure of what they are feeling. My
school district has spent a great deal of time focusing
on social emotional learning sel through this school year. We
try to teach coping skills and focus on teaching kids
how to deal with their feelings and become the best
version of themselves. As someone who has also been experiencing
(16:18):
the many anxieties of the world today. I have recently
downloaded the car mapp thanks to my mom. My mom
and I are big fans of yours, and once she
heard that you will have seven minutes of Daily Jay
each day, she encouraged me in doing this. Your meaningful
ideas and meditation have quickly become part of my daily routine,
so much that I've begun incorporating some of them into
(16:39):
my sel morning meetings with my third graders. If you've
ever wanted to meditate with me, join me on the
car Map for the Daily Jay, a daily guided meditation
where I'll help you find calm in the chaos, plant
beautiful intentions for a happy, abundant life and simple steps
for positive actions to get you closer to the life
of your dreams. Meditate with me by going to calm
(17:01):
dot com forward slash Jay to getty a Calm Premium
membership that's only forty two dollars for the whole year
for a daily guided meditation. Experience the Daily j only
on Calm. The next thing to do is to be
as clear with yourself about your strengths as you are
(17:22):
about your weaknesses. I find that a lot of us
are unable to name our strengths, but we find it
very easy to reel off a list of weaknesses. What
are your strengths? What are the parts of your life
that you feel really confident about? And if you struggle
with this, I want you to ask a colleague, I
(17:42):
want you to ask a friend. I want you to
ask a family member, and I want you to ask
a parent. Where do you excel? Where do you truly shine?
I want you to be so aware of that, and
I want you to know that, because when you know
you have strengths, and then you know your weaknesses, you
can live between acts seputance and assessment. But often we
don't live in acceptance. We live in criticism because we
(18:05):
only know our flaws. We know our flaws deeply, and
we know our strengths weakly. Let me repeat that, we
know our flaws deeply, and we know our strengths weakly
or shallowly. And because we don't have a deep understanding
of our own strengths, that's where a lack of self
(18:25):
esteem and self confidence comes from. Number five is superiority complex.
Apart from making you feel like you're the one that's wrong.
There's a way of making you feel inferior. You don't
work as hard as them, you don't work as fast
as them, you don't work as smart as them. Right,
if your partner always compares themselves to you or you
(18:47):
to them, you start to notice that this isn't a
healthy trait. Now, what do you do in that case?
What do you do when your partner does this? The
first thing is to make them aware that you don't
think it's fair, you don't think it's clear, that you
don't think it's the right way to feel encouraged. We
have to give the person the opportunity to become aware. Now,
(19:08):
if they still don't change, chances are they will need therapy,
that they will need support. And as I go through
this podcast, I'll also add that you have to set
boundaries because a lot of the times this person is
using you as a punching bag in their journey to perfection, right,
and they're never going to get to perfection, so they're
(19:29):
going to keep punching trying to release that pressure. And
so you have to be really careful that you don't
allow yourself to become a punching bag to be made
to feel inferior consistently, which it takes people years to
recover and rebound from things like this. To this group
(19:50):
number six is everything feels like a threat to them.
Everyone you mentioned, any person, any idea, It starts to
feel like a threat. And the reason why I'm making
you aware of that is because I don't want any
of you to get caught in the act of feeling
(20:12):
like what you're doing is wrong. I think a lot
of people live in this fear in their relationships that
I'm doing something wrong and my partner is upset. Now,
it's different if you cheat on someone, is different if
you lie, it's different if you steal. But often we
think we're doing something wrong because they make everything feel
(20:32):
like a threat. You're meeting up with a friend you
care about, you're meeting up with an old friend, you're
starting a new job, you're applying for something new, you're
getting advice from someone, and you might start to say, well,
you know, everyone has these traits. Of course we do.
We all have this because of how we were raised,
and it's good to be aware of these things in people.
Because we are, they're not surprised. I think so much
(20:54):
of the time we get surprised. We think, oh, but
they loved me. But then we unpack it and we go, oh,
wait a minute, I saw all those things. I just
ignored them, right, I just ignored them. The next one
is they switched the commode to themselves. Whenever you say something,
they switched it back to themselves. And this was something
I had to train myself out of. I found that
I always thought it was a way of building rapport,
(21:16):
and I started to realize how it wasn't effective lessening.
So if someone says to me, oh my gosh, I
just went skydiving this year, rather than me saying how
was that experience for you, my reaction was like, oh, yeah,
I went last year as well. It was amazing. And
So I found that actually being a better listener, actually
asking better questions, has allowed me to reduce some of
(21:37):
these tendencies by me saying how is that experience for you?
Like what was your favorite part about it? What was
the worst part about it? And then me sharing my
experience actually builds up a much healthier bond. So even
if you're listening to this, and I hope you are
noticing some of these traits within yourself that you start
to recognize that you don't want to treat yourself this
way either. Sometimes we take out our nasism on ourself. Now.
(22:02):
Number eight is taking credit. Often the narcissist wants to
take credit for everything, whether they did it or not,
and they will find a way to scoop up the
credit whether they did it or not. Something to be
very wary of. And as you can notice, some of
these are very normal. And when you're first starting a relationship,
it's so easy to be blinded by love. It's so
(22:22):
easy to think, oh, yeah, no, that's fine, and then
as time goes on, we start to go, oh, I
knew this. I noticed this, so I wanted to flag
that one to you. And number nine and ten. Number
nine is a really subtle one, and I found that,
you know, there were elements of this that I did
as well in my relationship that I had to really
work on. This was reclaiming difficult moments as yours. So
(22:46):
if your partner says I had a really long day
to day, you'd say, we'll tell me about it. Had
a longer day, right, or oh my gosh, I'm really
stressed about this week and you're like, well, tell me
about it. I've got so much I'm stressed about this week.
Someone says I've got a lot of planning to do
for this meeting, and you say, well, I've got ten
of those meetings this week. So you're reducing the other person.
(23:08):
This is almost accumulation of all the other areas where
you reduce the other person's efforts because you're reclaiming difficulty
as your badge. You've honor. And I have spent a
lot of time noticing this in myself, and when I've
done that, because again, I want a little bit of attention,
and you know all of us do, and so being
(23:30):
able to accept that and say okay. There were times
in my relationship with Radi where she would tell me
she's stressed about something and I'd be like, well, I'm
more stressed than you. I imagine what I've got on.
And then you start to realize, well, why am I minimizing?
She wasn't comparing her stress to me. She wasn't trying
to say that her stress was bigger than mine or
greater than mine. But because I'm not feeling heard myself,
(23:55):
and because I'm not vocalizing how I feel myself, I
want to use her vocalization as my opportunity. If you
use someone else's opportunity for vulnerability as a chance to
vocalize your own feelings, you are reducing their voice. You're
(24:16):
reducing their vulnerability. Take a moment to reflect on yourself.
It's so easy for us to listen to these and
think about other people, but it is important to see
some of this in ourselves and again to safely assess
and accept ourselves for how we are. We're not bad people.
We've adopted some poor habits and patterns. Right. If you
have a bad diet, it doesn't make you a bad person.
(24:37):
It just means you picked up some unhealthy habits along
the way that have become your normality. If a car's
driving through the mud and it gets muddy, it doesn't
make the car mud. It just means that it rolled
in some mud. It picked up some mud along the way.
But it can be washed, it can be cleansed, it
can be detoxed if you like, it can be purified.
(24:58):
And that is the same with us. And number ten
is a term called love bombing. This is probably the
hardest one. It's when people are overly loving in the beginning,
they're treating you, they're complimenting you. They're going all out
telling you how special you are, how important you are,
(25:19):
how amazing you are. They're excessively intense. They put you
on a pedestal, they give you extra gifts and positive compliments,
and it just gives you so much energy. And if
you're one of these people, I hope you hear this
because it makes other people feel like they are going
crazy right when you exaggeratedly fall in love with someone,
(25:42):
and the reason you're doing it is because you want
them to think you're amazing. You overlove in the beginning,
because you want someone else to think you're amazing. You
want them to say you are the best thing that
ever happened to me. You want them to say you're
the most incredible thing that ever happened to me. And
then all of a sudden, when you run out of that,
you dropped them, and you say, hey, I don't think
(26:02):
we had anything real. I don't think there was anything
between us. I didn't really feel the spark, I didn't
really feel the chemistry. I tried my best I overloved
you. You You didn't love me back enough. And that's another
thing we loved in order to be loved back but
the other person can't keep up with that exaggerated, inflated flattery,
and so then we go, oh, well, you never love
me the same as I loved you, And so how
(26:24):
many of you have ever experienced that in your life
where someone is so excessively, exaggeratedly in love with you,
you feel like this is going somewhere promising, and then
they lean away. If you've been through that, I just
want you to understand that that is a challenge for someone.
That is something they're dealing with. And I know everything
about you makes you want to think you did something
(26:46):
wrong or you messed up, and chances are it was
a trait that made them do that, especially if you
were just happy and going along. And I just want
you to take a moment again to assess what happened,
but accept yourself to where you are. If you've experienced
any of this, what have you got to learn? What
do you do? One of the biggest things is developing
(27:08):
this understanding of your strengths. Your self esteem not based
on what someone sees in you, but what you see
in yourself. That is self esteem. Self esteem is not
based on what others see in you. It's based on
what you see in yourself. Self confidence is not what
other people notice, it's what you wear, and naturally, whether
(27:29):
people notice or not, it's always there. I want you
to thank you for listening to this episode. I really
hope that it helped. I want you to share it
with a friend because I want people to be aware
that sometimes the people that they're with, the conversations that
they're having that often it's really really important that people
find help and support and therapy. That we don't just
(27:50):
allow them to be this way and just keep dealing
with it and think, oh, yeah, we're trying to help
them and we can help them out of this. We
need talented, skilled experts and professionals to support people out
of these Do not put that pressure on yourself. I
think so many people in relationships are trying to be
their partner's therapist. It's really tough to do that and
it isn't your role, it's not your job, but helping
(28:13):
them to find help is an amazing thing you can do.
And I want to end by reading some amazing reviews
and I thank you so much. We're growing every week
in reviews. We're nearly at the twenty thousand goal for
the end of this year, so please, please, please, It
would mean the world to me if you left a review.
This is a review from Sarah. She says I've resisted
podcasts for some reason, but realize now that it can
(28:35):
be just like a breath of fresh air in a
world with such high demand. Listening to your guidance is
a wonderful way to slow down and make the most
of moments we have. Thank you so much. This is
from Krista Jay. Your podcast has changed my life for
the better. I was going through a tough time with anxiety, depression,
and panic attacks when I came across your book Think
(28:55):
like a Monk. The book helped me so much, and
I tell everyone I know to read it. I started
listening to your podcast while I was reading the book,
and I haven't stopped listening since. You always have had
such good wisdom and helpful advice. I take something away
from every single one that makes my life better. Thank
you so much for everything you do, and I'm going
to read one more because there's so many beautiful one.
(29:17):
This one is from Courtney. I've started my work day
with you for the past couple of months. Something about
your voice an unbiased advice brings me such peace and
energy to greet the day ahead of me. I love
learning something new with your guests, and I just want
to thank you for bringing me calm, wisdom, and happiness
each day. Thank you all who've left a review. Thank
(29:39):
you to everyone who's listening. I hope you're enjoying this
week's episode as soon
Host
Jay Shetty
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Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations.
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
The Breakfast Club
The World's Most Dangerous Morning Show, The Breakfast Club, With DJ Envy And Charlamagne Tha God!