July 4, 2025 • 45 mins
Have you noticed the word narcissist being thrown around a lot lately and found yourself wondering whether someone’s actually a narcissist… or just unpleasant?
In this episode of But Are You Happy, clinical psychologist Dr. Anastasia Hronis breaks down what narcissism really is, how to recognise it, and what you can do if there’s a narcissist in your life.
You’ll also learn:
- Where Narcissistic Personality Disorder comes from
- The key red flags and behaviours to watch for in a narcissistic relationship
- How to navigate life with a narcissist, whether it’s a partner, friend, or family member
- The difference between a narcissist you can manage and one who can't be reasoned with
If you or someone you know is impacted by domestic, family, or sexual violence, you can contact 1800RESPECT — the national counselling and support service — on 1800 737 732.
If you or someone you know needs support, contact Lifeline on 13 11 14 or Beyond Blue on 1300 22 4636. Both services are available 24/7 for free, confidential mental health support.
Want to get in touch with us? DM @butareyouhappypod on Instagram or send us a voice memo. Our hosts are ready to hear your dilemmas—think of it as free therapy!
CREDITS:
Hosts: Ashani Dante & Dr Anastasia Hronis
Executive Producer: Naima Brown
Senior Producer: Tahli Blackman
Audio Producer: Jacob Round
Mamamia acknowledges the Traditional Owners of the Land we have recorded this podcast on, the Gadigal people of the Eora Nation. We pay our respects to their Elders past and present and extend that respect to all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander cultures.
Support the show: https://www.mamamia.com.au/mplus/
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:11):
You're listening to a Muma Mia podcast.
Speaker 2 (00:14):
Mamma Maya acknowledges the traditional owners of the land and
waters that this podcast is recorded on.
Speaker 3 (00:20):
So I'm a narcissist, but you seem so nice. Oh,
I'm pretending. I figured out if I'm charming and funny
and give you lots of attention and affection, then I
can get you to fall in love with me. Why
do you need me to fall in love with you? Oh,
because then you're less likely to leave once I start
lying and belittling and gas lighting you and chipping away
yourself worth in order to control and manipulate you.
Speaker 4 (00:38):
Huh.
Speaker 1 (00:40):
Poor Mamma Mia. I'm your host, Ashani Dante, Welcome to
But are you happy because jes b de Lulu isn't
a coping strategy?
Speaker 2 (00:50):
And I'm doctor Anastaga Hornus, a clinical psychologist passionate about
happiness and mental health.
Speaker 4 (00:57):
Have you, like many of us, heard.
Speaker 2 (00:59):
The word narcissist thrown around a lot lately and are
you sometimes not entirely sure if what is actually being
described is a narcissist or maybe someone who's just not
very nice.
Speaker 1 (01:12):
Narcissism is definitely one of those psychological frameworks that's been
thrown around a lot, from conversations with your girlfriends to
our social media feed, and by.
Speaker 2 (01:20):
The end of this episode, you're going to have a
better understanding of narcissism, how to spot the traits, and
what to do if you find yourself with a narcissist
in your life.
Speaker 4 (01:30):
Let's do it.
Speaker 1 (01:35):
At as Asia. I want to start by asking if
you've worked with many people with narcissism.
Speaker 2 (01:41):
I have, and I think it's something that I really
want to address first up, because the whole topic of
narcissism narcissistic personalities, I think is a really topical one,
but one that I want to address sensitively, and I
want to address it with sensitivity for the people who
(02:01):
may have been on the receiving end of someone who
is narcissistic, but also for the people who actually have
those narcissistic qualities themselves. Right, I've read a fair bit
of the kind of pop psychology literature about narcissism in
preparation for today, and a lot of it can be
very shaming to people who do display these narcissistic traits. Now,
(02:24):
I'm not here sitting and agreeing with some of the
traits that they exhibit, But I think it's important for
us to hold sensitivity in this whole conversation.
Speaker 1 (02:34):
Oh. I think it's a really good frame up and
really important to keep in mind because it is a
very sensitive topic to many. So what's that like working
with people with narcissism.
Speaker 2 (02:43):
It's interesting A lot of the time a person who
has these narcissistic traits won't necessarily come into the therapy
room because they think they have narcissism. Right, It's a
very rare day that someone comes in and goes, I
think I'm a narcissist. Can you help figure out if
that's an accurate diagnosis for me? They usually come in
(03:05):
because of secondary problems in their life. Maybe they're feeling
quite depressed, maybe they've got some sort of addiction concern.
These are quite common dual diagnoses we might see for people,
and through the process of assessing their mood, their mental health,
and addiction, it might come to the forefront that they
actually do have these narcissistic traits as well, so.
Speaker 1 (03:28):
They kind of connect it so they can overlap absolutely.
So then in terms like in the clinic room, then
people that actually do come to actively seek your support
would you say that they are more people that are
in relationships with a narcissist.
Speaker 2 (03:42):
Definitely, I would see many more people who come to
therapy who believe that they may have a narcissist in
their life. Whether that be a partner, a romantic partner,
that's a common question that's brought into the therapy room,
but also a narcissistic parent is the other common theme
(04:03):
that we see come through a person coming into the
therapy room feeling like they're experiencing difficulties in their life,
and when we sort of unpack their early childhood experiences
and the trajectory of their life, it comes out that
they may have had a parent who had these narcissistic traits.
Speaker 1 (04:20):
I feel like we need to break this down now.
What is narcissism because as we've mentioned before, the label
gets thrown around a lot. It can be misinterpreted. Give
us the lowdown.
Speaker 2 (04:31):
Okay, So narcissism, like any personality style, I guess, exists
on a spectrum. So we can meet people in our
day to day life who have very mild flavors of narcissism.
So this might be, you know, the person who loves
(04:51):
to tell stories about themselves, and when you jump in
with your kind of experience of the weekend and what
you got up to, they'll bring it back to what
they did.
Speaker 4 (04:58):
On the weekend.
Speaker 1 (04:59):
Right.
Speaker 2 (04:59):
People who are very sort of self focused, who can
be quite grandiose, a little bit overconfident, sometimes arrogant in
their personality style. And these people well, are not necessarily harmful.
Sometimes they're a little bit annoying to be around, a
little bit unpleasant to be around, but they're not harmful.
That's one end of the spectrum. The other end of
(05:21):
the spectrum where we meet someone who has quite intense
narcissistic personality traits, might be someone who has quite rigid
patterns of over inflating themselves in situations and devaluing others.
(05:41):
When we see the more extreme forms of narcissism, we
look at potentially diagnosing what we refer to as a
narcissistic personality disorder, So there is an official diagnosis that
we can give people who present with many themes and
patterns of narcissism to the point where it is actually
(06:02):
a clinically defined personality disorder, and a personality disorder is
essentially someone who's got very rigid patterns of thinking and
being in the world. This can present in all sorts
of ways. There's lots of different personality disorders that.
Speaker 4 (06:17):
I won't get into now.
Speaker 2 (06:18):
Maybe we can cover that in another episode sometimes, but
for narcissistic personality disorder, it really is about this grandiosity,
an overinflated sense of self and importance, sometimes a preoccupation
with power and control over other people. A belief that
they are superior to others, that they should live by
(06:41):
a different set of rules to what other people should.
A lack of empathy, finding it quite hard to put
themselves in the shoes of other people and think about
how others might be feeling. And they may also take
advantage of people or have unreasonable expectations of others.
Speaker 1 (07:00):
What would you say are the signs and symptoms that
you are in some kind of relationship with a narcissist.
Speaker 4 (07:07):
This is a great question.
Speaker 2 (07:09):
If you think you might be in a relationship with
a narcissist, you might be seeing signs of what I
would refer to as a power struggle.
Speaker 4 (07:18):
When you want to put forward a thought.
Speaker 2 (07:21):
An opinion, an emotional experience you're having. A person with
a narcissistic personality style may have trouble validating, recognizing, and
giving space to what you're saying, and so you might
end up in this feeling of a struggle for power
and control. You might also find that when you do
(07:44):
bring forward your emotions that the person you're with is
really lacking empathy in how they respond to you. They
might be able to give some surface level empathy, like
people tend to know what to say if someone's upset
and struggling, but beyond that they might really struggle to
maintain empathy and compassion. And you may also feel like
maybe you feel like you're being manipulated in certain ways
(08:06):
that it's the feeling in your gut that says, I
don't feel emotionally safe in this interaction.
Speaker 1 (08:13):
As you're saying that, it actually reminds us back to
episode one where you talked about emotions being a data.
So I feel like this is one of those moments
where it's like, what is that dynamic bringing up for
you personally? How is it feeling?
Speaker 2 (08:27):
Yes, what am I feeling in my body? What are
my emotions telling me about how I feel when I'm
in the room with this person or when I'm having
a conversation with that person. Because as you say, shiny,
those emotions are such important sources of information for us.
Speaker 1 (08:43):
So where does narcissism come from.
Speaker 4 (08:47):
So there's two pathways.
Speaker 2 (08:51):
Let's say, to developing narcissistic traits, and they really start
in early life. For the most part, people who experience
this narcissistic personality style, who have this narcissistic personality style,
they ultimately have very deep seated feelings of guilt and shame.
(09:16):
Now I want to pause and talk about the difference
between guilt and shame for a moment. Guilt is the
feeling that tells me I have done something wrong, I
have done something that breaks my moral code. I've done
something I don't like. That's really useful because we can,
you know, change and make amends. Shame, on the other hand,
(09:37):
tells me not that I have done something bad or wrong,
but that I am bad or I am wrong. So
there's a big difference between guilt and shame. Guilt is
about my actions. Shame is about who I am fundamentally
as a person. So while the narcissistic person might appear
(09:58):
on the outside to be very grandiose and very confidence
and very charismatic and can easily connect and talk to people,
it's very different to what their internal experience is that's
conscious or subconscious. We know that for most narcissistic people
there are those deep seated feelings of guilt, but predominantly shame.
(10:20):
They do not feel good about themselves. They have strong
feelings of worthlessness. Now, to bring that back to your
question about where does this come from, it comes from
early life experiences.
Speaker 4 (10:33):
If I have.
Speaker 2 (10:33):
Lived a life where I have in some way internalized
the message that there is something wrong with me, I
may develop these narcissistic, grandiose ways of coping as a
way to manage that feeling of shame and worthlessness within me.
So that's one pathway to developing these narcissistic traits. The
(10:57):
other pathway we see is where someone from very early
on in life has been overindulged and told not just
that they're special, but that they're more special than other people.
So if you think about this, little Freddy's got his
soccer game on this Saturday, and Mum and Dad are
(11:18):
on the sideline saying to the coach, Freddy should play
the whole game, when actually everyone only gets to play
half a game, but Freddy should play the whole game.
It's this idea that my child is special and different
rules should apply to him as opposed to all the
other kids. It's the people that rock up to the
airport and go I shouldn't have to wait in this line.
I should be able to go to the front of
(11:38):
the line. Right, It's this idea that the rules that
apply to everyone else don't apply to me. I'm in
some way more special, and that this is a message
that some parents also give their children. So this is
the other trajectory and pathway to developing that narcissistic, grandiose
personality style. But as I said, this is less common
(12:00):
than the pathway that's rooted in shame.
Speaker 1 (12:03):
So kind of circling back to the spectrum you gave
us around the personality disorder and using experiencing narcissism. I'm
really curious because i want to bust some myths and
I'm curious to know what's the difference between narcissism versus
(12:23):
having narcissistic behaviors, Like, is there a difference?
Speaker 2 (12:27):
So I'd say there's a difference between having a narcissistic
personality style, right, because we can have an agreeable personality
style or an introverted personality style. We can have all
these sort of features to our personality without it being
a diagnosis. So some people have more narcissistic styles to
(12:49):
their personality. The other end of that spectrum is a
clinical diagnosis and a disorder where the narcissistic traits are
so strong that, like with any clinical diagnosis, they're causing
some sort of negative impact in a person's day to
day life.
Speaker 4 (13:06):
If I am going through the world.
Speaker 2 (13:08):
And I'm very unagreeable, an antagonistic, and I lack empathy
and I'm not willing to put myself in the shoes
of others, and I manipulate and I control, I'm going
to end up with some real problems in my life,
probably into personal problems. But maybe it's trouble keeping a job,
Maybe it's trouble keeping a relationship. Maybe it's I develop
some sort of an addiction. As a result, that person
(13:30):
who meets those diagnostic criterias is going to be struggling
in some way.
Speaker 1 (13:34):
When you were kind of talking about the mild characteristics
of narcissism, I was like, Oh my gosh, I think
I do that. So does that mean like I might
be a.
Speaker 2 (13:44):
Narcissist I can assure you you're not a.
Speaker 4 (13:47):
Shiny let's clear that up right now.
Speaker 2 (13:50):
But we all exhibit some of these traits. I'm sure
there have been times in my life where someone's been
telling a great story and I'm like, oh, let me
tell you about that time.
Speaker 4 (13:59):
I went to Hawaii.
Speaker 2 (14:00):
If I hadn't cut off what they're saying, that's normal
human behavior. I'm sure there's times where maybe I could
have been more empathetic towards someone than what I actually was. Right,
So we don't ever want to look at just one
of these traits in isolation and in an isolated experience.
What we're looking for is patterns through a person's life.
(14:22):
It's not that one time I accidentally cut someone off
midstory and then feel.
Speaker 4 (14:26):
Bad about it afterwards.
Speaker 2 (14:27):
It's whether I do that every single time I have
a conversation with that person.
Speaker 1 (14:31):
I really like that the isolated experience versus the pattern.
So what does it actually look like to coexist in
a relationship with a narcissist?
Speaker 2 (14:42):
It can feel very confusing. What a person might experience
is this almost Jeckel and hide experience from the person
who has the narcissistic traits. So what I mean by
that a person who has narcissism, who feels very vulnerable,
full of shame. Right, they are working very hard every
(15:06):
day to protect themselves. So when they're in a situation
where they feel emotionally.
Speaker 4 (15:12):
Safe, they can be really pleasant to be around.
Speaker 2 (15:15):
They can be enjoyable, they can be often quite intelligent,
charismatic people, right, So they can be a real nice
side to that experience. However, the person who has such
deep seated feelings of shame and vulnerability and worthlessness can
very easily feel threatened. Now I don't mean physically threatened,
(15:38):
I mean emotionally threatened. So if they're with a partner
who challenges them, who provides feedback slash criticism, or who
says something that they don't agree with, they might be
very quick to react to that experience because it brings
up all those feelings of shame. No one likes to
feel shame, for any of us. It's an awful feeling
(16:01):
to sit in. So the person who is narcissistic will
protect themselves, but they will do it in a way
that often comes with some sort of attack, some sort
of inflation of self and put down of the other person.
So the twenty four hours of being in a relationship
with someone who is narcissistic can feel very confusing because
(16:21):
you can see a really lovely side to that person
and you can see a really mean side to that
person as well.
Speaker 1 (16:28):
So, something that I've heard that narcissists do is especially
early on in a relationship, is love bombing. Can you
tell me more about love bombing?
Speaker 4 (16:37):
Yes, this is true.
Speaker 2 (16:40):
We often see early on in a romantic relationship patterns
of love bombing, and so, you know, we come up
with all these great terms, but what is love bombing?
Speaker 4 (16:49):
It's essentially this notion.
Speaker 2 (16:52):
Of the narcissistic person making the person their dating feel
like the most amazing, special, lovely, unique person that ever existed.
And my god, who doesn't like to.
Speaker 4 (17:06):
Feel like that? Right, It's why it's very effective. We
love to feel special.
Speaker 2 (17:10):
Yeah, so it might sound like a narcissistic person saying
to someone else, I've never met anyone like you. You
are incredible. You are so special. I've never had such
deep and meaningful conversations with someone. It's amazing how we
can connect on such an incredible level. You and I
are very aligned in the way that we think. That
(17:33):
could be an example and so the person on the
receiving end is like.
Speaker 4 (17:37):
Huh, well look at me. Go right, this feels nice.
Speaker 2 (17:41):
I feel special, I feel really seen, I feel really valued,
I feel really important.
Speaker 4 (17:48):
But the thing is it happens too quickly.
Speaker 2 (17:51):
Right, this might happen like on the first or second
date and way too intensely. That is, we might actually
feel super connected with someone, but to have those very
strong conversations on a second date, I would be like, who,
let's hold our horses and let's really just get to
know each other first. And it then could be things
(18:12):
like I could see a future with you, I could
see us having kids together. I can't wait to save
money so that we can buy a house together.
Speaker 4 (18:19):
It could be all these kinds of.
Speaker 2 (18:20):
Things where we're then projecting to the future as well.
But it's all designed to make that person feel so
incredibly special that they then are in a position of vulnerability.
Speaker 1 (18:32):
It's really interesting because I fully get the world of
love bombing, But how do you discern between maybe this
guy's actually just really kind guy, he's really just emotionally
it tuned, versus it might actually be more of a
strategy from a narcissist.
Speaker 2 (18:48):
Think about if it sounds a little bit too good
to be true, Like, do you really think this person
has fallen in love with you on the second date?
Would you fall in love with someone on a second date?
I mean, for me, it's a bit hard to imagine,
you know, would you be saying to someone I've never
met anyone like you, like you are so special and
I've never had these kind of conversations. I'd be like
(19:10):
I have, you know, like I've met lots of special people.
I mean, you're one of them, but are You're not
the only ones. So it's this, it's this feeling of
special that comes with isolation, like you are the only
person who's ever made me feel this way. You really
get me in a way that other people haven't. It
comes with this sort of separation. It's different to I'm
(19:31):
really getting along with you and this feels like we're
having a nice time. Yeah, that's great. But when it's
like you're the only person who has ever made me
feel like I'm really seen and heard.
Speaker 4 (19:42):
Well, that rings alarm bells for me.
Speaker 1 (19:44):
Okay, So are there gender differences in narcissism.
Speaker 2 (19:49):
We see both males and females can display narcissistic traits,
and they're quite similar, right, the control, the power struggle,
the grandiosity. What we might see is in different situations,
we might notice a male narcissist more than a female narcissist.
So if we think about the workplace, for example, I'm
(20:12):
just going to give a very stereotypical example of maybe
an older male who's very high up in the hierarchy
in a workplace who exhibits those narcissistic tendencies. We might
see that more so in men than we would women.
But when we think about intimate relationships, women can also
display narcissistic traits. I think one of the key differences
(20:34):
that I want to highlight is when it comes to
things like abuse.
Speaker 4 (20:43):
We only have to look at the news to.
Speaker 2 (20:45):
See that women are significantly more vulnerable when it comes
to leaving a relationship with a male narcissistic partner. And
we know that the time of leaving is the riskiest
time for a woman, and it's the time where we
often see things like murder come to the forefront, even
if there hasn't been a history of physical abuse in
(21:06):
that relationship. Now, that's not a dynamic that we see
in the reverse.
Speaker 1 (21:10):
So one of the traits. Is love bombing that one
of the behaviors that a narcissist does. But what about
gas lighting because we hear this a lot, especially in
these kind of relationships.
Speaker 4 (21:20):
Yes, gas lighting is common.
Speaker 2 (21:22):
It's a form of control and manipulation, and for the
person who's on the receiving end of gas lighting, it
can be totally discombobulating, right, like you lose your sense
of reality. Gas Lighting is essentially where one person denies reality.
So a partner might say to the narcissistic person, oh,
(21:46):
but you said X y Z.
Speaker 4 (21:47):
The other day and they'll be like no, I didn't.
Or did you move my cup? And they did, but
they'll be like, no, I didn't.
Speaker 2 (21:54):
So it's this denial of reality that for the person
who's on the receiving end, can make them feel absolutely crazy.
Like literally, people who have experienced narcissistic abuse will come
into the therapy room and say, I feel like I'm
losing my mind, Like am I going crazy? Or is
something happening here? Because they literally feel like they're losing
(22:16):
their marbles.
Speaker 1 (22:18):
That's really it's a scary place to be, like questioning
your own reality as.
Speaker 4 (22:22):
Well questioning your own sanity.
Speaker 1 (22:24):
So do narcissists know that they're doing what they're doing?
Speaker 4 (22:30):
Yes and no?
Speaker 2 (22:31):
Okay, I think it varies person to person on their
level of insights.
Speaker 4 (22:37):
These are patterns that.
Speaker 2 (22:40):
Develop over the course of someone's life, and we're really
talking from kind of child and adolescent years all the
way through adulthood. So these patterns will become ingrained in
a person. Whether they have awareness of those is another
question that's hard to sort of give a blanket answer to.
(23:00):
I think some people with narcissistic styles will have caught
on that behaving in a certain way gives them some
sort of outcome. I don't think they necessarily walk into
a first date and go, I'm gonna love bumb this person,
but they may know that making someone feel special and
seen gets them some sort of positive feedback in return,
(23:25):
or by getting angry and criticizing their partner that the
partner stops talking and stops, you know, creating problems quote
unquote in the relationship. So they will have recognized that
these patterns work in some way, how consciously they set
out in their data use them.
Speaker 4 (23:44):
I would put question marks over.
Speaker 1 (23:46):
That, Okay, So can narcissists actually change It depends who
you ask.
Speaker 4 (23:54):
There are different schools of thought on this.
Speaker 2 (23:57):
My view is yes, many can not all perhaps. However,
getting the narcissists into the therapy room to do the
self reflective work to change is.
Speaker 4 (24:16):
A very hard process.
Speaker 2 (24:18):
People often don't willingly come to therapy if they are
displaying narcissistic traits because part of that goes against that grandiosity,
that sense of self importance and being special and righteous.
Right going into a therapy room and listening to the
feedback someone else has to give you about who you
are is not in alignment with the coping strategy that
(24:40):
they have built up for themselves. Once a person can
come into the room and we can start to have
that conversation, there are definitely ways in which we can
help work with those narcissistic traits and work to ultimately
not change the narcissism, but change the shame. If I
(25:01):
can get past in the therapy room someone's grandiose exterior
and go, you know what, I can see that that
helps you cope life, It helps you cope in the world.
You hang on to that, but when you're in the
therapy room, let's take off that armor.
Speaker 4 (25:17):
Let's just put it to the side. Temporarily.
Speaker 2 (25:20):
Let's look at the stuff that's underneath that, the stuff
you don't feel good, the stuff that makes you feel worthless.
Let's do that, and then when you leave the room,
put your armor back on and go back out into
the world. If I can get a person to sit
in the therapy chair and do that with me, we
can make some great progress.
Speaker 1 (25:36):
I love that because it's a little bit like you're
doing some emotional engineering, like in the therapy room, which
sounds really effective.
Speaker 2 (25:43):
And everyone has different ways of coping, right, This is
why I started this topic saying I want to talk
about it sensitively because the narcissist has developed a way
of coping with their own internal experience that feels awful,
and we all have ways of coping. They're not always
the best ways of coping, but they're coping nonetheless. And
(26:05):
if I can work with someone who has these narcissistic
traits and identify that this, this is your way of
coping in the world, to feel like you can survive
day to day, to feel like you're not threatened day
to day, to feel like you can cope, and we
can recognize.
Speaker 4 (26:20):
That for what it is.
Speaker 2 (26:22):
That then allows us to kind of be flexible with it.
I don't have to hold on to it so tightly.
I can choose to walk into a room and put
on my sort of top dog armor and feel a
little bit grandiose and important.
Speaker 4 (26:34):
But I can also choose to then tone that down
as well.
Speaker 1 (26:37):
So we know with psychopaths there's a lack of empathy.
With narcissists, do they have the capability to love?
Speaker 2 (26:45):
Yes, narcissists can love. However, this is again where we
come back to this spectrum, right, There is so much
to unpack with narcissism. People who have quite extreme forms
of narcissism and more that narcissistic personality disorder, will sometimes
see other people in their life as almost objects, right,
(27:10):
people through which they can get what we refer to
as narcissistic supply, the thing that makes them feel good
about themselves. So they may love someone, but they may
also feel like they're using that person to get their
own self love and self worth and validation in life
as well. It's different to say like psychopathy or a psychopath,
(27:35):
where psychopaths are cold and callous, they lack empathy and
they lack remorse. Right, So this feeling of if I've
hurt someone, I then don't actually feel bad about it.
This moves more into the spectrum of what we refer
to as antisocial traits or antisocial personality disorders, where we
(27:57):
see some really kind of cold, callous, criminal behaviors that
can unfold. That's different to the narcissist who is really
just overwhelmed by shame and deeply actually wants to be
loved themselves.
Speaker 4 (28:11):
Right.
Speaker 2 (28:12):
This is again why we talk about this so sensitively.
The narcissist wants love, they want validation, they want people
to like them, and they just have some really unhealthy
ways of getting that need met.
Speaker 1 (28:27):
After the shop rate, doctor Anastasia is going to tell
you the steps to take to deal with a narcissist. Anastasia,
what do you want to teach us today to manage
the narcissists in our lives?
Speaker 2 (28:40):
So I'm going to come at this from two angles, because,
as we've said, narcissism can exist on a spectrum.
Speaker 4 (28:48):
So let's talk.
Speaker 2 (28:49):
About how to manage the annoying friend who's got some
narcissistic flavors to their personality, and then we'll talk about
how to manage the potentially dangerous partner that someone might have,
because how we manage those situations is going to vary significantly.
Speaker 4 (29:04):
Let's start with the annoying friends listeners.
Speaker 2 (29:08):
I don't know if you have one of these friends
out there, but I'm talking about the friend who likes
to be the center of attention, who likes to tell
all their stories, who cuts other people off so that
they can talk about themselves, likes to circle every conversation
back to themselves, but not just themselves, also how great
(29:29):
they are, or what they've recently achieved, or the lovely
compliment that they got about their hair as they were
walking down the street. They want to tell you about
it so that you know that they were complimented.
Speaker 4 (29:37):
On their hair.
Speaker 2 (29:39):
Right, it's the person, the friend that we have that
always likes to choose where we go and have lunch
because it's about them, right, How to deal with this friend?
Speaker 4 (29:49):
First up, I ask.
Speaker 2 (29:51):
People to reflect on how much do you want this
friend in your life right now? That's not a loaded question.
It might sound like it, but I can promise you
it's not. It's a true reflection on how closely do
you want to hold this person in your orbit? Do
you want to have them as one of your closest
(30:13):
friends or are they maybe someone that you can interact with,
you know, once a month, once every six months, only
in a group social situation where there's a bit of buffering, right,
we can determine how close or far away we hold
someone in our life. So that's the first question I
would ask you to reflect on if you've got one
of these friends or these people in your life and
(30:35):
you have some capacity to put space and distance into
the relationship. The next part is around asserting boundaries. Now,
last episode, we'd had a whole segment on how to
be assertive, right, So if you want more on that,
go listen to our workplace assertiveness episode. But for this topic,
(30:58):
I want you to really reflect on the boundaries you
have that are.
Speaker 4 (31:02):
Being pushed or that are being crossed. Right.
Speaker 2 (31:06):
So this might sound something like, really value our friendship
and I love hanging out with you, but can we
take some turns in picking the place where we go
for lunch. It might sound something like, I really value
our friendship, but I would like our conversations to just
be a bit more balanced. It might sound something like
(31:30):
I look, I love you, but I really don't appreciate
it when you tease me about things, and particularly when
you tease me in front of other people, doesn't make
me feel good about myself.
Speaker 1 (31:38):
Right.
Speaker 4 (31:39):
This is us asserting our boundaries.
Speaker 2 (31:44):
Now, that's almost as much as we can do because
we have no control over how the other person responds, right,
and it is very likely that we might get a pushback.
Oh but I was only joking. I wasn't really teasing you.
I was only joking. Everyone knows it was a bit
of fun.
Speaker 4 (31:59):
Or Yeah, why do you say that.
Speaker 2 (32:00):
We're always going that we're always talking about me? We
talk about you too. You talked about your trip to Hawaii. Right.
I'm not saying that these boundaries are gonna land. All
I'm saying is it's what you can do to protect
yourself and to assert yourself. Because we don't want to
be in a situation where we feel like we are
being disrespected by someone else and then further disrespecting ourselves
(32:22):
by not speaking up. I would say when setting these boundaries,
be gentle and maybe avoid too much confrontation. Again, the
narcissistic person will feel more criticized and more threatened than
the average person getting this feedback from you, and that
(32:45):
is because they have that deep emotional wound of shame
and of worthlessness. So when you give them this feedback,
that's going to get triggered up. So we would expect
a reaction if they don't have the insight, a reaction
that probably isn't going to be as helpful as we
might like it to be. So I would say, yes,
(33:06):
assert your boundary, but also be willing to step away
avoid too much confrontation. The other thing is that these relationships,
these situations, they can be quite challenging to navigate, and
having some support in your life if you do have
a person who is narcissistic around you, having that support
can be really important, whether that be professional support or
(33:29):
whether that be maybe another friend or you know, a
family member where you can say, I've got this friend,
we've been friends for a long time. I know she's
a great person, but there's this part of our interaction
and of the dynamic that also doesn't feel so good.
Speaker 1 (33:43):
So how do we know when we're just done with
the relationship with the narcissist?
Speaker 4 (33:48):
When's it time to call it quits?
Speaker 2 (33:50):
Yep, Any relationship, and particularly like a friendship like we've
been talking about, has got to be give and take.
There's got to be reciprocity. We've got to feel.
Speaker 4 (34:02):
Like we give and we get.
Speaker 2 (34:05):
If you feel like you have this kind of friend
and doing a lot of giving, but you're not getting
a lot in return, that's when I would really say,
how is this friendship serving you in your life? Serving
might sound like a harsh word, but really, any dynamic
(34:26):
we have, particularly if it's a friendship, we want to
feel like we're getting something from it. Is that it
serves me because I have a good time? Is it
that I feel like I can open up to this person?
Is it that I can be really vulnerable with them?
Speaker 1 (34:38):
You know?
Speaker 2 (34:38):
What is it that I'm getting from this dynamic? Why
is this friendship and this relation important to me? Why
am I holding onto it? Really reflect on those questions,
and I think if you can't come up with some
pretty good answers, it might be time to consider calling
it quits.
Speaker 1 (34:57):
And I can imagine like it is. It's such a
heavy loaded question and can bring up a lot because
change is a lot, especially we've had a lot of
history with someone, so I think it's definitely layering that compassion, right,
So what about the dangerous partner?
Speaker 4 (35:12):
How do we approach that very differently.
Speaker 2 (35:16):
So this is a really serious topic, right, And so
I'm going to start off by saying, if you think
you are in a dangerous relationship, please seek out some
help before.
Speaker 4 (35:33):
You do anything.
Speaker 2 (35:34):
In fact, my number one piece of advice is going
to be don't just leave right now, right because leaving,
as important as it is, is also incredibly risky.
Speaker 4 (35:47):
Right. The data tells us.
Speaker 2 (35:48):
That the most dangerous time for a woman to leave
an abusive relationship is when she's preparing to leave, when
she does leave, and the two months after leaving, right,
that's the time when she is most vulnerable to things
like murder. So this is really serious, and we want
to ensure that when someone does leave a relationship that
they have all the protection and the resources in place
(36:12):
to be safe. The other really risky time for a
woman in an abusive relationship is also when she has
a child, around that perinatal period when she's pregnant and
in the early stages of having the child as well.
If we understand the narcissist and the narcissists need for
attention and supply, when a woman has a child to
(36:36):
focus on, the focus no longer becomes the partner, and
that's a really risky time for the female in that relationship.
So the biggest piece of advice I have is get
the help, get the support to be able to leave
and do so safely. Now, some excellent resources one eight
(36:56):
hundred respect. If you are finding yourself in a situation
or you're even just questioning. You don't even have to
be sure that you're in a situation where there is
abuse or there is control, but even if you're questioning it,
contact the one eight hundred Respect hot Life. They have
counselors who are professionals and experienced in the exact space
(37:17):
of domestic violence and domestic abuse, and they can help
you navigate this. The website also has some really fantastic resources.
One of the ones that I've at times given my
clients has been they talk you through how to pack
an emergency bag.
Speaker 4 (37:32):
If you find yourself at.
Speaker 2 (37:33):
Home and in a very unsafe situation where you need
to just get out of the house, you can have
this sort of emergency bag packed and it tells you
all the essentials that you should have, so things like identification, money,
your passport, birth certificate, any medications that you take. Just
kind of like that emergency bag, which might not be
(37:55):
something someone's planned for or has.
Speaker 4 (37:57):
Thought through before. But there's this list you can follow
of what to pack.
Speaker 2 (38:00):
So I guess the key message I'm trying to get
across here is that being in an abusive relationship is
incredibly dangerous, but we really want to ensure that a
person is as best supported as they possibly can to
make that step to leave when they're ready. Now, leaving
(38:22):
is not easy. The data tells us that, on average,
it takes a person six to seven attempts to actually
leave that relationship before they successfully leave it. So many
times when I've had people in the clinic who are
saying that they've been in some sort of abusive relationship
or they're in an abusive relationship, they may have recognized it,
(38:44):
but it took them multiple attempts to leave, and there's
no judgment to that. As we said, these relationships can
be incredibly confusing. There's a lot of tactics, a lot
of manipulation that's at play, and it's not always just
as simple as getting up, packing your bags and going,
So keep in mind that it can often take multiple
attempts before someone gets there.
Speaker 1 (39:06):
I didn't even know that statistic, So that's just yeah,
it's really big. I'm just process that and it really
just goes to show I'm just really grateful for the
resources that are out there, that you really are there
to support people that are in those situations too.
Speaker 2 (39:19):
Yep, one eight hundred respect their website, their hotline, and
also White Ribbon have some great resources as well that
you can look at.
Speaker 1 (39:26):
Yeah, we'll make sure to put that into the show notes.
After the shotbreak, we hear from a woman who was
accused of being a narcissist herself. Is she stay with us.
Speaker 2 (39:40):
Berb bib Bibby, I'm having a serious Cristy the BRB
having a crisis.
Speaker 1 (39:47):
That's right, it's our BRB having a crisis segment where
doctor Anastasia gives advice to one of you our listeners. Today,
we are hearing from Kate.
Speaker 5 (39:57):
I got into an argument with a close friend recently,
and in the middle of it, she said she thought
I was being narcissistic. It caught me completely off guard,
and honestly, I haven't been able to stop thinking about
it since. I don't know if she really meant it
or if it was just something said in the heat
of the moment, But maybe I am too focused on
myself without realizing it. If I'm being honest, I do
(40:20):
like being the center of attention. But I thought that
was just my extroverted personality. I don't know how do
I find out if I am being a narcissist? And
is it too late to improve myself?
Speaker 1 (40:33):
Oh that's so hard?
Speaker 2 (40:34):
Okay, you know what I want to say, I too
sometimes like being the center of attention.
Speaker 4 (40:39):
Don't we all what I do must do?
Speaker 2 (40:42):
And I too am an extroverted personality. I like to
tell stories. I like to talk into a microphone on
a podcast. You should do that.
Speaker 4 (40:51):
But I guess what I want.
Speaker 2 (40:52):
To say, Kate, is there's a difference between being extroverted
and liking to talk and being a bit of the
center of attention versus being a narcissist. The fact that
you have been thinking about this comment since your friend
said it is a probably good indicator that maybe you
are not that narcissistic. You know, you're able to reflect
(41:13):
on this comment. You're taking it seriously. You're looking inward
at yourself, and you're thinking about the impact you know,
the way you acted.
Speaker 4 (41:22):
Might have had on your friend.
Speaker 2 (41:23):
These are all great indicators that you have great qualities
for self reflection.
Speaker 4 (41:27):
So well done.
Speaker 2 (41:29):
What I would suggest is, if the friendship calls for
it and you are really wondering what your friend meant
by it, can you have a conversation with her? Can
you approach her and bring her up and be like, hey, look,
I've just been thinking about what you said the other
week where you said I was being a bit narcissistic,
and oh my god, am I narcissistic?
Speaker 4 (41:49):
What made you say that? Where did that come from?
Speaker 2 (41:52):
Your friend might be like, well, look, I was just
having a bit of a dig and I wanted to
piss you off, so I decided to call you a narcissist. Okay,
unhealthy conflict, But you know, that's another topic. But maybe
there is some underlying resentment there that came out through
your friend using.
Speaker 4 (42:07):
This word narcissistic.
Speaker 2 (42:09):
Maybe she feels like, hey, I want to be able
to share my stories too, I want to be able
to choose the cafe we go to. I want to
feel like I've got more space to be myself in
this friendship. Maybe that's what she was trying to communicate,
And if you're someone who's open to that, feedback, then
go you Kate like, that's fantastic. So I would say,
(42:30):
if the relationship and friendship calls for it, have a
conversation with your friend find out what she meant. But
in the meantime, well done for doing the self reflection.
And I think that probably means you don't have as
many narcissistic traits as you might be worried to do.
Speaker 1 (42:52):
Oh, this was a big episode, And I feel like
what you've really just illustrated for all of us is
that narcissism, like so many parts of the human personality,
is a spectrum. It can range from annoying and frustrating
to dangerous and abusive. Can you give us a recap
that we can come back to when we need a reminder?
Speaker 2 (43:11):
Sure can, And look, I feel like we've only just
scraped the surface on the topic of narcissism. We could
have a whole podcast just dedicated to this topic.
Speaker 4 (43:19):
But for the cheat sheet, let me run you through it.
Speaker 2 (43:22):
So, first off, narcissistic personality disorder is a diagnosable mental
health condition, and there are treatments that exist. Second, narcissism
exists on a spectrum. From the annoying friends all.
Speaker 4 (43:37):
The way up to an abusive partner.
Speaker 2 (43:39):
Third, how we might manage a relationship with someone who
has narcissistic tendencies varies depending on the degree of narcissism. Four,
if it's an annoying friend, set some clear boundaries, ask
for what you need. But if things don't change, reevaluate
this friendship in your life.
Speaker 4 (44:00):
Five.
Speaker 2 (44:01):
If you're in a relationship with someone who shows signs
of abuse, seek support on how to best make a
plan to leave. Finally, as always, there are professionals who
are available to help.
Speaker 4 (44:15):
Now.
Speaker 2 (44:16):
Next week's conversation is an important one. It's about the
little voice in your head that tells you you're not
good enough. Sometimes we call this imposter syndrome, but it
impacts virtually every part of our lives.
Speaker 4 (44:31):
It's a useful episode, so don't miss it.
Speaker 1 (44:34):
If you have any burnie questions. There's a few ways
to get in touch with us. Links are in the
show notes.
Speaker 2 (44:39):
And remember, while I am a psychologist, this podcast isn't
a diagnostic tool, and the advice and ideas we present
here should always take into account your personal history. The
executive producer of But Are You Happy is Niama Brown.
Speaker 1 (44:55):
Tarlie Blackman is our senior producer.
Speaker 2 (44:57):
Sound design and editing by Jacob Brown.
Speaker 1 (45:00):
I'm a Shani Dante.
Speaker 2 (45:02):
And I'm doctor Anastasia Heronus. If this conversation brought up
any difficult feelings for you, we have links for more
resources in the show notes around the topics we discussed today.
You can also reach out to organizations like Beyond Blue
or Lifeline if you're wanting more immediate mental health support,
or contact one eight hundred respect if you need help
(45:24):
with domestic abuse.
Speaker 1 (45:25):
Thanks for listening.
You're listening to a Muma Mia podcast.
Speaker 2 (00:14):
Mamma Maya acknowledges the traditional owners of the land and
waters that this podcast is recorded on.
Speaker 3 (00:20):
So I'm a narcissist, but you seem so nice. Oh,
I'm pretending. I figured out if I'm charming and funny
and give you lots of attention and affection, then I
can get you to fall in love with me. Why
do you need me to fall in love with you? Oh,
because then you're less likely to leave once I start
lying and belittling and gas lighting you and chipping away
yourself worth in order to control and manipulate you.
Speaker 4 (00:38):
Huh.
Speaker 1 (00:40):
Poor Mamma Mia. I'm your host, Ashani Dante, Welcome to
But are you happy because jes b de Lulu isn't
a coping strategy?
Speaker 2 (00:50):
And I'm doctor Anastaga Hornus, a clinical psychologist passionate about
happiness and mental health.
Speaker 4 (00:57):
Have you, like many of us, heard.
Speaker 2 (00:59):
The word narcissist thrown around a lot lately and are
you sometimes not entirely sure if what is actually being
described is a narcissist or maybe someone who's just not
very nice.
Speaker 1 (01:12):
Narcissism is definitely one of those psychological frameworks that's been
thrown around a lot, from conversations with your girlfriends to
our social media feed, and by.
Speaker 2 (01:20):
The end of this episode, you're going to have a
better understanding of narcissism, how to spot the traits, and
what to do if you find yourself with a narcissist
in your life.
Speaker 4 (01:30):
Let's do it.
Speaker 1 (01:35):
At as Asia. I want to start by asking if
you've worked with many people with narcissism.
Speaker 2 (01:41):
I have, and I think it's something that I really
want to address first up, because the whole topic of
narcissism narcissistic personalities, I think is a really topical one,
but one that I want to address sensitively, and I
want to address it with sensitivity for the people who
(02:01):
may have been on the receiving end of someone who
is narcissistic, but also for the people who actually have
those narcissistic qualities themselves. Right, I've read a fair bit
of the kind of pop psychology literature about narcissism in
preparation for today, and a lot of it can be
very shaming to people who do display these narcissistic traits. Now,
(02:24):
I'm not here sitting and agreeing with some of the
traits that they exhibit, But I think it's important for
us to hold sensitivity in this whole conversation.
Speaker 1 (02:34):
Oh. I think it's a really good frame up and
really important to keep in mind because it is a
very sensitive topic to many. So what's that like working
with people with narcissism.
Speaker 2 (02:43):
It's interesting A lot of the time a person who
has these narcissistic traits won't necessarily come into the therapy
room because they think they have narcissism. Right, It's a
very rare day that someone comes in and goes, I
think I'm a narcissist. Can you help figure out if
that's an accurate diagnosis for me? They usually come in
(03:05):
because of secondary problems in their life. Maybe they're feeling
quite depressed, maybe they've got some sort of addiction concern.
These are quite common dual diagnoses we might see for people,
and through the process of assessing their mood, their mental health,
and addiction, it might come to the forefront that they
actually do have these narcissistic traits as well, so.
Speaker 1 (03:28):
They kind of connect it so they can overlap absolutely.
So then in terms like in the clinic room, then
people that actually do come to actively seek your support
would you say that they are more people that are
in relationships with a narcissist.
Speaker 2 (03:42):
Definitely, I would see many more people who come to
therapy who believe that they may have a narcissist in
their life. Whether that be a partner, a romantic partner,
that's a common question that's brought into the therapy room,
but also a narcissistic parent is the other common theme
(04:03):
that we see come through a person coming into the
therapy room feeling like they're experiencing difficulties in their life,
and when we sort of unpack their early childhood experiences
and the trajectory of their life, it comes out that
they may have had a parent who had these narcissistic traits.
Speaker 1 (04:20):
I feel like we need to break this down now.
What is narcissism because as we've mentioned before, the label
gets thrown around a lot. It can be misinterpreted. Give
us the lowdown.
Speaker 2 (04:31):
Okay, So narcissism, like any personality style, I guess, exists
on a spectrum. So we can meet people in our
day to day life who have very mild flavors of narcissism.
So this might be, you know, the person who loves
(04:51):
to tell stories about themselves, and when you jump in
with your kind of experience of the weekend and what
you got up to, they'll bring it back to what
they did.
Speaker 4 (04:58):
On the weekend.
Speaker 1 (04:59):
Right.
Speaker 2 (04:59):
People who are very sort of self focused, who can
be quite grandiose, a little bit overconfident, sometimes arrogant in
their personality style. And these people well, are not necessarily harmful.
Sometimes they're a little bit annoying to be around, a
little bit unpleasant to be around, but they're not harmful.
That's one end of the spectrum. The other end of
(05:21):
the spectrum where we meet someone who has quite intense
narcissistic personality traits, might be someone who has quite rigid
patterns of over inflating themselves in situations and devaluing others.
(05:41):
When we see the more extreme forms of narcissism, we
look at potentially diagnosing what we refer to as a
narcissistic personality disorder, So there is an official diagnosis that
we can give people who present with many themes and
patterns of narcissism to the point where it is actually
(06:02):
a clinically defined personality disorder, and a personality disorder is
essentially someone who's got very rigid patterns of thinking and
being in the world. This can present in all sorts
of ways. There's lots of different personality disorders that.
Speaker 4 (06:17):
I won't get into now.
Speaker 2 (06:18):
Maybe we can cover that in another episode sometimes, but
for narcissistic personality disorder, it really is about this grandiosity,
an overinflated sense of self and importance, sometimes a preoccupation
with power and control over other people. A belief that
they are superior to others, that they should live by
(06:41):
a different set of rules to what other people should.
A lack of empathy, finding it quite hard to put
themselves in the shoes of other people and think about
how others might be feeling. And they may also take
advantage of people or have unreasonable expectations of others.
Speaker 1 (07:00):
What would you say are the signs and symptoms that
you are in some kind of relationship with a narcissist.
Speaker 4 (07:07):
This is a great question.
Speaker 2 (07:09):
If you think you might be in a relationship with
a narcissist, you might be seeing signs of what I
would refer to as a power struggle.
Speaker 4 (07:18):
When you want to put forward a thought.
Speaker 2 (07:21):
An opinion, an emotional experience you're having. A person with
a narcissistic personality style may have trouble validating, recognizing, and
giving space to what you're saying, and so you might
end up in this feeling of a struggle for power
and control. You might also find that when you do
(07:44):
bring forward your emotions that the person you're with is
really lacking empathy in how they respond to you. They
might be able to give some surface level empathy, like
people tend to know what to say if someone's upset
and struggling, but beyond that they might really struggle to
maintain empathy and compassion. And you may also feel like
maybe you feel like you're being manipulated in certain ways
(08:06):
that it's the feeling in your gut that says, I
don't feel emotionally safe in this interaction.
Speaker 1 (08:13):
As you're saying that, it actually reminds us back to
episode one where you talked about emotions being a data.
So I feel like this is one of those moments
where it's like, what is that dynamic bringing up for
you personally? How is it feeling?
Speaker 2 (08:27):
Yes, what am I feeling in my body? What are
my emotions telling me about how I feel when I'm
in the room with this person or when I'm having
a conversation with that person. Because as you say, shiny,
those emotions are such important sources of information for us.
Speaker 1 (08:43):
So where does narcissism come from.
Speaker 4 (08:47):
So there's two pathways.
Speaker 2 (08:51):
Let's say, to developing narcissistic traits, and they really start
in early life. For the most part, people who experience
this narcissistic personality style, who have this narcissistic personality style,
they ultimately have very deep seated feelings of guilt and shame.
(09:16):
Now I want to pause and talk about the difference
between guilt and shame for a moment. Guilt is the
feeling that tells me I have done something wrong, I
have done something that breaks my moral code. I've done
something I don't like. That's really useful because we can,
you know, change and make amends. Shame, on the other hand,
(09:37):
tells me not that I have done something bad or wrong,
but that I am bad or I am wrong. So
there's a big difference between guilt and shame. Guilt is
about my actions. Shame is about who I am fundamentally
as a person. So while the narcissistic person might appear
(09:58):
on the outside to be very grandiose and very confidence
and very charismatic and can easily connect and talk to people,
it's very different to what their internal experience is that's
conscious or subconscious. We know that for most narcissistic people
there are those deep seated feelings of guilt, but predominantly shame.
(10:20):
They do not feel good about themselves. They have strong
feelings of worthlessness. Now, to bring that back to your
question about where does this come from, it comes from
early life experiences.
Speaker 4 (10:33):
If I have.
Speaker 2 (10:33):
Lived a life where I have in some way internalized
the message that there is something wrong with me, I
may develop these narcissistic, grandiose ways of coping as a
way to manage that feeling of shame and worthlessness within me.
So that's one pathway to developing these narcissistic traits. The
(10:57):
other pathway we see is where someone from very early
on in life has been overindulged and told not just
that they're special, but that they're more special than other people.
So if you think about this, little Freddy's got his
soccer game on this Saturday, and Mum and Dad are
(11:18):
on the sideline saying to the coach, Freddy should play
the whole game, when actually everyone only gets to play
half a game, but Freddy should play the whole game.
It's this idea that my child is special and different
rules should apply to him as opposed to all the
other kids. It's the people that rock up to the
airport and go I shouldn't have to wait in this line.
I should be able to go to the front of
(11:38):
the line. Right, It's this idea that the rules that
apply to everyone else don't apply to me. I'm in
some way more special, and that this is a message
that some parents also give their children. So this is
the other trajectory and pathway to developing that narcissistic, grandiose
personality style. But as I said, this is less common
(12:00):
than the pathway that's rooted in shame.
Speaker 1 (12:03):
So kind of circling back to the spectrum you gave
us around the personality disorder and using experiencing narcissism. I'm
really curious because i want to bust some myths and
I'm curious to know what's the difference between narcissism versus
(12:23):
having narcissistic behaviors, Like, is there a difference?
Speaker 2 (12:27):
So I'd say there's a difference between having a narcissistic
personality style, right, because we can have an agreeable personality
style or an introverted personality style. We can have all
these sort of features to our personality without it being
a diagnosis. So some people have more narcissistic styles to
(12:49):
their personality. The other end of that spectrum is a
clinical diagnosis and a disorder where the narcissistic traits are
so strong that, like with any clinical diagnosis, they're causing
some sort of negative impact in a person's day to
day life.
Speaker 4 (13:06):
If I am going through the world.
Speaker 2 (13:08):
And I'm very unagreeable, an antagonistic, and I lack empathy
and I'm not willing to put myself in the shoes
of others, and I manipulate and I control, I'm going
to end up with some real problems in my life,
probably into personal problems. But maybe it's trouble keeping a job,
Maybe it's trouble keeping a relationship. Maybe it's I develop
some sort of an addiction. As a result, that person
(13:30):
who meets those diagnostic criterias is going to be struggling
in some way.
Speaker 1 (13:34):
When you were kind of talking about the mild characteristics
of narcissism, I was like, Oh my gosh, I think
I do that. So does that mean like I might
be a.
Speaker 2 (13:44):
Narcissist I can assure you you're not a.
Speaker 4 (13:47):
Shiny let's clear that up right now.
Speaker 2 (13:50):
But we all exhibit some of these traits. I'm sure
there have been times in my life where someone's been
telling a great story and I'm like, oh, let me
tell you about that time.
Speaker 4 (13:59):
I went to Hawaii.
Speaker 2 (14:00):
If I hadn't cut off what they're saying, that's normal
human behavior. I'm sure there's times where maybe I could
have been more empathetic towards someone than what I actually was. Right,
So we don't ever want to look at just one
of these traits in isolation and in an isolated experience.
What we're looking for is patterns through a person's life.
(14:22):
It's not that one time I accidentally cut someone off
midstory and then feel.
Speaker 4 (14:26):
Bad about it afterwards.
Speaker 2 (14:27):
It's whether I do that every single time I have
a conversation with that person.
Speaker 1 (14:31):
I really like that the isolated experience versus the pattern.
So what does it actually look like to coexist in
a relationship with a narcissist?
Speaker 2 (14:42):
It can feel very confusing. What a person might experience
is this almost Jeckel and hide experience from the person
who has the narcissistic traits. So what I mean by
that a person who has narcissism, who feels very vulnerable,
full of shame. Right, they are working very hard every
(15:06):
day to protect themselves. So when they're in a situation
where they feel emotionally.
Speaker 4 (15:12):
Safe, they can be really pleasant to be around.
Speaker 2 (15:15):
They can be enjoyable, they can be often quite intelligent,
charismatic people, right, So they can be a real nice
side to that experience. However, the person who has such
deep seated feelings of shame and vulnerability and worthlessness can
very easily feel threatened. Now I don't mean physically threatened,
(15:38):
I mean emotionally threatened. So if they're with a partner
who challenges them, who provides feedback slash criticism, or who
says something that they don't agree with, they might be
very quick to react to that experience because it brings
up all those feelings of shame. No one likes to
feel shame, for any of us. It's an awful feeling
(16:01):
to sit in. So the person who is narcissistic will
protect themselves, but they will do it in a way
that often comes with some sort of attack, some sort
of inflation of self and put down of the other person.
So the twenty four hours of being in a relationship
with someone who is narcissistic can feel very confusing because
(16:21):
you can see a really lovely side to that person
and you can see a really mean side to that
person as well.
Speaker 1 (16:28):
So, something that I've heard that narcissists do is especially
early on in a relationship, is love bombing. Can you
tell me more about love bombing?
Speaker 4 (16:37):
Yes, this is true.
Speaker 2 (16:40):
We often see early on in a romantic relationship patterns
of love bombing, and so, you know, we come up
with all these great terms, but what is love bombing?
Speaker 4 (16:49):
It's essentially this notion.
Speaker 2 (16:52):
Of the narcissistic person making the person their dating feel
like the most amazing, special, lovely, unique person that ever existed.
And my god, who doesn't like to.
Speaker 4 (17:06):
Feel like that? Right, It's why it's very effective. We
love to feel special.
Speaker 2 (17:10):
Yeah, so it might sound like a narcissistic person saying
to someone else, I've never met anyone like you. You
are incredible. You are so special. I've never had such
deep and meaningful conversations with someone. It's amazing how we
can connect on such an incredible level. You and I
are very aligned in the way that we think. That
(17:33):
could be an example and so the person on the
receiving end is like.
Speaker 4 (17:37):
Huh, well look at me. Go right, this feels nice.
Speaker 2 (17:41):
I feel special, I feel really seen, I feel really valued,
I feel really important.
Speaker 4 (17:48):
But the thing is it happens too quickly.
Speaker 2 (17:51):
Right, this might happen like on the first or second
date and way too intensely. That is, we might actually
feel super connected with someone, but to have those very
strong conversations on a second date, I would be like, who,
let's hold our horses and let's really just get to
know each other first. And it then could be things
(18:12):
like I could see a future with you, I could
see us having kids together. I can't wait to save
money so that we can buy a house together.
Speaker 4 (18:19):
It could be all these kinds of.
Speaker 2 (18:20):
Things where we're then projecting to the future as well.
But it's all designed to make that person feel so
incredibly special that they then are in a position of vulnerability.
Speaker 1 (18:32):
It's really interesting because I fully get the world of
love bombing, But how do you discern between maybe this
guy's actually just really kind guy, he's really just emotionally
it tuned, versus it might actually be more of a
strategy from a narcissist.
Speaker 2 (18:48):
Think about if it sounds a little bit too good
to be true, Like, do you really think this person
has fallen in love with you on the second date?
Would you fall in love with someone on a second date?
I mean, for me, it's a bit hard to imagine,
you know, would you be saying to someone I've never
met anyone like you, like you are so special and
I've never had these kind of conversations. I'd be like
(19:10):
I have, you know, like I've met lots of special people.
I mean, you're one of them, but are You're not
the only ones. So it's this, it's this feeling of
special that comes with isolation, like you are the only
person who's ever made me feel this way. You really
get me in a way that other people haven't. It
comes with this sort of separation. It's different to I'm
(19:31):
really getting along with you and this feels like we're
having a nice time. Yeah, that's great. But when it's
like you're the only person who has ever made me
feel like I'm really seen and heard.
Speaker 4 (19:42):
Well, that rings alarm bells for me.
Speaker 1 (19:44):
Okay, So are there gender differences in narcissism.
Speaker 2 (19:49):
We see both males and females can display narcissistic traits,
and they're quite similar, right, the control, the power struggle,
the grandiosity. What we might see is in different situations,
we might notice a male narcissist more than a female narcissist.
So if we think about the workplace, for example, I'm
(20:12):
just going to give a very stereotypical example of maybe
an older male who's very high up in the hierarchy
in a workplace who exhibits those narcissistic tendencies. We might
see that more so in men than we would women.
But when we think about intimate relationships, women can also
display narcissistic traits. I think one of the key differences
(20:34):
that I want to highlight is when it comes to
things like abuse.
Speaker 4 (20:43):
We only have to look at the news to.
Speaker 2 (20:45):
See that women are significantly more vulnerable when it comes
to leaving a relationship with a male narcissistic partner. And
we know that the time of leaving is the riskiest
time for a woman, and it's the time where we
often see things like murder come to the forefront, even
if there hasn't been a history of physical abuse in
(21:06):
that relationship. Now, that's not a dynamic that we see
in the reverse.
Speaker 1 (21:10):
So one of the traits. Is love bombing that one
of the behaviors that a narcissist does. But what about
gas lighting because we hear this a lot, especially in
these kind of relationships.
Speaker 4 (21:20):
Yes, gas lighting is common.
Speaker 2 (21:22):
It's a form of control and manipulation, and for the
person who's on the receiving end of gas lighting, it
can be totally discombobulating, right, like you lose your sense
of reality. Gas Lighting is essentially where one person denies reality.
So a partner might say to the narcissistic person, oh,
(21:46):
but you said X y Z.
Speaker 4 (21:47):
The other day and they'll be like no, I didn't.
Or did you move my cup? And they did, but
they'll be like, no, I didn't.
Speaker 2 (21:54):
So it's this denial of reality that for the person
who's on the receiving end, can make them feel absolutely crazy.
Like literally, people who have experienced narcissistic abuse will come
into the therapy room and say, I feel like I'm
losing my mind, Like am I going crazy? Or is
something happening here? Because they literally feel like they're losing
(22:16):
their marbles.
Speaker 1 (22:18):
That's really it's a scary place to be, like questioning
your own reality as.
Speaker 4 (22:22):
Well questioning your own sanity.
Speaker 1 (22:24):
So do narcissists know that they're doing what they're doing?
Speaker 4 (22:30):
Yes and no?
Speaker 2 (22:31):
Okay, I think it varies person to person on their
level of insights.
Speaker 4 (22:37):
These are patterns that.
Speaker 2 (22:40):
Develop over the course of someone's life, and we're really
talking from kind of child and adolescent years all the
way through adulthood. So these patterns will become ingrained in
a person. Whether they have awareness of those is another
question that's hard to sort of give a blanket answer to.
(23:00):
I think some people with narcissistic styles will have caught
on that behaving in a certain way gives them some
sort of outcome. I don't think they necessarily walk into
a first date and go, I'm gonna love bumb this person,
but they may know that making someone feel special and
seen gets them some sort of positive feedback in return,
(23:25):
or by getting angry and criticizing their partner that the
partner stops talking and stops, you know, creating problems quote
unquote in the relationship. So they will have recognized that
these patterns work in some way, how consciously they set
out in their data use them.
Speaker 4 (23:44):
I would put question marks over.
Speaker 1 (23:46):
That, Okay, So can narcissists actually change It depends who
you ask.
Speaker 4 (23:54):
There are different schools of thought on this.
Speaker 2 (23:57):
My view is yes, many can not all perhaps. However,
getting the narcissists into the therapy room to do the
self reflective work to change is.
Speaker 4 (24:16):
A very hard process.
Speaker 2 (24:18):
People often don't willingly come to therapy if they are
displaying narcissistic traits because part of that goes against that grandiosity,
that sense of self importance and being special and righteous.
Right going into a therapy room and listening to the
feedback someone else has to give you about who you
are is not in alignment with the coping strategy that
(24:40):
they have built up for themselves. Once a person can
come into the room and we can start to have
that conversation, there are definitely ways in which we can
help work with those narcissistic traits and work to ultimately
not change the narcissism, but change the shame. If I
(25:01):
can get past in the therapy room someone's grandiose exterior
and go, you know what, I can see that that
helps you cope life, It helps you cope in the world.
You hang on to that, but when you're in the
therapy room, let's take off that armor.
Speaker 4 (25:17):
Let's just put it to the side. Temporarily.
Speaker 2 (25:20):
Let's look at the stuff that's underneath that, the stuff
you don't feel good, the stuff that makes you feel worthless.
Let's do that, and then when you leave the room,
put your armor back on and go back out into
the world. If I can get a person to sit
in the therapy chair and do that with me, we
can make some great progress.
Speaker 1 (25:36):
I love that because it's a little bit like you're
doing some emotional engineering, like in the therapy room, which
sounds really effective.
Speaker 2 (25:43):
And everyone has different ways of coping, right, This is
why I started this topic saying I want to talk
about it sensitively because the narcissist has developed a way
of coping with their own internal experience that feels awful,
and we all have ways of coping. They're not always
the best ways of coping, but they're coping nonetheless. And
(26:05):
if I can work with someone who has these narcissistic
traits and identify that this, this is your way of
coping in the world, to feel like you can survive
day to day, to feel like you're not threatened day
to day, to feel like you can cope, and we
can recognize.
Speaker 4 (26:20):
That for what it is.
Speaker 2 (26:22):
That then allows us to kind of be flexible with it.
I don't have to hold on to it so tightly.
I can choose to walk into a room and put
on my sort of top dog armor and feel a
little bit grandiose and important.
Speaker 4 (26:34):
But I can also choose to then tone that down
as well.
Speaker 1 (26:37):
So we know with psychopaths there's a lack of empathy.
With narcissists, do they have the capability to love?
Speaker 2 (26:45):
Yes, narcissists can love. However, this is again where we
come back to this spectrum, right, There is so much
to unpack with narcissism. People who have quite extreme forms
of narcissism and more that narcissistic personality disorder, will sometimes
see other people in their life as almost objects, right,
(27:10):
people through which they can get what we refer to
as narcissistic supply, the thing that makes them feel good
about themselves. So they may love someone, but they may
also feel like they're using that person to get their
own self love and self worth and validation in life
as well. It's different to say like psychopathy or a psychopath,
(27:35):
where psychopaths are cold and callous, they lack empathy and
they lack remorse. Right, So this feeling of if I've
hurt someone, I then don't actually feel bad about it.
This moves more into the spectrum of what we refer
to as antisocial traits or antisocial personality disorders, where we
(27:57):
see some really kind of cold, callous, criminal behaviors that
can unfold. That's different to the narcissist who is really
just overwhelmed by shame and deeply actually wants to be
loved themselves.
Speaker 4 (28:11):
Right.
Speaker 2 (28:12):
This is again why we talk about this so sensitively.
The narcissist wants love, they want validation, they want people
to like them, and they just have some really unhealthy
ways of getting that need met.
Speaker 1 (28:27):
After the shop rate, doctor Anastasia is going to tell
you the steps to take to deal with a narcissist. Anastasia,
what do you want to teach us today to manage
the narcissists in our lives?
Speaker 2 (28:40):
So I'm going to come at this from two angles, because,
as we've said, narcissism can exist on a spectrum.
Speaker 4 (28:48):
So let's talk.
Speaker 2 (28:49):
About how to manage the annoying friend who's got some
narcissistic flavors to their personality, and then we'll talk about
how to manage the potentially dangerous partner that someone might have,
because how we manage those situations is going to vary significantly.
Speaker 4 (29:04):
Let's start with the annoying friends listeners.
Speaker 2 (29:08):
I don't know if you have one of these friends
out there, but I'm talking about the friend who likes
to be the center of attention, who likes to tell
all their stories, who cuts other people off so that
they can talk about themselves, likes to circle every conversation
back to themselves, but not just themselves, also how great
(29:29):
they are, or what they've recently achieved, or the lovely
compliment that they got about their hair as they were
walking down the street. They want to tell you about
it so that you know that they were complimented.
Speaker 4 (29:37):
On their hair.
Speaker 2 (29:39):
Right, it's the person, the friend that we have that
always likes to choose where we go and have lunch
because it's about them, right, How to deal with this friend?
Speaker 4 (29:49):
First up, I ask.
Speaker 2 (29:51):
People to reflect on how much do you want this
friend in your life right now? That's not a loaded question.
It might sound like it, but I can promise you
it's not. It's a true reflection on how closely do
you want to hold this person in your orbit? Do
you want to have them as one of your closest
(30:13):
friends or are they maybe someone that you can interact with,
you know, once a month, once every six months, only
in a group social situation where there's a bit of buffering, right,
we can determine how close or far away we hold
someone in our life. So that's the first question I
would ask you to reflect on if you've got one
of these friends or these people in your life and
(30:35):
you have some capacity to put space and distance into
the relationship. The next part is around asserting boundaries. Now,
last episode, we'd had a whole segment on how to
be assertive, right, So if you want more on that,
go listen to our workplace assertiveness episode. But for this topic,
(30:58):
I want you to really reflect on the boundaries you
have that are.
Speaker 4 (31:02):
Being pushed or that are being crossed. Right.
Speaker 2 (31:06):
So this might sound something like, really value our friendship
and I love hanging out with you, but can we
take some turns in picking the place where we go
for lunch. It might sound something like, I really value
our friendship, but I would like our conversations to just
be a bit more balanced. It might sound something like
(31:30):
I look, I love you, but I really don't appreciate
it when you tease me about things, and particularly when
you tease me in front of other people, doesn't make
me feel good about myself.
Speaker 1 (31:38):
Right.
Speaker 4 (31:39):
This is us asserting our boundaries.
Speaker 2 (31:44):
Now, that's almost as much as we can do because
we have no control over how the other person responds, right,
and it is very likely that we might get a pushback.
Oh but I was only joking. I wasn't really teasing you.
I was only joking. Everyone knows it was a bit
of fun.
Speaker 4 (31:59):
Or Yeah, why do you say that.
Speaker 2 (32:00):
We're always going that we're always talking about me? We
talk about you too. You talked about your trip to Hawaii. Right.
I'm not saying that these boundaries are gonna land. All
I'm saying is it's what you can do to protect
yourself and to assert yourself. Because we don't want to
be in a situation where we feel like we are
being disrespected by someone else and then further disrespecting ourselves
(32:22):
by not speaking up. I would say when setting these boundaries,
be gentle and maybe avoid too much confrontation. Again, the
narcissistic person will feel more criticized and more threatened than
the average person getting this feedback from you, and that
(32:45):
is because they have that deep emotional wound of shame
and of worthlessness. So when you give them this feedback,
that's going to get triggered up. So we would expect
a reaction if they don't have the insight, a reaction
that probably isn't going to be as helpful as we
might like it to be. So I would say, yes,
(33:06):
assert your boundary, but also be willing to step away
avoid too much confrontation. The other thing is that these relationships,
these situations, they can be quite challenging to navigate, and
having some support in your life if you do have
a person who is narcissistic around you, having that support
can be really important, whether that be professional support or
(33:29):
whether that be maybe another friend or you know, a
family member where you can say, I've got this friend,
we've been friends for a long time. I know she's
a great person, but there's this part of our interaction
and of the dynamic that also doesn't feel so good.
Speaker 1 (33:43):
So how do we know when we're just done with
the relationship with the narcissist?
Speaker 4 (33:48):
When's it time to call it quits?
Speaker 2 (33:50):
Yep, Any relationship, and particularly like a friendship like we've
been talking about, has got to be give and take.
There's got to be reciprocity. We've got to feel.
Speaker 4 (34:02):
Like we give and we get.
Speaker 2 (34:05):
If you feel like you have this kind of friend
and doing a lot of giving, but you're not getting
a lot in return, that's when I would really say,
how is this friendship serving you in your life? Serving
might sound like a harsh word, but really, any dynamic
(34:26):
we have, particularly if it's a friendship, we want to
feel like we're getting something from it. Is that it
serves me because I have a good time? Is it
that I feel like I can open up to this person?
Is it that I can be really vulnerable with them?
Speaker 1 (34:38):
You know?
Speaker 2 (34:38):
What is it that I'm getting from this dynamic? Why
is this friendship and this relation important to me? Why
am I holding onto it? Really reflect on those questions,
and I think if you can't come up with some
pretty good answers, it might be time to consider calling
it quits.
Speaker 1 (34:57):
And I can imagine like it is. It's such a
heavy loaded question and can bring up a lot because
change is a lot, especially we've had a lot of
history with someone, so I think it's definitely layering that compassion, right,
So what about the dangerous partner?
Speaker 4 (35:12):
How do we approach that very differently.
Speaker 2 (35:16):
So this is a really serious topic, right, And so
I'm going to start off by saying, if you think
you are in a dangerous relationship, please seek out some
help before.
Speaker 4 (35:33):
You do anything.
Speaker 2 (35:34):
In fact, my number one piece of advice is going
to be don't just leave right now, right because leaving,
as important as it is, is also incredibly risky.
Speaker 4 (35:47):
Right. The data tells us.
Speaker 2 (35:48):
That the most dangerous time for a woman to leave
an abusive relationship is when she's preparing to leave, when
she does leave, and the two months after leaving, right,
that's the time when she is most vulnerable to things
like murder. So this is really serious, and we want
to ensure that when someone does leave a relationship that
they have all the protection and the resources in place
(36:12):
to be safe. The other really risky time for a
woman in an abusive relationship is also when she has
a child, around that perinatal period when she's pregnant and
in the early stages of having the child as well.
If we understand the narcissist and the narcissists need for
attention and supply, when a woman has a child to
(36:36):
focus on, the focus no longer becomes the partner, and
that's a really risky time for the female in that relationship.
So the biggest piece of advice I have is get
the help, get the support to be able to leave
and do so safely. Now, some excellent resources one eight
(36:56):
hundred respect. If you are finding yourself in a situation
or you're even just questioning. You don't even have to
be sure that you're in a situation where there is
abuse or there is control, but even if you're questioning it,
contact the one eight hundred Respect hot Life. They have
counselors who are professionals and experienced in the exact space
(37:17):
of domestic violence and domestic abuse, and they can help
you navigate this. The website also has some really fantastic resources.
One of the ones that I've at times given my
clients has been they talk you through how to pack
an emergency bag.
Speaker 4 (37:32):
If you find yourself at.
Speaker 2 (37:33):
Home and in a very unsafe situation where you need
to just get out of the house, you can have
this sort of emergency bag packed and it tells you
all the essentials that you should have, so things like identification, money,
your passport, birth certificate, any medications that you take. Just
kind of like that emergency bag, which might not be
(37:55):
something someone's planned for or has.
Speaker 4 (37:57):
Thought through before. But there's this list you can follow
of what to pack.
Speaker 2 (38:00):
So I guess the key message I'm trying to get
across here is that being in an abusive relationship is
incredibly dangerous, but we really want to ensure that a
person is as best supported as they possibly can to
make that step to leave when they're ready. Now, leaving
(38:22):
is not easy. The data tells us that, on average,
it takes a person six to seven attempts to actually
leave that relationship before they successfully leave it. So many
times when I've had people in the clinic who are
saying that they've been in some sort of abusive relationship
or they're in an abusive relationship, they may have recognized it,
(38:44):
but it took them multiple attempts to leave, and there's
no judgment to that. As we said, these relationships can
be incredibly confusing. There's a lot of tactics, a lot
of manipulation that's at play, and it's not always just
as simple as getting up, packing your bags and going,
So keep in mind that it can often take multiple
attempts before someone gets there.
Speaker 1 (39:06):
I didn't even know that statistic, So that's just yeah,
it's really big. I'm just process that and it really
just goes to show I'm just really grateful for the
resources that are out there, that you really are there
to support people that are in those situations too.
Speaker 2 (39:19):
Yep, one eight hundred respect their website, their hotline, and
also White Ribbon have some great resources as well that
you can look at.
Speaker 1 (39:26):
Yeah, we'll make sure to put that into the show notes.
After the shotbreak, we hear from a woman who was
accused of being a narcissist herself. Is she stay with us.
Speaker 2 (39:40):
Berb bib Bibby, I'm having a serious Cristy the BRB
having a crisis.
Speaker 1 (39:47):
That's right, it's our BRB having a crisis segment where
doctor Anastasia gives advice to one of you our listeners. Today,
we are hearing from Kate.
Speaker 5 (39:57):
I got into an argument with a close friend recently,
and in the middle of it, she said she thought
I was being narcissistic. It caught me completely off guard,
and honestly, I haven't been able to stop thinking about
it since. I don't know if she really meant it
or if it was just something said in the heat
of the moment, But maybe I am too focused on
myself without realizing it. If I'm being honest, I do
(40:20):
like being the center of attention. But I thought that
was just my extroverted personality. I don't know how do
I find out if I am being a narcissist? And
is it too late to improve myself?
Speaker 1 (40:33):
Oh that's so hard?
Speaker 2 (40:34):
Okay, you know what I want to say, I too
sometimes like being the center of attention.
Speaker 4 (40:39):
Don't we all what I do must do?
Speaker 2 (40:42):
And I too am an extroverted personality. I like to
tell stories. I like to talk into a microphone on
a podcast. You should do that.
Speaker 4 (40:51):
But I guess what I want.
Speaker 2 (40:52):
To say, Kate, is there's a difference between being extroverted
and liking to talk and being a bit of the
center of attention versus being a narcissist. The fact that
you have been thinking about this comment since your friend
said it is a probably good indicator that maybe you
are not that narcissistic. You know, you're able to reflect
(41:13):
on this comment. You're taking it seriously. You're looking inward
at yourself, and you're thinking about the impact you know,
the way you acted.
Speaker 4 (41:22):
Might have had on your friend.
Speaker 2 (41:23):
These are all great indicators that you have great qualities
for self reflection.
Speaker 4 (41:27):
So well done.
Speaker 2 (41:29):
What I would suggest is, if the friendship calls for
it and you are really wondering what your friend meant
by it, can you have a conversation with her? Can
you approach her and bring her up and be like, hey, look,
I've just been thinking about what you said the other
week where you said I was being a bit narcissistic,
and oh my god, am I narcissistic?
Speaker 4 (41:49):
What made you say that? Where did that come from?
Speaker 2 (41:52):
Your friend might be like, well, look, I was just
having a bit of a dig and I wanted to
piss you off, so I decided to call you a narcissist. Okay,
unhealthy conflict, But you know, that's another topic. But maybe
there is some underlying resentment there that came out through
your friend using.
Speaker 4 (42:07):
This word narcissistic.
Speaker 2 (42:09):
Maybe she feels like, hey, I want to be able
to share my stories too, I want to be able
to choose the cafe we go to. I want to
feel like I've got more space to be myself in
this friendship. Maybe that's what she was trying to communicate,
And if you're someone who's open to that, feedback, then
go you Kate like, that's fantastic. So I would say,
(42:30):
if the relationship and friendship calls for it, have a
conversation with your friend find out what she meant. But
in the meantime, well done for doing the self reflection.
And I think that probably means you don't have as
many narcissistic traits as you might be worried to do.
Speaker 1 (42:52):
Oh, this was a big episode, And I feel like
what you've really just illustrated for all of us is
that narcissism, like so many parts of the human personality,
is a spectrum. It can range from annoying and frustrating
to dangerous and abusive. Can you give us a recap
that we can come back to when we need a reminder?
Speaker 2 (43:11):
Sure can, And look, I feel like we've only just
scraped the surface on the topic of narcissism. We could
have a whole podcast just dedicated to this topic.
Speaker 4 (43:19):
But for the cheat sheet, let me run you through it.
Speaker 2 (43:22):
So, first off, narcissistic personality disorder is a diagnosable mental
health condition, and there are treatments that exist. Second, narcissism
exists on a spectrum. From the annoying friends all.
Speaker 4 (43:37):
The way up to an abusive partner.
Speaker 2 (43:39):
Third, how we might manage a relationship with someone who
has narcissistic tendencies varies depending on the degree of narcissism. Four,
if it's an annoying friend, set some clear boundaries, ask
for what you need. But if things don't change, reevaluate
this friendship in your life.
Speaker 4 (44:00):
Five.
Speaker 2 (44:01):
If you're in a relationship with someone who shows signs
of abuse, seek support on how to best make a
plan to leave. Finally, as always, there are professionals who
are available to help.
Speaker 4 (44:15):
Now.
Speaker 2 (44:16):
Next week's conversation is an important one. It's about the
little voice in your head that tells you you're not
good enough. Sometimes we call this imposter syndrome, but it
impacts virtually every part of our lives.
Speaker 4 (44:31):
It's a useful episode, so don't miss it.
Speaker 1 (44:34):
If you have any burnie questions. There's a few ways
to get in touch with us. Links are in the
show notes.
Speaker 2 (44:39):
And remember, while I am a psychologist, this podcast isn't
a diagnostic tool, and the advice and ideas we present
here should always take into account your personal history. The
executive producer of But Are You Happy is Niama Brown.
Speaker 1 (44:55):
Tarlie Blackman is our senior producer.
Speaker 2 (44:57):
Sound design and editing by Jacob Brown.
Speaker 1 (45:00):
I'm a Shani Dante.
Speaker 2 (45:02):
And I'm doctor Anastasia Heronus. If this conversation brought up
any difficult feelings for you, we have links for more
resources in the show notes around the topics we discussed today.
You can also reach out to organizations like Beyond Blue
or Lifeline if you're wanting more immediate mental health support,
or contact one eight hundred respect if you need help
(45:24):
with domestic abuse.
Speaker 1 (45:25):
Thanks for listening.
Popular Podcasts
Crime Junkie
Does hearing about a true crime case always leave you scouring the internet for the truth behind the story? Dive into your next mystery with Crime Junkie. Every Monday, join your host Ashley Flowers as she unravels all the details of infamous and underreported true crime cases with her best friend Brit Prawat. From cold cases to missing persons and heroes in our community who seek justice, Crime Junkie is your destination for theories and stories you won’t hear anywhere else. Whether you're a seasoned true crime enthusiast or new to the genre, you'll find yourself on the edge of your seat awaiting a new episode every Monday. If you can never get enough true crime... Congratulations, you’ve found your people. Follow to join a community of Crime Junkies! Crime Junkie is presented by audiochuck Media Company.
24/7 News: The Latest
The latest news in 4 minutes updated every hour, every day.
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.