Psychotherapist and DV Advocate Yvette Stone talks about Narcissistic Abuse

Yvette Stone, psychotherapist and dv advocate. She has her own private practice and is an affiliate and trainer at NW Family Life.

During covid she graduated from grad school and started her own practice. It’s been a season of “Grief and Gratitude.” When people ask “How are you doing?” For the first time in my life I stop and say, “I don’t know.” It’s complex and we’re all carry so much. There aren’t straight forward answers.

She works mostly with women in domestic violence relationships and her specialization is with people of narcissistic abuse. Yvette is a survivor herself of narcissistic abuse.

Yvette is passionate about bringing narcissistic abuse into the forefront of domestic violence. Most people associate domestic violence with battery—broken bones and hospitalizations—and it is absolutely a category of dv, but psychological and narcissistic abuse also falls under that umbrella and Yvette says it is equally damaging and so much more prevalent than people realize.

Maggie asks Yvette to give a formal definition to the term narcissist. Many people use the term casually for someone who is selfish but there is really more to it.

Yvette acknowledges that the term has been thrown around a lot more lately. The statics say Narcissists make up 1 in 30 of the US population of those over 60 years old. However that number jumps to 1 in 10 of 20-somethings experience the clinical symptoms of Narcissistic Personality Disorder. She says this is because of the prevalence of violence, materialism and social media (the sense of look at me! look at me! look at me!”) in our culture.

She says there is a way narcissistic people will feel to you and then there is the clinical definition. A narcissist is identifiable by their:

• Lack of empathy for others
• Inflated sense of importance
• Deep need for excessive attention and admiration
• Perpetually troubled relationships

The traits of a narcissist according to the DSM (Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders):

• grandiose sense of self-importance
• preoccupation with fantasies of unlimited success, power, brilliance, beauty, ideal love
• belief they’re special and unique and can only be understood by, or should associate with, other special or high-status people or institutions,
• need for excessive admiration sense of entitlement,
• interpersonally exploitative behavior,
• lack of empathy,
• envy of others or a belief that others are envious of them,
• and demonstration of arrogant and haughty behaviors or attitudes.

Vulnerable or Deflated Narcissists tend to be a product of neglectful parenting, where as the grandiose narcissists tend to be a product of being spoiled and told how special or entitled􏰌 they are.

Danielle relates this back to her own experience growing up in the church with some leaders— “You’re talking to them but it’s like they aren’t there.” How shameful that felt. She said having a president [Trump] who exhibits some of these traits strongly, it has forced her to look inward to ask herself “What’s my narcissism Where have I exhibited narcissistic tendencies? Where have I been effected by this?” Growing up she had this sense of being gaslit - where if you call out someone who has a strong lack of empathy, she’s told no, that’s not it.

Yvette said that is the first thing people do when they hear the definition of a narcissist—they self reflect. They start to think “Oh God, I’m the Narcissist.” Every survivor/victim has to go war with that in their relationships. Everybody has narcissism in them. In fact, Yvette says you need a little bit of narcissism to achieve big things in life. You have to have someone who believes you can, but people that didn’t have good parenting did not get informed of their limitations nor were they celebrated for the way they were made thus preventing them from growing up in a healthy way.

There are some healthy levels of narcissism that causes us to take necessary risks in life and there is also a narcissist style of relating that can be difficult but still worked with and seen in yourself. This differs from a pathological narcissism that goes back to early developmental issues.

Maggie said gaslighting is one of the hallmark impacts of being in a relationship with a narcissist and asked Yvette what are some of the others.

Yvette says what you’ll experience in a relationship with a narcissist is:

• Lack of Empathy
• Manipulation
• Projection - things get spun around and accuse the victim of it to them
• Emotionally Distant or Cold - “Sucked into their orbit”
• Emptiness - Hard to attach to their personhood
• Gaslighting, re-narrating
• Crazy making, circular nature
• C