If Someone Says These 3 Things, They’re Manipulating You

What is the difference between a narcissist and narcissistic personality disorder? So narcissism is a personality style, right? There's lots of different personality styles out there. Certainly narcissism is a more maladaptive personality style because it puts people at odds with other people. It's not good for their relationships. In and of itself, it's not a disorder. There is something called narcissistic personality disorder, which is when a person is presenting with these various narcissistic patterns we've talked about. The low and variable empathy, the entitlement, the grandiosity, the arrogance, the envy, the admiration and validation seeking, that whole laundry list, the egocentricity, all the selfishness, all that stuff, right? So all of that is happening. It's chronic. It's pervasive. It shows up in their life in various, in a whole bunch of different relationships. The difference is they actually go to a therapist's office who's licensed and trained to issue a diagnosis, and that therapist determines like, yep, I'm seeing these patterns, they're consistent, they're across situations, and they may assign them that diagnosis. The vast majority of people who have this personality style are never going to be in a practitioner's office who's going to make that determination. Personally, Jay, if I ran the world, I think we'd get rid of this diagnosis. I think we get nothing out of it. A lot of clinicians don't issue it because it feels stigmatizing. So there's people out there who are narcissistic. They might be mildly narcissistic and a little bit more emotionally immature and just sort of selfish and shallow, all the way up to severe, where it can be malignant and it can be coercive and manipulative and all of that. So where it gets interesting is the mistake a lot of people make is, number one, they assume that if a person has narcissistic personality disorder, that their narcissism is more severe. Not necessarily. There are people out there with NPD, narcissistic personality disorder, whose narcissism actually is not as severe as people who were never diagnosed because they never went into that situation. Suffice it to say, I think in the public conversation about narcissism, we should only call it narcissism. So we're not able to have the clear conversation that these personality styles are harming the people who are in these relationships. Why is it all of a sudden we're feeling this kind of awareness and culture? It's always been there, Jay. I'd say about 75 percent of the people they've written about in that history book were probably quite narcissistic. Narcissistic people make history. And in fact, honestly, they often are responsible for some of the greatest innovations we've ever known. But I'd say, let them innovate. Just don't go on a date with them. You know, that's really what we're talking about here. So there is an out-of-the-boxness to them. There's a fantasy that they live in that they often feel compelled to create. So you better believe that they've always been there. I don't know that we would have had the leaps and bounds we've had in some ways without that. Right. So that said, it's always been there, but we never had a name for it. People have been doing narcissistic stuff to partners, children, family members since time immemorial. So I think there was almost a strange sort of universal radical acceptance that some people are just really jerky. But we see history books of kings who were ogres and invaders who were horrific. They were the narcissists of their time. We're using different languaging now. The point of this book was really to say there are people with these personalities. The way they show up in relationships is pretty consistently the same. And instead of blaming yourself and wondering what you could do, it's not you. But rolling up and turning your life into a human sacrifice to please or win over or prove something to an unwinnable over person. I have watched people waste lifetimes doing this, you know, and it's even particularly compelling if it's their parent. But even if it's a long term intimate relationship with some, especially if they got into the relationship young. So this has always been a thing. How do you stop attracting a narcissist? You know why you attracted a narcissist? Because you're attractive. And what I mean by attractive is you may be physically beautiful. It may be your physique. It may be your social status. What's attractive to them may not be attractive to the rest of us. Many people get into these relationships. We have this mistaken assumption that the people who get into these relationships are shrinking violets who have low self-esteem. Absolutely not. They're strong and they know who they are. And they're saying this thing dismantled me brick by brick. I was really well put together when I met this person. Right. Narcissistic people are attracted to people who will give them supply. What is supply for every narcissistic person might be a little different, but it's usually physical attractiveness, status, praise. So you just being a nice person and praising someone could actually be what makes you attractive to them. So people may think, well, does that mean I have to stop being me? I'd say no. They may be attracted to you and you may be compelled for a minute. But the key is then to know how to get off the carousel before it starts going too fast. So walk me through the pattern of a narcissistic relationship. They have traits, things like I talked about, the entitlement, the lack of empathy, the grandiosity, the arrogance, the selfishness. I want you to think of a narcissistic person as a volcano. And that volcano has got this bubbling lava and the lava for the narcissistic person is shame and insecurity. So they want to be able to plug the top of that volcano. Right. And that plug is all this stuff, the entitlement, the grandiosity. I'm perfect. But every so often in life, something's going to push that lid off to the side, which might be feedback or criticism. Their day doesn't go the way they want. They get stuck in traffic and they're late to something. They don't get the table they want in a restaurant, whatever it may be that nudges that manhole cover over. And the lava starts spilling out. And that lava is their rage and their anger because their shame has been shown. So all these patterns in the relationship, the way they show up in the narcissistic person is manipulation, invalidation of the other person, minimization of what another person is going through, gaslighting, rage and reactivity, future faking, which means promises are made and broken just to keep a person sort of on the hook. There will be blame shifting. They'll always blame the other person, which is why people in these relationships always tend to blame themselves. There's a lot of deceit, betrayal, lying, infidelity. There is neglect. Over time, they just give less and less and less to the relationship. And the person in the relationship is trying to make do on the tiniest, tiniest bits of being noticed. Everything in the relationship is about them getting supply and validation. They have absolutely no interest in the needs, wants, and honestly, the subjective reality of the other person in the relationship. Over time, the other person gets almost as considered an inconvenience, oftentimes, at least in an adult narcissistic relationship, whether it's an intimate relationship or a friendship. That early phase is very idealized and seductive. It's called love bombing, but it's really this phase where they're winning, not only winning you over with gestures and tactics, but with attunement and attention or seeming attunement and attention. They pay intense attention to you. But what you realize afterwards is some of that intense attention was them learning things about you that were going to be turned around and used against you down the road. That's often a point of devastation for a person who says, I was vulnerable with this person. And then six months in, I was being shamed and humiliated. And, you know, it was being used to sort of destabilize me. There was a point where that love bombing phase then starts heading into a place where there's ten good things, one bad thing. Over time, though, that ratio pretty much comes to like maybe one to one. That's the origin of the trauma bond. That back and forth, good, bad, hot, cold, I'm here, I'm not here, is where people will often find themselves falling into a cycle of justifying, blaming themselves because it was so great. So how did it not become great? Maybe I'm doing something. That's what people in narcissistic relationships do. They open the bag that is themselves and pull everything out, trying to figure out what is wrong with me. Maybe you've really committed into a long term relationship. You said, I love you's or whatever, that they've got you where they want you. Then there's sort of almost narcissistic folks are also very novelty seeking. They kind of get bored easily. And over time, there can be a real process of discard. They just really can feel like they just don't care at all anymore. Basically, what they do is they no longer fulfill the roles and responsibilities of what it means to be in a close relationship, which is empathy, compassion, kindness, attunement, self-awareness. These are the responsibilities we have in a human relationship. Then if you do decide to leave, or even if they decide to leave, you start to enter potentially a cat and mouse game of hoovering where they'll pull you back, see how you're doing. Sometimes they'll even figure out, oh, they're happy now. Let me go see if I can spin that around a little bit. What are the excuses that people keep telling themselves? When you think about one of the most primal human needs, it's attachment. We need other people. Human beings are tribal. We evolved in social groups. And people say, what about the narcissist? I said, they need it more than anyone. But that, especially in a child, that need for attachment is everything. If a child has an unattuned parent or even an abusive parent, the child doesn't have the option to say, I think I'm going to split up with them and go on parent hinge and see if I can find someone new. The child has to hold this parent in esteem, which means the child then needs to devalue themselves. The child really learns how to be everything that parent wants and needs to the detriment of their own needs, right? This is our backstory. Exactly. But in adulthood, they may be things like, everyone has a bad day, relationships are tough. So the justifications are not only proliferate, they come easily. And Jay, they're reinforced by the world, right? Because the world will say, oh, relationships are tough. And you do that enough every time these really invalidating, destabilizing things that cut to the core of your identity happen. The people who tend to get more stuck in these relationships, quite frankly, are the more empathic people. And as a result, are more likely to make those excuses and justifications, right? We don't like the tension of inconsistency within ourselves. So we're always trying to make it fit. And how do we relieve that tension and make it fit? We justify. Then we can maintain the status quo. And human beings are also homeostatic creatures. Over time, many survivors will say, I don't even care if I wake up, you know, in a random place, as long as I'm not waking up here. But how much terribleness had to happen to the person in that period of time, the longer a person is in a narcissistic relationship, the more they literally have to abandon themselves. But often with people who've been with narcissistic people, especially empathetic people, they're still saying, well, I hope they're okay. What is the impact of someone who's experienced narcissistic abuse on a deep scientific, psychological level? And what is actually going on for them? So what we're seeing pretty consistently across, and now I can say now, thousands of people we've looked at who have experienced these relationships is consistently we see a problematic level of rumination, regret, anxiety, sadness, self-blame, self-doubt, a sense of hypervigilance, a social anxiety that comes from it. And I want to put a pin in that hypervigilant piece, because I want to come back to that in a moment. What's interesting, though, about survivors of narcissistic abuse is that some of them may actually develop clinical depression, but most don't. But one thing I'm really seeing, and I'm getting so many clients now at this point, and other people telling their stories, is that the empathy is almost functioning as a bit of a trauma response. And something I really try to focus on with survivors is to say, this empathic, responsive, compassionate part of you is beautiful. We've got to heal you and not lose that. Does that make sense? So this isn't an amputation. This is very much about, we've got to keep this here, pull the shame off of it, but allow you to become more discerning. And that's the trick in doing this work with clients and for an individual who's healing themselves. It's almost as though if you have empathy for the narcissistic person, you're foolish. My goal for folks is you want to have empathy for them. And I mean, if you don't want to, I get that too, for what you've been through. Can you disengage from someone and still empathize with them? I believe absolutely yes. And that balancing act of retaining empathy when you've been so hurt by someone, that's some of the hardest work of healing. A big point I bring up in the book, and I'm going to sort of jump ahead here, is I actually don't know that forgiveness always has a place in these relationships. There's a whole body of scientific research that suggests that repeatedly forgiving a repeat perpetrator actually harms the forgiver, but it's also not a necessary one to heal. And I'm going to be very frank with you, Jay. There's some narcissistic people who harmed me immeasurably. I don't forgive them and I heal just fine. It comes back to the, you can't just say the cliches to people and hope they'll move on and be okay with it. And it can be really hard for that individual to, again, either rise or lower themselves down to either of those. Like I know someone who's been through something recently who's dealing with it with empathy. And I know for them, their friends and family are like, how can you be empathetic to this person? And so they're dealing with it that way. Or you'd have the opposite. In your case, you're saying, I actually don't want to be empathetic towards them. I don't want to forgive them. And your family is saying, well, you should be. But I do. Here's where it gets interesting. I empathize with them. And I think that, again, one of the big exercises in the book, and I think it might be one of the most important ones, is something I've been doing with clients for a long time, which is a multiple truths exercise. But I said, like, let's just be, I want you to write everything you feel for this person. And a person might write, this is my mother. I hate her. She had a tough backstory. She was terrible to us as children. She lives alone. I feel sorry for her. I wish she would change. I know she won't change. This is literally the stream of consciousness. And right there, it's manifest why survivors are so confused. But I absolutely believe, and not everyone does. Some people say, I have no empathy for this person. But I think it's quite possible. And this is where everyone's saying, no, that's not possible. If you empathize with them, you'd forgive them. I say, I understand why they are the way they are. I even kind of understand why they did what they did. What they did was unforgivable. And so I do I wish them no ill will. In fact, if good things happen to them, so be it. If bad things happen to them, so be it. So there's a mild indifference to it. But it wouldn't be a loss. I mean, I don't think again, there's so many forms of empathy and empathy, its own complicated conversation. But I don't think that the not forgiving is a lack of empathy, because forgiveness really reflects the harm it's done to us. And people say, No, no, no, it's a gift for you to make Yeah, and I'm not giving them this gift, because I know they would do it again. If I let this person back in, they would do it again. Another word that a whole chapter is dedicated to radical acceptance, define that for us so that we can understand how that's used. Because again, even looking at the difference between empathy and forgiveness, it's so interesting to me just how subtle and specific healing looks like, as opposed to this almost abstract journey that's often painted of healing being like, move from this stage to here, where it's, you know, right? Yeah. So there's two, probably two essential ingredients to healing, you're going to go through radical acceptance, you're going to go through grief, and then it's sort of people are going to go on different paths. But radical acceptance is the absolute acceptance that these patterns are not this person's behavior is not going to change, at least not significantly enough to make this into a healthy relationship, that this behavior affected you. And as long as you're in the purview of this behavior, as long as they keep doing this to you, it will keep hurting you. How come when they say these things to me, it still bothers me. I'm like, because it's hurting you. It's still hurtful. But the key element of it is this is not going to change. And all decisions from that point forward have to be made on that basis. The core of mental health is flexibility. It's almost like physical health, right? A person who's physically healthy has a lot of flexibility in their muscles and joints. A mentally healthy person has a lot of flexibility in their psyche. How do we define flexibility in our psyche? I would say it's an adaptability. It is a self-awareness and awareness of others. Think about it. If a tree is flexible, it'll bend with the wind. If it's not, it's going to snap if the wind is too hard. Most grandiose narcissists subjectively think of themselves as great people. If you ask them, they'll say, I'm a great guy. Like I'll help anyone. I'll do anything for anyone. I'm just a cool person. They believe it. Having just cheated on their girlfriend two nights before that they're able to maintain what almost feels like a delusional self schema. Those things are not amenable to change. The addiction is managed like they've been sober for many years, but that core personality, they're definitely not fit for an intimate relationship. At least not one where someone's not going to get hurt. So that radical acceptance of the all of it, that moment is the penny drop moment because now people see the path forward very differently. This is no longer once the kids grow up, it's going to get easier. This is no longer when he gets the promotion, things are going to get better. This is no longer when the grandkids come, my parents is going to calm down. This is, this is it. A couple of things is that radical acceptance doesn't mean you're signing off on this. It's not that it is. You're seeing it absolutely and painfully clearly. And you know what happens after you painfully and radically see something, the grief comes over you like a tsunami. That's devastation. And I tell folks now we're going to because grief is the most human of experiences. Nobody gets to make their grief go quicker, right? And that grief actually leads people, Jay, to say, okay, this feels terrible. And so the holding on during the grief, understanding what's happening within you, that the loss isn't just, I'm not talking to my partner anymore, or I'm distanced from my mother, or I'm getting a divorce. But the grief is how much of yourself you lost in this relationship. Some might as well say, I'm kind of glad they're gone. But oh, what what just happened to me? Yeah, yeah, it's the grief of the life you once had. What's the first step when you're feeling I don't know what, where do you where's where's the starting point? I tell folks, we're taking you back to basics. And it's little things like I'll say three times a day, set a little timer if you want. I want you to just when that little notification comes up for you to stop and say, how do I feel right now, Michael? I'll say, what do you want on your pizza? You'd be amazed how many people are flummoxed by that question. I'll say, well, this is how even these these sort of low hanging questions become a place where a person is now being able to recreate a subjective focus. And part of what I write about in the book is just you keep reorienting to yourself. And you ask yourself a few times a day, like, what's the temperature? I'm actually feeling a little bit cold. And that's okay. Even if everyone else has a bathing suit on. It's okay. Wow, it's just bringing that person back into their body into their body. Because that's our most physical, tangible way of knowing how we feel. And because we've gone so far away from understanding how we feel. That's going to be the easiest way. Same with what do you want on your pizza? It sounds silly, but it's not because it's not silly at all. Let's get these basic decisions. Let's get these really amateur decisions. Rather than thinking, who am I? What is the goal of my life? But you work up to that. And when you ask people, who am I? I don't know. I remember a client once saying to me, we're talking about meeting a purpose. And she said, Are you kidding me? What's meaningful and purposeful? She said, I just want to get to a day where I don't think about them. And I said, Great, then that's that's where it is right now. But then it's also the willingness to turn to trusted as I'm going to give you a silly example of something that happened today. I had a very problematic call today, right with someone, the person was very disrespectful, very dismissive. So my first tendency was, am I being too sensitive? Am I being too demanding? Am I being ridiculous? That's what I was thinking. And at one point, the lady who was helping helping me out, she kind of looked at me rolled her eyes, I rolled my eyes. And she looked back at me. And she said, Yeah. And I got off the phone. And the person who was helping with something else, she had nothing to do with this call. And I closed my eyes. And the person said, the person in the room with me said, yeesh, that was absolutely ridiculous. And I looked at her, I said, say more. And she said, I can't believe how dismissive that person, she didn't even do the basic. And Jay, I fell whole, because my inner experience, which I still doubt after all these years, and I've come a long way. But my inner experience, this person outside of me, who I know cares about me, said it wasn't okay, how she talked to you. And each time that happens, we have a micro adjustment of that was on point, but that other person's presence, having that safe space. And this is so big part of the healing then becomes building up safe, validating anti gaslights, as I call them in your life, people who see you and say that wasn't okay, or are you okay? Or that was disrespectful. They did not speak nicely to you, whatever it is, most survivors are so used to being spoken to badly. They're like, well, that's just business as usual. This is what healing is you build up those people, even if it's one or two people, giving yourself permission to put I call it the 9010 inversion. Most of us put 90% of ourselves into our most toxic relationships, and 10% into the giving reciprocal loving ones that run easily. Flip the math, I want 90% into those good relationships and phone it into the toxic ones. Yeah, that's so true. And it's, it's interesting, because I think that kind of answers the next question I was gonna ask. But this idea of I think, when someone's going through that healing journey, they're almost oscillating between like, what should I know myself again? Oh, I don't know who I am anymore. What else can someone do when they're kind of oscillating between that? I think I'm making progress. I'm not sure anymore. I think I'm making progress. I'm lost again. How do you what do you find in that period, embrace the oscillation? Right? You're you're sort of it's like a child wobbly on their feet when they're learning to walk. You're you're learning this again. And the but it's the individuated voice and the internalized the narcissistic internalized gaslighted and internalized voice. And we were told to Jay many survivors are told their uppity if they want to achieve a goal. Do you really think you're going to pull that off? Like I think you're reaching a little too high. So they were minimized and trivialized for wanting to do something that they still hear that inner voice of don't be ridiculous, you're never going to be able to do that. And they make that voice their own. Instead of trying to learn like that kind of that was an unwanted visitor. So let's see if you can sort of treat it that way. And we can even think about if you look at trauma theory, we talked about the protector persecutor kind of a model that the persecuting voice in a strange way is doing this really messed up way of keeping you safe. Because it's telling you like, in essence, it's the that persecuting voices, that voice is telling you you're going to fail. So you don't try. But if you can say that, okay, I see what you're trying to do persecuting voice, I'll be fine. If this doesn't go well, because it'll be on my terms. And if you really have done radical acceptance, even when the narcissistic person rolls their eyes into the big surprise, you have to keep coming back to this is a them thing. This is not a me thing. Not saying it doesn't hurt. This is a carousel that really takes a toll on people. But it can be done. But that oscillation starts to become a little less oscillatey. The more people have these validating voices, people build up what we call efficacy, the the idea that they're able to do something, right. So I tell survivors, keep trying new things. Because the more efficacy you build, that also helps foster individuation. So I'm like, grab the drill. If you put a few holes in the wall, but the picture goes up, you're going to feel really good about the picture going up. Try to make the difficult souffle, you may burn a few, but when it's made, great, I did try to do this with bread, I still have not successfully raised a loaf of bread. So it's my last neurotic wound. But I think that when we define some people, and other people do all kinds of interesting things. I see like some folks I've worked with learned languages, and they learned how to play a musical instrument. And they'll say this feels so good. Because back in the day, I would have been made fun of for this. And that confidence starts jumping into other areas of their life. Yeah, I mean, it's really a rehabilitation. Self identity, self worth, self confidence, self acceptance, you're almost teaching yourself to do things again in order to feel whole, right? Well, absolutely. But you know what you see, it's interesting to use rebuild for a lot of people, it's a build. Because if this happened to them in childhood, their individuated identity never got to form at all. So this is a build. But I want to ask you one last question. And it's this idea of can going back to that empathy point, that forgiveness point for the person who's healing from the narcissistic person, for them, can the narcissistic person ever heal? Part of this is an understanding the origins of narcissism, right? Some narcissistic folks, their personality development was very much shaped by adversity, trauma, neglect, loss, chaos, attachment moods, right? That subgroup, if they are willing humbly to engage into the work of growth, they do excellent trauma informed work, work with a therapist, and then get beyond the trauma informed work and are able to reflect on how they they're able to create that schema of how they're, they affect others, right? To pull, it's almost like you're pulling away, you're pulling open gates and say, there's people out there, see this thing you're doing, they're being affected. And it's really opening the schema out of how they're desperately trying to protect themselves, to how other people are getting hurt. And I have, it's interesting, I work with a narcissistic client once for many, many years, and I sort of cut back my practice. And I've had one or two of them reach back, like, Oh, can I work with you? And I'm like, you know, I've really kind of shut up shop. But you know what they said, though? One in particular said, I am, I'm screaming at my girlfriend. I know it's not okay. But he does know, he's like, I know it's not okay. And she may leave me and I probably deserve it. And he's like, you taught me that. Humility is such a big part of this, right? And the, I honestly think the antidote to narcissism is humility. And honestly, the hardest thing for a narcissistic person to accept is that they're ordinary. You're ordinary, I'm ordinary, everyone in this room is ordinary, and we're simultaneously special. And so for them not to be the most special person means removing the camp off the volcano, which is terrifying for them. And they have to keep showing up. And for about almost 60 to 70% of narcissistic folks drop out of therapy prematurely. And it usually happens when the rubber meets the road and the work starts getting really vulnerable. That's when I lost clients. And so we have to go very, very gently into that forest with them. You can't just, you can't aphorism your way through this. You're going to have to do this painful work face up to that vulnerability. There's hope for them to make some progress. But the harm they've usually done to another person, usually it's not super, it's not really that fixable. And so many people will say, and a fear of a lot of people in narcissistic relationships is, what if they change for the next person? They're not going to change for the next person, right? This is years and years and years of committed work to this. Yeah, that's what I was going to ask you as the last question that came from that was, what would you say to someone who says, I'll wait for them to change? You, then you're waiting for a bus that's never going to come. You're waiting for a submarine to show up at a bus stop. You will lose yourself in the process. And to me, that sort of soul death, that sort of loss of self is, it's just not okay. And listen, you and I both know this culturally, we both come from a culture where remaining in a marriage, no matter what the conditions are, is very much a sort of a symptom of the culture. But others, it was like watching a fruit die on the vine. And it's, to me, one of the most horrific things to witness is the potential of a human being being lost to this kind of invalidation. And I shudder to think how much potential, creative potential, knowledge, wisdom that people have held back because it was invalidated. This book is a love story to every survivor and saying to them, please bring, we need you. We need all of your gifts in this world because you have so many. Listen, the fact that you endured this relationship is already a gift, but so all the stuff you kept behind the gate, open those gates so we can see all this beautiful stuff that you could bring into the world.