April 6, 2023 • 45 mins
Narcissism lives in all of us to some degree as on a spectrum. And it’s easy to see how having even a tinge of narcissism could have been a valuable survival tool over the ages. But like with everything, there is a limit to what is healthy and what is toxic. Psychologist and author of Rethinking Narcissism Dr. Craig Malkin talks about the extroverted narcissist, i.e. “the narcissist we all know and loathe”, but says there are others. And like with most things there is an equal and opposite thing that compliments it. Meet the narcissist and its foil, the echoist. A match made in heaven? Not even close. Malkin describes his echoist relationship with his narcissist mother, the barriers people have to getting out of toxic relationships, the importance of anger and how a certain medication can help - if the narcissist actually thinks they need it.
If you have questions or guest suggestions, Ali would love to hear from you. Call or text her at (323) 364-6356. Or email go-ask-ali-podcast-at-gmail.com. (No dashes)
**Go Ask Ali has been nominated for a Webby Award for Best Interview/Talk Show Episode! Please vote for her and the whole team at https://bit.ly/415e8uN by April 20, 2023!
Links of Interest:
Rethinking Narcissism: The Secret to Recognizing and Coping with Narcissists
The Communal Narcissist: A New Kind of Narcissist? (Psychology Today)
The Most Narcissistic U.S. Presidents (Pew Research, 2013)
Malignant Narcissism: Does the President Have it? (Psychology Today, 2020)
CREDITS:
Executive Producers: Sandie Bailey, Alex Alcheh, Lauren Hohman, Tyler Klang & Gabrielle Collins
Producer & Editor: Brooke Peterson-Bell
Associate Producer: Akiya McKnight
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Go, Ask Alli, a production of Shonda Land
Audio and partnership with iHeartRadio. I think, like Gyorginas have
a lot to say. I think we should let them
speak out of it and they'll just talk. Yes, one
of the hardest things to absorb for those who are
new to these kinds of fights. Again, if we want
all of them, we wouldn't be here. If you see
(00:21):
a monster, don't try to run away, step right up
to it and say what do you have to teach me?
Why are you? In my mind, I want to be
the person who has cancer and doesn't run a marathon, Like,
do I have to work that hard? No, it's the
best excuse not to run a marathon. Welcome to Go,
(00:42):
ask Alli. I'm Allie Wentworth. So we've all heard the
word narcissist being thrown around. He's a narcissist, she's a narcissist.
But what exactly is a narcissist? And how do we
spot a narcissist in our life and how do we
get them the hell out of it? There is no
better a person to talk to about this than doctor
Craig malcol He's a clinical psychologist, author and lecturer for
(01:06):
Harvard Medical School. His internationally acclaimed book, Rethinking Narcissism, The
Secret to Recognizing and Coping With Narcissists, has been translated
into twelve languages. That's how many narcissists there are in
the world. In February this year, Rethinking Narcissism was named
by Oprah Daily as the best book to read if
you have a narcissist in your life. One hundred percent
(01:28):
chance you do. His articles, advice and insights on relationships
have appeared internationally in outlets like Time Magazine, NPR, and
the Oprah Winfrey Network. Doctor Malkin is President and Director
of y M Psychotherapy and Consultation in Cambridge. Well, doctor Malkin,
(01:50):
are you a narcissist? I'm just curious how you got
involved in researching narcissism. Are you a recovering narcissist? I
should ask. I'm actually covering echoist, which is a whole
other topic that is related to narcissism. What's an echoist?
So if you think of narcissism along a spectrum, and
(02:12):
you really should, because study after study, decades of research
show that it's really best to think of narcissism as
pervasive universal trait that exists to some extent in all
of us, to a greater or lesser degree. I think
of as the drive to feel special, and we can
talk about why. I think that captures all forms of narcissism.
(02:35):
But you think of that drive to feel special along
a spectrum. Imagine it from zero to ten. A lot
of times people start at some narcissism bad and then
all the way up to a lot of narcissism really bad.
But what we've learned from the research is a little
of that drive is helpful. And if you have none
of it, if you have what's called a failure to
(02:58):
self enhance, that is what I describe as echoism. And
the term echoism comes from the myth of narcissists. In echo,
Narcissus is the vain Greek youth who fell in love
with his reflection. Echo is the nymph who was cursed
to repeat the last few words she heard. She had
no voice of her own, and she fell in love
(03:19):
with Narcissus. And I like to think of echoism along
those lines. These are people who, because of their experiences,
have no drive to feel special or very little, fail
to self enhance, and they intend to have fall into
relationships with extremely narcissistic friends and partners, not always a
lot of time, and that pretty much describe my dating
(03:40):
life right for most of my early adulthood. Interesting. Yeah, yeah,
you've just described a lot of people. I know, a
lot of women. I know. All right, So let's dive
right into narcissism because I think that and I'm sure
you've dealt with this A lot people get confused with
exactly what narcissism is, and we need to be very
(04:02):
clear because I feel like the word is thrown out
so casually all the time. So how would you, doctor Melkin?
How would you define narcissism we've just discussed. I think
the starting point is the drive to feel special, exceptional,
or unique compared to the other eight billion people nearly
(04:22):
eight billion people on the planet. Is it the drive
or do you feel those things? It's both. It's both.
The reason it's both is because the drive is there,
that is, the intense engagement in experiences in a relationship
in a way that's expressly geared to maintain this sense
(04:44):
of feeling special. But people will struggle with narcissism, particularly
in the extreme, don't always feel special. They're driven to
create experiences that they can have that feeling, but it
doesn't always stick and they don't always feel that way,
So I would say it's both. There are three terms
for a narcissist. Correct, correct? Can you tell me what
these three terms are? Sure, so you think of the
(05:06):
drives you feel special as the heart of narcissism. There's
lots of ways to feel special, but to date they
come down to three that we've identified in the research.
The first is extroverted narcissism, also called overt or grandiose
or obvious. Really it's that loud, outgoing brand of narcissism.
(05:31):
The second type is introverted when people were more inward
and reflective and less outgoing. Doesn't mean they don't have
any aspect of that. So that's more introverted or vulnerable
or covert. And these are people who agree in self
report with questions like no one understands my problems. A
(05:52):
few people have suffered as much as me, so you
get the idea the flavor of it, which is with
overt narcissism, the grandi is obvious and the insecurity is hidden.
In covert narcissism, the insecurity is obvious, shy, anxious, withdrawn,
self doubting, low self esteem. The grandiosity is on the
(06:14):
inside or hidden, hence covert. And then there's a third
brand of narcissism that we've identified recently in the research,
which is communal narcissism. And communal narcissists agree with statements
like I'm the most helpful person I know and it
always makes me laugh without fail. So I'm the most
(06:35):
helpful person I know, and one day I'll be known
for my good deeds. So these are people feel special
by virtue of their helpfulness or their altruism. As you
might expect, their belief in their altruism and helpfulness isn't
necessarily correlated with their actual altruism or helpfulness, but that's
how they feel special. So those are the three types.
(06:57):
And so are you born a narcissist? How do you
acquire narcissistic traits? You know it? Like most answers in
psychology and development and personality, the answer is it's really
best understood as a combination of genetics or temperament and environment.
We know from a terrific longitudinal study by a psychologist
(07:22):
named Phoebe Kramer, where she traced people over time for
twenty one years. She used data that had been around
to track patterns of behavior, and one measure was early
precursors for narcissism in preschoolers, like being melodramatic, being impulsive,
(07:45):
always wanted to be the center of attention, being aggressive.
These were signs as early as age or four or
five that she discovered predict later on unhealthier pathological narcissism
unless those kids had a kind of parenting called authoritative parenting,
which you want to think of as a combination warmth
(08:06):
and structure. It's kind of what it sounds like. They
set limits, they have boundaries, but they're carrying, they're connected,
they're empathic with their kids. And if those little sort
of obnoxious tikes had that experience over time, they didn't
grow up to be extremely narcissistic, they didn't show unhealthy narcissism. So,
(08:28):
combined with genetic studies that also show what we call
in the research a concordance rate, where you look at
twins and if one twins particularly separated at birth, but
they're identical twins and they're separated, if one has narcissism
does the other, there's a high concordance rate. So that
also suggests there's genetics or temperament involved, but we know
(08:51):
that's not enough because kids need a particular experience that
leaves them insecure in a very specific way that also
causes them to develop unhealthy narcissism over time. So if
you had a narcissistic toddler and you're not an authoritative parent,
let's say you're a free range parent, chances are that
(09:14):
narcissism would grow absolutely, particularly because that kind of unhelpful
free range parenting that you're talking about is often called
permissive parenting, and it's not simply hands off. It's not
just lais a fair. Parents who slip into that kind
of permissive parenting are also not really paying close attention
(09:37):
to what's going on with their kids. And so you
take a kid with this kind of earth and we're
talking a particular kind of narcissism, I should mention right
when it's outgoing, when it's aggressive, that one tends to
develop along these lines, particularly when kids don't have limits
and boundaries. And if you take a kid with that
(09:58):
temperament and put an an environment where the parents just
kind of asleep at the switch in all kinds of ways,
not just in boundaries and limits, but more importantly emotional intwuments.
Are they paying attention to when their kid is sad
or scared or lonely or blue. They're not paying attention
to other things like obnoxious behavior. They're not paying attention
(10:21):
to that either. That is a recipe for unhealthy narcissism.
So is it a leap to say that narcissistic toddlers,
when not having a strong connection to their parents, become
bullies in high school. No, it's not a leap at all.
The core of the problem there this brand of narcissism
which is extroverted. It's the loud, brash, as I say,
(10:45):
narcissists we all know and loathe, right, we all recognize that.
And what drives that most powerfully is aggression, which is
also wired in. We also come into the world with
that biological equipment, taking kid with that kind of aggression
and give them an experience where they're not taught to
(11:06):
consider others, where they have, say an authoritarian or bullying
parent themselves, or parent who doesn't really help them think
about other people in these the kind of empathic way
that we're talking about. Authoritative parenting Yeah, they're going to
become a bully. Sure, and you just hope they don't
become president one day. Correct. Yes, that's an interesting topic.
(11:27):
Of course, most presidents they're narcissists, yes, yeah, but there
I would imagine different levels of narcissism that works in
their favor, and then there's those that work again correct, Yes, yeah,
I think you have to be somewhat of a narcissist
who want to be president of the United States, and
that is that is confirmed by research. There's a couple
(11:48):
of researchers, James de Luga, another one Scott leland Field
Lelandfeld excuse me, who took measures of narcissism, of which
we have many, and took one of the most popular.
And you can take a measure like that, and you
can ask expert people to rate someone on that scale,
and both these studies did that and not surprisingly, look
(12:10):
at presence over time and looking at their behaviors, and
there's plenty of biographical historical data for this. Most of
them scored high enough on these measures to be called narcissists.
That doesn't mean disorder, which is your point. It means
they had the drive to get them to that place.
Exactly and a high enough drive that it's well above
average compared to other people. But we know from the
(12:32):
research too, is there's healthy and unhealthy aspects of narcissism
and expressions of it, and they don't rise and fall
in perfect step with one another. So you can be
high enough on the narcissism scale to agree with statements
like I'm a natural born leader, which you hope and
somebody who wants to lead a country, for example, but
not score high on measures. I won't stop until I
(12:56):
get the respect. That's doom and I like to look
in mirrors. Right right, I will be the fascist dictator
of a democratic country. People with narcissistic personality disorder, which
we should probably define, are so addicted to that that
need to feel special, so driven by it that they
(13:18):
demonstrate what I call triple E, which is the core
of pathological narcissism. Exploitation, which is doing whatever it takes
to feel special no matter the cost to others. Entitlement,
which is acting as though the world should bend to
our will because we're so special, and empathy impairments exactly
(13:39):
what it sounds like, becoming so blind in the needs
and feelings of others because of our drive to feel
special that we have to maintain that at all costs.
We can't see what's going on with other people. And
triple E accounts for all the most destructive, dangerous behaviors
that you see in narcissistic personality disorder. Okay, so let
me jump First of all, did you know your mother
(14:01):
was a narcissist when you were a kid? I didn't.
But circling back to your question, this is what got
me into it, and I didn't know. There are no
words for this anyway, to kind of think of myself
as an echoist. And these things came later for me
in my own thinking and research as well. But when
I was younger, I had of Dara say, had a
(14:23):
special connection with my mother. I mean, I knew her
to be kind and caring and supportive. Looking back, there
were red flags of her narcissism. Can you tell me
what those were? That our relationship was really organized around
me being a consummate caretaker. So she, for example, had migraines.
(14:44):
I think she had migraines. I don't know now. All
I know is she locked herself in her room, isolated herself,
and seemed to be in pain and needed special attention.
You see where this goes. This is what looking back,
I think of as a red flag. Just wanted many
but she often called me, you know, her little helper,
(15:07):
her little doctor, in terms like this to really valorize
and reinforce how great I was it attending to her.
At at the same time, she could be caring with me,
and she was often warm. I wouldn't say she was
the best listener. Again, another red flag. It was only
(15:29):
when I later started learning about narcissism an undergraduate that
I saw a description of narcissistic personality disorder in a book,
and by then I'm a young adult and it fit
her so well. And that was stuck with this paradox
of this stark contrasts between the mother I knew as
(15:54):
a child and the mother that I knew as an adult,
And how do I reconcile those Well, it sounds like
you had a narcissistic mother, But it sounds like what
you said up top of the podcast you were echoing,
and so you were probably in relationships where you participated
in some form of what you were like as a
(16:15):
child with a narcissistic partner. Oh spot on Allie, I'm
not a professional, but those are the connections I would make.
There's a lot more to come after the short break
(16:36):
and we're back. So the majority of my listeners are
women and younger women, even older women that are already
in a relationship, maybe pursuing a relationship. What are some
of the things they can look for when it comes
to narcissism. I'm sure you've come across this as yourself.
(16:56):
Most of the sort of signs that people list the
warning signs, they're really things that tend into abuse, gas lighting,
put downs, and those are behaviors that often come later.
Most people are trying to put their best foot forward
in a relationship, including people who are extremely narcissistic. So
(17:19):
those are not the ones I focus on. Really, they
all come down to what I call the vulnerability dodge,
and what I mean by that is the more narcissistic
someone is, the more they have that particular form of
insecurity I mentioned earlier called attachment insecurity, And what attachment
(17:41):
insecurity is is it means that this is a person
doesn't trust themselves in other people's hands emotionally when they're sad, scared,
lonely blue, when they have vulnerable emotions. In particular, they
don't trust that they can turn to a special person
or persons with that for mutual care and comfort. That
is attachment security and extreme narcissism is a way of
(18:03):
coping with that. And one of the ways narcissists cope
with it is they avoid vulnerable states. If I don't
go into those vulnerable feelings, if I stay away from them,
if I don't feel them, if I don't share them,
I'm not going to risk being hurt. Nothing bad is
going to happen to me. So you see these things
early on. Subtle signs like one of them I call
(18:25):
emotion phobia, and a lot of people are phobic when
it comes to emotion, but this is a particular brand
that happens with all forms of narcissism, where say, for example,
you're chatting with your date and you know, you're talking
to them about an experience that you've had, say you
(18:47):
went through difficulty at work, and you're feeling sad and
you're feeling hopeless, you're feeling upset, and you're just trying
to share a little bit about that, and they say
to you, oh, gosh, I can't say I've ever felt
that way. I try to look on the bright side
of things. Now. A lot of people make a mistake
like that, but delivered in that way. That is particular
combination of where they're not only trying to stay away
(19:09):
from any vulnerable feelings in you, but in themselves and
at the same time self enhance. I would never feel
that way. What's wrong with you? That's the message, right,
that's weird who would feel that way? And as a
matter of fact, I feel the opposite. It's strange that
you would feel otherwise. That's a good example. You're weak,
(19:30):
that's the implication, and it can be subtle. I may
have played it up more than I should have, but
everybody runs into this from time to time. And when
it's that combination of staying away from any kind of
vulnerability and self enhancing, trying to feel special or on
top of experience or better at emotions than you are. Right,
that's a sign of narcissism. Yeah, I would assume that
(19:51):
narcissists in a relationship, if they've started a relationship and
the person they're having a relationship with maybe they're going
through hard time, which makes them vulnerable and emotional. A
lot the narcissist would leave. That's a great segue. Sometimes.
Remember there is a brand of narcissism introverted or vulnerable
(20:14):
or covert, and these are people who feel special except
for unique by virtue of their suffering. Right, I'm no
one's more misunderstood than me. No one has been passed
over for promotions more often than me, all right, And
in the beginning of a relationship, they're going to put
their best foot forward as well. And what that means
(20:35):
is they might join you in that vulnerability and you
might not catch early on that it doesn't feel fully authentic,
that it doesn't feel fully mutual, more along the lines of,
oh I've been through that too, And you may not
catch the lack of mutuality. But they wouldn't necessarily leave.
They'll stay around long enough if they're extremely narcissistic in
(20:57):
this covert way, to show you that you don't understand
how much and they've suffered. That's where it will trend eventually.
So what this would look like in the interaction is
they might join you early on and talking about oh, yeah,
I've been through that too, and I remember this one time,
and very quickly you realize that they're talking about their suffering,
and you're not sharing yours at all anymore, right, and
(21:19):
it must feel like sort of a fake attachment, which
is the opposite of that right before. So exactly, let's
fast forward and somebody is now married to a narcissist,
let's say an extreme narcissist. Is there any advice you
can give them if they need to stay in the marriage.
So we might need to break this in parts. I
(21:41):
have a lot to say about it. Yeah, good step one.
And this is true of any relationship experience you have.
I put the emphasis on safety. And not all extremely
narcissistic people are abusive, but many are. It correlates. Actually,
I mentioned that aggressive drive. The more aggressive drive somebody has,
(22:07):
the more likely they are to show that really outgoing,
loud bullying kind of narcissism, which is not the covert
of vulnerable kind that doesn't come out in that way.
And those types of narcissists are more likely to exhibit
overt aggression as well, which could be in physical abuse,
(22:27):
it could be like an onslaught of emotional abuse. So
I always always talk to people about the three stop
signs first for any relationship. All kinds of things drive abuse.
Not just narcissism, but if you hear put downs as
the person is trying to control you financially, if they're
gas lighting you, right, if they're trying to say and
(22:48):
do things to make you feel like you're crazy when
you're just trying to report events as they happened, Like
I saw you look at your phone. Oh no, you're
imagining things that kind of thing. This is gaslighting. If
you see that kind of abuse, that's one of the
stop signs. Another stop sign is denial. I've talked to
people about this a lot too. Just in the same way,
if you have a partner who has substance abuse problem,
(23:11):
if they're addicted to alcohol or if they're addicted to
opiates and they can't acknowledge that there's any problem at all,
they're not going to get better. So now imagine somebody
who's extremely narcissistic, where their whole problem is they can't
allow mutuality in a relationship. You know that they're drive
(23:31):
to feel special overtakes everything, all right. If you imagine
that situation of somebody who can't eignet a knowledge they
struggle in any way, and it's not going to get better.
It's going to get really bad, and in fact, in
the research, denial is a horrible predictor, meaning it predicts
horrible things down the line. It often only gets worse.
And then the third stop sign is psychopathy. Psychopathy and
(23:53):
narcissism are related. Psychopathy it's another trait like narcissism, but
unlike narcissism, where people and at their worst have blocks
in empathy impairments. Their empathy might come and go if
they're motivated. Just as we were talking about early on
in a relationship, you might see flashes of empathy. With
a psychopath, it's all show and they feel almost wired
(24:17):
in a lack of remorse or guilt. So this is
somebody who you catch them in a lie and they
don't flinch, and they show no remorse and they show
no guilt. We've gone beyond narcissism to psychopathy at that point,
and again, to me, that's another one of those stop
signs that's not going to work in a relationship. You know,
(24:37):
I have an example I want to give just because
there's something that I witnessed in my own life that
I think is important because you are pretty much describing
the whole thing, which is I have a friend who
was married, and whenever I was around them, he was
so verbally abusive to her, you know, and it was
really uncomfortable for people to be around them because you'd say, oh,
(25:00):
what do you know, you're so stupid you don't know,
or well, you just won't lose that baby fat, and
you know, just it was so it was horrific, and
but you know, people at that level, people go, well,
I guess there's got to be good points to that,
because she's still in it. And then one day she
showed up at my apartment and he had beaten her
(25:21):
up because she found meth and a pipe in his belongings.
And so for me, thinking quite rationally, I said, we
have to call the police, and she kept saying, oh, no, no,
I don't want to rock the boat. I don't want
to get him mad. He's a father of my children,
you know, protect him, protect him, protect him. Anyway, long
(25:43):
story short, they went through a horrific divorce. He's a
meth addict, he's also gay, and he showed all the
extreme signs, the red flags that you're describing. But at
the beginning, it was that kind of narcissism. Seemed like
he was incredibly you know, he was a proud man
(26:04):
and he was so secure and he knew himself and
that's what attracted her to him. And then over time
all these things developed to an extreme obviously, Yeah, an
alpha male in the beginning. Yeah, and he controlled the
finances and all those other things. But you know they're
now finally divorced. And but for me as an observer
(26:25):
of this, this to me was an extreme example of
everything you're talking about. Such a classic example too, of
how insidious this is in an abusive relationship, where again,
obviously he got worse and worse over time. But yeah,
I don't think the drugs helped either, No, no, And
(26:47):
they often go hand in hand as well. Nothing exacerbates
personality or character pathology more quickly than substance abuse or addiction.
So obviously it was all it was all escalating with him.
But it's horrible to witness that. And it's the classic
depiction that you're describing right now, where the person in
(27:12):
the abusive relationship is just in it and they do
a number of things. One is they take on responsibility
for the bad behavior. We just have to wait for
a pass. They're going through a difficult time, we've got
to make sure things are better at home. Don't want
to rock the boat. That's taking responsibility for someone's abuse,
(27:33):
and it's inevitable if you're trying to stay connected to
someone who's abusive. We see this, and this is why
it becomes harder and harder to leave over time. Yeah,
I was going to ask you about that. It seems
like it's incredibly difficult to extract yourself from a relationship
with a narcissist. How do you do that? For practical
(27:54):
reasons and emotional reasons. Yeah, one of the biggest barriers,
I would say, And this will speak particularly to people
who struggle with echoism because it's sort of central to
their defensive style. There are ways of protecting themselves. One
of the biggest berries of self blame. So you're in
a bad relationship and you've got sunk cost as we
(28:18):
call it, where you've invested a lot, it's been years,
you've got kids, your lives are inextricably bound together or
seemingly inextricably right, it's going to be hard to untangle things.
There are a lot more reasons to explain to yourself
why you should stay than why you should go. And
(28:38):
one of the ways that people accomplish that is they
tell themselves, well, I'm being too sensitive. I need to
approach this differently. I need to understand that he's going
through a difficult time. I've always been this way, where
I have really intense emotional reactions. I have to be
mindful of that that self blame stands in the way
(29:04):
of the anger that's natural and healthy and important that
you felt watching this happen. I'm sure you weren't just sad.
I'm sure you were angry at times on your friend's behalf.
Oh yeah, well, I mean I wanted to do all
kinds of legal action and absolutely, and that is the process.
(29:26):
When I work with people who are in abusive relationships,
whether it's a mild form, but regardless of whether somebody's
extremely narcissistic, whatever it's causing us, one of the first
things I do is try to get them in touch
with healthy anger. I don't know if you know, people
are always surprised when I talk about anger being important
and healthy. It is. It's wired in it's primary Anger
(29:49):
helps us stand up and say no and connect to
feelings about what matters and what's right for us. Part
of dignity feelings, and if we learned that it's dangerous
to express anger, which is the other in cities impact
of an abusive relationship, like it makes things worse often
when we try to express our anger, all right, So
(30:10):
then it gets easier and easier to try to silence
or swelch it. But the tradeoff then is that you're
cut off from the kinds of impulses and awareness and
insight that help you leave. So my first step is
helping people end self blame and instead of asking what
am I doing wrong, to ask am I disappointed or angry? Right? Yeah,
(30:34):
I would assume it's how you acquire agency of your
own life, you know. And I watch somebody who had none,
you know, and now it would seem to me, even
though it's counterintuitive that they then repeat this pattern, like
this friend of mine, you know, I don't know what
she's going to do, but I hope she doesn't now
(30:54):
meet another narcissist and sort of get into the same
cycle that can have. And this is one of the
reasons I developed the concept of echoism. Remember, kind of
the rule of living for an echoist is the less
room I take up, the better, And that's their stance
in life, and they're caring and generous people that they
(31:16):
can have relationships with, and they're lucky to find them.
But the reality is that anybody who needs you to
give up your voice in order to feel connected to
you or to feel comfortable with you, anybody who needs
you to continue that way of living that you've become
comfortable with, is probably going to be more narcissistic because
(31:39):
they're kind of flip sides of each other. Would narcissists
have an extreme drive to feel special, echoists are afraid
of special attention, and when that becomes a way of
living life, staying connected to people and moving through the world,
you've got to think about who's drawn to that. The
person who's going to be comfortable, most comfortable with you
(32:00):
is the one who likes that you don't take up
any room, right, who likes that you don't challenge their
extreme drive fuel special. So what starts out feeling as
you being careful or mindful of others in a relationship
can become what I call defensive empathy right where it's
kind of the mirror of the what about me stance
(32:21):
in extreme narcissism. The echoing side of that is, well,
what about him, what about her? Look what they've been through.
They've told me about their childhood. Often people who are
extremely narcissists have been abused and elect themselves, so they
have that as part of their backstory. And often people
who continue to get into abusive relationships, one of the
(32:43):
things that they struggle with is they trade their anger
for empathy when you should be able to have both. Right,
So it sounds like there's two different types of childhood
trauma that then inform kind of who they are or
will be as adults. So I'm calling it a submissive
(33:04):
and the other abused child is sort of cooked into
the narcissistic traits. That seems like a perfect match. It
is narcissists in echo. It feels like low versus high
self esteem in a way. The high self esteem takes
up all the room and the low self esteem just
powers in the corner and takes what it can get
(33:26):
it can be. I prefer to think of it as
addictive self enhancement or drives people special versus a failure
to self enhance or fear of special attention. Alright, the
reason because you lecture at Harvard, So I'm putting it
in this is yber. But the reason also is because
(33:46):
narcissists often don't even have high self esteem, but they
mask it well. The loud, brash kind you remember, the
introverted or covert narcissists may visibly suffer from low self esteem.
They might even endorse statements like I'm not all that special,
nobody really cares about me, right, which is the harder
(34:07):
narcissist to spot, because I think in our culture we
always equate narcissism with big, loud bullies, like I said before,
so the quieter ones are very hard to label narcissists.
They could be so many other things. Yes, and it's
time for a short break. Welcome back to go. Ask Galley,
(34:38):
what would be your advice to people that have familial
relationships with people that are narcissists. How do you preserve
your own dignity self control when you're constantly having to
deal with a narcissist. Yeah, Often people can't just take off,
they can't just go no contact, as it's often described.
(35:00):
Could you never abandon your mother because she was a narcissist?
I didn't, So what I did is again, in non
abusive relationships, something alcohol empathy prompts I used these with
my mother all the time, and that is when she
was being critical or accusing me, for example, of using
(35:21):
funds from selling off stuff that was at their house
after my father died to help her move because she
was a destitute, because she'd spent down all her cash,
and I needed to use some of it to pay
for the move. Because I was a poor, starving graduate student,
I didn't have I didn't have the money to do
it without some help. So we got a few thousand dollars,
some of which went to the move, and she spent
(35:44):
an hour interrogating me about what had happened to the
rest of the money. With her, I used an empathy prompt.
It's like, Mom, I love you, I care about your
my mother, You're one of the most important people in
my life, and it's devastating to hear you ask me
this as though you think I might have just taken
(36:06):
the money. It makes me feel like you think I'm
a horrible person or nothing in your eyes. That's an
empathy prompt where you first emphasize the importance of the
person to you, the specialness of the relationship, if you will,
and it kind of lights up those blocked areas of
(36:26):
the brain devoted to connection and carry and concern, and
somebody's extremely narcissistic, and then you share from a vulnerable place.
It would be tempting for me, It would be tempting
for anybody to say, what the hell are you talking about?
Are you out of your mind? How could you even
ask me something that awful? Which you can do, but
as anybody on the receiving end of that is going
(36:47):
to get more defensive and protective, and with a narcissist
that means they get more narcissistic. And it actually cuts
me off from the point, which is I want my
mother to be caring and I want to have a
connection to her, and me blasting her is actually about distance,
which is great if you don't have to be in
the room with a person and you just want to
get away. Not so great. Of what you're saying is
(37:09):
I need you to be kinder to me right for
us to be close. So that's an empathy prompt. That's
what I did with her. I mean there are other
things that I did that were more about managing the relationship,
but that's something worth trying. If you have connection with
this person and they're more in the mild range. Remember
that spectrum from zero that I talked about to give
from zero to ten left to right zero extreme echoist,
(37:34):
ten is pathologically narcissistic. Someone around a six or seven.
It's worth trying. Empathy prompts with it's good to know.
What else are you learning? Like, is there any kind
of medication that's going to come out so we can
medicate narcissist and block those brain scepters that tell them
to be the way they are? Well, you've got a
(37:54):
point that you're making there that actually taps into what
we do know works one medication. So the people I
see who have narcissist in personality disorder, there's kind of
a selection bias, as we call it, where for somebody
to get in my door, for example, they are not
likely to be the kind of person with narcissistic personality
(38:18):
disorder who won't admit to problems. And we know this
is confirmed by research. It's usually people with introverted narcissism.
They're the ones who show up for therapy because they're
willing to say, I'm upset, I'm anxious, I'm depressed, and
will you give somebody like that in the room. One
of the first things I do with them. I do
(38:39):
this with everybody to some extent, but especially somebody who's
extremely narcissistic, as I help them reduce their anxiety. So
anything that helps somebody with particularly vulnerable narcissism feel less anxious,
whether it's medication or whether it's psychotherapy, is going to
reduce their narcissism over time eventually, because the less anxious
(39:03):
someone is, the less they're operating in defense mode. The
whole point of these automatic or unconscious defenses, like pathological narcissism,
which has a collection of defensive responses, you know, they
can all boil down to the vulnerability dodge. As I said,
like with any of these, the more anxiety drops, the
(39:23):
less people are operating in the defensive mode. So it's
not atypical for me to have somebody in the room,
whether it's bases, a combination of us talking about in
them getting on some anti anxiety meds, or just working
with me to help them know what it feels like
to not be in that fight or flight state, or
tense or angry, which is also anxiety masked. So often
(39:47):
people with covert narcissism are irritable or briskly but it's anxiety, right,
and so when I help them reduce that anxiety, that's
often an event in and of itself. I had somebody
recently come to me and they said, I've ever felt
this calm in my life. Wow. And they started using
these techniques. And once I've got them there, somebody who's
calm isn't going to go on the attack. They're not
(40:11):
going to put you down. They don't need to. They
don't have the insecurity firing up in them. Right. So
direct answer to your question is I, I mean, you
get them on me on medication that reduces their anxiety,
it's going to help, right, I mean it's going to
help most problems really if they get lower the stress factor.
So yeah, before I let you go, Um, this is
(40:37):
going to sound very narcissistic, but it's my podcast, and
I ask the people that come on is my guests
a lot of questions, and so I like to turn
it at the end and let my guests ask me
a question about anything. So do you have a question
for me? Can you call me schmoopy? I'll call you smoopy.
(41:00):
Course that's not my question. It is related though. Yeah,
there are certain shows that we grew up with that
that we watched addictively. For me, it was Gilligan's Island
I was little, but in my twenties it was in
Living Color. Oh Wow. Yeah, I watched that show again
and again and I watched it with my friends. And
(41:21):
I'm not going to assume that it was a great
experience for you. But my question is, what's your most
memorable time on in Living Color? Wow? Well, I'll tell
you one thing that you'll appreciate because of what you do,
which is, you know, very early on, I learned that
I thought that humor and comedy could actually be kind
of healing tools. And it was on in Living Color
(41:44):
that I realized making people laugh was actually a superpower.
And so that was one of the great things that
came out of it. And I talk a lot in
my podcast I use humor to parent, yeah, because I
find it more effective than saying, like, you go to
your right now. So let's say, there's a lot of
memories within Living Color. And I got to me Jim
(42:06):
Carrey and David Ellen Greer and Jamie Fox. I will
say I had a lot of fun with Jamie Fox,
and we did a lot of crazy sketches together, and
one sketch we did was he had a character called
Ugly Woman where he yeah, he will make up in
a way, and we did a basic instinct ugly Woman
(42:27):
and I was Sharon Stone, and so in the sketch,
now we did it live, so you know, there was
no changing anything. And so in the sketch we're supposed
to kind of fake kiss, and Jamie was chewing gum
and he just stuck his tongue in my and he
deposited the chewed gum in my mouth. So rather than
(42:52):
you know, sort of freak out or hide it, I
took the gum out of my mouth and held it
up and the whole audience was like, you know, but
that was that was how off the rails we were,
which was exciting. I mean, they would never be able
to make this show today everyone be canceled. But at
the time, you know, it felt very groundbreaking, and you know,
(43:12):
you felt like you were pushing the envelope a little,
which was pretty cool. You are awesome on thank you
and thank you for thank you for all your work
you're doing and rethanking narcissism. I've so enjoyed your book,
Doctor Malkin, and I really I bought a bunch of
them to send us some friends, not because I was
calling them narcissists, but I think it's an important read
(43:35):
and recognizing and coping with narcissists in the world. So
I really appreciate you coming on and talk to me
about this. Thank you, You're so welcome. Thank you for
listening to Go Ask Alli. I've got to hop off
this podcast because I just realized I am riddled with
narcissists in my life and I need to go get
(43:56):
rid of them. Please read doctor Malkin's book Rethinking Crassism,
The Secret to Recognizing and Coping With Narcissists. Follow him
on Instagram at doctor Malkin or YouTube at Craig Melkin.
For more info and what you heard in this episode,
just check out our show notes. Be sure to subscribe,
rate and review Go Ask Gali and follow me on
social media on Instagram at the Real Alley Wentworth. Now.
(44:19):
If you'd like to ask me a question or suggest
a guest or a topic dig dig into, I'd love
to hear from you, and there's a bunch of ways
you can do it. You can call or text me
at three two three three sixty four sixty three five six,
or you can email a voice memo right from your
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And if you leave a question, you just might hear
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(44:52):
production of Shondaland Audio and partnership with iHeartRadio. For more
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or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Welcome to Go, Ask Alli, a production of Shonda Land
Audio and partnership with iHeartRadio. I think, like Gyorginas have
a lot to say. I think we should let them
speak out of it and they'll just talk. Yes, one
of the hardest things to absorb for those who are
new to these kinds of fights. Again, if we want
all of them, we wouldn't be here. If you see
(00:21):
a monster, don't try to run away, step right up
to it and say what do you have to teach me?
Why are you? In my mind, I want to be
the person who has cancer and doesn't run a marathon, Like,
do I have to work that hard? No, it's the
best excuse not to run a marathon. Welcome to Go,
(00:42):
ask Alli. I'm Allie Wentworth. So we've all heard the
word narcissist being thrown around. He's a narcissist, she's a narcissist.
But what exactly is a narcissist? And how do we
spot a narcissist in our life and how do we
get them the hell out of it? There is no
better a person to talk to about this than doctor
Craig malcol He's a clinical psychologist, author and lecturer for
(01:06):
Harvard Medical School. His internationally acclaimed book, Rethinking Narcissism, The
Secret to Recognizing and Coping With Narcissists, has been translated
into twelve languages. That's how many narcissists there are in
the world. In February this year, Rethinking Narcissism was named
by Oprah Daily as the best book to read if
you have a narcissist in your life. One hundred percent
(01:28):
chance you do. His articles, advice and insights on relationships
have appeared internationally in outlets like Time Magazine, NPR, and
the Oprah Winfrey Network. Doctor Malkin is President and Director
of y M Psychotherapy and Consultation in Cambridge. Well, doctor Malkin,
(01:50):
are you a narcissist? I'm just curious how you got
involved in researching narcissism. Are you a recovering narcissist? I
should ask. I'm actually covering echoist, which is a whole
other topic that is related to narcissism. What's an echoist?
So if you think of narcissism along a spectrum, and
(02:12):
you really should, because study after study, decades of research
show that it's really best to think of narcissism as
pervasive universal trait that exists to some extent in all
of us, to a greater or lesser degree. I think
of as the drive to feel special, and we can
talk about why. I think that captures all forms of narcissism.
(02:35):
But you think of that drive to feel special along
a spectrum. Imagine it from zero to ten. A lot
of times people start at some narcissism bad and then
all the way up to a lot of narcissism really bad.
But what we've learned from the research is a little
of that drive is helpful. And if you have none
of it, if you have what's called a failure to
(02:58):
self enhance, that is what I describe as echoism. And
the term echoism comes from the myth of narcissists. In echo,
Narcissus is the vain Greek youth who fell in love
with his reflection. Echo is the nymph who was cursed
to repeat the last few words she heard. She had
no voice of her own, and she fell in love
(03:19):
with Narcissus. And I like to think of echoism along
those lines. These are people who, because of their experiences,
have no drive to feel special or very little, fail
to self enhance, and they intend to have fall into
relationships with extremely narcissistic friends and partners, not always a
lot of time, and that pretty much describe my dating
(03:40):
life right for most of my early adulthood. Interesting. Yeah, yeah,
you've just described a lot of people. I know, a
lot of women. I know. All right, So let's dive
right into narcissism because I think that and I'm sure
you've dealt with this A lot people get confused with
exactly what narcissism is, and we need to be very
(04:02):
clear because I feel like the word is thrown out
so casually all the time. So how would you, doctor Melkin?
How would you define narcissism we've just discussed. I think
the starting point is the drive to feel special, exceptional,
or unique compared to the other eight billion people nearly
(04:22):
eight billion people on the planet. Is it the drive
or do you feel those things? It's both. It's both.
The reason it's both is because the drive is there,
that is, the intense engagement in experiences in a relationship
in a way that's expressly geared to maintain this sense
(04:44):
of feeling special. But people will struggle with narcissism, particularly
in the extreme, don't always feel special. They're driven to
create experiences that they can have that feeling, but it
doesn't always stick and they don't always feel that way,
So I would say it's both. There are three terms
for a narcissist. Correct, correct? Can you tell me what
these three terms are? Sure, so you think of the
(05:06):
drives you feel special as the heart of narcissism. There's
lots of ways to feel special, but to date they
come down to three that we've identified in the research.
The first is extroverted narcissism, also called overt or grandiose
or obvious. Really it's that loud, outgoing brand of narcissism.
(05:31):
The second type is introverted when people were more inward
and reflective and less outgoing. Doesn't mean they don't have
any aspect of that. So that's more introverted or vulnerable
or covert. And these are people who agree in self
report with questions like no one understands my problems. A
(05:52):
few people have suffered as much as me, so you
get the idea the flavor of it, which is with
overt narcissism, the grandi is obvious and the insecurity is hidden.
In covert narcissism, the insecurity is obvious, shy, anxious, withdrawn,
self doubting, low self esteem. The grandiosity is on the
(06:14):
inside or hidden, hence covert. And then there's a third
brand of narcissism that we've identified recently in the research,
which is communal narcissism. And communal narcissists agree with statements
like I'm the most helpful person I know and it
always makes me laugh without fail. So I'm the most
(06:35):
helpful person I know, and one day I'll be known
for my good deeds. So these are people feel special
by virtue of their helpfulness or their altruism. As you
might expect, their belief in their altruism and helpfulness isn't
necessarily correlated with their actual altruism or helpfulness, but that's
how they feel special. So those are the three types.
(06:57):
And so are you born a narcissist? How do you
acquire narcissistic traits? You know it? Like most answers in
psychology and development and personality, the answer is it's really
best understood as a combination of genetics or temperament and environment.
We know from a terrific longitudinal study by a psychologist
(07:22):
named Phoebe Kramer, where she traced people over time for
twenty one years. She used data that had been around
to track patterns of behavior, and one measure was early
precursors for narcissism in preschoolers, like being melodramatic, being impulsive,
(07:45):
always wanted to be the center of attention, being aggressive.
These were signs as early as age or four or
five that she discovered predict later on unhealthier pathological narcissism
unless those kids had a kind of parenting called authoritative parenting,
which you want to think of as a combination warmth
(08:06):
and structure. It's kind of what it sounds like. They
set limits, they have boundaries, but they're carrying, they're connected,
they're empathic with their kids. And if those little sort
of obnoxious tikes had that experience over time, they didn't
grow up to be extremely narcissistic, they didn't show unhealthy narcissism. So,
(08:28):
combined with genetic studies that also show what we call
in the research a concordance rate, where you look at
twins and if one twins particularly separated at birth, but
they're identical twins and they're separated, if one has narcissism
does the other, there's a high concordance rate. So that
also suggests there's genetics or temperament involved, but we know
(08:51):
that's not enough because kids need a particular experience that
leaves them insecure in a very specific way that also
causes them to develop unhealthy narcissism over time. So if
you had a narcissistic toddler and you're not an authoritative parent,
let's say you're a free range parent, chances are that
(09:14):
narcissism would grow absolutely, particularly because that kind of unhelpful
free range parenting that you're talking about is often called
permissive parenting, and it's not simply hands off. It's not
just lais a fair. Parents who slip into that kind
of permissive parenting are also not really paying close attention
(09:37):
to what's going on with their kids. And so you
take a kid with this kind of earth and we're
talking a particular kind of narcissism, I should mention right
when it's outgoing, when it's aggressive, that one tends to
develop along these lines, particularly when kids don't have limits
and boundaries. And if you take a kid with that
(09:58):
temperament and put an an environment where the parents just
kind of asleep at the switch in all kinds of ways,
not just in boundaries and limits, but more importantly emotional intwuments.
Are they paying attention to when their kid is sad
or scared or lonely or blue. They're not paying attention
to other things like obnoxious behavior. They're not paying attention
(10:21):
to that either. That is a recipe for unhealthy narcissism.
So is it a leap to say that narcissistic toddlers,
when not having a strong connection to their parents, become
bullies in high school. No, it's not a leap at all.
The core of the problem there this brand of narcissism
which is extroverted. It's the loud, brash, as I say,
(10:45):
narcissists we all know and loathe, right, we all recognize that.
And what drives that most powerfully is aggression, which is
also wired in. We also come into the world with
that biological equipment, taking kid with that kind of aggression
and give them an experience where they're not taught to
(11:06):
consider others, where they have, say an authoritarian or bullying
parent themselves, or parent who doesn't really help them think
about other people in these the kind of empathic way
that we're talking about. Authoritative parenting Yeah, they're going to
become a bully. Sure, and you just hope they don't
become president one day. Correct. Yes, that's an interesting topic.
(11:27):
Of course, most presidents they're narcissists, yes, yeah, but there
I would imagine different levels of narcissism that works in
their favor, and then there's those that work again correct, Yes, yeah,
I think you have to be somewhat of a narcissist
who want to be president of the United States, and
that is that is confirmed by research. There's a couple
(11:48):
of researchers, James de Luga, another one Scott leland Field
Lelandfeld excuse me, who took measures of narcissism, of which
we have many, and took one of the most popular.
And you can take a measure like that, and you
can ask expert people to rate someone on that scale,
and both these studies did that and not surprisingly, look
(12:10):
at presence over time and looking at their behaviors, and
there's plenty of biographical historical data for this. Most of
them scored high enough on these measures to be called narcissists.
That doesn't mean disorder, which is your point. It means
they had the drive to get them to that place.
Exactly and a high enough drive that it's well above
average compared to other people. But we know from the
(12:32):
research too, is there's healthy and unhealthy aspects of narcissism
and expressions of it, and they don't rise and fall
in perfect step with one another. So you can be
high enough on the narcissism scale to agree with statements
like I'm a natural born leader, which you hope and
somebody who wants to lead a country, for example, but
not score high on measures. I won't stop until I
(12:56):
get the respect. That's doom and I like to look
in mirrors. Right right, I will be the fascist dictator
of a democratic country. People with narcissistic personality disorder, which
we should probably define, are so addicted to that that
need to feel special, so driven by it that they
(13:18):
demonstrate what I call triple E, which is the core
of pathological narcissism. Exploitation, which is doing whatever it takes
to feel special no matter the cost to others. Entitlement,
which is acting as though the world should bend to
our will because we're so special, and empathy impairments exactly
(13:39):
what it sounds like, becoming so blind in the needs
and feelings of others because of our drive to feel
special that we have to maintain that at all costs.
We can't see what's going on with other people. And
triple E accounts for all the most destructive, dangerous behaviors
that you see in narcissistic personality disorder. Okay, so let
me jump First of all, did you know your mother
(14:01):
was a narcissist when you were a kid? I didn't.
But circling back to your question, this is what got
me into it, and I didn't know. There are no
words for this anyway, to kind of think of myself
as an echoist. And these things came later for me
in my own thinking and research as well. But when
I was younger, I had of Dara say, had a
(14:23):
special connection with my mother. I mean, I knew her
to be kind and caring and supportive. Looking back, there
were red flags of her narcissism. Can you tell me
what those were? That our relationship was really organized around
me being a consummate caretaker. So she, for example, had migraines.
(14:44):
I think she had migraines. I don't know now. All
I know is she locked herself in her room, isolated herself,
and seemed to be in pain and needed special attention.
You see where this goes. This is what looking back,
I think of as a red flag. Just wanted many
but she often called me, you know, her little helper,
(15:07):
her little doctor, in terms like this to really valorize
and reinforce how great I was it attending to her.
At at the same time, she could be caring with me,
and she was often warm. I wouldn't say she was
the best listener. Again, another red flag. It was only
(15:29):
when I later started learning about narcissism an undergraduate that
I saw a description of narcissistic personality disorder in a book,
and by then I'm a young adult and it fit
her so well. And that was stuck with this paradox
of this stark contrasts between the mother I knew as
(15:54):
a child and the mother that I knew as an adult,
And how do I reconcile those Well, it sounds like
you had a narcissistic mother, But it sounds like what
you said up top of the podcast you were echoing,
and so you were probably in relationships where you participated
in some form of what you were like as a
(16:15):
child with a narcissistic partner. Oh spot on Allie, I'm
not a professional, but those are the connections I would make.
There's a lot more to come after the short break
(16:36):
and we're back. So the majority of my listeners are
women and younger women, even older women that are already
in a relationship, maybe pursuing a relationship. What are some
of the things they can look for when it comes
to narcissism. I'm sure you've come across this as yourself.
(16:56):
Most of the sort of signs that people list the
warning signs, they're really things that tend into abuse, gas lighting,
put downs, and those are behaviors that often come later.
Most people are trying to put their best foot forward
in a relationship, including people who are extremely narcissistic. So
(17:19):
those are not the ones I focus on. Really, they
all come down to what I call the vulnerability dodge,
and what I mean by that is the more narcissistic
someone is, the more they have that particular form of
insecurity I mentioned earlier called attachment insecurity, And what attachment
(17:41):
insecurity is is it means that this is a person
doesn't trust themselves in other people's hands emotionally when they're sad, scared,
lonely blue, when they have vulnerable emotions. In particular, they
don't trust that they can turn to a special person
or persons with that for mutual care and comfort. That
is attachment security and extreme narcissism is a way of
(18:03):
coping with that. And one of the ways narcissists cope
with it is they avoid vulnerable states. If I don't
go into those vulnerable feelings, if I stay away from them,
if I don't feel them, if I don't share them,
I'm not going to risk being hurt. Nothing bad is
going to happen to me. So you see these things
early on. Subtle signs like one of them I call
(18:25):
emotion phobia, and a lot of people are phobic when
it comes to emotion, but this is a particular brand
that happens with all forms of narcissism, where say, for example,
you're chatting with your date and you know, you're talking
to them about an experience that you've had, say you
(18:47):
went through difficulty at work, and you're feeling sad and
you're feeling hopeless, you're feeling upset, and you're just trying
to share a little bit about that, and they say
to you, oh, gosh, I can't say I've ever felt
that way. I try to look on the bright side
of things. Now. A lot of people make a mistake
like that, but delivered in that way. That is particular
combination of where they're not only trying to stay away
(19:09):
from any vulnerable feelings in you, but in themselves and
at the same time self enhance. I would never feel
that way. What's wrong with you? That's the message, right,
that's weird who would feel that way? And as a
matter of fact, I feel the opposite. It's strange that
you would feel otherwise. That's a good example. You're weak,
(19:30):
that's the implication, and it can be subtle. I may
have played it up more than I should have, but
everybody runs into this from time to time. And when
it's that combination of staying away from any kind of
vulnerability and self enhancing, trying to feel special or on
top of experience or better at emotions than you are. Right,
that's a sign of narcissism. Yeah, I would assume that
(19:51):
narcissists in a relationship, if they've started a relationship and
the person they're having a relationship with maybe they're going
through hard time, which makes them vulnerable and emotional. A
lot the narcissist would leave. That's a great segue. Sometimes.
Remember there is a brand of narcissism introverted or vulnerable
(20:14):
or covert, and these are people who feel special except
for unique by virtue of their suffering. Right, I'm no
one's more misunderstood than me. No one has been passed
over for promotions more often than me, all right, And
in the beginning of a relationship, they're going to put
their best foot forward as well. And what that means
(20:35):
is they might join you in that vulnerability and you
might not catch early on that it doesn't feel fully authentic,
that it doesn't feel fully mutual, more along the lines of,
oh I've been through that too, And you may not
catch the lack of mutuality. But they wouldn't necessarily leave.
They'll stay around long enough if they're extremely narcissistic in
(20:57):
this covert way, to show you that you don't understand
how much and they've suffered. That's where it will trend eventually.
So what this would look like in the interaction is
they might join you early on and talking about oh, yeah,
I've been through that too, and I remember this one time,
and very quickly you realize that they're talking about their suffering,
and you're not sharing yours at all anymore, right, and
(21:19):
it must feel like sort of a fake attachment, which
is the opposite of that right before. So exactly, let's
fast forward and somebody is now married to a narcissist,
let's say an extreme narcissist. Is there any advice you
can give them if they need to stay in the marriage.
So we might need to break this in parts. I
(21:41):
have a lot to say about it. Yeah, good step one.
And this is true of any relationship experience you have.
I put the emphasis on safety. And not all extremely
narcissistic people are abusive, but many are. It correlates. Actually,
I mentioned that aggressive drive. The more aggressive drive somebody has,
(22:07):
the more likely they are to show that really outgoing,
loud bullying kind of narcissism, which is not the covert
of vulnerable kind that doesn't come out in that way.
And those types of narcissists are more likely to exhibit
overt aggression as well, which could be in physical abuse,
(22:27):
it could be like an onslaught of emotional abuse. So
I always always talk to people about the three stop
signs first for any relationship. All kinds of things drive abuse.
Not just narcissism, but if you hear put downs as
the person is trying to control you financially, if they're
gas lighting you, right, if they're trying to say and
(22:48):
do things to make you feel like you're crazy when
you're just trying to report events as they happened, Like
I saw you look at your phone. Oh no, you're
imagining things that kind of thing. This is gaslighting. If
you see that kind of abuse, that's one of the
stop signs. Another stop sign is denial. I've talked to
people about this a lot too. Just in the same way,
if you have a partner who has substance abuse problem,
(23:11):
if they're addicted to alcohol or if they're addicted to
opiates and they can't acknowledge that there's any problem at all,
they're not going to get better. So now imagine somebody
who's extremely narcissistic, where their whole problem is they can't
allow mutuality in a relationship. You know that they're drive
(23:31):
to feel special overtakes everything, all right. If you imagine
that situation of somebody who can't eignet a knowledge they
struggle in any way, and it's not going to get better.
It's going to get really bad, and in fact, in
the research, denial is a horrible predictor, meaning it predicts
horrible things down the line. It often only gets worse.
And then the third stop sign is psychopathy. Psychopathy and
(23:53):
narcissism are related. Psychopathy it's another trait like narcissism, but
unlike narcissism, where people and at their worst have blocks
in empathy impairments. Their empathy might come and go if
they're motivated. Just as we were talking about early on
in a relationship, you might see flashes of empathy. With
a psychopath, it's all show and they feel almost wired
(24:17):
in a lack of remorse or guilt. So this is
somebody who you catch them in a lie and they
don't flinch, and they show no remorse and they show
no guilt. We've gone beyond narcissism to psychopathy at that point,
and again, to me, that's another one of those stop
signs that's not going to work in a relationship. You know,
(24:37):
I have an example I want to give just because
there's something that I witnessed in my own life that
I think is important because you are pretty much describing
the whole thing, which is I have a friend who
was married, and whenever I was around them, he was
so verbally abusive to her, you know, and it was
really uncomfortable for people to be around them because you'd say, oh,
(25:00):
what do you know, you're so stupid you don't know,
or well, you just won't lose that baby fat, and
you know, just it was so it was horrific, and
but you know, people at that level, people go, well,
I guess there's got to be good points to that,
because she's still in it. And then one day she
showed up at my apartment and he had beaten her
(25:21):
up because she found meth and a pipe in his belongings.
And so for me, thinking quite rationally, I said, we
have to call the police, and she kept saying, oh, no, no,
I don't want to rock the boat. I don't want
to get him mad. He's a father of my children,
you know, protect him, protect him, protect him. Anyway, long
(25:43):
story short, they went through a horrific divorce. He's a
meth addict, he's also gay, and he showed all the
extreme signs, the red flags that you're describing. But at
the beginning, it was that kind of narcissism. Seemed like
he was incredibly you know, he was a proud man
(26:04):
and he was so secure and he knew himself and
that's what attracted her to him. And then over time
all these things developed to an extreme obviously, Yeah, an
alpha male in the beginning. Yeah, and he controlled the
finances and all those other things. But you know they're
now finally divorced. And but for me as an observer
(26:25):
of this, this to me was an extreme example of
everything you're talking about. Such a classic example too, of
how insidious this is in an abusive relationship, where again,
obviously he got worse and worse over time. But yeah,
I don't think the drugs helped either, No, no, And
(26:47):
they often go hand in hand as well. Nothing exacerbates
personality or character pathology more quickly than substance abuse or addiction.
So obviously it was all it was all escalating with him.
But it's horrible to witness that. And it's the classic
depiction that you're describing right now, where the person in
(27:12):
the abusive relationship is just in it and they do
a number of things. One is they take on responsibility
for the bad behavior. We just have to wait for
a pass. They're going through a difficult time, we've got
to make sure things are better at home. Don't want
to rock the boat. That's taking responsibility for someone's abuse,
(27:33):
and it's inevitable if you're trying to stay connected to
someone who's abusive. We see this, and this is why
it becomes harder and harder to leave over time. Yeah,
I was going to ask you about that. It seems
like it's incredibly difficult to extract yourself from a relationship
with a narcissist. How do you do that? For practical
(27:54):
reasons and emotional reasons. Yeah, one of the biggest barriers,
I would say, And this will speak particularly to people
who struggle with echoism because it's sort of central to
their defensive style. There are ways of protecting themselves. One
of the biggest berries of self blame. So you're in
a bad relationship and you've got sunk cost as we
(28:18):
call it, where you've invested a lot, it's been years,
you've got kids, your lives are inextricably bound together or
seemingly inextricably right, it's going to be hard to untangle things.
There are a lot more reasons to explain to yourself
why you should stay than why you should go. And
(28:38):
one of the ways that people accomplish that is they
tell themselves, well, I'm being too sensitive. I need to
approach this differently. I need to understand that he's going
through a difficult time. I've always been this way, where
I have really intense emotional reactions. I have to be
mindful of that that self blame stands in the way
(29:04):
of the anger that's natural and healthy and important that
you felt watching this happen. I'm sure you weren't just sad.
I'm sure you were angry at times on your friend's behalf.
Oh yeah, well, I mean I wanted to do all
kinds of legal action and absolutely, and that is the process.
(29:26):
When I work with people who are in abusive relationships,
whether it's a mild form, but regardless of whether somebody's
extremely narcissistic, whatever it's causing us, one of the first
things I do is try to get them in touch
with healthy anger. I don't know if you know, people
are always surprised when I talk about anger being important
and healthy. It is. It's wired in it's primary Anger
(29:49):
helps us stand up and say no and connect to
feelings about what matters and what's right for us. Part
of dignity feelings, and if we learned that it's dangerous
to express anger, which is the other in cities impact
of an abusive relationship, like it makes things worse often
when we try to express our anger, all right, So
(30:10):
then it gets easier and easier to try to silence
or swelch it. But the tradeoff then is that you're
cut off from the kinds of impulses and awareness and
insight that help you leave. So my first step is
helping people end self blame and instead of asking what
am I doing wrong, to ask am I disappointed or angry? Right? Yeah,
(30:34):
I would assume it's how you acquire agency of your
own life, you know. And I watch somebody who had none,
you know, and now it would seem to me, even
though it's counterintuitive that they then repeat this pattern, like
this friend of mine, you know, I don't know what
she's going to do, but I hope she doesn't now
(30:54):
meet another narcissist and sort of get into the same
cycle that can have. And this is one of the
reasons I developed the concept of echoism. Remember, kind of
the rule of living for an echoist is the less
room I take up, the better, And that's their stance
in life, and they're caring and generous people that they
(31:16):
can have relationships with, and they're lucky to find them.
But the reality is that anybody who needs you to
give up your voice in order to feel connected to
you or to feel comfortable with you, anybody who needs
you to continue that way of living that you've become
comfortable with, is probably going to be more narcissistic because
(31:39):
they're kind of flip sides of each other. Would narcissists
have an extreme drive to feel special, echoists are afraid
of special attention, and when that becomes a way of
living life, staying connected to people and moving through the world,
you've got to think about who's drawn to that. The
person who's going to be comfortable, most comfortable with you
(32:00):
is the one who likes that you don't take up
any room, right, who likes that you don't challenge their
extreme drive fuel special. So what starts out feeling as
you being careful or mindful of others in a relationship
can become what I call defensive empathy right where it's
kind of the mirror of the what about me stance
(32:21):
in extreme narcissism. The echoing side of that is, well,
what about him, what about her? Look what they've been through.
They've told me about their childhood. Often people who are
extremely narcissists have been abused and elect themselves, so they
have that as part of their backstory. And often people
who continue to get into abusive relationships, one of the
(32:43):
things that they struggle with is they trade their anger
for empathy when you should be able to have both. Right,
So it sounds like there's two different types of childhood
trauma that then inform kind of who they are or
will be as adults. So I'm calling it a submissive
(33:04):
and the other abused child is sort of cooked into
the narcissistic traits. That seems like a perfect match. It
is narcissists in echo. It feels like low versus high
self esteem in a way. The high self esteem takes
up all the room and the low self esteem just
powers in the corner and takes what it can get
(33:26):
it can be. I prefer to think of it as
addictive self enhancement or drives people special versus a failure
to self enhance or fear of special attention. Alright, the
reason because you lecture at Harvard, So I'm putting it
in this is yber. But the reason also is because
(33:46):
narcissists often don't even have high self esteem, but they
mask it well. The loud, brash kind you remember, the
introverted or covert narcissists may visibly suffer from low self esteem.
They might even endorse statements like I'm not all that special,
nobody really cares about me, right, which is the harder
(34:07):
narcissist to spot, because I think in our culture we
always equate narcissism with big, loud bullies, like I said before,
so the quieter ones are very hard to label narcissists.
They could be so many other things. Yes, and it's
time for a short break. Welcome back to go. Ask Galley,
(34:38):
what would be your advice to people that have familial
relationships with people that are narcissists. How do you preserve
your own dignity self control when you're constantly having to
deal with a narcissist. Yeah, Often people can't just take off,
they can't just go no contact, as it's often described.
(35:00):
Could you never abandon your mother because she was a narcissist?
I didn't, So what I did is again, in non
abusive relationships, something alcohol empathy prompts I used these with
my mother all the time, and that is when she
was being critical or accusing me, for example, of using
(35:21):
funds from selling off stuff that was at their house
after my father died to help her move because she
was a destitute, because she'd spent down all her cash,
and I needed to use some of it to pay
for the move. Because I was a poor, starving graduate student,
I didn't have I didn't have the money to do
it without some help. So we got a few thousand dollars,
some of which went to the move, and she spent
(35:44):
an hour interrogating me about what had happened to the
rest of the money. With her, I used an empathy prompt.
It's like, Mom, I love you, I care about your
my mother, You're one of the most important people in
my life, and it's devastating to hear you ask me
this as though you think I might have just taken
(36:06):
the money. It makes me feel like you think I'm
a horrible person or nothing in your eyes. That's an
empathy prompt where you first emphasize the importance of the
person to you, the specialness of the relationship, if you will,
and it kind of lights up those blocked areas of
(36:26):
the brain devoted to connection and carry and concern, and
somebody's extremely narcissistic, and then you share from a vulnerable place.
It would be tempting for me, It would be tempting
for anybody to say, what the hell are you talking about?
Are you out of your mind? How could you even
ask me something that awful? Which you can do, but
as anybody on the receiving end of that is going
(36:47):
to get more defensive and protective, and with a narcissist
that means they get more narcissistic. And it actually cuts
me off from the point, which is I want my
mother to be caring and I want to have a
connection to her, and me blasting her is actually about distance,
which is great if you don't have to be in
the room with a person and you just want to
get away. Not so great. Of what you're saying is
(37:09):
I need you to be kinder to me right for
us to be close. So that's an empathy prompt. That's
what I did with her. I mean there are other
things that I did that were more about managing the relationship,
but that's something worth trying. If you have connection with
this person and they're more in the mild range. Remember
that spectrum from zero that I talked about to give
from zero to ten left to right zero extreme echoist,
(37:34):
ten is pathologically narcissistic. Someone around a six or seven.
It's worth trying. Empathy prompts with it's good to know.
What else are you learning? Like, is there any kind
of medication that's going to come out so we can
medicate narcissist and block those brain scepters that tell them
to be the way they are? Well, you've got a
(37:54):
point that you're making there that actually taps into what
we do know works one medication. So the people I
see who have narcissist in personality disorder, there's kind of
a selection bias, as we call it, where for somebody
to get in my door, for example, they are not
likely to be the kind of person with narcissistic personality
(38:18):
disorder who won't admit to problems. And we know this
is confirmed by research. It's usually people with introverted narcissism.
They're the ones who show up for therapy because they're
willing to say, I'm upset, I'm anxious, I'm depressed, and
will you give somebody like that in the room. One
of the first things I do with them. I do
(38:39):
this with everybody to some extent, but especially somebody who's
extremely narcissistic, as I help them reduce their anxiety. So
anything that helps somebody with particularly vulnerable narcissism feel less anxious,
whether it's medication or whether it's psychotherapy, is going to
reduce their narcissism over time eventually, because the less anxious
(39:03):
someone is, the less they're operating in defense mode. The
whole point of these automatic or unconscious defenses, like pathological narcissism,
which has a collection of defensive responses, you know, they
can all boil down to the vulnerability dodge. As I said,
like with any of these, the more anxiety drops, the
(39:23):
less people are operating in the defensive mode. So it's
not atypical for me to have somebody in the room,
whether it's bases, a combination of us talking about in
them getting on some anti anxiety meds, or just working
with me to help them know what it feels like
to not be in that fight or flight state, or
tense or angry, which is also anxiety masked. So often
(39:47):
people with covert narcissism are irritable or briskly but it's anxiety, right,
and so when I help them reduce that anxiety, that's
often an event in and of itself. I had somebody
recently come to me and they said, I've ever felt
this calm in my life. Wow. And they started using
these techniques. And once I've got them there, somebody who's
calm isn't going to go on the attack. They're not
(40:11):
going to put you down. They don't need to. They
don't have the insecurity firing up in them. Right. So
direct answer to your question is I, I mean, you
get them on me on medication that reduces their anxiety,
it's going to help, right, I mean it's going to
help most problems really if they get lower the stress factor.
So yeah, before I let you go, Um, this is
(40:37):
going to sound very narcissistic, but it's my podcast, and
I ask the people that come on is my guests
a lot of questions, and so I like to turn
it at the end and let my guests ask me
a question about anything. So do you have a question
for me? Can you call me schmoopy? I'll call you smoopy.
(41:00):
Course that's not my question. It is related though. Yeah,
there are certain shows that we grew up with that
that we watched addictively. For me, it was Gilligan's Island
I was little, but in my twenties it was in
Living Color. Oh Wow. Yeah, I watched that show again
and again and I watched it with my friends. And
(41:21):
I'm not going to assume that it was a great
experience for you. But my question is, what's your most
memorable time on in Living Color? Wow? Well, I'll tell
you one thing that you'll appreciate because of what you do,
which is, you know, very early on, I learned that
I thought that humor and comedy could actually be kind
of healing tools. And it was on in Living Color
(41:44):
that I realized making people laugh was actually a superpower.
And so that was one of the great things that
came out of it. And I talk a lot in
my podcast I use humor to parent, yeah, because I
find it more effective than saying, like, you go to
your right now. So let's say, there's a lot of
memories within Living Color. And I got to me Jim
(42:06):
Carrey and David Ellen Greer and Jamie Fox. I will
say I had a lot of fun with Jamie Fox,
and we did a lot of crazy sketches together, and
one sketch we did was he had a character called
Ugly Woman where he yeah, he will make up in
a way, and we did a basic instinct ugly Woman
(42:27):
and I was Sharon Stone, and so in the sketch,
now we did it live, so you know, there was
no changing anything. And so in the sketch we're supposed
to kind of fake kiss, and Jamie was chewing gum
and he just stuck his tongue in my and he
deposited the chewed gum in my mouth. So rather than
(42:52):
you know, sort of freak out or hide it, I
took the gum out of my mouth and held it
up and the whole audience was like, you know, but
that was that was how off the rails we were,
which was exciting. I mean, they would never be able
to make this show today everyone be canceled. But at
the time, you know, it felt very groundbreaking, and you know,
(43:12):
you felt like you were pushing the envelope a little,
which was pretty cool. You are awesome on thank you
and thank you for thank you for all your work
you're doing and rethanking narcissism. I've so enjoyed your book,
Doctor Malkin, and I really I bought a bunch of
them to send us some friends, not because I was
calling them narcissists, but I think it's an important read
(43:35):
and recognizing and coping with narcissists in the world. So
I really appreciate you coming on and talk to me
about this. Thank you, You're so welcome. Thank you for
listening to Go Ask Alli. I've got to hop off
this podcast because I just realized I am riddled with
narcissists in my life and I need to go get
(43:56):
rid of them. Please read doctor Malkin's book Rethinking Crassism,
The Secret to Recognizing and Coping With Narcissists. Follow him
on Instagram at doctor Malkin or YouTube at Craig Melkin.
For more info and what you heard in this episode,
just check out our show notes. Be sure to subscribe,
rate and review Go Ask Gali and follow me on
social media on Instagram at the Real Alley Wentworth. Now.
(44:19):
If you'd like to ask me a question or suggest
a guest or a topic dig dig into, I'd love
to hear from you, and there's a bunch of ways
you can do it. You can call or text me
at three two three three sixty four sixty three five six,
or you can email a voice memo right from your
phone to Go Ask Gali podcast at gmail dot com
And if you leave a question, you just might hear
it and Go Ask Gali. Go Ask Gali is a
(44:52):
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