In this episode Chris goes over the topic of narcissistic personality disorder. He starts by looking at what narcissism is according to the DSM, then he looks at what life looks like when you are in a close relationship with someone who has it. To help give you a better context of the disorder, he also looks at what might have caused it for them and then finishes the show by talking about ways to help cope with it.
Tune in to see Narcissistic Personality Disorder Through a Therapist’s Eyes.
Listen for the following takeaways from the show:
- When did the term Narcissism originate from? According to Kasie, it was from Greek mythology.
- What is the definition of Narcissism? WebMD discusses that here: www.webmd.com/mental-health/narcissism-symptoms-signs
- Has social media led to a rise of narcissism in more people?
- Everyone, at some point in their life, has narcissistic characteristics or traits.
- Chris reviews the official DSM medical symptoms of Narcissistic Personality Disorder (NPD).
- They damage others because they are usually damaged themselves.
- A lot of narcissists overcompensate outwardly with how they feel on the inside.
- Relationships start strong, but once you are not agreeing with them, providing something to them, or start expecting things from them, then it can take a sharp turn.
- Once abuse starts, you really need to strongly consider ending the relationship.
- Here is a great podcast episode about narcissists: Why Are Narcissists So Mean? – YouTube
- You need to look at not just how a person acts, but also talk about what could be going on the inside.
- Narcissistic injuries are what a person feels when they encounter criticism, loss or perceived abandonment.
- What could cause NDP or Narcissistic Traits? Here are two studies that looked into this: www.ncbi.nlm.nig.gov/pmc/articles/pmc3973692/ and www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abe/pii/s002239561300157x
- So how do you cope with being in a relationship with someone that has NDP? What can you do? What should you avoid?
- One tip is to set clear and solid boundaries with the other person. If not sure abou this, you should listen to Episode 152.
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Episode #176 Transcription
Chris Gazdik: [00:00:00] Hi there and welcome to another edition of through a therapist’s eyes. You have landed on the podcast where we talk about everything, mental health and substance abuse. This is where we, I like to say. You get personal insights from a therapist in your own home or personal time in your car. But be aware is not to delivery of therapy services in any way.
We do offer an interesting lens though, through a therapist eyes, thus the name where you get to see personal insights from my brain, having done therapy since 1995, my phone. Has a spam call as we speak. I’m so sick of these things, man. How many do you get a day? A couple. Yeah, it’s just terrible, man.
We’ve got to get some laws around. this or Something there is
Neil Robinson: a, did [00:01:00] not call law. I just don’t know how much they,
Chris Gazdik: it’s not effective.
Neil Robinson: What did you put your phone number into the do not call website? I think I
Chris Gazdik: did a while. I probably need to do it again, but sorry for that little bunny trail road that we just went down.
Listen, we have some new things that we’ve got coming out that we’re pretty excited about. Maybe we’re talking about first of the month that want to build some interest in some kind of an announcement or new thing that we’re going to be doing. I really think it’s going to be cool. Maybe I’m going to give a hint that it has to do with phrases and quotes.
Can I say that on air? I think so. I guess I just did. It’s going to be cool. I’m really excited about it, that you guys are going to enjoy that. So this is the human emotional experience. We do endeavor to figure it out together. You know, I think I haven’t done for a little while. Neil, the, why do I say that?
Why do you think I say that at every show, let’s figure this out together
Neil Robinson: because [00:02:00] that’s what humans are about. It’s about working together. It’s relationships. It’s, you know, you’re not doing this by yourself. You have your community, you have your friends, you have your family, you have people like you as a therapist.
And people like me, who’s a friend and a person is you don’t have to do this journey alone. Well,
Chris Gazdik: it’s a little bit more than that, even. I’m, I’m glad to hear your response. And I want to add to that because I was talking to a client in my office about that. And I’m like, you know, you’ll have doctors or people in the media are afraid to say they don’t know.
Something and truly when it comes to a lot of what we’re talking about, and we’re going to be talking about narcissism today in this topic fits in perfectly with that, because there’s a lot to figure out. And there’s a lot that we don’t really know. And so. People that you go to that are professionals that proport, this is the hardcore answer.
This is all there is to know, you know, I had a physician assistant shadowing me that [00:03:00] I was training all week and her, her rotation for mental health and substance abuse. And w we talked about that, like medicine works best when you’re working with the doctor. Like, there is no professional that can tell you exactly what’s going on in your body or in your head or in your life.
So I really practice the way of really working with you rather than like at you or for you or whatever. Like there’s a little bit more than meets the eye to like, let’s figure this out together. There’s, there’s a lot that I feel about that and operate about that. That’s not surprising that you haven’t been around for so long.
I don’t think I ever really. took a Time to explain
Neil Robinson: that. No, you haven’t, but that that’s I liked that added piece to it. Cause like I said, I had my, my idea behind it, but that makes a lot of sense. And you know, coming from, you know, you’re talking from mental health side, but you know, I’m even thinking about like exercise, personal trainers, personal trainer, can’t lift the weights for you, but they’ll help you kind of progress as you go.
[00:04:00] And it, you know, it’s something that you still have to do it, but they’ll still work with you. And I love the fact that you said that I wish more people would say, I don’t know. ’cause a lot of people would just come up with there’s this weird insecurity. That’s like, they have to come up with an answer.
Just say, you don’t
Chris Gazdik: know. Why do people get narcissistic personality disorder, Neil? I have no idea. I have no idea. And I don’t think science does. I think it’s something that we really there’s. There’s a little bit of a great mystery about that. And, and we’ll talk about that kind of as well today, so awesome.
Let’s launch man. Let’s launch. So narcissism. I’m just gonna pull it Neil. You’re the co-host this week we had Matt needed to step out. So you get the hot cold question, right? The, the what is narcissism to you. It’s a funny term, right? It’s something that I have seen or felt society and culture [00:05:00] talking a lot more about.
The term thrown around narcissist and narcissism, and it’s a weird psychological term probably should have done some history on it. It’d be curious to pop a Google search and see when this term kind of came out because it’s sort of an old, psychological term, but one that we liked still use how it really, somebody out there that’s listening and is home on the computer.
Hey Casey, why don’t you pop a Google search and pop your head in here and tell us what the history of when we first started using the word narcissistic or narcissist. You think she’ll do it. That’d be crazy if she did. That’d be awesome. She might, she very well might we’re looking for comments from Casey.
She’s a, by the way, if you’re listening to it, she’s a colleague of mine at Metro line of psychotherapy associates and also a a co-host and whatnot. So what’s the narcissism, you know, what do you know about it or hear about it or think about it when you [00:06:00] hear that term, just in the world.
Neil Robinson: Usually it goes back.
That’s another one of those negative terms with most people. It isn’t a negative when someone’s caught narcissistic or loaded. It is definitely not in a good light. Yeah. And usually to me it says kind of like self centered almost to the point where are you care about is what’s in it for you? No matter what the effect it has on the other people around you.
That’s kind of my rough idea of someone who’s a narcissistic narcissist. I think also going back to what you talked about with social media, That I think that’s also the growth of the use of narcissism is because it seems like social media is a very narcissistic tool or apparatus that really feeds on that when, when people have that tendency, social media can really either elevate it or make it worse.
Chris Gazdik: Can we say that social media has elevated the experience of narcissism in society? [00:07:00]
Neil Robinson: I think so.
Chris Gazdik: I had, so really I think you’re right. I would need to think about that, but in a moment that is, is very interesting because you know, really the definition I think is, is cool to think about with things like this.
For sure. We haven’t really done a diagnostic show in a little while, but you know, narcissism. Really essentially is having an excessive, erotic interest in oneself and one’s physical appearance. I thought that was a weird here’s Casey. She’s got some information for us. I told you she might be listening.
That’s awesome. She just popped her head in and gave us gave us this tidbit narcissistic personality disorder originated in ancient Greek mythology. Oh yeah. In mythology, Narcissus, N a R C I S S U S [00:08:00] was a handsome and proud young man. Holy crap, Casey. You’re awesome. Seeing his reflection on the water for the first time, he was so obsessed that he couldn’t stop sharing at his staring at his image.
He stayed, he stared by the state by the water until finally collapsed and died. Is this ancient Greek mythology throughout history, various philosophers and thinkers have also explored the concept of excessive self admiration. In the past. This idea was called arrogance, a state of extreme arrogance and arrogance, usually out of touch with reality dude.
She’s awesome.
Neil Robinson: How’s that for service?
Chris Gazdik: She was checking out the show and brought this to us. Yeah. Ancient Greek mythology. I’m I’m not, like I said, I’m not at all surprised because like I said, it’s like an old term. It’s one of these weird Freudian things that most of Freud stuff we’ve kind of abandoned or progressed from [00:09:00] or, you know, the, the stages of development and getting stuck in stuff.
I mean, he had a lot of weird sort of psych 1 0 1. Concepts based around sexuality and I don’t know different things frouderism and, and what else comes to mind. But but this is one that is literally survived since ancient Greek progression times. Isn’t that interesting?
Neil Robinson: Yeah. Which goes back to before our show, you talked about how everyone might be a little narcissistic, which means it’s part of human nature.
And that’s, I could see that as something that the ancient Greeks, they saw that in people. So they develop that into a God. And so you, yeah. Ben awhile, any
Chris Gazdik: emotional experience, baby? I mean, there, it is in a lot of ways. And so back to what I was getting at there, you know, narcissism, I mean, I think that’s a weird definition I cited before.
I really liked web MDs thing. They, they kind of called it extreme self involvement to the degree that it makes a person ignore the needs of those [00:10:00] around them. True narcissists, true narcissists. They kind of feel frequent. They, they, they frequently basically just disregard right? Other people, th the, the lack of empathy that, that, that people talk about.
So, but, but in my, in my mind, narcissism is like a, well-established a weird term that really can be kind of synonymous with selfishness does anyone listening, it doesn’t have a moment of selfishness. So we can say that you have a moment of narcissism and, and I think the flavor of it really is selfishness. Yeah. But more accurately, you know, when you’re, self-absorbed you, the human experience, right.
Were some things like fear or driving you with anxiety or overwhelming you with like confusion. You’re, you know, when you really just lose touch, you might even get foggy [00:11:00] thinking and foggy brain, but you’re, you’re just sort of absorbed in yourself. That’s like the narcissism, because something emotional is really hot on you and you’re not really able to conceptualize it.
A lot of other things does that, can you think of normal applications in life where that kind of plays out? Because that’s what I want people to kind of understand you know, from. From that from a day-to-day perspective.
Neil Robinson: Yeah. I’m kind of thinking, you know, in that case, when you, when you have those moments where you’re in a grocery store line or you’re driving and someone cuts you off or something happens to you and you get so entrenched in that moment, because you got affected by it, you can’t get out.
Right. And cause, I mean, you, you hear those stories about they’ll rant and go off for like 30 minutes about someone doing something that affects them or holding things back from them. And they might miss, like, you know, you missed your turn because you’ve been too busy complaining about that guy who cut you off 10 miles [00:12:00] ago.
Yeah.
Chris Gazdik: Yeah. You actually, here’s a clinical term. You actually get disassociated. Okay. And that’s a funny term that, so I always use this example with this dissociation, you’re driving down the road and going to work. So you get in your car, you drive down the road to get the car, you drive down the road, get in the car, drive down the road.
But then Saturday, you’re going to the grocery store, but you get in the car and you drive down the road and you’re like, oh, I, I didn’t take the right turn to the grocery store. I’ve
Neil Robinson: done that. Maybe take that wrong, wrong drawn offer. And bottom 45.
Yeah.
Chris Gazdik: That’s disassociated state. So you actually get in a narcissistic state disassociated from reality, like that’s what’s happening.
And it really is common. Now we’re going to have some listeners on this show that are dealing with a narcissist or dealing with narcissistic personality disorder, which is which. At times much more severe than what we normally experienced. But I think that part [00:13:00] of the theme throughout the show that I want to kind of get conveyed is that this is a continuum like insecurities and fear and abandonment and engulfment.
We’ve talked about a lot where on this continuum, okay. We are all on a narcissism continuum that we can even get into disassociated states with when we’re self absorbed from something, right. And boy that hit the re 32nd rewind button because that’s some cool reality for all of us and people that are dealing with narcissistic people or narcissism personality disorder.
If you can gather the idea that you yourself actually get narcissism. And you’re seeing all these pretty horrible traits that we’re going to go into it’s as you say, it’s not a pretty picture, [00:14:00] but it’s starting in examining, how does this exist in you so that you can be insightful about how does this operate then in my partner or the person I’m dealing with?
So, boy, that’s a really cool starting spot. Okay. So personality disorder narcissistic personality sources or something a little bit different. So here’s the big book you can see on the Facebook live. This is the DSM five, everything that’s mental health and substance abuse in this crazy thing. And I will pull this out with clients sometimes when I’m kind of wondering, know, maybe we have a personality disorder and I’ll literally just like list these things.
And I’ll kind of do them as I’m going to do right here now. And it, it, it helps people believe it or not even with narcissism or borderline personality disorder and things like that, people can actually get insight about. I [00:15:00] do have some of these traits,
Neil Robinson: does the disconnection of reading the it’s kind of like an objective viewpoint, like coming from a medical book?
I think so kind of helps take out the emotion and like, oh, I use these traits. I think
Chris Gazdik: so, because you’re just thinking about these as we hit one through eight or whatever it is that like, well, that fits a little bit. Well, that one doesn’t at all. Well, that one really does. I do that a lot and I do that one a lot and you get through some of the emotional interference you’re right.
And dissonance begins to dissipate and you can get, you know, some, some clarity. So here, here really are the symptom sets that we look for for narcissistic personality sort of has a grandiose sense of self-importance. Grandiose is a weird word. Actually I’m going to do this. Like I do with my clients.
Let me start over. I will read in my brain what I just read, but I’ll say has a big sense of self-importance meaning it’s, it’s highly exaggerated, the achievements that you have, or the talents that [00:16:00] you have, and you can kind of recognize yourself as. In a superior light preoccupied with fantasies of power and brilliance in, you know, beauty or having the ideal ability to love somebody.
Like it’s a preoccupation with this sort of fantasy world, but believes that he or she is special and unique in some way, right. Or isn’t really able to be understood by most folks that they should be, you know, understood or making sense out of things with people on high, you know, high level, higher levels than they kind of are requires excessive admiration.
So they’re not comfortable unless they get, and the keyword there is excessive has a sense of entitlement. I think you mentioned that. But these are unreasonable kind of levels of, I should have this, or you should do this for me or this type of thing. It gets to a [00:17:00] level that’s, you know, more unreasonable sort of expecting automatic compliance from your spouse without discussions, six interpersonally exploitive say you might have more of an advantage, more of a tendency to take advantage of people and you might look back being like I didn’t, I shouldn’t have really done that.
I wish I would have acted better. Believe it or not people that have narcissistic personality disorder do have the ability to internalize and evaluate a little bit. It’s not like they just don’t lacks empathy number seven, and I’m willing to recognize or identify. Other people’s feelings. Like I don’t get your feeling on it.
Doesn’t really compute to me. It doesn’t make sense. My partner oftentimes doesn’t make sense to me. Like, I don’t understand her feelings is often envious of others or believes that others are envious of him or her. So there’s, there’s a lot of FOMO, fear of missing out and envious of other people’s stuff or virtues.
And lastly shows [00:18:00] arrogant, haughty behaviors, that kind of an attitude. Now, you know, what’s interesting as I went down through that and tried to do it as I would do in a therapy session, I didn’t read some of the exact words because they’re weird words and people are like, I will do that with borderline personality disorder.
I could do it really well. And people are like, oh yeah, I see that one. Like I’ve described it’s I’m realizing that I don’t think I’ve done that as much with narcissist. Or narcissistic people in sessions, just because that was kind of hard for me to interpret some of those difficult words. I mean, it sounds like a really crappy person, doesn’t it?
Neil Robinson: Yeah. It does.
Chris Gazdik: You know, you have more thoughts I think.
Neil Robinson: And just, you know, I was kind of thinking about the going reading through, through those of one I thought is Hottie really like in there? Is that a medical term? That’s actually, I think that that’s true, but the thing that’s interesting is, you know, when you [00:19:00] talk about the different things.
Part of the key to some of those definitions was excessive. And like over the top, it’s not just, you know, it’s not that they feel entitled. It’s the fact that they feel entitled for like everything. Give me everything pretty strongly. So, so that’s the one thing that’s interesting about the narcissistic personality, where some of the other ones is, it really seems like it’s more on the extreme of some of our natural human
Chris Gazdik: tendencies, absolutely extreme, eh, you know when you get to the level of narcissistic personality disorder the lack of empathy is like really, like, I don’t, we’re going to draw out a distinction here to very surely I think, in his next segment coming up, like it, there’s a, there’s a difference in the way that narcissistic people appear.
And then what they’re really experiencing inside. Okay. And I’m actually going to give an example of this. I was debating in show prep if I want her to do this, but why not? I’m pretty genuine on here. Why [00:20:00] not? I remember a time in high school was in a communications class and it was definitely early on in high school and still had a lot of insecurities.
I, that, that, that bothered me from various things in life. And, but I thought I was dealing with them pretty well. And I kind of was a little bit, but there was a weird activity that the teacher presented and she, she, she took a leap man, and it was really cool the way that, that it was. It was talking about how somebody appears and how they, how they look.
And I remember somebody in the class looked at me and they were talking about me and I must have presented something or something. And somebody offered feedback. I was like, that’s pretty brazen for a high school teacher to do I think. But it hit on something because what the lady said was, well, Chris is a good guy.
He’s cool guys. He’s, he’s an average guy, you know, but he thinks a lot of himself, you know, it was like, I don’t know what that was all about. Cause at the [00:21:00] time I was pretty insecure, you know, not that I’m totally secure today by any means, trust me. But the, the point that I’m trying to make is there was a little bit of a disconnect.
Like how, if you know how teenagers are pretty brazen or whatever. Right. Well, it didn’t feel like it fit in, in what I was experiencing internally, like at all. That’s my point. So when you look at a narcissist and you say, you lack empathy, You really have strong entitlements. You’re really self-absorbed because they come off really thick with this stuff.
And inside they’re not feeling that way. They’re really feeling something very, very disconnected from what they’re coming off as. Hmm. Yeah. Like the, these are injured people inside. And like I said, people that are dealing with like a narcissistic spouse or something that’s [00:22:00] hot and heavy, even to the point of abuse where it’s dangerous and I’ll make the point that you probably need to get out when violence is happening and stuff like that.
It’s weird to think that this person inside is, is all mushy and not well because they come off so nasty, but, but here’s a tip. The nastier a person comes off as, as violent and vile and tough. Internally it’s equally the opposite. How’s that for a take? Does that make sense? I just drew that. It’s almost an overcompensation it’s way overcompensation.
Yeah.
Neil Robinson: Which goes back to, if you know, thinking about your comment in high school, you were, you know, if you felt very insecure, your, the way you present yourself as overconfident, you know, because you’re trying to overcompensate for that, you know, that lack. So you feel like you have to present it the other way.
So yeah, that, that [00:23:00] makes a lot of sense that I could, I could see that with those people, that they damage others, because they’re so damaged on the inside type of a relationship
Chris Gazdik: they damage others, because they’re so damaged inside is a quote. That’s a better quote than what I said. I don’t think we want that anywhere.
And the quotes that were, can see that dark coffee cup or something, but it is, but it is really true, you know, when, when they are really, really nasty and, and you’re seeing it’s because they are that damaged on the inside. And if we can develop that kind of an insight that that’s what’s going on, it doesn’t mean it’s going to be an easy, easy road from there on out, but that certainly gives you a different perspective.
And I think that that’s, that’s really true that let’s switch to a segment of what is life really like with this? Okay. What is life really like to experience with this? And I want to take this from two angles on what it’s like to be around somebody that’s dealing with this [00:24:00] level of narcissism and what it’s like.
To to experience that level of narcissism on the inside. Now I’m going to try to draw a distinction from narcissistic personality disorder and narcissism. What I’m not going to talk much more at all today more about is the more universal experiences of having some narcissism. So we’re talking about narcissistic traits and then narcissistic personality disorder in this show kind of moving forward.
Narcissistic traits refers to like, you know, narcissism, even though we just normalized a little bit of normal narcissism in all of us. So narcissistic traits and narcissistic personality disorder is what we’re talking about now, moving forward. So first of all, when you meet a narcissist and whatnot, the charm flows.
They’re charming. They’re fun. They’re funny. They’re engaging like most personality disorders, like anti-social personality disorder who is [00:25:00] violent, violent, vehemently, violent. You would know it. You wouldn’t know it in, in domestic violence. You hear these term love bombs, right? You know what love bombing is?
No, no love bombing is when sort of acts again. There’s that word, right? Excessive forms of affection. That’s fun, man. Like you love it. You get flowers at the office. You get, you know, candy at your doorstep. Like these are endearing fun, sweet things that they will entice you into a relationship with, but it’s kind of like that’s a bit much.
Neil Robinson: Well, my question is, is what’s what’s the motives behind it
Chris Gazdik: to form a relationship to express my affection for you. That’s the motivation. It’s a good question. But it’s excessive because man, you’re really kind of cool. And I think you’re really kind of cool and I really, really need to show you how much I think you’re really kind of cool because I would [00:26:00] really love to get to know you better, but as a, as a, as almost a desperation to it, right.
It’s almost a, there’s an intensity level to it. Yeah. So that’s really, I mean, I just want to make the point they can build relationships and here’s the, there were a little switches, a little bit expecially, like with those people that are very much geared towards meeting my needs. My need for admiration might need for affection, my need for, you know superiority my need for you to agree with me, your, my need for you to validate that I’m right.
Right. They will kind of connect with people that are really readily agreeable, really readily caretaking really readily. Right. And, and there’s a word that fits that type person. Any idea what hot word that might be? Somebody who’s pretty caring for somebody else. I’m pretty giving and, and not really caring of themselves and really kind of focused on making you well, [00:27:00] building you up.
Neil Robinson: Is that the codependent or something like that or the, I don’t know. That’s on point. Oh wow.
Chris Gazdik: On point codependent people are absolutely likely to get into these relationships hugely. So yeah.
Neil Robinson: And narcissists love it.
Chris Gazdik: Love it, eat it up. It feeds their ego. They, they get taken care of in a, in a, and again, in an excessive way.
When you’re talking about narcissistic personality disorder. Oh man. It is excessive. Yeah. Could have codependent people will. Pour into them and make their world well, and they love it. And when you stopped doing it now, we got a big problem. The moment you don’t agree with me, the moment you want something in return, the moment you want me to take care of you or empathize now, the ugly comes out.
And boy, we’re going to draw that picture in a [00:28:00] second. So the relationships don’t deal with disagreement well, so they find agreeable people like we drew out, but then the stuff starts to turn maybe slowly. You really start seeing that sense of entitlement, that manipulative behavior, the need for admiration, the lack of empathy and the arrogance, and these, these can really be just nasty, nasty, nasty.
I mean, in a fight, man, they will just throw out names and curse at you and threaten you and Gaslight you and just get pretty emotionally aggressive. And oh my God, it will wear you out even just to have a discussion because they dominate the conversation. There is no stop talking on their part that you can’t get a word in edge wise.
It’s just when you’re in the moment where a narcissistic personality person is [00:29:00] just injured, they are just so nasty Nash. I remember the nastier that a person can be understand what’s going on in the inside. So I’m going to make a very important point here. When you are living with narcissistic people, you really need to look out for abuse, particularly physical violence.
And when you start seeing some of this nasty, nasty come out, you really need a pause. There’s not a lot of situations when I’m doing marriage counseling and whatnot, where I am ready and willing to really jump in and pop at somebody with directives or. Strong statements, but this does happen with narcissistic people and domestic violence, abuse situations.[00:30:00]
So long time ago, somebody in my career made the point safety above all else. When things begin to be unsafe, especially physically, but emotionally as well on an excessive level, I’m not talking about, I don’t feel safe because of insecurities and all the, I mean, abandonment and engulfment people can have some serious miracle throw downs and they can throw curse words and they can get nasty.
So I’m not talking about that, but the, the gas lighting and the excessive manipulation and then violence is just like not okay. Did I draw that out? Well, did that make sense? Because you have to look out for abuse, particularly domestic violence. Don’t be alone. Get a play to get out almost.
Neil Robinson: Yeah. Yeah. I think that’s, that’s the key is having a plan that you can follow because you know, like you said, interrelationship there’s ups and downs.
There’s going to be heated arguments, [00:31:00] but when it’s a constant, when one side always has to walk on eggshells, one side is always the aggressor. One side is, you know, it’s a continual almost 24 7. It becomes a bigger problem. And you know, like you said, get a plan to get out, get people involved, create a plan and follow it.
And I think that’s the hardest part. I think for a lot of relationships, I think, especially with the abusive is the fact that a bad thing happens, the person who’s affected by it. It’s like I’m done I’m out, but then the next day, or a couple of days that they go back, they don’t have that support to say, you know, Hey, this happened again.
Let’s go to the safe house, come to my house. Let’s go over here, do this. Let’s get you safe. And then we can deal with it or let’s call these organisms. There’s a lot of organizations that help people that are abused. And I’m specifically not saying gender because it does go both ways. Good point. We haven’t talked
Chris Gazdik: about gender yet at all.
So women can have [00:32:00] narcissistic personality disorder. They can, it is thought to be the dude always. And that is not the case might look a little different, but I don’t know that it really does. Men can be face scraped and pushed and hit and violence perpetrated on them. As a matter of fact, men can be killed.
Right. Men can be killed, shot, stabbed, all sorts of things do happen. So that’s the excessive level that we’re talking about. Not a hundred percent of the time with domestic violence. So we’re looking at that level, but a lot of the time we’re looking at like, have you ever thought that your life or limb is in danger?
If that’s a yes dude or dudette, like, look, that’s not okay.
Neil Robinson: Yeah. It’s continual. And if it’s not just a one-off or one of those things where it’s just really, really not. Okay. Yeah. I mean, [00:33:00] that, that’s that thing, like I said, heated argument, something accidentally happened one thing, but when it happens every week.
Yeah.
Chris Gazdik: But when you literally once a month or the domestic violence cycle that we’ve talked about on a show with M JVs, look it up type domestic violence. We have that as resources that we’ve covered. Yeah. It’s it’s, it’s. Might be a couple of times a year in the early part of your relationship. And if that, if you, if you question your life or limb more than once, like that’s really, really, again, not okay.
I don’t care if it was three years ago and this is the second time I felt this way. That’s really, really not. Okay. Yeah. So yeah, it looks bad. Explosive arguments, gaslighting, silent treatment is another thing like, you know, narcissist will just perpetrate you into silence, you know, manipulation, false accusations, insults threats.
And of course the violence we’ve talked about. It’s what it’s like living with this man. It’s tough. It’s tough to look at, but what about inside the person? Let’s switch gears a little bit. These are [00:34:00] terrible feelings of inadequacy he’s strong, and this is my own sort of brainstorm on this by the way. Is that didn’t cite?
Oh yeah. Early on. Up until now, I’ve kind of been looking at, we’ve got a link on web MD that I thought did a pretty good show. Oh man. Dang. Also, I forgot to email. You Neil I had a friend of mine emailed me the the Genesis of the show actually last week, a friend emailed me a podcast that covers exclusively narcissism and I checked the show out.
It was really good. He’s on point with a lot of the things he’s talking about and that’s all he talks about. So that is going to be a great resource for you to dig in with information about this. So please do not. Let me leave this office, Neil, without giving you that link to his podcast, it’ll be on the
Neil Robinson: website.
If I can get it from you.
Chris Gazdik: So to be inside this person’s strong doubt that they’re even lovable, really like very little confidence. [00:35:00] They, they really feel like people just don’t care about them and, and they’re lost, you know, they might even feel. Boy and they way overcompensate for this. But they, they may even feel the worst type of pain that a person can feel.
Now, I’m not going to draw this out. I’m going to go to it pretty quickly because it’ll take too long. If I give you the long version at a conference, I learned a lady asking the question. What’s the most painful thing you can experience without doing guessing and thinking about it. Like I normally do in conversation with people, I’m just going to give you the answer that it is feeling invisible, right?
That that is the most pain moment that you can feel when you’re so down. So unimportant that you’re not even seen. And to give you an idea of how powerful this can be. We do know that [00:36:00] babies, and we’ve talked about this around the world, in, in foster homes that don’t have love and nurturance. They, they feel so invisible that babies just die.
Neil Robinson: Yeah, the neg, they had those stories where they neglected
Chris Gazdik: them. Yes. You know? Yeah. It’s a tough, it’s a real tough reality when you feel that much pain. And I think narcissistic personality disorder, people can get to that level of pain where they feel invisible.
Neil Robinson: And to me, it kind of goes back to the opposite of sometimes when there’s that little bit of hope it can push people to.
Survive longer. Now you’re looking at the opposite side where you’re looking at when you don’t have any hope, because you feel invisible that you’re, you’re not needed. You’re not feeling desperate. Yeah. I mean, I can see that there’s that path that goes back to how important, how big that is, that neglect feeling invisible versus having that hope like this is a relationship that I know is going to last, or this is, oh yeah, there’s a difference.
And so I see the, [00:37:00] I see how powerful that is and how painful and how, how horrible that is for a
Chris Gazdik: human big fight with your wife or your husband just acts like a major jerk and you guys are battling, you know, you’re going to do a repair. I mean, you’re going to recover that, you know the next day or the next couple of days, you’re going to reconnect and, and, and kind of get through that.
This is really, really tough for a narcissist to do. They feel offended and devalued from others may even hate themselves. In fact, I shouldn’t say, may these guys and gals that are in narcissism, pretty intently on any excessive level. Definitely don’t really like themselves at all. And then they have a strong sense of powerlessness fully out of control.
This is different than the way that they appear hugely appear like, oh, I’m awesome, man. I am the best thing [00:38:00] since sliced bread. I’m going to be your best employee. I’m treat you like a husband should treat a wife better than anybody’s ever. Why are you unhappy? I mean, they appear very, very different than what’s on the inside.
Now there’s a concept here called narcissistic injury. That’s a clinical term. So weird term. It’s honestly a term that I heard many years ago, but it flopped my view of narcissism and narcissistic personality disorder. Because previous to hearing this term narcissistic injury, I was like, man, these guys are just jerks.
I mean, these people need to be freaking punched into a head. You know, like I wouldn’t put up with any of this. This is ridiculous until I began to hear narcissistic injury. So this is felt when they may feel when they counter criticisms or losses or perceived abandonment. Okay. By the way, this is abandonment exploded with what might be the word abandonment, exotifying, what would we be?
Some cool words. You get the [00:39:00] idea like this is a big time level, a dose of abandonment, insecurities, extreme and severe abandonment with, you’ve heard us talking to show in golf, men and abandonment. These guys are way over there on that side of the continuum. They may experience humiliation or rejection.
When narcissistic injuries occur, this is really when the nasty comes out loudly and they attack hard and they defend hard. Is boy, how, how depressing is this show so far, man? What are you going to do with a narcissist? How we’re going to talk about it next segment here in a minute. How do you cope with this?
This is, this is tough. Isn’t it?
Neil Robinson: Well, one of the questions I have you talk about these injuries and one of the things you wrote down was encounter criticism. And the question I have because of the personality, where does that line go from? Feedback to criticism, especially with the narcissist, [00:40:00] do they, do they perceive any feedback?
That’s not positive as criticism. It is tough and that makes it hard for the person work with them because it’s like, how do you even say, Hey, I want you to be better. Can you try this? Because as soon as you say, I want you to, as soon as you say, I want you to do better. That means like, what’s wrong with me?
Narcissistic
Chris Gazdik: injury just occurred. Yeah, it does. It is. That is, what’s so nasty. I mean, you want to, it don’t normal relationship. You have give and take. You have, you know, no one knows you better than your partner. It could be said like, you know, you’re going to say, Hey Neil, you know, you, you, you need to talk more on this show.
You know? Like, come on on the Facebook live, you’ll see him. He just shook his head, muffled golf. My person, I don’t like talking as an engulfment person. I don’t like talking. He says, but if I gave you that feedback, you’d be like, oh, that stings. Maybe you don’t like that. But then it’s like, okay, well maybe I’ll talk more or no, Chris has lost his mind.
I’m talking plenty enough. And you kind of go along with it. If I said that to a narcissist [00:41:00]
Neil Robinson: dude, their world,
Chris Gazdik: their world is shattered and they’re going to let me know why I am wrong. Yeah. And you gotta be really, really careful with feedback and discussions. I mean, can you be again in a marriage? Can you imagine how.
Month to month and year to year that this it’s it’s, it’s so bewildering for a person who’s married to this. It’s a tough, tough spot to, to, to be in when you start thinking about it. So here’s a quick little segment. I started this off on a show, or maybe I said it on the Facebook live. What do you think causes narcissism? Neil
mean, I think I’ll come on. Don’t think hard. I already said, well, we have no idea. Yeah.
Neil Robinson: Well, in my head, I’m breaking down. I’m trying to figure out the logic. I have no idea. Like I said, I think in anything you have your genetic dispositions and how you perceive [00:42:00] things, but what is that one trigger? What is that one thing?
What is that one neurological thing that calls it yet? We have no clue. All we know is some people are predispositioned to be more narcissistic because of how they perceive things. Now, sometimes it is the environment they did have. They weren’t neglected as a kid or they were abused. And so, yeah, there’s no set answer.
Chris Gazdik: Yeah. I mean, there, there isn’t. I mean, so I will tell you my clear clinical lien first, and then I’ll tell you a theory that I have, and then I’m going to point you to a couple of cool studies. My clear clinical lien revolves around the ideas of a tale of two tapes. You know, I’ve said that on the show before, so it’s an overview of mental health on the one side here, you’ve got.
You know, biological realities, genetic predisposition, you know, that’s why we always ask about that. On the other side, you have social and emotional realities, life experiences, life relationships, daily stress, and the grind. And these two things really combined together dynamically to [00:43:00] create what it is that a person is experiencing or displaying.
So my very clear clinical lean is that it’s definitely much more on the social and emotional side. Maybe I shouldn’t say much more, but it’s definitely on the social and emotional side with this, the neglect, the family, the experiences, the trauma that, you know, I mean, they, they have, they generally they’re when you diagnose narcissistic personality disorder and you’re working with this in therapy, which by the way, I do have narcissistic personality, people in therapy working on this.
Okay. That happens. That happens.
Neil Robinson: What’s the trigger for that first for someone to come
Chris Gazdik: in and say probably a loss of a relation. So a lot of the times, but various reasons I might just begin to diagnose it. They might find out it’s substance abuse problem, or it could be anything. And then I identify it.
But, but my immediate answer yet is probably a loss of a relationship. They’ve lost something
Neil Robinson: that made them feel [00:44:00] good. Yeah.
Chris Gazdik: Yeah. That’s a great way to put it. Yeah. And they’re like, what am I going to do? And they’ll bounce into therapy or whatnot. So my theory, this is just Chris Gazdak brain going in different directions, trying to figure stuff out over the years since 1995.
Okay. I said this with borderline personality disorder. And I’m going to say it here because with all of the personality disorders, you’ve probably heard of them. We’ve got antisocial personality disorder and borderline personality disorder, narcissistic personality disorder. There’s weird things called schizophrenia personality disorder and schizotypal personality disorder.
But you’ve heard of maybe dependent personality disorder, right? These personality disorders are weird weirder than depression and bipolar and whatever. Like we, we get a lot of what’s going on with neurotransmitter setups and, you know, medications that can treat these things. And I mean, we’ve got some pretty good understanding of what’s going on [00:45:00] with a lot of things in mental health at this point, personality disorders, not a tall.
And I believe that it has a lot to do with hormonal imbalances and irregularities. I really do. And I don’t think there’s much out there about how hormones are a part of our mental health picture, because we don’t know much about all these crazy things. Yeah. You know, hormone systems endocrinologists might disagree with me, but I would love to have you on the show if you’re listening to this and you want to talk about hormones, because that would be the fantastic is show ever.
And I say that, have you ever heard of the word? Fantastic is
Neil Robinson: I’m pretty sure I have, but not click, not, you’d be surprised what we say in our house. We come with some pretty weird vocabulary.
Chris Gazdik: It’s also [00:46:00] fantastic. Is show ever there were some really pretty cool articles that I did come across. NCBI. And both of these links will be on the show notes.
The title was a behavioral genetic study of interpersonal and intrapersonal dimensions of narcissism. Ah, that’s interesting. A genetic study of these interpersonal and interpersonal dimensions. I didn’t read the article it’s way too. Like, oh God. Yeah. I want that researcher to explain what that crap says, but if you really want to get into this, this is a bonafide study.
Oh, nice. It looked cool. I’m intrigued by that. Yeah. And also this next one was really even cooler. In my mind. It came from science direct title is gray matter abnormalities in patients with narcissistic personality disorder. Now gray matter is the right and left hemisphere of the brain. It’s that, that matter in between those hemispheres and [00:47:00] that, for instance, such as in autism, We know that grain matter doesn’t work properly.
And those two hemispheres aren’t talking right now, think about that. If we can scan a narcissistic personality disorders, brain and see abnormalities in the, in the gray matter between the two hemispheres, similar to autism and people with Asperger’s, that would explain a lack of empathy that would explain any emotional in congruence with what you’re saying and the selfishness that’s there because you just might not biologically get the brain signals to understand the normal emotional interaction.
Right. So
Neil Robinson: that would be a genetic problem then. The genetic
Chris Gazdik: source, also nothing to do with hormones to blow my own theory up. Yeah.
Neil Robinson: Right. But then again, [00:48:00] as we’ve seen, it could go with, with the way human nature, human humans grow and develop. One thing could lead to the other ones that have hormones. We don’t know what they’re doing for us.
You could have a hormone that could cause some other, I mean, there’s a lot of stuff. Do you think a physical brain injury could cause a shift like that because
Chris Gazdik: of the, no, I haven’t thought of it, but the answer I would say immediately is yeah, we know that traumatic brain injuries are related to bipolar.
For instance but that would maybe have to be a specific brain injury with gray matter, which you’d also be probably damaging hemispheres as well after. Right.
Neil Robinson: That’s higher pay scale than I came. I can bring in way
Chris Gazdik: more than me too, brother. That’s that’s for sure. Okay. Let’s get on to, how do you cope with this man?
A segment of that, right? How, how do you cope with this? It, it is a little bit of a bleak picture in how do you cope with this? I can tell you [00:49:00] that I have had marital sessions where narcissism is a part of the marital session and we are working through this. Okay. So I am a guy of, I don’t know about eternal, but I am a guy of.
Somewhat eternal hope in people and a process of getting well and dealing with things like, I, I just believe that I believe that people can heal and get well, even with some of these pretty intense stuff. You know, and so I’ve, I’ve, I’ve watched look, I’ve watched narcissists get better and develop the ability to really relate to people.
Particularly if they’re not on the severe side of narcissistic personality disorder, probably on the more mild side of narcissistic personality disorder, but we’ve already established narcissistic personality disorder in total is all pretty severe. Right. So I I’ve, I’ve seen people be able to do that.
So there, there really is hope To the [00:50:00] codependent person that might be listening out there, hearing those words. And you’ve already been in domestic violence for too long. I don’t want you to hang onto that too much though. Safety has got to come first for you and your life. I don’t know why I wanted to make that point, but I, I just felt a need to kind of make sure, you know, hang on to that hope that I just offered when you’re involved in domestic violence.
You know, that’s,
Neil Robinson: I feel like when you talk about codependency, I feel like they almost they’ll put their safety on the back burner to make, keep the other person happy. Yeah. So I think it’s important to re-emphasize the fact that it’s not okay. It’s okay for you as a codependent person to be happy and to live a live a happy life without that person.
I think
Chris Gazdik: you’ve probably even realized it. Maybe you didn’t realize it, but I want to highlight it in either case a codependent person will put their safety. On the back burner. You use that word safety. I’m not okay with that. I [00:51:00] said, yeah, a codependent person will put their well-being on the back burner.
Okay. Well that sucks. I will work with CodePen people and you know, that’s a bummer. That’s what co-dependence kind of is, you know, you’re, you’re, you’re, you’re really putting yourself out to help somebody. I mean, it sucks, but okay. I’m fine with that. I am not okay with somebody putting their safety on the back burner.
Did you realize that when you said that I’m serious? I said it on purpose. Yeah. I mean, that’s boy, that’s a hell of a concept. That’s that’s not okay. Yeah. That’s that’s not. Okay. So, but what do you do to train cope as long as you’re not putting your safety on the back burner and as long as you’re, you know, within a reasonable level of, of, of safety with things?
First again, I think I just did that. I emphasized it in my show notes too, to, you know, look out for the signs of domestic violence, you know, it’s not okay. To tolerate that. Firstly, let’s do just show again, right? Check out the podcast that is going to be on our, [00:52:00] on our site. It’s all about narcissism.
You know, read articles, get an understanding of what’s going on, particularly in their own, in the narcissists spirit and heart and whatnot, like become, I like to say this whenever somebody is dealing with something in the mental health field or something closely, I like to say become a little mini expert in that issue.
Like that point of insight is really, really huge and important. And we do have a lot of resources nowadays to be able to look into that. So that’s really point number one is become aware and learn as much about this as you can. And in that you’ll find out and point B, you’re going to develop a perspective.
There’s great pain in what they’re experiencing. Like that’s not the way you think about a narcissist. You think of them as just really, I mean, crappy people that run over you and [00:53:00] are bad people and they kind of act really badly and whatnot, but that just comes from a huge place of great pain. This is a different perspective.
You know, would you be shocked if I said on a list of how to cope with this and what to do with this to not be alone, which is that, is that shocking?
Neil Robinson: Let’s figure this thing out together,
Chris Gazdik: right? Yeah. Yeah, but how many people do you think you want to tell them about your relationship with the narcissistic personality disorder, where you’re going through great levels
Neil Robinson: of distress?
Yes. You have to have a high level of trust and openness with that person. And most people hopefully have at least one very few have more than that. So it’s, it’s very hard to get
Chris Gazdik: to that point. Yeah. And it’s essential because [00:54:00] this is going to make you feel crazy. It is going to make you feel fully out of your mind with any significant levels of this, you know, and, and, and chances are you, you, this may not be your first rodeo.
Might’ve been your first boyfriend, your first husband. That was a narcissist. And as with domestic violence, replicated this into another relationship. And now at like one or two guys, or if you’re a guy, one or two girls that you’ve been in a relationship with a made you feel just nuts. Yeah. You lose objectivity.
You lose your ability to be grounded and confident in your, in believing what your eyes are seeing and believing what your ears are hearing and believing what your chest and your heart is beating. You lose objectivity. And somebody else is going to be able to say, yo, look, dude, you are not crazy. You need to look closely at this.
I think you’re pretty [00:55:00] valid in your sadness here. Yeah. You, you, you, you, you, you can’t come at that very easily alone.
Neil Robinson: And when you’re alone, you rationalize the
Chris Gazdik: bad behaviors, minimize your right. ‘
Neil Robinson: cause. It’s like, oh, he’s there just doing this because of this. Or I did something. So they’re doing this versus like you said, if you talk to someone, they’ll be like, What they did was not right.
You’re not in the wrong, right. They were, but it’s very quick when you keep it to yourself. It’s oh, it’s because of something I did. That’s why they react to it. That’s why it’s okay for them to act that way. Yeah. It was like you said that, that Annette, you know, like the last shot that we talked about to fix yourself, you have to get an unbiased opinion from outside to see the truth about what is really going on
Chris Gazdik: yeah.
With implicit bias and your core belief systems and stuff. It’s really hard to do it inside because you’re already automatically engaged with rationalizing or minimizing or, you know, [00:56:00] explaining things away and intellectualizing, how about those clinical terms, right? Yeah. So I I’ll tell you another, you know, easy answer here, you know, for anybody who understands kind of what’s going on you, you got to, I’m not talking about boundary setting.
I’m like, dude, you have got to be an ex. Expert on a high level with boundary setting here. Just take a flyer, Neil, how, how, how well do you think codependent people are at setting boundaries?
Neil Robinson: I’m pretty sure that they use a string that is not attached to anything to make their boundaries. Oh, wow.
Chris Gazdik: Kind of. That’s pretty dramatic a string. That’s not attached to anything to create boundaries. I need to use that. That was excellent. Yeah. That’s not so good skills developed. And you know, I’ve, I’ve many times in therapy really, really worked on this in way of borderline personality disorder as well.
You know, you’ll, [00:57:00] you’ll, you’ll find people in marriages and sometimes you’ll find people in long-term marriages. I’m telling you for sure, this is not like a flash in the pan relationship. Sometimes they’ve been married for a lot of years and dealing with this for a long time. And they haven’t really learned how to set up great boundaries.
Neil Robinson: So, so my question is with, with how our narcissistic person handles things, do you see boundaries are effective because you’re clearly stating, goes back to the Ana that an outside. Example, like if you do this, then this happens or you can’t do this because I don’t want you to like clearly stated it where it takes the emotions out of it.
Is that a benefit for narcissists. And even if they cross the boundaries, even if they cross that boundary and you give them a negative, that negative consequence to cross that boundary, does it make it less hurtful? Because it was clearly stated that if you do X, Y is going to happen or if you do X, Y is not going to happen.
That does that help minimize the emotional
Chris Gazdik: impact? Yeah. [00:58:00] On the YouTube show, check us out on through therapist eyes, the YouTube channel, by the way. It you know, you see my head just like, yes, yes, yes, yes. Love everything you’re saying there it’s, it’s perfectly on point because you gotta remember when you throw the emotion in there, you’re more likely to trigger a very much more deep narcissistic injury probably going to sustain a little bit of an injury anyway, just because you’re given feedback, like we were saying earlier and whatnot, but, but when you take the emotion out of it and you, and you line up with a boundary that you’ve already set, you might even been able to agree together with the boundary.
Believe it or not. I said that a person can set a boundary with a narcissistic person and have an agreement. And then later on when that agreement inevitably fails and they go across the boundary, this is, I don’t know, all sorts of things you know, clean this room or, or, you know, don’t ask me to get off the phone or all [00:59:00] sorts of things, right.
Boundaries can be, and you take the emotion out of it. You’re much more likely to be able to return, even given an injury may even have occurred to the agreement that we had. So yeah, I love it. It take the emotion out of boundary setting. We did a show as well on episode 1 52 the title was being an open book or a private person, as I recall, I don’t even know if you were around yet.
Neil. I think he probably wouldn’t know. You definitely were. You remember the show being an open book or a private person? Yeah. And I don’t really remember our conversation. I’m not gonna lie, but if I think about the way I think I would go about that show. The title being an open book or a private person is kind of extremes.
I think we probably did talk a lot about, you know, how do you set boundaries? You wouldn’t have any recall to you and it’s like 30 shows ago. 50. Yeah. I mean,
Neil Robinson: that, that was one of the biggest things about, it was either, either way your personality went, [01:00:00] whether you’re wide open and just emotion, emotional vomiting on people, or you’re so reserved, you don’t even talk to anyone.
There’s still a matter of boundaries. Cause if, if you. If you’re too much into someone, you don’t have boundaries, you don’t respect their boundaries. And then also if you’re too reserved, maybe you there. Yeah. We talked a lot about the boundaries and how to set them, how to set them dependent on your personalities and all that stuff.
So, yeah, we definitely cover that to that.
Chris Gazdik: So if you’re
Neil Robinson: having issues episode 1 52,
Chris Gazdik: it really is a good one to look at. How do you set boundaries? I mean, dude, this is, you know, like I said, you gotta become a little bit of an expert on this one here because you’re dealing with a pretty good boundary pusher, self care, self care, self care is the cornerstone of mental health.
You’ve got to take care of yourself and build yourself up. You, it is a must to build your self esteem. This will make you crazy. Like I said, and your self-esteem will take hit after hit, after hit. I mean, you are told you’re wrong all the time and you will begin to believe I’m really wrong. [01:01:00] And I can’t make sense out of stuff.
You’ll believe crazy stuff like that about yourself. And it’s just not true.
Neil Robinson: Do you see if someone’s in a relationship with a narcissistic person, that if they get out of it, that they tend to be the other side in the next relationship possibly because of the damage that was done on the
Chris Gazdik: self-esteem the other side, what do you mean?
They become the narcissist? No, I don’t think so. Is my initial thought. But an overcompensation. Yeah. I, I guess I could see that a little bit, but, but I, okay. So narcissistic personality disorder, narcissistic traits, and then we have narcissism there. Narcissism probably is going to be a little bit more to your point, but I don’t think they’re even going to go so far as to develop narcissistic traits on a more involved level, but that’s a really interesting question.
Neil Robinson: And the thing is if they, if they are, if they do get run over so much, [01:02:00] it might be good for them to develop some narcissism so they can learn to stand their ground better.
Chris Gazdik: That’s a yeah. Right. The apps. Absolutely. Yeah. I think, I think that’s on point as well. He in other good sod is avoiding direct confrontation.
We’ve talked about that a little bit, but you know, when you’re doing boundary work, you know, that that’s done really well in small doses. It’s done really well in. Very few words. Like you want to make like three sentence statements and then stop it stop. Because when you get into a battle and a discussion, it is going to be a discussion that ends up in a rant about why the narcissist is right and you’re wrong.
That’s that’s going to be, what’s going to good. Get to there that there’s not going to be much. You know what? I’m going to say this off the cuff don’t [01:03:00] take this scientific, but in an argument with a narcissistic person, you’re probably not going to get much productive interaction after five minutes.
Neil Robinson: ’cause, they’re probably bored. And like, why, why am I in this? Cause I want to go do this.
Chris Gazdik: Well, no, they’re not bored. They’re they’re, they’re triggered. They’re hurt. They’re they’re firing out now the nasty is going to come out and
Neil Robinson: everything you say just compounds every time.
Chris Gazdik: Yes, yes. No, that makes sense.
If you’re still in a conversation 20 minutes later with a narcissist you’re in trouble. Hey, here. You’re in trouble that honestly can get dangerous. So I like the way I just explained that at that point. That’s a really good take right there. Honestly. Last thing is interesting talking about your own feelings to begin appealing.
Okay. I said an all caps to see on the show notes. What do you want to say? The all caps? Can you see it? What is it when
Neil Robinson: safe
Chris Gazdik: to do so, right. Safety. Safety’s got to [01:04:00] come first by far, especially, you know, if you’re, if you’re trying this talk, but talking about your own feelings, talking about your own experience, they’re probably not going to be that into it.
They’re not going to really want to give you the space to do that. But the more that you can do that, the more that you then might be, and again, to be able to appeal potentially to them actually developing a little bit of…..empathy.
Neil Robinson: Would would part of it be a relate-ability to them build empathy. Cause if, cause if they’re so damaged on the inside and you’re talking about how you kind of feel the same way, does, if they can then relate, does that then help with them actually empathy.
Chris Gazdik: I see where you’re going with that. I think so, you know, remember we’re all in this continuum. So if you talk about ways that you’re really struggling with your own doubt and your own fear, I mean, the narcissist does care about you. I know that sounds like a crazy [01:05:00] statement, but they’re committed to you.
They’re with you they’re maybe your friend or your business partner or their, I mean, they’re your spouse. They would like to be better. Believe that or not, they really, really wood on the inside. It just doesn’t show it. So if you’re showing your doubts and fears, they that it does lend an opportunity for them to develop a little bit of empathy in, in an, in a way that they’re kind of caught off guard, you know?
Oh, so you think I’m awesome and I am right. And you doubt yourself. Let me empathize with that. So you really struggled yesterday. I didn’t, I didn’t know that. Okay. Now you just got somewhere and that’s huge moment. Only when safe to do so it goes
Neil Robinson: back to the thing where if they’re even keld you, bring it up and then you kind of let it lie there and you don’t elaborate too much.
Cause then you go back to the previous 0.5 minutes. Yeah. Which makes sense. Cause I’ve done that with, you know, you do that in any time you have a relationship cause I’ve done it with my wife and like there are some topics I only bring up [01:06:00] one. I know she’s in a good mood, whatever it is because you just know, you know, a moment asked to go hang out with some friends or go do this or go do that.
I’m not going to ask her when she’s mad at me already. You
Chris Gazdik: know, your kids have stressed her out. Right. Some things to avoid. This was, I don’t know where I got this. Maybe this was my own list. I’m not sure. But I kind of forget some things to avoid tell them don’t tell them that they’re wrong. Yeah.
Avoid that. You’re wrong. And well, they’re going to explode. Don’t give in on boundaries drawn, you know, that’s tough, but I think this was my own thoughts. You know, you really got to avoid your own emotions and calling them names or, or joining in on the blowups or citing their bad characteristics.
Like, you know, Hey, you’re a liar or assassinate some character trait that they have. Well, you’re always selfish. When you think about when we’re going out to eat, you know, whatever you want to avoid, really turning [01:07:00] kind of returning fire. It won’t, it won’t go well and get strongly defensive. You want to avoid defensiveness?
We should, we, we should actually maybe do a whole show on defensiveness and I don’t think people really understand that, but, and then don’t tell them directly that they’re wrong or how they could do something better. You know, sounds a little common sense, but dude, I’m telling you when you’re in a battle or you’re in a discussion, you’re in a fight, you’re good at do those things.
That’s just almost comes naturally.
Neil Robinson: Well, and the fact of the, if a narcissist is wearing you down, Yeah, you’re just, you want to return fire, like you’ve said before, when, when they’re peppering you with BB guns and as wearing you down, do you want to go back with a shotgun because you’ve held up all that ammunition.
It’s going to blow that.
Chris Gazdik: So, and since we’re talking about a very domestic violence sensitive topic in whatever I’m going to say, when he’s talking about BB guns and shot guns, these are metaphors
Neil Robinson: it’s are metaphors, purely metaphorically metaphor. They’re small pings and your big [01:08:00] explosiveness was nothing about actually during that.
Yes.
Chris Gazdik: And I, and I shouldn’t make too much light of that because I want to wrap us up and take us out of here with, with some comments about that, but closing thoughts, comments, questions, and stuff. That we did a really good job of taking some mystery out of a pretty mysterious term all the way back from what did Casey tell us?
Ancient Greek and mythology nurses. Susses N a R C I S S U S I can’t even say it. Right, right. Narcis susses he was handsome and proud young man seeing his reflection on the water for the first time, he was so obsessed that he couldn’t stop staring at his image. He stayed by the water until finally collapsed and died.
This has been around a long time.
Neil Robinson: Yes it is. And I think we did a good job of, I think, taking away some of the stigma of narcissists and the fact that everyone’s a little narcissistic, so there should be some empathy. And when you’re dealing with someone who has that, and you’re [01:09:00] dealing with that, there has to be a level of care and concern for them as well as for yourself.
And I think I liked that part of this conversation because. I think everyone, like I’m not narcissistic. Yeah. That’s it, it is just, it does have a negative connotation, but really I have narcissism. Everyone has a little narcissism and I think everyone should have a little
Chris Gazdik: nauseous. I’m so sorry for anybody who knows me purposely for the narcissism that I display.
Just can I big of a blanket? No, no, Nope. Listen, this is an intense topic. And you know, we try to throw levity in a little bit in our conversations, but it is one that I want to take us out with really helping you to understand, not to be alone, understand that you’re really not alone. These are really, really hard and powerful feelings to cope with and safety above all else is really what you’ve got to get.
Ingrained in your mind when you’re trying to kind of manage the realities of narcissistic personality disorder, [01:10:00] or even narcissistic traits. So get in touch with support systems and let’s continue to figure this out. All right. Y’all take care and we’ll have a great week. See you next time. Bye.