30. A Therapist’s Escape from Narcissism

Transcript:

About three years ago, I began to accept that I was unusually narcissistic. I say it that way on purpose because I don't like to use the term "you're a narcissist" or "you're not a narcissist." Realistically, it's more of a spectrum. Everyone is somewhere on that spectrum, and three years ago, I finally accepted that I was way towards the bad side of it.

I was more narcissistic than almost all of the people I knew. There were very few people I encountered daily who were more narcissistic than I was. As you can imagine, that was causing all sorts of problems in my life. It was tearing apart my marriage, it was causing problems in both my military and therapy careers, and it was making it impossible for me to have the kind of life I wanted.

This has three parts. The first part is how and why a person becomes narcissistic. What does narcissism protect against? What purpose does it serve? Why is it so useful? Why did my brain decide this was the way to handle the world? The second part is the three components of narcissism: fragility, superiority, and indifference. And the third part is my journey out of this narcissistic way of being towards a more kind and courageous way of being in the world.

Narcissism is a defense mechanism against the feeling of personal insufficiency. Personal insufficiency just means that I don't feel like I'm good enough. I don't feel like it's okay for me to be me. It's like there's something wrong with me.

Most people struggle with this feeling, but for me and for other narcissistic people, this feeling is so intense that my brain is willing to put in a ridiculous amount of effort to get away from it. Different people find different ways of defending against this sense of personal insufficiency, but the way my brain decided to deal with this was by becoming narcissistic and developing these three attributes.

As I've worked on becoming less narcissistic, the price of that is I have to feel this sense of insufficiency. I have to deal with the fact that, deep in my soul, there's a sense that it's just not okay for me to be me. There's no solid ground. So, if I have to face the fact that I'm contributing as much to the problems in my marriage as my wife is, theoretically it seems like that should be okay, but it doesn't feel okay. My brain is so used to putting things together as everything is her fault and none of it is my fault. It's really hard for my brain to handle the idea that we're both equally contributing to the problems. It's not just her fault; I have normal developmental challenges just like she does.

That's true at work, too. If I'm working with a client and they're not making progress, my brain wants to frame it as the client's fault, not mine. When I was in the military, if I got in some sort of ego battle with another officer, my brain wanted to put it together that it was all the other person's fault.

All of this comes down to the idea that my brain really struggles to think of myself as a person who makes mistakes. I really want to think of myself as a person who doesn't make mistakes. It sounds silly to even say that—everybody makes mistakes—but for most of my life, I have not been able to think of myself that way. The only way for me to be okay was to be perfect, to not make mistakes, to be superior to other people. That's how I developed this habit, this pattern of thinking, behaving, and treating people in a narcissistic way.

When you're dealing with a narcissistic person, I hope this can help you have some compassion for them. The reason they behave the way they do is they're trying to protect themselves from the feeling of not being good enough. For me, that feeling is so intense it feels like I'm falling into a pit of blackness. It feels like I have no ground to stand on, like I'm just falling backward and I'm going to be falling forever.

What I have learned to do in recent years is allow myself to feel that sense of not having ground to stand on, of not having a sense of being okay or good enough. Because if I don't allow myself to feel that, then my brain is going to find a way out of it, which is the same kind of behavior that has caused all these problems in the first place.

Now, I want to talk about the three components of narcissism: fragility, superiority, and indifference. You can use the acronym FSI if it helps you remember them. This is important because we use the term narcissism all the time in society, but it's rare for people to actually understand what they're talking about. It's mostly just used as an insult or a way to put somebody down. What it actually is is a complicated defense mechanism against a very real pain that is hard to handle, and it does have a wildly negative impact on other people. So obviously it's something to be dealt with, but I think it's important to understand its components, why a person becomes narcissistic, and what you can do to become less narcissistic or help someone else do so.

The first component is fragility, which means that it's really hard for me to handle critical feedback. Any kind of criticism feels like hot lava. It's just super difficult.

There were times in my military career where one of my commanders would call me into his office and say, "Hey James, I need to talk to you about something. This is what you've been doing, this is how you've been performing, and it's not good enough. You need to do better." It would hit me so hard I would just crumble inside. I actually broke down and cried several times as a 35-year-old military officer because it would just destroy me to be viewed by an authority figure as not having measured up. I could not handle the idea that I was a normal person who made normal mistakes and needed to improve. That was just not okay for me.

My mind was so good at creating a fantasy where that wasn't true. In my fantasy world, I was always doing everything perfectly. I was never making mistakes. When there were mistakes, it was always someone else's fault. But when I had to face the reality of this person in charge of me—and sometimes it was even someone I admired—seeing me in a negative light, it was so devastating that I would break down and cry, or I would make up some story in my mind about how their view wasn't accurate. "There's no way this can be true. It has to be a better explanation. It's not fair," and so on.

That's fragility. It's really at the core of narcissism and underlies everything else. So when you're dealing with a narcissistic person, I just want you to remember how fragile they feel all the time. Any criticism you offer them is going to feel like hot lava. This is not an excuse for being fragile—fragility destroys every relationship a person will ever have—but it is a real experience that narcissistic people have. It's really hard to handle feedback.

One thing I've done to try to deal with my own fragility is to just sit with the feeling that comes when I get criticized. So if I receive some sort of criticism from my wife or from my therapist, I try to sit with what it feels like. And I'll be honest, it still feels really bad to me. It feels less bad than it used to, but it's still pretty intense. The pathway I see of dealing with that is asking, "Can I sit with that feeling instead of using my old tricks to get out of it? Can I sit in the discomfort of being criticized instead of trying to push it away through some sort of manipulation?"

The second component is superiority, which is kind of the flagship component of narcissism. When I think of the word narcissism, the first thing that comes to mind is this idea that I'm better than everybody else. And that has been my experience through most of my life; I have always thought of myself as superior to the people around me.

A couple of stories come to mind. One is when I was a young helicopter pilot in Montana in my twenties, assigned to protect a nuclear convoy. I was on guard duty, flying my helicopter to watch out for bad guys, and I was supposed to coordinate my takeoff time to relieve another helicopter crew. There was a person back at base running the whole show, and I talked to this other officer on the phone who said, "Hey, it's time to take off." But I had talked to a member of my crew who said it wasn't time. Realistically, my crew member is not in charge of me; the person on the phone is. This should have been a really easy decision.

But I felt threatened by this person on the phone telling me that I was wrong, that my perception of reality was incorrect. He wasn't exceptionally mean about it, but I felt so uncomfortable with the idea that he didn't think my perception of reality was accurate. So I didn't take off. I delayed my takeoff based on this other information.

That act of insubordination ended up getting me busted down to copilot for a month, which is what I deserved. In the military, when someone tells you, "Hey, take your crew and take off," you do it. I remember my commander pulled me aside and said, "So, did you hear Captain so-and-so tell you to take off?" And I was like, "Yeah, I did." And he's like, "Okay." That was all he needed to know. I had received the order and I had decided to disobey it.

In my mind at the moment, it seemed so important for me to prove that I understood the situation better than the person on the other end of the phone. This was ridiculous because he was on the other end, he knew where all the helicopters were and he knew what was happening. I had very little information. But my brain couldn't handle the idea that someone else understood the situation better than I did. That was a really hard thing for me to handle. So that's an example of how my sense of superiority made it hard for me to do my job.

It also caused problems in my marriage. I always thought I was better than my wife, which you can imagine how much fun that was for her. I would try to construct or manipulate reality in a way that made it seem like that was accurate, so I would always try to push her down to elevate my status. In the end, it is just really unpleasant to be around a person like that.

I remember when I showed up for my first day on the job as a therapist. I was working in this county mental health clinic and there were maybe half a dozen therapists there, and I was pretty convinced that I was the best therapist on the job, even though it was literally my first day. But that was just the way my brain constructed reality. It seems kind of ridiculous, but it really was my experience. To me it seemed normal at the time. It's the way it had always been since I was a teenager. I was convinced that I was always the smartest person in the room.

The third component of narcissism is indifference, which just means not caring about people. This affected me most in my roles as a husband and a father. I've been married for a long time and have four children. To be a good husband and father, I have to care about my wife and children. That was always really hard for me; it just didn't come naturally. I was good at putting on a show and making it seem like I cared, but there was very little actual caring going on under the surface.

Over the past three years, I have put a lot of effort into thinking about what would be different. How would I handle myself differently if I cared a lot more about my wife than I did? I've had to really push myself on this because it does not come naturally to me. Performative caring comes naturally to me. I can look good on paper, I can make it seem like I care about her, but she sees through all of that, and my kids see through all of that.

So, what does it look like to actually be invested in another person's wellbeing? What does it look like to actually care about a person? It's not codependence; it's not "I'm going to sacrifice all of my happiness for your happiness." It's not that at all. It's, "I am going to care about myself and I'm also going to care about you." It's something I've had to learn by looking at people who do this well, people who are very caring, and trying to emulate that and help my brain adjust to this new pattern.

Of the three, this one is probably the hardest to explain. If you are naturally a very caring person, it comes naturally. If you grow up in a family where people care about each other a lot, it probably comes naturally to you. If you didn't, it probably doesn't, and it's going to be hard to learn. As a couple's therapist, I talk to my clients about this constantly because there's an infinite spectrum of caring. I can always learn to care more about my wife than I do. This is a journey I'm very much still on, but I see it as the most important part of creating a better marriage: What does it look like for me to care more about my wife tomorrow than I did today?

So fragility, superiority, and indifference are the three components of narcissism. When I'm talking to someone about these things, I don't ever talk to them about being narcissistic. It's not useful. But I do talk to people about being fragile, or superior, or not caring enough, because you can really only work on one at a time. Any one of those topics can be overwhelming all by itself. None of my therapists ever just said, "James, you're narcissistic." That's not helpful. What is helpful is saying, "You know, I noticed that when you talked about your wife, you take a very superior tone and it seems like you're talking about her as if she's not nearly as good as you are." I'm addressing one component of narcissism, and that's what's helpful to someone.

That's how my therapist helped me, which is part three: how I became aware of my narcissism and what I've been doing about it since.

I'm pretty lucky in this regard because the more narcissistic a person is, the less likely they are to know about their narcissism. Narcissism incorporates a kind of blindness where it's really hard for a narcissistic person to look at themselves and see themselves accurately. That goes along with the components. If I'm fragile and superior, it's going to be really hard for me to receive any kind of critical feedback from anyone, and then to see any other person as worthy to give me feedback in the first place. The indifference plays into that too. If my wife would come to me and say, "Hey, the way you're treating me is really hurtful," because I didn't really care about her very much, her complaints didn't matter enough to me to actually do something about it.

My wife and I worked with quite a few couples therapists over the years. Eventually, we ended up working with one particular therapist who established early on that she cared about me as a person and wanted me to get better. She was not hesitant to be critical of me, but she balanced her criticism with a level of caring that was sufficient for me to be able to take it in, just a little bit. And she was super persistent. She would offer me a piece of critical feedback, and I would bat it away or get around it or withdraw. She would just back up, reconsider, and offer it again in a slightly different wrapper. She would never give up.

The core component here is that she was basically immune to the ways that I usually manipulated people. To be narcissistic, you have to be good at manipulation because you have to get other people to play along with your narcissism. Most narcissistic people end up living with a group of people who adapt to them because whenever you challenge a narcissistic person, they take that really hard and might react in certain ways or get manipulative. My way of dealing with challenges was mostly manipulation and avoidance. I avoided conflict with my wife. I put on a really good show of pretending to be a good husband, but if she did bring any kind of problem to me, I would find a way to make it seem like she was wrong and I was right.

So we ended up with this couple's therapist who was really good at dealing with my particular ways of manipulating people. We had been to other couple's therapists in the past, but honestly, I was usually in charge of those sessions, even though I wasn't the therapist. I was pretty good at manipulating the way the sessions would go to make it seem like my wife was the problem and I wasn't, even though we were both contributing.

We ended up with this therapist who didn't fall for that. From the very early days, she focused mostly on me. No matter what I did, I would use all of my tricks and get super manipulative and clever to try to make it seem like my wife was the one with the problem, and she just never fell for it. She would come back over and over and over again to, "James, this is what I see you doing right now. This is the move I see you making." She would talk to me constantly about what I was doing in the session, the ways I was trying to get out of the criticism she was offering, the ways I was trying to make my wife feel bad or back off.

Piece by piece, she held up evidence after evidence in a way that was really difficult for me to get around. None of this was pleasant. It was really, really hard for me. I got pushed up against this feeling of falling, of not having solid ground to stand on. But there isn't really any other way. The whole reason I became narcissistic in the first place was to avoid feeling this deep sense of personal insufficiency.

One thing she offered me was she would say, "James, can you think of yourself as a normal person who makes normal mistakes? Or can you think of yourself as a person who's facing normal developmental problems?" And the answer was no, I couldn't. But I was eventually able to see that to the extent that I cannot accept that reality, I will never be able to change and have the kind of marriage that I want.

That last part is important because the motivation matters. For me to make the changes I needed to make, I had to care deeply about something. I had to want something so bad that I was willing to make the sacrifices necessary to obtain it. What I wanted was a happy marriage, and I wanted to be a good father. I wanted to not pass down to my children these same things that have made my life so hard. Because I had that motivation, I was able to stick to this path of dealing with these really difficult things.

This is a path that I'm very much still on. I'm not done with this process; I probably never will be. But I do feel like I have a path. I found a path and I can keep walking on it, and I have found people who can help guide me. So basically, I have motivation, I have guidance, and I can just keep going. What that means is that I have a lot of hope for the future. That I will continue to become more caring, less fragile, and less superior. I will be able to see people as equals, as just like me, instead of trying to constantly construct a reality where everybody is worse than me in some way. I can learn to care a lot more about people. I can be less judgmental and more openhearted.

As I've walked away from some of my narcissistic tendencies, I've found that I have a lot more energy left to focus on things other than defending my ego. Narcissism is so intense and complicated, and it takes a lot of energy to constantly spin reality into something that supports my ego. Instead of trying to create a reality that makes me seem superior or innocent or perfect, I can deal with the fact that I'm just a person who makes mistakes like everybody else, and that's okay.

I still get these upwellings of feelings of "I'm not good enough." I still feel like I'm falling sometimes. But I've learned to accept that feeling and feel it instead of trying to twist reality into some sort of fantasy that gets me out of it.

My brain will probably always have these tendencies to a certain extent. I've been living this way for decades, and it's not likely that these patterns will ever completely leave my brain. But I've become aware of them enough that I can see myself doing it and stop it before it gets too bad—not always, but most of the time. I've made enough changes in my life that my marriage has improved dramatically. I'm better at my job than I used to be, and I don't have to spend so much energy creating a false reality that supports my ego.

Instead, when those feelings of insufficiency come up, I've learned to just make room for them and feel them. I've also learned to see myself with a lot more compassion and accept this idea that I'm a normal person who makes normal mistakes. I don't have to be better than everyone. I don't have to be perfect. I don't have to be innocent. I can be guilty sometimes. Not that I'm trying to do bad things, but just that like everyone else, I make mistakes. That has allowed me to put so much less energy into defending my ego, which leaves me a lot more energy to do the things that I want to do in life.

I'm going to end it there. If you have questions, put them in the comments and I will answer them. Thank you for watching.