533: Are They A Narcissist Or Just Emotionally Immature?

Today, I’m breaking down narcissism, narcissistic traits, and how to understand this topic through the lens of The Adult Chair. I talk about the difference between narcissistic personality disorder and narcissistic tendencies, why narcissism exists on a spectrum, and why awareness is the key factor in whether someone can heal or change.
Please note that this track is educational and not a substitute for one-to-one professional care.

Transcript

Hello, Hello, Hello, My friends. Welcome to the adult share podcast. I am Michelle Chalfant. Happy to be here with you today, As always. Whoa, Let me tell you what. Something that I love talking about would be, Probably the thing that I love more than anything is relationships, Let's face it. We have relationships with everything. We have relationships with everything from food to nature to money to other humans, Right? And a topic that continues to come up. Is a relationship topic. Around. Narcissism. If you are in a relationship with a narcissist, If you are wondering if you're a narcissist, If you're wondering if narcissists can heal, If you're wondering if your mom is a narcissist and what you're supposed to do about it, If your ex-husband or ex-wife is a narcissist or someone again in your family, What are you going to do? How are you supposed to navigate that? We're going to break it down and talk all about it today because I get a lot of questions about this. Is there hope? Can I change if I am a narcissist? You name it, These questions continue to come in. It is a really important relationship question because I realize we don't have skills to navigate this path. It can be a difficult one if you have no skills. So hopefully by the end of this podcast today, You will feel empowered. You will have a better idea of what this is and how to navigate it, No matter what side of the fence you're on. And yeah. You're gonna, I like the word empowered. We're gonna leave it there. You're gonna feel very empowered. All right, Here we go. Let's jump right in. So, Narcissism. Narcissism. I'm going to define it for you. And you know me, You guys, I break everything down because life does not have to be so complicated. So there's so much online, There's so much in social media about this topic as well as every other topic, As you know. But here's the way that I define narcissism. It's a self-centered personality that does not function well if out of the spotlight. And that's it. But now here it is. Narcissism runs on a spectrum, Okay? So think 0 to 5. That's the spectrum that we're talking about here. Narcissism wasn't even thrown around all that much until probably. . . Thinking back probably 15-ish years ago, Suddenly the term was out there and everyone that is sort of controlling and sort of a jerk is suddenly a narcissist. This could not be farther from the truth. It's not accurate. So there is something called narcissistic personality disorder, Okay? This is a clinical diagnosis, And this is the extreme version of what we think narcissism is, Or what it is, Actually. So when you think about narcissism being on spectrum, Zero to five, Number five is that person. And to be honest with you. I don't have a lot of hope for someone that is a number five on that spectrum. And here's why. Because with narcissism, The reason I see it as a spectrum from zero to five is because with narcissism, It has to do with a level of awareness. So I had a practice, A private practice for decades. And when someone would come in and say to me, Oh my gosh. My wife told me I was a narcissist and so-and-so, I don't know, And I Googled it and maybe I am. Can you help me, Michelle? Am I a narcissist? If someone comes in and they would ask me that question, Those people I actually had hope for. And I thought, Okay. They have an understanding of what this thing is and they're asking if they are, That takes a heck of a lot of vulnerability and openness, Which someone at a level five, They don't have that. They will, Someone at a level five will never, Ever, Ever believe that they are a narcissist. It's always everyone else's fault. They'll never claim that or own that. All right. So, Someone that is coming in and asking me questions about it and saying, Gosh, I really want to change this. Can you help me? How do I do that? Yes, I have hope for you. People ask me that all the time. Can you change a narcissist depending on their level of awareness? Can they heal depending on their level of awareness? Again, It's always about awareness. So that's what I think I'm doing, And this is how I'm showing up in the world. I have hope. So again, Let's go back to the scale. We've got narcissistic personality disorder. It's a personality disorder, And I'm unaware that this is how I'm living. That's a level five. And then anything in between that would be a narcissistic trait or a narcissistic tendency, All right? So what are those things? Like, What are the things that we should be on the lookout for when it comes to this? Here we go. These are the people that love to be in the spotlight. These are the people that have a really hard time, Let's say, If you're at a dinner party and you start talking about something. And the other person at the table. There's this one person at the table that keeps making all the conversation go back toward them. That's a sign, Okay? That's a sign that it could be, Again, I don't even like labels to be honest with you. I have not ever liked labels because it gets us stuck. But that could be a sign if we're going to use a label of narcissistic traits or narcissistic tendencies, Like, Huh. They can't seem to have that spotlight off of them. All they want to do is talk about themselves. And it happens every single time I'm with them. And I don't think they're even aware. So again, They're somewhere on the scale. We don't even need to know where they are on the scale, But they're somewhere on that scale. So when people have this excessive interest in themselves, That's it. It's like, I'm the best. I know everything. I might even put other people down or want to make people smaller than me so that I can maintain this big giant spotlight. This is a telltale sign. People with narcissistic tendencies or traits or full-blown narcissists lack empathy. What is empathy? Empathy is I have the ability to tune into you and what you are feeling and experiencing in the world. I can feel that. So if you're sad or you're in grief or you're afraid, I don't need to quickly change you out of that. I can be with you in it. And I might say, Oh, My gosh. Tell me more. I'm so sorry that you're feeling like that. I want to be here for you. Tell me all about it. So that is what empathy is. Someone with narcissism, They can't feel what you're feeling. And again, I get this question too. Can someone learn empathy? Yes, I believe you can. It takes awareness again. You have to have the awareness that I'm not having empathy. I'm not living with empathy. I'm not experiencing empathy. In fact, I'm not comfortable feeling other people's emotions. That's a lack of empathy, But if I have awareness and I want it, And I want to learn, I can teach you empathy. Let me tell you what, One of the ways that we teach people how to have empathy is to teach them how to get comfortable in their uncomfortable emotions. Humans in general need to learn how to do this because oftentimes what happens is we feel an uncomfortable emotion. Anything on the spec, Anything, You name it. And we bounce out of it. We might start talking to talk ourselves out of that emotion or talk above the emotion. We start tasking. We'll start cleaning or doing laundry or going out and mowing the lawn. We don't know what to do with that emotion. We might eat. We might watch porn. We might start shopping. Guess what? We might get lost in social media. All of these things You gotta stop doing. And instead, What we want to do is turn toward self, Toward ourselves, And go inside and feel. And again, You don't even have to know, Wow, I'm feeling so much grief. You might just notice you have a big giant knot in your stomach. Be with the knot. We're not taught how to do this in schools, Which by the way, That's a passion of mine. I want to get the adults here in schools. That's a side note, But we want to learn how to turn toward self and be with whatever I'm feeling, Whether it be a true blue emotion. Or a physical sensation that, By the way, Is also an emotion. It might be a tightness in your throat. It might be tightness in your belly. It might be your shoulders are so tight, You're having a hard time breathing. Be with it. Because what happens is, Is the emotion then moves through us. We have to remember, Emotions are energy. They're big balls of energy that are actually moving through our human energy field, Which is the physical body, Too. And they get stuck when we go into story about them. So when we can just allow them to pass through. They pass through like a cloud in the sky. They're gone. So we have to learn how to stay connected to ourselves. And we do that by allowing ourselves to tune into our emotions. It's that simple. That's how we build empathy, But that's how we build resilience and all the other things too. We all could do a training in this. Another thing that narcissists tend to do is something called love bombing. And this is when they give excessive gifts. They are giving you flowers and jewelry and let me take you away on a trip. And, Oh my God, I think I love you. And it's very soon in the relationship. It's very early on. And they're already telling you they love you and they want to marry you and they want to be with you forever. And they're beyond nice. They have this mask on that they're like the nicest people on the planet. And everyone around you keeps saying, Oh my gosh, They're so great. Look at what they're doing. They're so sweet. They're there for you. And maybe this is the one and all of this. It's excessive. You really have to pay attention to, Is this excessive? Or not. Love bombing is when it is excessive. And you fall into that and you believe it, What happens is once they hook you, Right? When the narcissist then hooks you. That stuff turns off, They become controlling, And it's like that, What do they say, The Dr. Jekyll, Mr. Hyde. They say, What happened here? This was not the person I've been dating. It's like I had a 180 happen. This person is not the same person. Where did they go? They were love bombing you. That was not their true self. And here's the thing. In a healthy relationship, It's not to say that we can't fall for someone and feel connected with someone early on. That absolutely happens. But is it excessive? And how do we know, Especially if we maybe haven't been dating for a long time or we're really longing for a relationship or longing to feel treated with so much love and we want that so badly? Make sure you have someone that you're working with or a great friend that you can double check yourself with. You want to ask them and ask them and say, Hey, Is this normal healthy? I'm just making sure. Just making sure, Because this feels extreme, But I love it. And I don't want it to stop. But is this OK? Does this feel right? Could this be love-bombing? Is this out of the ordinary? I'm trying to get clear. Can you help me? So just pay attention, Have someone check you. OK. Typically narcissists. Yes, They see themselves as better than everybody else. They seek a lot of praise and acknowledgement. Okay, So they'll do a lot for other people and then they get that praise and acknowledgement back that they're so great. They talk about themselves, Brag, Excessive need for admiration. Okay. They can be very controlling and psychologically and or physically abusive, Especially when you start standing up for yourself and speaking up for yourself. Okay. Do not like that. The last one is this, Gaslighting. A lot of people say, Well, What's gaslighting? And how do I know if I've been gaslit? I want to understand what that word means. This is the telltale sign of gaslighting, Okay? Do you feel confused or confusion when you are in conversation with this person? Do you find yourself walking away asking yourself, Wait a minute, Why am I so confused after what they just said to me? I felt clear and now I'm confused. I don't understand. I don't understand. Start paying attention to how often you feel confused. If you feel confused, It is a sign of gaslighting. So gaslighting is when they're trying to psychologically manipulate you. For example, If I say that I'm going to go and apply for a brand new job, And I'm so excited about it, I can't wait. I have a new career path I'd like to take and I'm over the moon excited about it. And I tell my friends and my family and everyone's very supportive. And then I go tell my boyfriend, My husband, And they say to me, Why would you want to do that? That's so dumb. We don't need the money. Why are you even getting a new job? You need to just relax. You love yoga. You need to go do yoga, Do your gardening, And you are fine. You are too old to be starting a new career. At your age, You're going to do that? That's ridiculous. I would not do that. I do not advise that. And certainly, Like I said, We don't need the money. So you need to back off that. So then we walk away and we think, Well, That person loves me. So they're trying to look out for me and give me, You know. Their opinion, Which would be in my highest good because we're married or we're dating and they love me. So you want to believe them. You want to believe that they have their best, That they have your best interest at heart. And they don't. They don't. They would not want you to steal the limelight from them. They would not want you to out earn them. They would not, You get where I'm going? They don't want you to have any of the attention that they're getting. So they want you to stay stuck, To stay small, And to stay buried in the house, Doing your small thing, Because they don't want the attention off of them. So confusion is key. If you are confused, It is a hoist that red flag and go find an accountability partner and start asking them, Wait a minute, Hold on a second. I remember the word confusion from Michelle Chalfant, And I got to make sure that I am not being gaslit here. Okay, So I want to step back just for a moment. I did talk about controlling. And the psychological and physical abuse. I just want to just point out here, Everyone, We need to have zero, And I mean zero, Tolerance for this. It is never, Ever, Ever, Ever okay to have somebody emotionally or physically abuse you, Touch you, Treat you in a horrible way. And if you have someone that is around you. That is telling you, Wow, The way your partner, Your husband, Your wife, Whomever is treating you, It doesn't feel good to me. I don't like that they swear at you, That they tell you off, That they treat you like a child in front of your children. Your children are learning how to be healthy adults from you. I have had so many people that I've worked with over the years and so many questions that have come in around this. We have to have zero tolerance for this. And the first thing, Again, Is having the awareness that something is not right. Something is not healthy here. And if you've got little children in the house or teenage children, They're watching every move you're making, And they're learning how to be adults in the world. So think about your kids. If you can't think about yourself, Because I know so many people that are in relationships with any level of narcissist, It's so confusing. And when you're in a relationship with someone that is a narcissist, It's like receiving a slow drip of poison a little bit every day. And what happens with the poison is our self-worth gets chipped away little by little by little by little. And as our self-worth goes down, Our tolerance for abuse goes down as well. It's just like, Or excuse me, It goes up. It's like, Oh, So my self-worth goes down. My tolerance for abuse of any kind goes way, Way up. Okay, So the opposite is true as well. When your self-worth goes up, Your tolerance for any kind of abuse goes down. So if you're someone that does not see Your retirement, Let's say. I hear this all the time. Oh, My husband doesn't show me what's in our retirement. I'm not allowed. If you're someone that has signed paperwork and you don't know what you're signing, Please go have it checked. If you are their partner, Their husband, Their wife, And you're not being shown this stuff, Please go check. It's your rights. Most importantly. If you're in a relationship like this, You need to find one person that you can trust and you can share this information with. That will support you, That will validate you, And that will help you with a plan to get out, To change this relationship in some way, Shape, Or form. And I gotta tell you something. I know it's hard. Because on the outside of your house, When you're typically, Unfortunately everybody, I'm just going to name it, It's men that are in this category of being narcissists. But when the women that I worked with, Have wanted to tell people about their husband, Who is a narcissist, And how they're getting treated. Nobody believes them. Because the husband wears such a mask of being perfect and the greatest guy. Everyone in town loves them. Everyone thinks that their husband is the greatest person ever. And then the wife at home is saying, I don't know who to tell because no one will ever believe me. I'll tell you what, There are people that will believe you. Get out of your town, Go online, Find someone, A therapist, A coach, I don't care who it is. They will believe you. And you need one person that you can lean into to start helping you to build your self-worth. Please go do this for yourself. Please, Please, Please. This is your path out. This is the path out of being tolerant of any sort of abuse at all. And again, The worst kind of abuse I think, Honestly, Is psychological, Because nobody can see the bruises on our face. When you're being manipulated and controlled at home and you go to the grocery store and you see your neighbor, Nobody knows what's happening versus you have a black eye or bruises all over your body. Big difference. They're both, They're in both cases, Zero tolerance. So there's a path out. Please go get help. Okay. Let's talk about where narcissism comes from. I want to explain this because people get confused. Like, Am I born a narcissist or are they born narcissistic? No. Nobody's born a narcissist. What happens is with narcissism is we have two different parenting styles. So as parents, Our job, One of our main, Main jobs as parents, Is to reflect or mirror back to our children who they are. Not who we want them to be, But who they actually are. So for example, If my child picks up their toys, My little three-year-old, I might say, Oh my gosh. Thank you, That's so thoughtful of you, Or that's so helpful, You're so helpful, I love that about you. Or if they do a little coloring thing at school and they come home and I'll say, You're so creative, I love that about you. I'm validating or mirroring who they are. If they come to me and say, I wanna do dance, I wanna do soccer, I wanna, Great, Let's do it. I expose them to the things that they're interested in. What happens with narcissism with children that are in households like this is this. If my parent Instead of mirroring or reflecting who I am, Puts me on a pedestal because they want me to be. Let's go there. A doctor, An entrepreneur, An attorney, A whatever. They've put me up here or the most beautiful one, The best athlete, Whatever it is, They're putting us up here on this pedestal. It's not actually who the kid is. We're born with this true authentic self. Right here to be molded and reflected upon so I can see and feel who I am in the world. But if my parents don't do that well and they instead tell me how perfect I am, How great I am, And they put me on the pedestal of my perfect prince or my perfect princess, As a child, I have to abandon my true self. Because as children remember, We want to fit in. And I need to stay loved and lovable to my parents because if I don't, I'm on the street. That's the unconscious thinking, Right? So I need to change who I am to become lovable for you as my parent or parents. So I abandoned myself. My true self, And I become exactly who you want me to be. So if I'm on this pedestal now and my mother says, Oh, She's so perfect. She's beautiful. She's this, She's that. Oh, Look at my little boy. He's the best on the baseball team. He's the best in school. He's the smartest. When parents use a lot of that extreme languaging with their children, If the children don't align, And most of us don't because we don't know who we are, We're needing our parents to mirror this for us, What happens is the child abandons self and they become that person. And they start believing what that parent is saying, Because we do that, We're kids. We're absorbing everything our parents say, Let's face it. So I become that version of self, Which by the way is a facade. It is a false self that I have now built over my true self. When I become this kid on the pedestal that my mom or my dad or both parents have put me on. And then I grow up and I become. Exactly the list of the signs that I just mentioned. Okay. That's how narcissism, That is one way, Excuse me, That narcissism is formed. The other way, Is that I am growing up. Neglected. Nobody's paying attention to me. I'm that might be the latchkey kid. My parents are only engaged with me. My parents are, You know, Just really not, They don't interact with me all that much. I then grow up thinking, What's wrong with me? I need to be someone else because I'm not getting any attention around here. Maybe I'll become the best at football, The smartest kid in the school. Maybe I'll become the best at this, The best. So we form this again, This false self-identity or this extreme identity of someone else that gets built on top of our true self. So we're buried. The true self is buried in there. But I put this mask on, This false self mask, It says, I'm not that, I'm this over here. Really interesting. If you look at the background of Elon Musk, Donald Trump, I remember reading books on these two years ago. They did not have great childhoods. It's very fascinating to look at how they were raised. And this is what you see as well. Several, Many, Many, Many narcissistic tendency or true narcissists. Do extremely well, Financially speaking. They are driving themselves to death to make an identity, To make sure they're seen, To make sure they're heard, To make sure all of these things, Right? So they go to the extreme. Again, This is not a judgment. This is fact, Everybody. This is not about politics. It's just about fact of how people like this are formed. They were ignored as children. In fact, Elon Musk was in an extremely abusive household. Very emotionally neglected and physically abused. I remember reading about Donald Trump was very ignored as a kid. So again, These children then grow up to then prove what they're doing is actually proving to their parents that they're worthy. So here's how you, This is why I say with narcissism, There's a level of awareness. When people come in and say, Hey, I need help. I think I'm a narcissist or I have narcissistic tendencies. Can you help me? What happens is the true self is inside of us always, But it gets buried. But between the facade or the false self mask that this kid is wearing or the adult now is wearing, And the true self in between that layer? Is shame. Because I had to abandon my true self because I wasn't being loved, Validated and respected and nurtured for who I actually am. So there's a whole level of shame that that person has to go through. It is freaking painful to penetrate, Crack open the false self and drift and go through the shame to get to their true self. This is why I say, If someone is too far on that extreme of narcissism, It ain't going to happen because the level of shame is that deep, Is that thick. And it's so painful. They are not going to do it. But the people that I've worked with, They'd have said, Let's do this work. And I help them reconnect with themselves, Emotionally speaking, And help them to hold onto themselves and not disconnect when they have to apologize, When they are not in the spotlight. There's an uncomfortableness that will happen when they're not in the spotlight. When that happens, That shame's starting to bubble up. When they can sit and hold that and allow the shame to bubble up through them, Let me tell you what, The masks crack off, That false self just starts to fall away and then they become more of their healthy, True self. It's a process, No doubt, But it's absolutely possible. I've seen it for sure. For sure. So. A couple last things I just want to share about this. If you are, And I said this before, What is the kryptonite? If you are in a relationship with a narcissist, Kryptonite. Is self-worth. So if you have an ex-husband, God knows I worked with so many clients that have the ex-husband that's the narcissist, They're trying to do parenting, They're trying to do all this stuff, My ladies would be imploding all over the place. When we would work with self-worth, And I would up-level their self-worth, I would help them stay connected to self. They were able to not get nearly as triggered. They were able to maintain distance. They just let things go that they could not control, And they were actually okay. So if you are someone that is getting triggered by your ex or triggered by your mom, Your dad, Your whomever, You're taking it too personally. You're allowing them to dictate who you are. And when they come at you with these statements that are horrible, When we have a healthier self-worth, We understand what's going on here. We understand what's going on with narcissism. We can go, It's not me. We don't let it land. We don't let, As I say, We don't let that poop land on us. If someone was throwing flaming cow manure at you, Would you duck or do you open up your heart and say, Here, Throw it on my chest? No, You learn to duck. So when someone is throwing horrible language at you and treating you poorly, You learn to duck and you don't let it land, You don't take it personally. And again, The level of how personal we take things has so much to do with our self-worth. When our self-worth meter goes way up, Our boundaries are improved 10, 000 fold. The healthier self-worth, The healthier the boundaries that we have. And also we just aren't as triggered. I promise you, I promise you, You will not be as triggered. The other thing is, Let's see. Yep, I think that's all I have for you guys actually. I wanted to share with you again about shame, But we just talked about that. So shame is what any narcissist has to penetrate down through, And then they will be able to live more from their true self and build that empathy and build up feeling emotions and actually have much, Much healthier relationships. Oh, I know one more thing. Oh, Big one. How did I forget this? Thank God I have notes sitting here. Okay, Here we go. Not only do narcissists need to learn, And people in relationships with narcissists, To feel our emotions and to empathize, We also need to learn how to own our reality. What I mean by that, This is what we do, This is Adult Chair 101 language. Is this 100% fact and truth right now in this very moment? Start asking yourself this question if you are confused, If you are wondering, Wait, Is what my dad just said to me, Is that, If my dad's a narcissist, Wait a minute, Is this 100% fact and truth? No, He's projecting his wounding all over me. I don't need to believe it. So that question, Oh my gosh, Since the adult chair came around 12 years ago, Has changed more people's lives. Is this 100% fact and truth? Feel that. Not six years ago, Not two months ago, Not a day ago, And not in the future is what they're saying 100% fact and truth. No. It's actually not. And then you feel that truth. Also. . . If you are someone that's more on the narcissist side. . . You got to learn how to apologize. In fact, I think most humans need to learn how to apologize. We just don't do that all that well. Let's face it. We weren't taught how to do that. So how do we apologize? This is not an apology. This is not an apology. When you say something like, I'm sorry that you feel that way. I'm sorry you feel that way. That's not an apology, People. An apology is, I'm sorry. I'm sorry I hurt you. I'm sorry I hurt you. How can I make it better? Will you forgive me? I'm so sorry. I did not mean that. Even if you say, It was unintentional, I didn't mean to. If you still hurt someone, You need to apologize. So you say, Oh my gosh, This was unintentional. And I am so sorry that I hurt your feelings. I will not do that again. Will you forgive me? What can I do to make it better? These are heartfelt. Healthy apologies. And then how do we accept an apology? This is another good one because a lot of people don't even know what to say when they're getting an apology. Here it is. You ready? Here's the drum roll. You say, Thank you. Thank you so much. I appreciate that. Thank you and I appreciate that apology. Done. Wrap it up. Done. There you go. So here we have. Everything. I know I've done several podcasts on this, But man, I keep getting questions that are coming in. I wanted to give you more again. Hopefully this is helpful for you. Let me know if you have any more questions. I love doing podcasts based on what you all need and want to hear. All right, Everybody. Thank you so much for being with me today. It is so fun being with you guys. I love, Love sharing this information with all of you and I love all of you. So have a beautiful, Beautiful rest of your day. I hope you found the show helpful and I will see you right here next week in the adult chair.