This tran­script has been edit­ed for clar­i­ty. There may be dif­fer­ences between the audio and this tran­script.

[00:00:00]
[00:00:07] John (2): Being in a rela­tion­ship with a nar­cis­sist is like being caught in a storm with­out a com­pass. Ini­tial­ly, the nar­cis­sist show­ers you with charm and affec­tion, mak­ing you feel spe­cial and deeply loved. But soon, the storm hits. A nar­cis­sist’s need for con­stant admi­ra­tion and lack of empa­thy reveal their true nature.
[00:00:27] At first, you’re on a pedestal, but then crit­i­cism and emo­tion­al abuse start chip­ping away at your self esteem. You find your­self walk­ing on eggshells, des­per­ate­ly try­ing to regain the affec­tion you once received. The Nar­cis­sist’s manip­u­la­tion cre­ates a tox­ic mix of hope and despair, trap­ping you in a relent­less quest for val­i­da­tion.
[00:00:48] This emo­tion­al roller­coast­er leaves you doubt­ing your per­cep­tions and worth, fos­ter­ing con­fu­sion and depen­den­cy. Break­ing free requires immense strength. You must reclaim your sense [00:01:00] of self and nav­i­gate the painful heal­ing process from the deep wounds inflict­ed by the nar­cis­sist’s abuse. Shed­ding self doubt, and embrac­ing the path to heal­ing with com­pas­sion and courage are essen­tial steps on your jour­ney.
[00:01:19] Alex: The name, if we’re talk­ing from a clin­i­cal per­spec­tive, the name Nar­cis­sis­tic Per­son­al­i­ty Dis­or­der is real­ly not a great name, and there are not a lot of things that all psy­chother­a­pists will agree on, we don’t love the name. It’s a fair­ly stig­ma­tiz­ing name and it does­n’t, Real­ly get to the root of what we’re talk­ing about. [00:02:00] [00:03:00] We, we have a col­lec­tion of symp­toms and we give that a name and we call that a dis­or­der, but we don’t real­ly know where any of it comes from, but I think most peo­ple would agree that what we call nar­cis­sis­tic per­son­al­i­ty dis­or­der. It at least in part comes from adverse child expe­ri­ences. And from that per­spec­tive, we could call it a trau­ma dis­or­der. And I cer­tain­ly do when I’m work­ing with it, that this is a response to an envi­ron­ment in which. [00:04:00] A child can­not devel­op in a way in terms of reg­u­lat­ing their emo­tions and relat­ing to oth­er peo­ple.
[00:04:09] John (2): but it’s not just one symp­tom , is it?
[00:04:10] Right. Yes.
[00:04:12] Alex: nine, clin­i­cal­ly there are nine symp­toms and you have to have five of them. And so what I see on social media is the way the word nar­cis­sism is thrown around the inter­net. Peo­ple are try­ing to use self cen­tered­ness and nar­cis­sism and clin­i­cal nar­cis­sism. And I think this per­son is a jerk all inter­change­ably and those things are not inter­change­able. So from my per­spec­tive as a ther­a­pist, I’m talk­ing about a clin­i­cal diag­no­sis. And when we talk about a clin­i­cal diag­no­sis, we’re talk­ing about some­thing that we’re try­ing to treat. So self cen­tered­ness is what most peo­ple will look at and say, nar­cis­sist, right? But there’s more to it than that and one of the [00:05:00] things that is, per­va­sive and , that is, Very hard to see from the out­side is a deep sense of shame and a real­ly very shal­low frag­ile sense of self and not know­ing who you are and in a real­ly deep sense that who you are to the extent, you know is not okay and would not be accept­ed. And so from that we devel­op, all of us devel­op ways of going through the world, that make us feel that, that make us feel like we have the best. Chance of being accept­ed and val­i­dat­ed and nur­tured. And when we think from a bio­log­i­cal per­spec­tive, and if we’re talk­ing about shaman­ism as the old­est tra­di­tion in the world this very much applies to shaman­ism. What would hap­pen to our ances­tors if they weren’t accept­ed by their com­mu­ni­ty? They would die. Because we need com­mu­ni­ties to sur­vive maybe less [00:06:00] so now because things we think of as com­mu­ni­ty aren’t actu­al­ly humans help­ing humans. When I go to the gro­cery store, is that com­mu­ni­ty? I don’t know. I don’t have to inter­act with any­body, but I did­n’t, hunt or farm that food. I did­n’t put it in the pack­age. Com­mu­ni­ty has, we’ve been sep­a­rat­ed from com­mu­ni­ty in the way we sur­vive.
[00:06:19] If we think about the neces­si­ty of Accep­tance in the com­mu­ni­ty. That was a absolute sur­vival imper­a­tive. And so it’s bio­log­i­cal­ly pro­grammed into us seek that accep­tance to bond with oth­ers.
[00:06:34] That’s in our biol­o­gy. And us humans we think we’re more think­ing beings than we are. We’re real­ly not think­ing beings. We’re feel­ing beings and we hap­pen to have thoughts about it. So those deep emo­tions we have have a bio­log­i­cal rea­son for being there, and shame is one of those.
[00:06:54] When we feel shame, it lets us know not to do that thing we’re about to do, because we won’t be accept­ed by [00:07:00] the com­mu­ni­ty. We’ll be cast out and we’ll die. So if I’m as a kid, if I don’t know, if I break a win­dow and I get yelled out for it, I feel shame. Then when I’m about to do some­thing again that might break the win­dow, that lit­tle bit of shame that comes for­ward pre­vents me from doing that and helps me have a bet­ter rela­tion­ship with my com­mu­ni­ty.
[00:07:20] That’s adap­tive shame.
[00:07:21] Mal­adap­tive shame where we feel shame that’s out of pro­por­tion to the sit­u­a­tion, or when we feel shame in sit­u­a­tions where it’s real­ly not appro­pri­ate at all.
[00:07:32] For exam­ple, hon­ey, you for­got to get milk today. That’s not a sit­u­a­tion to feel shame, right? You either go get milk or you say, I’ll get it tomor­row. But feel­ing a deep sense of shame about that is not help­ful or pro­duc­tive. All of that is to say that we all in behav­iors That it and Freud would say defens­es, so much a Freudi­an, but he did have some, good things to say there. [00:08:00] We engage in these things that help us sur­vive.
[00:08:02] And so the set of things we look at when we say this is nar­cis­sism, it’s not look­ing in the mir­ror and say­ing you’re so great. It’s out­sized efforts to build your­self up so that you don’t feel that intense. mal­adap­tive shame. And that can involve things like putting oth­er peo­ple down.
[00:08:24] Can involve things like going to great lengths to get oth­er peo­ple to praise you how­ev­er you can, it’s the only thing that can keep that shame away.
[00:08:34] So when I say that per­son­al­i­ty dis­or­der is a trau­ma dis­or­der it’s there’s this out­side shame that comes from adverse expe­ri­ence it’s these extreme efforts. To do any­thing pos­si­ble to cov­er that
[00:08:51] John: What about ances­tral lin­eage?
[00:08:53] Alex: Yeah. We can look at epi­ge­net­ics, right? And we can and I, that’s cer­tain­ly not my area of [00:09:00] exper­tise, but we can look at all kinds of ways epi­ge­net­ics, inter­gen­er­a­tional trau­ma trau­ma that comes from oppres­sion, all of these ways that, that these things are passed down from gen­er­a­tion to gen­er­a­tion there’s much more research than there used to be about the impact of, being in an oppressed, race or gen­der or sex­u­al­i­ty or cul­ture, reli­gion, eth­nic­i­ty, all these ways that we can expe­ri­ence oppres­sion as a peo­ple and how these things get passed down and what’s the impact of expe­ri­enc­ing these things. so for sure, these get passed down on a cul­tur­al lev­el and then on a direct lin­eage lev­el. If you’re raised by some­body that has, that, that takes these extreme efforts to avoid their own shame, that cre­ates adverse expe­ri­ence for you and your child­hood. And then how do you grow up? Do you grow up doing those same things or do you grow up doing some­thing dif­fer­ent? And then [00:10:00] clin­i­cal­ly, psy­cho­log­i­cal­ly, we would call that maybe some­thing else, maybe anoth­er per­son­al­i­ty dis­or­der, maybe a trau­ma dis­or­der or a dis­so­cia­tive but we would pathol­o­gize it in some
[00:10:10] Because every­thing gets a label, right?
[00:10:12] John: Is grief at the bot­tom of it?
[00:10:15] Alex: Absolute­ly! Because You think about accep­tance
[00:10:19] Right? And what is the expe­ri­ence of being reject­ed? And if we look at the even the sort of social media which, gets me up on my soap­box there. Think about some­one who’s con­stant­ly engag­ing in this way of relat­ing to oth­er peo­ple and how much rejec­tion would they expe­ri­ence when peo­ple don’t want to put up with that, right? And then they, the rejec­tion and they can’t feel the grief because they can’t tol­er­ate it, right? Because it acti­vates this deep shame. And so it, com­pounds the prob­lem. there’s the con­stant grief of rejec­tion and then nev­er being able to actu­al­ly sit with the grief and process the grief because [00:11:00] it’s too much.
[00:11:01] You can’t take it. You can’t tol­er­ate it. And so then what do you need to do to cov­er it up even fur­ther?
[00:11:07] John: Just a a spi­ral, isn’t it?
[00:11:09] Alex: Absolute­ly.
[00:11:10] John (2): The a shaman­ic approach, as we talked about ear­li­er then, we’re gonna break it down look­ing at soul loss. That part of us that we don’t want any­body to see our shame, right? And so we don’t show that part of our, who we are.
[00:11:23] So the frag­ment that con­tains the idea of the shame is ban­ished, not to be seen or heard from again. And and so that’s like giv­ing up a bit of our life essence when we ban­ish our own part of our­selves.
[00:11:38] Alex: Very much. And to have parts of your­self that you hate so much that you shove them away that way. And think about the amount of soul loss that has to be present for some­body not to know who they are. It would be a lot. And peo­ple will talk this way, and as a, as some­one who focus­es on trau­ma in my prac­tice and [00:12:00] child­hood trau­ma, com­plex trau­ma, I hear this a lot. Know who I am.
[00:12:04] John: So is that sim­i­lar to a dis­so­ci­a­tion?
[00:12:08] Alex: Yeah, in a way, it is. Because you’ve dis­owned this piece of you, right? To the, maybe dis­owned so many pieces of you that you’re not sure what’s still inside. Peo­ple talk this way a lot. I feel emp­ty inside.
[00:12:21] From a shaman­ic per­spec­tive, that may be, at a cer­tain lev­el of empti­ness, we don’t have enough ani­mat­ing force to walk around any­more. Need some of it. We need some of us in there it speaks to a real­ly pro­found lev­el of soul loss.
[00:12:34] John (2): I’m won­der­ing about about curs­es or Thought forms that are passed down from par­ent to child. What­ev­er it is that they say or they keep rein­forc­ing, then it becomes like a curse. And there­fore, one would need to unrav­el that to a cer­tain extent.
[00:12:50] Alex: Is giv­ing away a piece of your soul to some­one else or tak­ing a piece of some­one else’s soul or both at the same time, [00:13:00] right? And it, it becomes much more com­pli­cat­ed to work with. Isn’t nec­es­sar­i­ly just putting some­thing on some­one. It can be tak­ing some­thing away from some­one. And it could become com­pli­cat­ed if some­one else is hold­ing that piece.
[00:13:18] John: So that would real­ly make it com­pli­cat­ed then if you’re a tra­di­tion­al psy­chother­a­pist work­ing with peo­ple who appear to be nar­cis­sists but they’re not look­ing at it through a spir­i­tu­al lens. aspect as well as a clin­i­cal aspect. That how you would phrase it?
[00:13:38] Alex: I, might phrase it as you’re try­ing to get what you need from oth­er peo­ple. con­trol­ling what they do, but none of us can con­trol what oth­er peo­ple do. And I’d say my job would be a lot eas­i­er if I could con­trol what peo­ple do. Could wave my lit­tle mag­ic wand and say, stop doing that.
[00:13:55] And peo­ple just would, unfor­tu­nate­ly for me and for the insur­ance com­pa­nies, [00:14:00] I can’t do that. And so here we are, right? And, I do have a princess wand on my desk if I want to real­ly ham­mer it home. But, we can only con­trol our­selves so at some point we have to find in our­selves what it is that we’re seek­ing. It does­n’t mean we can’t have rela­tion­ships, but if we’re if we don’t do the work that we need to do in order to main­tain healthy rela­tion­ships, we’re going to keep com­pound­ing the rejec­tion. And so that’s the work that needs to be done. If you’re hap­py the way you are, you tend not to find your way into my office. A client that wants to talk from a spir­i­tu­al per­spec­tive, a ther­a­py client, I absolute­ly hon­or that. And I’m hap­py to do that. But if I have some­one who does­n’t, then I hon­or that too. There’s, this is one of those many paths up the moun­tain kind of sit­u­a­tions.
[00:14:50] And I’ve cer­tain­ly seen what seems to be a spon­ta­neous soul return. Um, As we go through the [00:15:00] worK.
[00:15:00] I worked with folks who were man­dat­ed to treat­ment by the legal sys­tem. And I pri­mar­i­ly did work with folks with sub­stance use dis­or­ders because I like doing addic­tion work. But I also get along real­ly well with peo­ple who are pret­ty vio­lent.
[00:15:14] And so I got a lot of those folks divert­ed to me in the agency because we get along, can’t real­ly explain it, I cer­tain­ly have had folks come to me that way after, after being harm­ful to some­one else and not nec­es­sar­i­ly vio­lence, things like. Things like iden­ti­ty theft or check fraud or lar­ce­nies. I cer­tain­ly have had folks say, gosh, this real­ly isn’t work­ing for me. And we talk about this in the field that folks with nar­cis­sis­tic per­son­al­i­ty dis­or­der are a lit­tle bit less like­ly to find their way to treat­ment because you’re right.
[00:15:49] They real­ly don’t think any­thing’s wrong and they tend to find them­selves in treat­ment some oth­er way, whether it’s cou­ples ther­a­py or fam­i­ly ther­a­py, some­body else say­ing you real­ly need to get some [00:16:00] help, some kind of ulti­ma­tum from some­one. so what I see more are folks with, What we would say nar­cis­sis­tic traits not meet­ing full cri­te­ria for the dis­or­der or folks that have nar­cis­sis­tic per­son­al­i­ty dis­or­der and some­thing else. And they’re com­ing to me for the and some­thing else. . And, I think that’s most peo­ple’s expe­ri­ence. And there are cer­tain­ly I, and I know peo­ple that real­ly spe­cial­ize in this area. There’s some­one local to me who spe­cial­izes in daugh­ters of nar­cis­sists.
[00:16:34] I think there’s not a lot of talk about women specif­i­cal­ly who have nar­cis­sis­tic traits and I think that you can have expe­ri­enced hor­rif­ic things. When some­one was­n’t a nar­cis­sist some­one can just be Hor­rif­i­cal­ly abu­sive and they may you know, again, we say nar­cis­sis­tic traits It does­n’t mean self cen­tered that it’s not nar­cis­sists star­ing in the [00:17:00] water
[00:17:00] Of course Is the leg­end.
[00:17:01] John: I’m just won­der­ing about unat­tend­ed grief. Weller always says that that’s when all the aber­rant behav­iors will start to pop up. When peo­ple have just keep bear­ing their grief and become anes­thetized to that and and that pain that they’re car­ry­ing and then addic­tions pop up.
[00:17:19] And also I was won­der­ing just the mal­adap­tive behav­iors in the sense that you owe me, that you’re the cause of my pain. And is that the, it’s like ear­ly seeds or would that have already been with that indi­vid­ual egg before the chick­en? What’s, what comes first? Oh
[00:17:42] Alex: I think that, grief seems to be the thing peo­ple are least will­ing to feel.
[00:17:48] John: yeah.
[00:17:48] Alex: Present, present com­pa­ny accept­ed maybe but it sucks, right? No one wants to sit with that. And think. I think [00:18:00] peo­ple don’t want to even name it as grief. And we have a whole lot of feel­ing words hun­dreds in the Eng­lish lan­guage, words for emo­tion. Think there’s a case to be made for look­ing at grief as, an umbrel­la term and not a spe­cif­ic term.
[00:18:18] John: That’s a good point. What would you say for some­body who’s dis­cov­er­ing that there’s a nar­cis­sist amongst their midst in the fam­i­ly or their hus­band or their sig­nif­i­cant oth­er? What to do about it?
[00:18:34] Alex: It’s, I know it’s very ther­a­pist of me to say seek out ther­a­py, but I real­ly do believe that. If you haven’t, I’ve expe­ri­enced, if you haven’t bound­aries with some­one in the begin­ning, or if the bound­aries you’ve set are not work­ing, it is much hard­er to change course. Because you’re going to get a big reac­tion, much big­ger than if you set them
[00:18:57] John: Ear­ly.
[00:18:57] Alex: You’re going to get a big­ger reac­tion from them [00:19:00] and it’s you’re learn­ing to walk again, right? You’re a tod­dler now learn­ing to do this and it’s real­ly help­ful to have some­body to coach you and to sup­port you and to val­i­date you and to the extent that there’s gaslight­ing hap­pen­ing.
[00:19:16] To have just some­body else there to say, no, it does­n’t sound right. And in, in a fam­i­ly where there’s set of com­mu­ni­ca­tions styles going on and in rela­tion­ship styles, it’s. extreme­ly unlike­ly that there’s only one per­son who has some kind of of
[00:19:36] John: hmm.
[00:19:37] Alex: you know, there’s a ten­den­cy for peo­ple with nar­cis­sis­tic per­son­al­i­ty dis­or­der and peo­ple with bor­der­line per­son­al­i­ty dis­or­der to come togeth­er because it fits some­body who is only will­ing to get their own needs met and some­one who has this ten­den­cy to con­stant­ly do for oth­er peo­ple. That sounds like a fit, does­n’t it? It’s not a healthy one for either per­son. But , the [00:20:00] begin­ning, at least can work. work is not the word. Can, you can stick. So it real­ly is a skill issue. To learn how to, just say­ing no to some­body real­ly is not as easy as it sounds. Did six ses­sions today, talked about this prob­a­bly three times. Just how to say no. Cause it’s hard. It’s hard. And hav­ing some­body who’s impar­tial but is also in your cor­ner, sounds like a para­dox, but does­n’t have to be. that can be real­ly help­ful. Also think that ener­getic bound­aries are not talked about enough. And this goes more into shaman­ism ter­ri­to­ry although I would talk about it in a dif­fer­ent way ther­a­peu­ti­cal­ly. I would I, and I would call it ener­getic bound­aries. but just being able to be cen­tered in your own space and not be intrud­ed upon by oth­er peo­ple’s ener­gy. And I think there’s a lot of [00:21:00] us par­tic­u­lar­ly and John, you and I are both in health care, par­tic­u­lar­ly in health care that don’t have good ener­getic bound­aries. we like to help oth­er peo­ple. We want to help and we get bom­bard­ed. We get all these intru­sions from oth­er peo­ple. so learn­ing to dis­cern what’s yours and what’s not yours, learn­ing to fil­ter out what does­n’t belong to you. All that very basic kind of pro­tec­tive stuff can be very help­ful. And for you and I, we would do that with the sup­port of our help­ing spir­its. And I’ve from them that have been very help­ful for me as one of those peo­ple that, always have good ener­getic bound­aries. par­tic­u­lar­ly as I’m sit­ting with among oth­er things, grief all day. It’s just good to be able to sep­a­rate what’s yours and what’s not yours. Takes a lit­tle bit of a sense of self to be able to do that. And again, that’s what do we do first ther­a­py or shaman­ic heal­ing?
[00:21:58] I think it depends on the [00:22:00] per­son.
[00:22:00]
[00:22:00] John (2): Thank you for join­ing us for this episode. We hope you found Alex and Solomon’s per­spec­tives on nar­cis­sis­tic per­son­al­i­ty dis­or­der and shaman­ic heal­ing help­ful . Remem­ber to tune in to our next episode with Chris Wasko. Until next time, take care and con­tin­ue your jour­ney towards heal­ing and self dis­cov­ery.