How To Recognize And Avoid A Narcissist

Kevin Anthony 0:05
Welcome to the Love Lab podcast, a safe and fun place to get real and learn about sex, whether you’re a man or woman, single or couple, this is the show for you. I am your host, Kevin Anthony, and I am here to guide you to go from good to amazing in the bedroom and your relationships.

All right, welcome back to the Love Lab podcast. This is episode 321 and it is titled How to Recognize and Avoid a Narcissist. This is something that comes up a lot when you’re doing any sort of coaching work around relationships. Not only that, but I have seen this come up a lot in my friends’ relationships. I can’t I really can’t count, at this point in my life, how many times I have had a personal friend of mine, you know, especially when it was my wife and I and, you know, people would always want to come and talk to us about their relationship. I can’t count how many times someone has come to me and shared that they believed that they were in a relationship with a narcissist.

What’s interesting about that is the statistics say that it’s only about one to 2% of the population that actually suffer from narcissistic personality disorder. I don’t know that’s really accurate, to be honest. I mean, maybe I just have a skewed perspective because of what I do for a living, but I have seen this seemingly more than one to 2% of the time. And because it is so prevalent, at least from my perspective, I think it’s really important and worth doing an episode on. First of all, what is it so we’re clear. Second of all, how do you recognize it, if you do realize you’re in a relationship with a narcissist, what do you do about it? That’s the biggest question everybody has, is like, what do I do about it? Now, what’s interesting about that is it can be extremely difficult to realize you’re in a relationship with a narcissist, and so usually, by the time I hear about it, it’s because somebody’s already gotten to that point where they recognize that it’s happened, and now they’re just looking for what to do about it.

However, there are a lot of people who are in dysfunctional relationships who do not even realize that they are in a relationship with a narcissist. The only thing worse than being in a relationship with a narcissist is being in a relationship with one and not even realizing you’re in a relationship with one. So that’s what we’re going to talk about today on this episode. I have a lot of information. This is going to be more of a research-heavy episode, as far as defining some terms and and citing some references, but I think it’s going to be worth it.

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Okay, so first we need to get into what exactly is a narcissist. This is somewhat important, because you hear the term thrown around a lot, oh, he’s a narcissist. She’s a narcissist. I was in a relationship with a narcissist, but that doesn’t necessarily always mean that they technically are a narcissist. They could just have some behavior patterns that are similar to an actual narcissist. But let’s just dive into exactly what a narcissist is first so that we understand what we’re talking about.

Okay, according to psychiatry.org, narcissistic, personality disorder is complicated and nuanced. It is defined as a pervasive pattern of grandiosity, a sense of superiority in fantasy or behavior, a need for admiration, and a lack of empathy, beginning by early adulthood and occurring in a variety of kinds. Context, an estimated one to 2% of the US population has narcissistic personality disorder. In addition to grandiosity, narcissistic personality disorder has a significant vulnerability aspect, and individuals may alternate between the two. Vulnerability may make individuals very sensitive to criticism or defeat, and although they may not show it, those experiences may leave them feeling ashamed, degraded, and empty.

People with the disorder may react to criticism or defeat with disdain and defiance or with social withdrawal or an appearance of humility, which masks the grandiosity, although they seem like quite different traits, researchers have found both aspects of narcissism have in common, selfishness, deceitfulness and callousness. We’re going to talk about that more as we go. People with a narcissistic personality disorder often have relationship difficulties because of problems related to self-preoccupation, need for admiration, and insensitivity to others, they are also more likely to have other conditions and related problems, including increased distress, depression and anxiety, and substance use disorders, narcissistic personality disorders are also associated with increased risk for legal work and relationship problems.

Okay, now that we got that out of the way, sort of the textbook definition of it, let’s dive in a little bit more to some of the things it talks about. So, pervasive pattern of grandiosity, which is like this sense of superiority. So you’ll see this manifest a lot of ways, where, like, everything they do is the best, right, or they always seem to know better, or whatever strategies, methods, things they’ve come up with are the only way to do it, the best way to do it. There was an example used when I was researching this was like, everybody I work with is the best people, right? It’s like just this, basically, as it says, a sense of grandiosity, a need for admiration. So this is a big one too, where there’s this constant need for everybody to see them as the best, as the top right. And then, of course, the classic telltale trait, which is lack of empathy, basically the absolute inability to have empathy for anybody, including, and sometimes most strongly their own partner in a relationship.

So those are some of the big sort of signs that somebody is a narcissist. Of course, those can be hidden very well. Narcissists can and often are because of their lack of empathy and because of their grandiosity. They can actually be very successful people. So some of those things seem justified, even though they’re not really. It also talks about the idea of this significant vulnerability aspect. But you know, one of the things that it does talk about here is vulnerability may make individuals very sensitive to criticism or defeat, although they may not show it. The important part, I think, to mention, when it comes to this idea of narcissists also being vulnerable, it’s not going to show up the way a normal person would show up as vulnerable. In other words, a normal person might show up as vulnerable by, you know, opening up and sharing with you their fears, their worries, their concerns, the places where maybe they don’t feel that they’re as good as they should be, right?

So a quote, unquote, normal person, might show their vulnerability that way, sharing their feelings, things like that. The problem with narcissists often is that when they’re feeling vulnerable, basically it just makes them double down on their narcissistic personality. So rather than opening up and being vulnerable, they just double down because they see it as it says here, they’re sensitive to criticism or defeat, right? So they see that as a weakness in themselves, and they’re going to do anything they can to not allow that. So they’ll often double down on whatever toxic behavior they are in if they’re feeling vulnerable. So that’s something to keep in mind. I suppose it’s possible they could potentially fake vulnerability, but that hasn’t really been my experience. I haven’t really seen those people fake it, but you know some of you if you’ve been in relationships. Let me know if that’s something you have seen or not.

Okay, so that’s kind of the classic definition and understanding of what somebody who suffers from narcissistic personality disorder is. I’m not really going to go in this episode into why is somebody a narcissist? There are reasons for this. Lot of it has to do with upbringing, how they were raised by their parents. There are some indications. There’s some genetic stuff going on in there. I’m not going to get into any of that. It’s not really important at this stage, or not even at this stage, but in the context of what we’re talking about it’s not really important to understand how they became a narcissist. What’s really important is to recognize that they are one and figure out how do you deal appropriately with them. Because you know, this show is about sex, love, and relationships, and so what I’m trying to do with this episode is help you be able to understand what is a narcissist really now that you know what it is, can you spot one, right? And then if you realize that, whether it’s your personal relationship or, you know, work relationship, or friendship or anything like that, how do you deal with that person? What would be the appropriate steps?

So that’s really what I want to do here. So I’m not going to go into how somebody has become a narcissist. We just want to know, how do you recognize them? All right, so psychiatry.org gave us the definition, and now we are going to go to the DSM for how you can recognize a narcissist. What is the DSM? You’ve probably heard of this before, but the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. In this case, this comes from the fifth edition, okay? It describes nine overarching characteristics. So these are things that you want to look for to determine whether or not you are potentially dealing with a narcissist. Number one lacks empathy and is unwilling to identify with the needs of others. They seem to have no desire for real connection. They don’t feel empathy for people in trouble. So yeah, this lack of empathy thing is one of the big telltale signs.

Like all of these signs, here’s what I’ve learned about dealing with narcissists. They are masters of disguise. I mean absolute masters of disguise. And if you start to see through their disguise, they are then also masters of manipulation to get you to believe that you didn’t see the man behind the curtain. So this can be really difficult. The reason I bring that up now is that, as we go through these things, you’re going to say, Well, that seems obvious, like I should be able to see that not necessarily, they can be incredibly skilled at disguising these things, but lack of empathy is definitely a big One, and so because they’re so good at disguising this lack of empathy, you gotta look for the patterns and see that there’s a potential lack of empathy across the board with them. So not just with one person or one situation, but look for the pattern of it occurring frequently. Number two has an overblown cell sense of self-importance. They might mentally check out when you start talking, even when you’re trying to relate to something they just said.

So another big one, is they are hugely self-importance. This is one of course, that’s shared with sociopaths as well. And you don’t really have to look far to see this one. Now, I’m not gonna say all politicians or Hollywood types are, you know, narcissists or sociopaths, although there are a significant number who are. I just bring that up as a way to really see an example or examples of somebody who has an overblown sense of self-importance. So one thing that you should realize is that you know, some people do get successful through hard work, absolutely. Some people get to be very successful, just out of sheer luck. But the people who are genuine and become successful recognize that, hey, I busted my butt to get here, or, you know, I. Got really lucky. Somebody helped me out. They gave me this start, or this tip, or this whatever, like you’ll, you’ll hear it in the way they describe their success is very different than somebody who has a very overblown sense of self-importance. And you’ll even see these people who aren’t successful, they’re not successful in business or financially successful, or really successful in any way, but you’ll still see that overblown sense of self-importance.

Number three behaves as if they are exceptionally special and can only be understood or associated with other special people. So this is one actually. Let me finish reading the definition. First, they might be indifferent or even rude to people they think are below them. They may care more about making a good impression than anything else. Okay, so this is one of those ones that we will gaslight you all day long with this one, which is you can’t understand because you’re not at my level. That’s, that’s how this will often show up. You can’t understand. Yeah, I know you think you’re right, but I’m really right, and you just can’t understand because you’re not at my level. That’s how you’ll often see that one show up, which, of course, is nonsense right now, somebody may have more knowledge in a particular area than you which may give them a better qualification to talk on a specific subject.

But that doesn’t mean that the other person isn’t capable of understanding it. You know, if you lay it out for them, and you present a solid case and you show them, you know evidence to support what you’re trying to say, that person should be able to listen to all of that and understand it. So, you know, if they’re basically just, you know, indifferent, they’re being rude. They’re refusing to explain to you because you just, you just can’t understand. You’re not at my level, right? That’s another, another telltale sign. Number four is they need to be admired. They may go to great lengths to make sure everyone is aware of their success and accomplishments. They may get unreasonably angry if they feel humiliated or criticized. So that’s true. Let me just let me share with you another way that this one shows up that maybe isn’t quite as obvious. So this says they may go to great lengths to ensure everyone is aware of their success. Yes, that is absolutely true.

But another way that I see this show up a lot is they will go to great lengths to make sure everybody is their friend. So you’ll see this, they will go over and above to basically enroll everybody to be on board with how great they are, and they’ll do things. They’ll do favors for thing for people and things do in order to get them to ingratiate, in order to ingratiate themselves to these people, so that everybody says he’s such a great guy or she’s such an amazing person, right? So that’s another way. So it’s not even just always about bragging about success, but they want to be admired by the people in their friend’s group, and so they’ll ingratiate themselves and do things in order to enroll everybody in how great they are as a person, number five has an unrealistic sense of entitlement and expects others to give them special treatment. They may come undone when corrected, put out or treated as if they are common. So unrealistic sense of entitlement, you’re always expecting somehow to be treated differently or special than everybody else.

I mean, that’s that’s pretty much self-explanatory. Number six, exploits and takes advantage of others to achieve their own goals. They may frequently use other people for their own gain. They might add others on social media for the sole purpose of getting more likes but never return the favor. That’s an okay example, but exploits and takes advantage of others to achieve their own goals. This is 100% true. With real narcissists, it shows up in so many different ways. Sure, it might be that they add you on social media just to get more likes, right? That’s a very small way that this would show up, but you’ll often see them bringing you into their world and being your best friend, while you have something that you can offer them, and as soon as there’s nothing you can offer them, you notice. You get discarded. You are not called on anymore. You’re you know, whatever sort of sort of left out.

I have seen this, unfortunately, with some close friends. I had a friend who was brought on to live on some land in exchange for helping build this community, physically, like doing handyman kind of stuff. And so he did that for a couple of years, and everything was great. He helped build all the infrastructure, and when the infrastructure was built, suddenly everything he did was wrong, and suddenly there were all these excuses, and then suddenly it was, you need to leave, right? So that’s another way that they can exploit or take advantage of people to achieve their own goals. The goal was, I need to build this community. So here I’m going to bring these people in and have them build my community, and once I don’t need them anymore, I’m just going to get rid of them. Number seven is often envious of others, or believes that others are envious of them. They may disparage people they’re envious of and point out reasons why those people shouldn’t be admired. They can’t seem to accept that others are genuinely more successful, more successful, even as successful, or even close to as successful as they see themselves. Right?

So it’s not even just people who are more successful than them, it’s anybody that comes anywhere near threatening their place and the top of, you know, the pyramid. So, yeah, this, you know, don’t just go, oh, well, they’re envious of anybody more successful than them, or anybody that is potentially at their level, or even anybody that’s coming up close to their level. Yeah, number eight displays arrogant behaviors and attitudes. They may constantly talk about their success, influence or attractiveness. For instance, they might brag about how much they get hit on but then complain about it. So arrogant behaviors and attitudes are pretty self-explanatory. And number nine regularly talks about their fantasies of success, power, or recognition for their brilliance. Conversations may primarily revolve around the kind of luxury car they want, or other material or shallow desires. Yeah, that. I mean, of course, it’s part of the DSM. I’m not gonna argue with that.

I would say that they just regularly talk about themselves and their successes and their brilliance all the time. All right, so there you go, according to the DSM Five, those are nine overarching characteristics. So those are things that you want to look for. I have a few more things that I want to add that either are variations of what we just talked about or are slightly different, but there are just more things that you can look for in order to identify a narcissist, so I’m gonna go over those. And then, of course, what to do if you realize you’re in a relationship with a narcissist, and what not to do as soon as we come back from this short break.

Are you a couple? Are your relationship and sex life where you want them to be? Are there changes you would like to make, but just don’t know how maybe you think there is nothing that can be done if you’re not 100% happy with where your relationship or sex life is, then get help today and change your life. Go to https://www.kevinanthonycoaching.com/sex-coaching-couples/ and schedule a strategy call with me today so we can map out a strategy to get you where you want to be so you can have it all your way. Go to https://www.kevinanthonycoaching.com/sex-coaching-couples/ and book your strategy call today that, of course, is my couples coaching program. I love working with couples because I really love and appreciate the opportunity to work with both halves of a couple, rather than just one half. Now I work with just one all the time, probably the majority of the time, I’m working with either just the man or just the woman. We can make incredible progress just working on our end, but we can make even better progress if we can work on both ends at the same time, and it can be a really transforming and bonding process to go through this with your partner. So you know, if your relationship isn’t really where you want it to be, you know, if there are things that you’re like, Ah, it’s so good. But this part over here, if only we could, or if only he could, or if only she could then just do something about it. Just do something about it. Life is too short to be in a mediocre relationship, or worse yet, a dysfunctional relationship. All right, so go check that out. https://www.kevinanthonycoaching.com/sex-coaching-couples/.

All right, so before the break, I gave you the nine overarching characteristics according to the DSM Five. Now I’m going to talk about some other signs, so they interrupt you a lot and never seem to listen. It’s really, really hard to have any sort of meaningful conversations. I. With somebody who is actually a narcissist and every time you try to make a point, they basically just interrupt you. Now, of course, this interrupting pattern is unfortunately pervasive in our society. If somebody hasn’t really taken the time to focus on learning good communication techniques, then they likely will interrupt people, you know, they’re listening to what the person has to say, and then they get an idea and they have to blurt it out, or they don’t agree with what the person is saying. And then they have to talk, you know, over top of them to get their point in. And then when the other person doesn’t stop, they keep talking, or they talk louder in order to it is absolutely pervasive in society, and it’s something that drives me crazy. And the reason I point that out is because it doesn’t necessarily mean that somebody’s a narcissist, right?

However, if you see this in conjunction with other signs, that may be a sign that this person is a narcissist. They speak in superlatives. I kind of added this one in when they were was it an overblown sense of self-importance? Or they also behave as if they’re exceptionally special? But the idea here is like, everything is the best, and I’m the best, and this is the best, and my program is the best. You know, it’s just like this constant need to speak in superlatives. They often flatter others. I kind of mentioned this also. This is they do this a lot to enroll people into, you know, onto their side. So, you know it, but it’s absolutely false. They don’t they don’t actually mean any of it. You know, if you’re on the receiving end of flattery from a narcissist, just you just completely let it go, because they are just full of shit, telling you whatever you want to hear so they can enroll you in whatever thing they want to enroll you in, whether it’s just getting you on your on their side against somebody else, or wanting to take advantage of you in some way. Yeah, if they’re flattering you, you can just let it go.

And here again, they try to enroll everyone around you on their side. This is one I see a lot. Next is extreme preoccupation with how others see them. So, you know, it’s they’re super worried about how other people see them, and always wants to be seen as the best or on the top or the most amazing, or whatever. And then the last one is manipulative behavior. Okay, this one is really big. This one’s really important. And I guess it’s sort of implied in all the ones we talked about before because a lot of those things are manipulative. Yeah, pretty much all of those nine things are manipulative in some way. But there’s so much more manipulative behavior going on, and manipulative behavior can be very obvious or it can be extremely subtle and hard to detect.

So it’s really important, if you think you might be dealing with a narcissist, that you really pay attention to their behavior and see in what ways might they be attempting to manipulate you. Do you know who the classic narcissist is, is government? I don’t go down. I try to stay away from politics on this show, even though I am a huge student, let’s say of politics, including having a degree in political science, is one of a few. But I try to stay away from politics in this because, you know, politics divides people, and what I’m trying to do with, you know, sex and relationship is bring people together. However, the government is like the ultimate narcissist.

So the reason I say that, and what made me think of that in this moment, is this, anytime the government tells you anything, it doesn’t even matter what it is, they say we’re going to do what x, right? The very first question you need to ask yourself is, is all right, how does this benefit them? What agendas are behind that? How are they trying to manipulate us to benefit them? Because 99.9% of the time, that’s exactly what’s going on, right? And so you need to start looking, if you think that you’re in a relationship with somebody who’s a narcissist, you need to, unfortunately, start looking at things from that point of view, almost anything that they tell you or ask you to, do you have to start going, Okay, how could this potentially be them manipulating me? It’s sad. It’s a very cynical way to go through a relationship or life.

And you know, I don’t suggest you should. To spend your entire life looking at everything that way, although you should have always an eye open for how somebody may be attempting to do that, because there are a lot of dishonest people in the world when, especially if you think you’re dealing with a narcissist, you need to really have both eyes open and looking for how are they potentially attempting to manipulate me this way. Okay, so those are some other signs, I guess. Really what they are are just ways of describing their behavior that maybe is a little bit less textbook-ish and a little bit more real life-ish, I guess. So hopefully at this point, you understand what a narcissist is, and you have enough tools to be able to recognize one. So the most important thing with a narcissist is recognizing that you’re dealing with one. Because if you don’t know that you’re dealing with a narcissist, you’re just never going to figure out why this relationship isn’t working. You’re never going to understand what you need to do to help this so the awareness around it, the recognizing like, oh, oh no, I let this narcissist into my life in some way.

Okay, that is absolutely step one. And I want to say also, that pretty much every person that I’ve ever coached who is recovering from being with a narcissist always feels guilt in some way. And I just want to say to anybody who has unwittingly been duped by a narcissist, they are masters of deception. I said that earlier. I’ll say it again. They are masters of deception. Do not beat yourself up for being fooled by them. This is what they do. They spend their whole lives working at their craft of manipulating people. And so you know you can’t be upset at yourself. All you can do is go okay. Now I know better. Now I know how to recognize a narcissist, and I will never let that happen again. But do not beat yourself up at all, at all because they like I said, they really are masters at deception. Okay, speaking of government, again, it’s really hard sometimes on this show for me not to talk about things of a political nature.

But I say this to people all the time also when say like the government says, has been telling them for decades one thing that actually isn’t true, and then people get mad or upset with themselves that they bought into the lie. I’m like, You shouldn’t be mad at yourself. Do you understand how many billions of dollars and how many supposed experts and celebrities and media people and whatnot spent years trying to fool you on that thing? So, you know, the odds are stacked against you. You’re just a regular person out there trying to live your life, trying to be a good person, trying to do the right thing, and you’ve got massive amounts of money and people specifically trying to fool you. So you know, don’t, don’t beat yourself up in either case, whether it’s a government or it’s just a person because they are master manipulators. All right, so once you’ve recognized that you’re in a relationship with a narcissist, the next thing you need to do is educate yourself. So I’m attempting to do that here on this show, at least to some extent.

But you want to learn everything that you can about, not only what it’s like for the narcissist, like how they behave and what motivates them and how they operate and all that, but also everything you can about how to effectively deal with somebody who is so you got to educate yourself. Whatever it is you think you know about it, you probably don’t know everything there is to know, even though I’m trying to tell you as much as I can in this episode about it. There’s still so much more to learn. This is kind of more like an introduction, so definitely take the time to educate yourself and learn as much as you can about it. Next is to build self-esteem. One of the things that I noticed that happened. A lot of people who have been in relationships with narcissists is they lose or lack self-esteem. Now this isn’t a criticism of the victim of the narcissist here. The narcissists themselves actually intentionally do a lot to destroy your self-esteem. The reason why they do that is because it’s easier to manipulate and control you when you lack self-esteem. So they will do all kinds of subtle things. This is where the gaslighting comes in, big time, right? Getting you to believe all kinds of things that you know you know aren’t true. So you start to doubt yourself. You start to doubt your own intelligence, you start to doubt your own intuition. You start to doubt things you see with your own eyes, right? So you got to do the reverse of that.

You have to start finding ways to build your self-esteem. So outside of that relationship, do things where you can be successful. So you know, every little success will start to help build your self-esteem. You know, ask close friends and family to help you. They’ve probably been trying to help you the whole time. You probably just didn’t really realize it. So, yeah, definitely take time to build self-esteem. It’s something that you could also work on with a coach or a therapist but definitely work on building your self-esteem. The next thing you want to do is create boundaries. Boundaries are really important. Here. You really have to set boundaries. And the reason why setting boundaries is so difficult with a narcissist is because the second you start to set boundaries with them, they will get irritated, annoyed, pissed off. They will often react in a highly negative way to those boundaries.

And so a lot of times people in relationships with narcissists, so they’ll go to set a boundary, they’ll get this big negative reaction, and then they’ll go, I know I’m supposed to set some boundaries, but I don’t want to go through that again, right? I understand the reasoning behind that, but it’s super important that you set the boundaries. So even if you have to deal with a little bit of backlash, you have to set some boundaries. Next is to speak up for yourself. So here’s the thing, once you have awareness, you have some education, you know what you’re talking about, and you know who you’re dealing with, and you’ve built up enough self-esteem that you feel good about yourself, and you’ve laid down some boundaries, all of those things then make it so much easier to start to speak up for yourself, which is important. That’s something that you really need to do.

So you need to start speaking up and not letting them just bulldoze you, railroad you, gaslight you, right? So, yeah, you need to start speaking up for yourself in the situation. Of course, when you do speak up for yourself, you do want to watch your wording. You do have to be careful about the things that you say. You basically have to realize that these people are not operating in the same reality that you are. And so certain things can be particularly triggering. I’ll cover a little bit more about what I mean by that. When I get into the what things do you not want to do? Uh, of course, you always want to stay calm, you know, getting into a reactive state, attempting to argue with them, or, you know, get into yelling matches, or things like that never work. And I mean, they never work in relationship in general,

That’s a good thing to follow in general with relationships, but they really will not work in this situation, because they will only aggravate the narcissist more and they’ll just double and triple and quadruple down on their behavior. So staying calm is really important. Next is you want to create a good support system. This is going to be really challenging. So you’re going to need help outside of yourself. You know, close friends that you trust, family members, therapists, coaches, some combination of all of those. I think, is something that you really need to get in place around you, especially if you’re married to a narcissist, or have been in a long-term committed relationship with a narcissist. If you have kids with a narcissist or anything like that, you are going to need a long-term support system to help you navigate this relationship, and I do suggest that. It’s kind of varied that you’ve got some friends that you trust, some family, and some professionals all mixed in there to help you navigate this, because it’s going to be tricky.

Next is to insist on immediate action, not promises. So as you are dealing with them, negotiating with them, trying to you know, whether it’s navigate the relationship or navigate co-parenting, you’re going to have to deal with them in some way, and so insisting on immediate action and not promises is a good thing to do. Obviously, you’ve set some boundaries. You’re speaking up for yourself, and in speaking up, you’re going to ask for immediate action, not promises, because narcissists are amazing at making all sorts of promises, most of which never come true. So what you want, rather than is, okay? Yeah, I promise I’ll do what you want. Okay. Can you do it today? Can you do it right now? Can you do it tomorrow? Right? You want to definitely insist on immediate action, not the promises. Next is to bring in a counselor or coach or a therapist. I kind of mentioned that when it comes to creating your support system.

But you know there’s, there’s having a counselor, coach, therapist on your side that you’re dealing with. You can also bring one in to work in the context of the relationship, or the couple as well, that might be able to help you navigate those things together. So that’s another area where you might, yeah, you might want to consider bringing in somebody All right, and then the last one is, leave the relationship. I’m going to talk a little bit more about that in a moment. I’m not going to go too much into that, but that is another thing that you can do. And I want to point out that this list, most of this list, actually comes from web, MDS resources on narcissistic personality disorder, but there are a few mixed in there that either I threw in from my own experience or that I’ve seen other people write about. So they just kind of wanted to let you know that, yeah, some. So the point is that some of these are the actual, you know, prescribed from any professional that you would go see way of dealing with it. And then I’ve thrown in a couple of extras just from my own personal experience and research.

Okay, so those are, those are the things that you should do. What are some things that you should avoid doing if you’re in a relationship with a narcissist? Okay, don’t argue or try to confront them. It’s just, it’s a complete waste of time. They’re never going to see your point of view. They’re just going to argue back, double down, triple down, gaslight. It’s just, just don’t try to argue with them. You can speak up for yourself and set clear boundaries, but just don’t try to argue with them. Next is don’t try to direct them, and remember they always need to be the ones in charge. Remember they’re the one who’s most important, and they always seem to know best, better than anybody else, regardless. So you’re just going to get into this power struggle with them, which is really just never going to go well because they’re never going to accept it.

Next is, and do not expect them to see your point of view. This is the thing it’s like when we have a discussion with somebody, or even an argument with somebody, because there’s a disagreement, what we’re always hoping is that even if the person doesn’t agree with us, they will at least see our point of view. Because you can do that. You can recognize and go, Okay, I understand your point of view. I understand where you’re coming from. I understand why you feel the way that you do. I don’t agree with it, but I understand it, right? So that’s possible. However, in this particular case, do not expect them to ever see your point of view. They’re just not going to do it. They’re not they’re literally incapable of doing it, because if they were to actually do that right, it would threaten their their construct of who they are, which is, you know, that grandiosity again, that we’ve talked about throughout this episode. Do not expect deep, meaningful communication. That’s another thing. You can expect a lot of communication potentially, but it’s probably not going to be deep or meaningful, and it’s probably not going to lead to any type of resolution that you are hoping for.

So. Despite having tried over and over and over again, and that’s kind of it’s kind of sad, because when we’re talking about relationships, right, whenever there’s any sort of relationship challenges going on, the key to solving those challenges, or even the key to just having a great relationship, even if they’re not challenging in any way, is great communication, effective communication, communication that is honest and open and, you know, caring, compassionate, that is a key to any really great relationship, and so it’s kind of sad to say, don’t expect any deep, meaningful communication. But it’s kind of unfortunately true. If you think you’re going to communicate your way out of this situation, it’s probably not going to happen. What you can hope for is that the communication can hopefully shift things a little bit, can hopefully lessen some of the bad behavior, can hopefully set some boundaries that make things a little easier, but I don’t know that you can expect a whole lot more outside of that.

Another thing not to do is go over past issues. So like going well in the past you did this, or you said that, they’re pretty much incapable of acknowledging any of that is a complete waste of time. It’s best to really just stick with the present and what’s happening currently in the present and how you’re feeling currently in the present. So that’s another list that mostly came, I believe, from a WebMD when researching narcissists. And you know, like I said, I’ve coached quite a few people who have dealt with narcissists. And I can say, from my personal experience that, these things are definitely true, both the do’s and the do nots are it’s solid advice, even though there are a lot of things I would not go to WebMD for, I would say that those things are pretty solid advice from my personal experience. Okay, so we’ve talked about what a narcissist is, we’ve talked about how to recognize a narcissist, and now we’ve talked about what to do if you find you’re in a relationship with a narcissist.

There’s one more thing that I need to come back to, because it is critically important, and I would feel that I was doing a disservice if I left this part out. Here is another quote from that same set of reference material. I was just quoting people with narcissistic personality disorder. Usually don’t change, so keep that in mind, even if you learn to manage your relationship better, it probably won’t ever be a healthy relationship. That’s not me saying that. That’s literally straight from the medical slash psychological literature. Now it is what I would say, and it is exactly what I would have said, had I not read that while researching this episode, but I had, I had to literally quote it and take it word for word so that you understood that it’s not just me or my cynical view of dealing with narcissists. But I will tell you, there’s a reason why it’s a personality disorder, and I don’t even always agree with everything that the DSM calls a personality disorder. I think they’ve labeled a bunch of things that I’m like.

I don’t know about that, but in this case, my experience in the 50 years I’ve been on this planet, in the over a decade, I’ve been doing coaching work that I just I’ve never seen a narcissist truly recover and change, and not be a narcissist anymore. Sometimes they can control their behavior a little bit, but you know, I’ve never really seen true change, and so, you know, when we were talking about, you know what to do if you’re in a relationship with a narcissist, the very last thing on the list was to leave the relationship. Unfortunately, my recommendation is, if you realize you’re in a relationship with a narcissist, if you want to have a healthy and fulfilling relationship, you’re not likely to get it with that person, so you should seriously consider transitioning that relationship in the easiest way that you can unfortunately, narcissists will not make this easy. They will make it as absolutely brutal and painful as they can make it on you. But trust me, it’s worth it to go through it and to come out the other side later on down the road, life will be better.

So. Uh, even though it’s going to be challenging and you’re going to need that support system that we talked about if, for some reason, you can’t leave it like let’s say you’re co-parenting. Maybe you’re not in that relationship anymore, but you now have to co-parent with somebody who’s a narcissist. Then use the strategies, use, use the things that we’ve talked about here, to learn to manage that relationship in the most efficient way that you can possibly manage it. You’re never going to make it perfect, and that’s okay, just you’re looking at this point, at managing it so that it is the best it can be, and that it is the least harmful to, let’s say, children, if there’s any children involved, or, you know anybody else, not even just children, so yeah, I would feel like I was doing you a disservice if I didn’t mention that. I didn’t want to make it seem like, well, if you just knew how to recognize one and employed a few strategies you could fix everything, you can make things better. You can make them easier to deal with, but ultimately, few people ever really stop being a narcissist. Some of them can have some awareness around it, and they can work on it, and they can tone it down. But I’ve never really seen anybody like really just not be one anymore. So some people may disagree with that. I haven’t seen it. That’s what the research and literature say as well.

So it is what it is, all right. Well, there you go. That is how to recognize and avoid a narcissist, obviously, if you can recognize them early on, then you have the opportunity to avoid them, even if you don’t catch it right away. If you can recognize it, you have an opportunity to remove yourself from that situation. And then, of course, if you recognize it, but you can’t remove yourself, you at least have the opportunity to try to manage it in a way that is better than it would be were you not aware of it and managing it. So I hope you found that helpful. If you know anybody who is in a relationship with a narcissist or thinks they might be or maybe they don’t even see it, but you see it, please share this episode with them. I would really love for people to be able to avoid these types of relationships, because I have seen so much struggle, heartache, and pain experienced by people who were in these relationships, and I would love if I could just help even one person avoid that. That would be amazing. All right, everybody, that’s all I have for this episode, and I will see you next week.

I hope you liked this episode of the Love Lab podcast. If you enjoyed this show, subscribe, leave us a review and share it with your friends, and for more free exclusive content, join me in the passion vault at https://www.kevinanthonycoaching.com/vault/. That’s https://www.kevinanthonycoaching.com/vault/. Thanks for listening, and remember, as Céline used to say, you’re amazing!