How Narcissists are Trauma Survivors More Than You May Think

Hey folks and welcome to my channel. I am Brooke Richey, a 20-plus-year vocalist and multi-trauma survivor, film composer, and indie rock artist, and I'm here to help people figure stuff out through the power of their voice. Being a trauma survivor and a vocalist, those are 2 things that require your voice in order to succeed, to overcome, and that has been my number one, I guess, Strength in overcoming my trauma is exercising my voice, listening to the things I say, coaching myself in order to uncover a suppressed memory—a suppressed memory for 15 years—and I'm sorry, I know I have a bit of a speech impediment right now. That is a lot. That's a result of a lot of trauma processing. So I'm still healing. I'm still on my journey, and I know that you're watching this video likely because you are too. And today I want to talk about something that. I don't know if it gets a lot of attention or if there's a lot of popularity around this idea, but it's that narcissists are actually probably trauma survivors more than you might think. And the reason for this is, and why I think this, this is my theory, is because one, I grew up with 2 narcissists and narcissistic behavior. This is something new to me that I'm still kind of figuring out, but there has definitely been covert and overt narcissistic behaviors and abuse in my life. Here's the deal, we are, we are outcomes of where we come from. So because I can look at my life and see, okay, why does every single day feel like this, you know, terrorizing death grip of like I'm in fight or flight mode and I'm trying to just survive, right, throughout the day. Well, that comes from somewhere. Um, so it's likely that that's what my parents were feeling too, all the years that I was growing up. And why I think this matters, why I think this is important, is because we, in order to heal, have to get connected with others. You can only do so much alone. But when you really heal, it's when you are connected with others, when you can collaborate with others. And because we're wired for connection, and that's the thing. And so here's, here's the thing that I want to get— draw the bottom line about. Within the context of my life and what I focus a lot on, which is complex post-traumatic stress disorder, That's my experience, 20-plus years lived with the disorder, 20-plus years dissociating. Okay, the behaviors I've seen in myself have mirrored behaviors in narcissism. I've attracted narcissists not just in romantic relationships but in work environment, places, any— a lot of places. I've attracted that energy because it mirrors what goes on for complex post-traumatic stress disorder. So here's the thing, probably then narcissists see something in that, right? They— it's not that they're seeing a victim, someone they can target. That could very much be happening, but they could also just be seeing traits of You're, you're, you're okay in these areas, but I'm not. What could be going on is, I see you and everything you've experienced, and you've overcome it, and you're okay with talking about it. How can I do the same? So first off, what's narcissism? Narcissism is characterized by a grandiose sense of self. Narcissists glorify their ego. They worship their ego and protect it, usually at all costs. That means severing relationships, manipulating storylines and narratives at the expense of another's image in order to protect their own. It's a need for excessive Admiration, and the belief that one is unique and deserving of special treatment. All of this actually mirrors things that I've experienced, and I know other CPTSD individuals have also experienced. It's trauma response. That's what I see. I just see trauma response written all over narcissism. Narcissism is just perfectionism on steroids. And it's You know, it's the extreme opposite of here's complex PTSD, here's narcissism— polar opposites. Okay, but the bottom line with both of them is you could experience a trauma or have an insecurity. I'm not saying— I just want to get this clear— I'm not saying that all narcissists are trauma survivors and all trauma survivors are narcissists. That's not what I'm saying. I'm I'm saying there are clear correlations between both. And I think we should pay attention to this in order to help this growing issue of narcissism in our world. It's kind of a hot topic right now. And I hope I'm doing it justice in this video by addressing it by a trauma-informed perspective. So if you want to understand a little bit of what I mean when I say it's mirroring, right? Um, because I know a lot of you might hear that word, hear me talk about this, and you're getting triggered because you're like, no, narcissists attack people and all this stuff. And it's like, yeah, I, I know that. I know they attack people, but they're not— that's not universal is what I'm saying. They're not always attacking people out of malicious intent. That's the thing. Here's the difference, right? You can have an individual that maliciously attacks people because they're serving something, someone. They, um, they don't care for the lives of others. But you can also have someone like a narcissist, um, just obtain extreme control and through manipulation and coercion and gaslighting and what, what have you. And that be the extent of it, right? So narcissism overall though, I think what's commonly misconstrued is it's a protection of the ego. And what do we know about trauma? It comes with an ego. So if you don't heal the trauma, At the time that it happens, if it's not processed, it's not addressed, this individual, um, was never cared for after the trauma that happened, and then they later turn into a narcissist. I think it's pretty clear because narcissism isn't something you're born with. It's a result of something. So this is the bottom line I'm getting to. Whether you develop complex post-traumatic stress disorder or narcissistic personality disorder, Bottom line is it's a result of something. Can it be prevented? Probably, but that's not always the case. Can it be mitigated? Absolutely. And that's what I want people to understand from this video by looking at these 3 traits of narcissism that also mirror traumatic response. So contrary to popular belief, I actually think narcissists, those who struggle with narcissism, are actually just other wounded empaths, but their behaviors and their compensation to their trauma or their insecurities is playing out differently, right? Playing out less favorably. Okay. And so this is just, this is just it. When we approach narcissism with a trauma-informed perspective, that means what my bottom line is: trauma is something that is a— is that needs to get resolved right away. When trauma happens, you have to resolve it right away. Otherwise, disorders happen. And when it comes to complex post-traumatic stress disorder, Or narcissistic behavior— did I say that right? Narcissistic personality disorder. Um, it's a disorder because something went unresolved for too long. That could be a trauma, that could be insecurities, that could be significant emotional unintelligence, not emotionally developed enough to be able to process and talk through the things. And that then What we know is crippling in on itself, right? So there is a suppression going on, and that's what I'll use to get into my 3 traits of narcissistic personality disorder and narcissism. I have 3 traits for us to look at that also mirror the behaviors of trauma survivors, and this is specific to individual trauma survivors. So Mass, mass, um, events of trauma where there's multiple people involved, those are a little bit different, um, and there's a collective connection to other people who also suffered the same experience, the same event. When it's an individual trauma survivor, this is the tendency I see in mirroring between CPTSD and narcissism. So I'm talking more in terms of complex post-traumatic stress disorder here and narcissistic personality disorder. So first point, the first trait of narcissism that mirrors trauma response is masking. So masking is something that people do to suppress their mental state. There's something going on for them that is causing them to be in a heightened awareness. And so if they mask, they can essentially avoid that discomfort of what's triggering them. Okay. So narcissists will mask in order to uplift their ego. Like we've said, like I've gone over, trauma comes with an ego. Okay. There's no reason to really glorify your ego if you're not protecting something that Is really evil, you know? So evil, shameful, you feel guilty because you experienced it. So narcissism lures a person into masking because when they mask, they can live by proxy of someone else, which is safer than living out by their own actions. So think of a person in power with many hands. Right? If they're caught doing something, it's very easy for them to say, oh well, that wasn't actually me because it was someone working for me, you know, things like that. Okay, so masking is a defense mechanism, and in narcissism, it is a means of Avoiding accountability. For complex post-traumatic stress disorder and trauma survivors, masking is a result of a means of survival. These people actually might feel like they're in a flight or fight, life or death situation, going back to the death grip, right? That hold that trauma has on them of, you're gonna die. Giving that message to your subconscious. It's giving that message to your subconscious, that strong grip. That's why trauma survivors mask. Um, and so really, when it comes to the two of them, it's kind of the same. Okay, looks different from the outside, but it's, it's kind of the same thing going on. Under the surface. The last thing on this is it's really dissociation for trauma survivors. So the masking and narcissism, it mirrors the dissociation that trauma survivors do because both are a defense mechanism. For narcissists, to avoid accountability. For trauma survivors, to avoid danger, perceived danger. So Trait 2, the extreme need for control and sometimes often OCD. So narcissists and NPD, they will be compulsive in needing to control what's going on around them, the details of their life, the narrative going on in a situation because it's Protecting what? Their ego. They want to better their image. And again, that bettering of the image is a compensation for something. When you know that you are a trauma survivor, when you know that you've experienced something, you can, you can choose which way it plays out. Is that right? What I'm saying, you can choose what you want to do and how you want to respond. You can avoid your triggers at all costs, which is what narcissists do. Trauma survivors do it as well. The two can be interchangeable when you look at the individual situations. I would say most often than not, there's just the common ground of there's an insecurity that has not Been taken care of. There's an insecurity and a need that needs to be met, and it hasn't been taken care of. And the narcissism or the CPTSD, the dissociation, are all overcompensations and acting out in order to avoid looking at probably a painful truth. So the need for control then comes from this. In narcissism. It comes from this desire to never have to look at this thing, at this experience that happened, at the insecurity, at the way they felt, at whatever it is. That obsessive compulsion to control anything and everything and everyone around them, it's an overcompensation to avoid looking at the truth. And while they are in the delusion and the illusion that they are doing what's best for them, they are actually crippling themselves and they are severing themselves away from connection with others, with themselves. Trauma survivors do the exact same thing, and this is mirrored in the way that trauma survivors Out of fault, will do everything they can to kind of disregard the severity of their experience. This often comes up in dissociating, in sarcasm, in joking. I'm one of them. I started making jokes when I was 15, maybe. Yeah. About 15, 16 years old. That's when Pregnancy jokes started, and I was joking about— the joke was this, like, is this real? Like, this can't be real, um, that this is what life is about, that, um, what's happened to me happened to me by my parents. So the need for control. When you can manipulate the truth, you know, to, to, um, shed it off as it's not that big of a deal, you know, to, to portray it as it's just a funny joke, right? Um, humor is great and it helps us heal, but that is, that is, that is something you got to do after you heal. Is a thing. Making those kind of jokes, probably, um, in my personal opinion. But I hope, I hope this is tracking. I feel like I'm getting a little bit off, but, um, this— that need and the need for control, the OCD, it mirrors trauma survivors as well and their responses to trauma because they want to control the fact— they want to control— this is what we want. We want to be able to say that it never happened. When we're struggling with it, right? And I'm, I'm always here and I'm saying get vocal, talk about it immediately when it happens and all of that stuff, because the longer you keep it in your system, the longer it stays. Um, but when you're really struggling with it and you don't want to do it, you will do anything and everything you can to control the narrative that that person didn't do this thing. Thing to you, or that thing didn't actually happen to you. You'll find the ways that you do it is the thing. You will find the ways that you control, you know, your life in order— in avoidance. Um, so narcissists, then they are probably trauma survivors, a lot of them. It's just at this heightened extreme, right? Right of disconnection, worshiping their ego, controlling anything and everything around them so that they never have to look at that pain. Same for, you know, CPTSD people who will just dismiss things. So third point, denial, lying, manipulation, kind of spinning off of that, that last point. These behaviors in narcissism, they stem from the need of control and masking. The denial, the manipulation, the lying, even the gaslighting. And trauma survivors will gaslight themselves all the time too. That's the thing. And so, you know, they intertwine is what I'm saying. Narcissists— this is so hard for me to say. I'm so sorry. Narcissists And CPTSD individuals. Okay? The denial, the lying, the manipulation, even gaslighting. It is a front. It's a defense mechanism to just avoid it all. And you can't live your life in avoidance. So when it comes to the trauma survivor, the defense mechanism is Avoiding, denying the reality of their experience, because if they accept it, that means all this pain, that means all this grief, that means all this loss that they don't want to have to admit to, right? They don't want to have to admit that that's their life. That's the same thing I believe that's going on for narcissists, for folks who struggle with narcissism too. It's this: I don't want to have to admit it. That's really what's going on in their minds, and ultimately, it's a manipulation of of your experience, of your truths. And so why talk about this is the thing because. Narcissism is kind of a hot topic for our time, I guess, um, because millennials— I'm one of them— we all, a lot of us grew up with narcissistic parents, uh, the folks who are like, yeah, I provided the bare minimum for you and we did things together, but emotional needs were out the window. And so what that does, that what that's done to us is stunt our development in a lot of other areas in our lives. And We're tired of it, right? Drop in the comments if you're tired of it. But not just that, but you know, if you can, if you can help a narcissist heal, you're going to help probably a lot of organizations in the world, probably a lot of people that work for narcissists. You're probably going to do, um, you're probably going to have a lot of impact when you can approach a narcissist with With a trauma-informed perspective. So here's an example of this. You know, I— if you've, if you've been watching my videos, you've heard me talk a bit, you know that I believe that everything is pretty, pretty physical and tactile. So what that means is I had a suppressed memory, uh, for 15 years, and that was stuck in my body. The second I unlocked it, Things started to change both in my mind and in my body. If you follow what I do, you'll see that in just artwork that I've created. But more so than that, back when I was trying to figure out what was going on with me, this is, you know, for this example of speaking about the tangibleness of mental disorder. My body was twisting in on itself. So there was all this trauma that was trapped in my body, emotion suppressed, and all this stuff. My body started turning in on itself and started attacking itself. You can go one way or the other. You can turn inward or you can turn outward. Narcissists, they will turn outward, but they can do that both overtly and covertly, is the thing. It comes down to this. When you're faced with someone who only ever wants the good things and you see that they complain and blame others for things that go on in their life, you're probably dealing with someone who's narcissistic. And Because there's that pride, right? There's the pride of the ego of, I deserve the best, I deserve the special treatment, and that sort of deal. But if you look at it with the trauma-informed perspective of, okay, narcissism is an— is a glorification of the ego. Trauma comes with an ego. What was that person's trauma that they refused to look at? And I've seen it in hyperfixation of— you hyperfixate on your trauma, you protect it for years. You can get a traumatic brain injury. You can lose an eye because you refuse to look at a truth in your life. And you opt out to become a narcissist. Narcissist. You opt into narcissistic behaviors because that's easier for you to digest the trauma, the insecurity, the pain that you experienced. And I don't think really people are saying this enough to narcissists, to people who struggle with narcissism. Or without even telling them they're a narcissist, pointing it out for them of saying, hey, I know, I see you. It's really painful. I don't know what it was like for you, but I can see that you're hurting. And I can see that you're asking for help to heal. Just as a challenge for you, the next time someone comes off very aggressive and controlling— and by aggressive I mean controlling in their demeanors, their behaviors, and that, that sort of thing, misogyny and all of that stuff— just consider that they could be someone who is refusing to look at the truth of their experience and Becoming a narcissist, engaging in narcissistic behavior is actually a means of them crying out for help. Somehow I think we can actually show them how easy it is to drop the mask. Anyways, thanks for tuning in. I hope this helped you. I know this video ran a little long. Drop in the comments if you would like any topics for me to talk about. Drop in the comments how this video helped you. I would love to hear your feedback, and if you need help, just you can peruse over to my website. I have resources for you below. Amplify Your Voice is my 40-day reset program that can help you recover suppressed memories. Really, it's to unlock your voice. I operate from the belief that what you say is your reality. So if you tell yourself You're good enough to do X, Y, and Z. You're good enough. And that will become your reality the more you lean into that energy. So thanks again for tuning in, and I'll see you in my next video. Bye.