Dr. Carol Darcah (psychologist, founder of Reconnect Trauma Treatment Center) explains what narcissism and narcissistic personality disorder (NPD) are, lists core symptoms and common developmental origins, and reviews how NPD can affect children and spouses. Key symptoms highlighted: excessive need for admiration, disregard for others' feelings (lack of empathy), inability to tolerate criticism, and a sense of entitlement. She contrasts narcissistic tendencies with a formal NPD diagnosis (which must be made by a professional), notes NPD is "found more commonly in men," and emphasizes likely genetic and environmental causes. Practical advice for people living with a narcissist: educate yourself, set and enforce boundaries, build external support, seek professional help for the narcissistic person when possible, and consider leaving if the partner becomes abusive, humiliating, or refuses responsibility. The speaker frames narcissism as a disorder often rooted in childhood attachment trauma and recommends compassionate but firm approaches.
Questions this video answers
Found more commonly in men.
(1) Excessive need for admiration; (2) Disregard for others' feelings (lack of empathy); (3) Inability to handle criticism; (4) Sense of entitlement.
Chapters
Hi, I'm Dr. Carol Darcah, author, psychologist and founder of Reconnect Trauma Treatment center in Los Angeles. Are you living with a narcissistic person? Well, let's start with the definition of what narcissism is, because it's changed over the years of from what people knew what narcissism means and what it means really today. So here's the definition. A person who has an excessive interest in themselves or an admiration of themselves. So of course we have people with narcissistic tendencies, right? So where you're just sort of seeing them. But then we have an official diagnosis of narcissistic personality disorder which I would like to share with you as well. Listen to the definition and think of the person that you are suspecting that they might be narcissistic. Narcissistic personality disorder is found more commonly in men. Oops, sorry. The cause is unknown, but likely involves a combination of genetic and environmental factors. Symptoms include an excessive need for admiration, disregard for others feelings. This is a very important one. An inability to handle any criticism, and a sense of entitlement. So those four things are very important. Again, the need for the admiration. So you'll see the narcissistic person really constantly wanting and sort of fishing for praise from you. And if they don't get it, they might get quite angry. In fact, they might also get shocked because they think you should be admiring them. The disregard for others feelings. So they really have a hard time to put themselves in your shoes, right? It's all about their feelings. And the moment their feeling is not okay, they don't have a capacity to take care of you. An inability to handle any criticism. So to you, you might be seeing a constructive criticism. For them it means, oh my God, I'm the worst person in the whole art world. I can't take this. And most likely I want to cut you out of my life. And then the sense of entitlement. I am right. This is my right. You should be admiring me. You should be doing all these things for me. You should be taking care of me. It's not even like a question. It's so organic for them actually that when you don't do it, it really does surprise them and they see it as what's wrong with you rather than what's wrong with this picture. So I have met many clients in my career, unfortunately that were married to narcissistic spouses and or have grown up with narcissistic parents, which both of them have a lot of different painful situations. If you think about it. So as a child, when you are very young, especially when you are maybe younger than a teenager age, it should be actually all about your needs as a child. Right. So your parents are there to take care of you and not vice versa. So the moment you have a narcissist, narcissistic parent, that usually means the role is reversed. And now you are taking care of your parents. Well, maybe not physically, although sometimes that can happen, but often emotionally. So it's about how your father feels, how your mother feels, and then of course you'll see some unfortunately damages as you grow up as an adult. Now, if you're married to a narcissistic person, the interesting thing about them in the beginning, they're so charming that you may not really realize they're narcissistic because they're just very attractive people. They, they really know how to sort of get your attention and, and you are really just admiring them naturally, because they also know how to sell themselves. They almost like self market. They often talk about what's great about them and you just listen and so. But after a while it starts becoming a problem where because they can be very dominant, manipulative in order to get their needs met. And you'll find yourself in a situation where it's really never about your needs anymore. Let's look at some of the things of what you can do. First of all, see them for who they are. Really educate yourself about narcissism and do not expect them necessarily to change, but see them also with their good and bad. So just try to have a more of an open mind so that you're not getting sucked in, into how they're presenting themselves. So don't focus on them as much as they want you to focus on them. Again, they will sort of try to get you to do that, but try to break that habit or break that expectation of them by just also gradually focusing on other things. Right. It's very important to put good boundaries. So speak up for yourself, stand up for your rights because it will not come from them. Especially again if this is a marriage, because if it's a parent, eventually you move out. But if it's a marriage and you have children and you want to keep this marriage, you want to make sure that you found very good support to be able to put boundaries and do not expect them to maybe respect that. So. But you have to be very strong in order to keep those boundaries. Expect them to push back when you put, especially if this is a new thing for you, when you Put boundaries. They're going to, first of all, not agree with you or try to find ways, or they're going to see it as an injury to them. Their ego is going to get hurt. But you have to be really able to push back and stay strong, have support, friends, therapists, family members, people who can just really make you feel sane. Because sometimes you might feel like you're going insane because. Because everyone else might be admiring them and you might find yourself going like, okay, what's wrong with me? Right? Am I not giving enough or am I being selfish? And so just have support. Also, remember that you're not at fault. In fact, honestly, even the narcissistic person is not at fault. Usually the narcissism comes from a childhood trauma of not having had proper attachment with parents. Any child who's loved and attended in a regular way would not actually turn to be really narcissistic. The needs that are not fulfilled will stay and will show up as a narcissism. So it's actually the narcissistic person sort of a way to get attention because they haven't gotten it, or a validation because they actually feel very insecure. So. So if you start seeing that actually as a mental health disorder and issue, you'll be compassionate, but doesn't mean that you give in. Just again, remember that it's not your fault that there's nothing wrong with you for loving them or for being with them will go a long ways. The ideal situation would be actually for a narcissistic person getting professional help. I had a client years ago that had so many relational issues, and she just didn't understand why she was struggling so much and why everybody was reacting to her so negatively. So we suggested that she does a psychological evaluation because narcissistic personality disorder has to be officially diagnosed by a professional. Right? So she got the testing done, and actually it came out narcissistic personality. And believe it or not, she was happy to see this diagnosis. It's not an easy diagnosis to digest, but she looked at it and said, you know, it makes sense of why I do certain things and why it's not in my nature to actually care about other people's feelings and why I'm always sort of looking at for my own benefit first. But it really just gave her such awareness that she started sort of fighting against her nature of not caring about others. Right? She was like, oh, wait, that's my narcissism. And then she just sort of gently encouraged herself to. To be different. You can teach them to be much more empathic. Actually, you know we're not talking about sociopaths, right? Narcissistic people are, are not bad people. They just really need to be taught and, and guided in the right way so that they can put themselves in your shoes as well. Let's see. So, but here's the. The situations where you might have to unfortunately move on from the relationship. If the person is name calling you, insulting you, publicly humiliating you, patronizing you, becoming really jealous, or accusation verbally or physically abusive, blaming you for everything that's going wrong, never taking any responsibility for anything that they do, and basically denying everything that are that are obvious to you and to the loved ones, but to themselves. So at that moment you might have to consider maybe walking away from that relationship. Don't lose hope. I'm a big believer in therapy. Obviously I'm a psychologist. Right. I do believe actually if you go deeper into a childhood issues, especially attachment related stuff, whether you are the one who has narcissistic tendencies or the disorder or your loved ones, I do highly recommend to be gentle, compassionate and motivated to work on it. And you will definitely see some improvements. Thank you again for watching and I hope to see you in my next videos. Remember, trauma equals disconnect. Healing equals reconnect. Stay connected.
