Amber Hollingsworth, a master addiction counselor, explains why a person who is both narcissistic and addicted (to substances or behaviors like alcohol, drugs, sex, gambling) poses particular danger and increased unmanageability. She describes narcissists as addicted to "narcissistic supply" (constant affirmation/validation), and explains that adding another addiction reduces their ability to obtain that supply productively, producing a double-withdrawal that increases manipulation (gaslighting, blaming, deflection), anger, desperation and potential danger. She notes most addicts may appear narcissistic but distinguishes that only some are true narcissists and points viewers to a follow-up video about how to tell the difference.
Chapters
If you have an addicted narcissist on your hands, you are in giant trouble. Things are not going to be good. Let me explain why. For those of you who are new here, I'm Amber Hollingsworth. I'm a master addiction counselor. I've been helping people and families conquer addiction for more than 20 years now. A long time. And in this video, I want to share with you this connection between narcissism and addiction. There's a lot of talk about narcissism these days. That's for good reason. Narcissistic abuse is a terrible, terrible thing, and it can be difficult to differentiate. Am I dealing with someone who's just addicted, or am I dealing with someone who's a narcissist? Or both? And I'll link up some videos here at the end to tell you how to figure out whether you're dealing with one, the other, or both. But for those of you who are dealing with an addicted narcissist, things are about to get a whole lot worse. You see, all narcissists are addicted. They're addicted to narcissistic supply. They need that constant affirmation and validation and attention. And just like with any other addict, it's never enough. It's always, I need more and more and more. Now, most narcissists have some ability to get that narcissistic supply in, you know, some fairly productive ways. Like, they have some good ways of getting that attention. Maybe they're really successful at work. Maybe they're really giving to their community. I would call those more productive ways of getting it. Now, for those of you who live with a narcissist, I know that you see the other side of that, the not so great part. You know, the part that I'm going to get this attention and validation, affirmation no matter what, no matter what I have to do to get it. Well, when you bring in another addiction on top of that addiction, something like alcohol, drugs, sex, gambling, whatever, the person becomes less and less and less able to get narcissistic supply in any kind of productive way. Because in the life of any addict, there becomes more and more and more unmanageability as that addiction grows, the person's ability to manage life and all these external things while also managing this internal addiction, this obsession, recession that's taking over. It just becomes too much, and people start dropping balls. Now, that will happen with any person who's addicted. You know, you start missing deadlines, you start underperforming. You start not taking care of your responsibilities. You start letting people down. And so it's bad enough when you're just dealing with an addictive person, but if you throw the narcissism on top, that means that they're going to be getting less and less and less positive affirmation and validation from the people around them, which is going to put them in like, a severe withdrawal state from the narcissistic supply. And so which causes them to get very, very desperate. You're going to see a major increase in gaslighting. All the manipulation forms, blaming, deflection, ranting, raving, all the things are going to go through the roof because the people in the world around them are going to become less and less tolerant of them, let alone happy or validating of them, even if the person is a vulnerable narcissist. And they get most of their narcissistic supply from sort of playing the victim and having other people feel sorry for them. Once you start layering in those other typ types of addictions on the top, the people around them get less and less and less empathetic and tolerant of their situation, which creates this constant battle, which creates this sort of double withdrawal for the person in. For the narcissist who's also addicted. You're going to see a lot more anger lashing out and desperation, which honestly can get pretty dangerous. Now that I've said all that, I do want you to know that not every addicted person is a narcissist. Although most people that are addicted sort of look narcissist. They're not really narcissistic. And there's a way to tell the difference. And I explain it in this video. I'm going to put it right up here for you, and I want you to watch it next, because figuring out which one you're dealing with is extremely important. One of the things can be fixed and the other thing cannot be fixed.
