Tim Arrigo explains that narcissism stems from childhood wounds and deep inferiority, not from anything wrong with the people around them. He's worked 20,000+ clinical hours treating narcissistic patterns and says they can heal through intensive work. Partners should stop internalizing abuse and recognize love-bombing, devaluation, and discarding as cycles tied to their own unhealed trauma.
Tim, will my husband who's narcissistic, will he ever change? I want to explain something, number one, and this is something that a lot of people don't know about quote unquote narcissists, whether they're grandiose, covert, or malignant, that the narcissist is really somebody who has a fragile sense of self-esteem. They have secret feelings of vulnerability, inferiority, inadequacy, and unworthiness. This is why they have a grandiose sense of self-importance. This is why they're preoccupied with fantasies of power, brilliance, beauty, and the perfect mate. This is why they believe they're special and can only socialize or, or hang out with equally special people. This is why they need excessive validation. This is why they crave the validation from other people. The sense of entitlement that they have. This is why they exploit other people. They have a lack of empathy. They behave in a way that's arrogant. And this is why they have difficulty handling criticism, is because they have a broken sense of self-esteem. So when somebody is narcissistic, never see their behavior as a reflection of your worth and value. Always understand that their behavior is a reflection of how they really feel about themselves. They're secretly revealing how they really feel about themselves. Somebody who's narcissistic is an individual who didn't have their needs met in childhood. And so they overcompensate for that by becoming overprotective of themselves. They're an adult who's trapped in a childlike state of being. They're a child who's in a perpetual state of fight or flight. And they become intolerable of introspection, intolerable of self-reflection, self-analysis, self-examination. They can't look inside themselves. Because self-awareness was something that was painful for them. And so they overcompensate for that, and they develop this wall, this protective mechanism that many people see as narcissism. I want to let somebody know something. Number one, narcissism and narcissistic tendencies can be overcome. I see so many people talking about narcissism because it's a big buzzword, and this isn't a sympathy post for narcissists. This is the truth about what it actually is. It's a defense mechanism. That somebody has because they're wounded. It's a reflection of what really goes on inside of them. I worked in the clinical setting. I have over 20,000 hours of clinical experience. I've helped thousands of quote-unquote narcissists change, especially inside of the Total Breakthrough Academy. These guys come in with the label of being narcissistic, but what they are is actually wounded. And this can be changed with deep intensive work. It can be changed. It can be healed. But again, that's about them doing the work on the inside. So next time you see somebody who's narcissistic, understand one thing: they can change, number one. And number two, that their behavior is never a reflection of you and your worth and value. And if you're in a relationship with somebody who's quote unquote narcissistic, and you make them the scapegoat for every bad issue or bad problem in your life, you need to look at one thing. Why are you in that relationship? Why do you stay in a relationship where you settle for breadcrumbs and you tolerate abuse? What kind of message do you send yourself by staying in that cycle? This trauma bonded dysfunctional relationship where I'm in this repetition compulsion and I'm reenacting my childhood, reliving my childhood in an abusive relationship with an abusive partner. What does that say about me? What does that say about me that I stay here and then I justify it and then I fall victim to the love bombing, the devaluation, the discarding? What does that say about me? Because when I was in relationships like that, whether I was the perpetrator or I was the person that was on the receiving end of that, I had to ask myself one question: Why am I here? And the answer to that question will lead us to a place where we can heal and we can overcome the issues that cause us to stay in dysfunctional dynamics, because the real power move in our life is when we no longer tolerate any form of dysfunction.
