This is a big topic, and I fully intend to flesh it out in future posts. But allow me, here, to consider this question from the perspective of the work I do with couples. It is often surprisingly easy, from a couples therapy perspective, to weed out the narcissists from the non-narcissists; and more importantly, the salvageable from the unsalvageable narcissists.
Narcissists, as we know, will struggle to see things from their partners’ perspective. But let’s be clear: it is the reasons they struggle with this, not that they struggle with it, that signals their narcissism.
At the risk of oversimplifying, narcissists struggle to appreciate their partners’ perspective fundamentally because they are deeply self-centered; and their self-centeredness does not arise from a neuro-developmental disorder.
But why do narcissists struggle to see things from their partners’ perspective? Mainly, because to do so, in their experience, would concede the primacy—the overwhelming significance and importance—of their wants and needs.
For narcissistic personalities, the mere notion of others questioning the primacy of their experience is felt variously as insulting, outrageous, unacceptable, threatening and punishable.
In contrast, less narcissistic personalities are less threatened to consider their partners’ perspective, because they have a more equitable view of whose perspective matters. To be clear, for less narcissistic individuals, their perspective matters a lot, but their partners’ perspective also matters a lot.
But I want to be very clear: it’s not that less narcissistic personalities don’t take their own perspectives seriously, maybe even more seriously than their partners’; it’s just that they’re not inflexibly wedded to the idea that their experience—how they feel, how they think, what they want, what they need—is always, by definition, more important and valid than their partners’!
Believe it or not, this is a virtual litmus test for problem levels of narcissism. When I work with couples, I am interested to encourage, and then see, something very important. I’m interested to encourage, first of all, the idea that “validating” your partner’s experience is not the same as endorsing it, agreeing with it, or even, necessarily, fully understanding it.
And “validating” your partner’s experience certainly doesn’t obligate you to abandon your own, possibly very different perception of the situation.
And so I often discuss this model of validation with couples in some depth—especially, the idea that you can recognize your partner’s experience; be willing, interested and curious to appreciate, and better understand, your partner’s experience, from her perspective; and recognize the sanity and sense of your partner’s experience, again from her perspective, without any of this effort and interest requiring you to concede your own, and perhaps very different, experience of the situation.
As you can see, validating, in this model, is the process of recognizing your partner’s experience from her perspective. It is not a process, as noted, of necessarily agreeing with, or even fully understanding your partner; and most certainly—and I can’t stress this enough— it is not a contest of whose perceptions of any given situation are more accurate and right, versus less accurate and more wrong.
Many find this a liberating concept, as it can allow for a relaxation of a common and unhelpful defense: I can’t validate what you’re saying or feeling, because to do so would effectively invalidate my experience.
In other words, from the perspective I’m describing, it’s possible—indeed, with motivation and practice, surpisingly easy—to validate another’s experience without in the least invalidating your own. In fact, this is a model of validation that’s relatively easy to practice because it respects the integrity of one’s own perceptions and experiences.
Once the need for the above defense is removed—and I work hard with couples to remove it—the couple’s capacity to appreciate each others’ experiences of each other often improves significantly.
Partners discover that, because the integrity of their personal experience is preservable, they can actually listen to each others’ experiences with more interest, curiosity and less defensiveness.
In marriages in which some goodwill remains, partners who buy into the model of validation I’m describing often find themselves striving for even more—that is, more than merely endeavoring to listen to each other more effectively, they often find themselves striving to make their partner’s experiences less frustrating and more satisfying.
Conversely, where no goodwill remains in the relationship, everything I’m discussing becomes pretty much moot. Narcissist or not, the marriage, with no goodwill left, is almost certainly dead. It’s just awfully difficult to recover goodwill in a relationship when the “goodwill tank” begins in the therapist’s office with the arrow on empty.
In any case, what happens in my office is often very interesting. The highly narcissistic and, in extreme cases, sociopathic client, cannot do what I’m discussing. Specifically, he is unable, with sincerity and effectiveness, to apply the model of validation I’ve described.
I suggested above the reason for this: he is simply too deeply, inflexibly invested in the significance, if not superiority, of his experience to make enough room for genuine interest in his partners’ experience, even after he’s been introduced to, and given ample time to digest, the proposed model of validation.
That is, this model of validation still falls well short of his demands. Sure, it’s nice that his partner is making efforts to recognize and appreciate his experience from his perspective. He’ll certainly take that, but he wants more than that.
Not surprisingly, what’s necessary—that is, what he still insists on and continues to demand—is his partner’s total capitulation to his way of seeing things.
This is the essence of his narcissism or, if you prefer, his deep, immutable self-centeredness.
Will these individuals show their cards immediately? More often than not, yes. More often than not, whether in my office or outside it (between therapy sessions), they’ll demonstrate, sooner than later, their inability to apply the kind of mutual validation under discussion.
But what about the smooth manipulator? It’s true that a smooth operator, a sociopath, for instance, can fake this process for some time, if he perceives it’s in his selfish interest to do so. (By “fake it,” I mean that he may seem to grasp it, apply it, and be invested in it.)
Yet, in my experience, even the manipulative individual masquerading as sensivitely invested in this form of validating communication, will almost always, sooner than later, reveal chinks in his mask; almost always, sooner than later, he’ll lapse into the highly self-centered attitudes and behaviors of the classic narcissist—attitudes and behaviors characterized by high, rationalized levels of under-accountability and non-transparency.
And so, while the slick manipulator may “get over” for a while, it’s usually not for long. That is, while he may present, initially, as reasonable, flexible and motivated, sooner than later his disguise will fray, revealing his true agenda in the forms of his usual presumptions and entitlement to ongoing gratification.
And so who is the salvageable partner? Narcissist or not, I’d venture to suggest he’s the partner capable of understanding, and appreciating, the concept of validation I propose.
He will be highly motivated to apply it, which is to say, willing to work hard, consistently and sustainedly at applying it; and, of course, he must be capable of applying it.
But the nice thing is, if he’s willing to work hard at it, he’ll definitely succeed.
In which case he won’t be a narcissist or, at the very least, his narcissism will prove to have been less extreme, and less emotionally crippling, than we might have feared.
(This article, the first of several impending articles on this subject, is copyrighted © 2010 by Steve Becker, LCSW. My use of male gender pronouns in this article was purely for convenience’s sake. Females are also capable of the attitudes and behaviors discussed.)
EB – you said:’I think of life as a good book. The further you get into it, the more it begins to make sense.” -Harold Kushner’
i would have related to this in my early 40’s; but as the suckage factor started to climb, and i couldn’t meditate, accept or fight my way out of it, i have lost this sense completely. it’s been 4 years of deepening, exponential weirdness. i know i am in a sweet spot right now – i have a job and can pay my rent and have money to work on my health. i know this will tip again in three months and i am so terrified of that that it is keeping me up some nights. like you i am trying to keep a few things on the back burner, and this is one of them, but it doesn’t mean it doesn’t leak through. i also started my job finding campaign this week – i can’t actually look for jobs, but i deal with a lot of people all the time and i am putting out my availability to the people i talk to.
With the exponential nature of my response to stressors, i know that i am much more afraid of the poverty and feeling trapped than i was last year. i hope that i will be able to pull the ability to cope out of my hat…i hope that the campaigning i am doing pays off; that the infrared saunas pay off; that the neurofeedback pays off; that having detached from the spath to a much greater degree pays off.
i told one of my co workers that i have PTSD. i told her i have problems with anxiety, and with things like remembering names. i am working more and more closely with her, and i needed to tell her. i am unerringly embarrassed by how i function. i think that’s why i talk about my deficiencies so often – i am in chronic pain, but i want people to know that i am challenged: i want them to know that i would be so much more if i wasn’t. in this way i am constantly apologizing for my limitations. may not sound like shame and guilt, but that is what it is. i really just want to be loved and respected and i can no longer meet the standards i have in the past, or my own standards. i am 50, and i have years to go in which i have to make a living, with a body that is in pieces and will as all our bodies do, go slowly to dust. the pain and lack of sun in the horizon warps my personality and experience of life. i am terrified all the time and it shows.
i have a business colleague i have spoken about here many times. i gave him some hand rolled truffles for xmas. he stopped by my place to pick them up. he said, oh, you are looking so much better, you’ve dropped some wieght…blah blah. …and you know, he’s completely fucking full of shit. HE wants that to be true – i have decided that he can say whatever, think whatever he wants, but the next time he says this crap i am going to challenge him on it – he doesn’t want to deall with my fear or maybe the negativity that comes with it – what fucking ever – but i am not listening to this pollyanna version of my life from anyone anymore. i ran in to lost freind #2 last week, and my conversation with him, was my saying, rather vaguely, what was going on and him saying, oh no it can’t be, you are such and such and this and that, AND NO , I AM EFFING NOT! STOP TRYING TO REWRITE MY FREAKING EXPERIENCE TO ONE YOU ARE COMFORTABLE WITH. MY LIFE ***IS*** UNFREAKING COMFORTABLE. AND ****THAT**** IS WHY I WILL NEVER COURT RENEWED FRIENDSHIP WITH LOST FRIEND #1. he has always been in denial, and pollyanna-ish. i am just sick of it. it is NOT supportive – people sometimes act as if all i need is a little ‘perspective’ adjustment. the next person that comments on my body – well, i am going to open my coat, lift up my shirt so that they can see my gut hanging over my pants, my ‘pregnant’ profile the fat around my back…….every day i wish people could feel what i feel in my body. all the pain and the growing restrictions and limitations, how doing any exercise (like i did with the physio on friday)if i am not extremely careful, puts me in pain for days …and i want to feel what other people they feel – to form a bridge, to get some relief. i now my pain is not the worse pain, many people suffer as i do, and many suffer much much worse. but i suffer and i am fucking tired of people trying to manipulate the situation to pretend otherwise.
Rant not unexpected, and not expended yet. 🙂
aussie and sky- the lf week of ‘xmas family pain’ has officially started.
i am so glad that i am not celebrating xmas – the stress of that would make it even harder to hear the pain within myself about my family.
i so hear you about your mum Aussie. I now have the same situation. my sib did the same years ago (i am starting to wonder though, if that was a classic n stand off between my sib and father. she has her problems for sure, but i am thinking one if them may well be n)
I am wondering how i can spend some time with my mom – i don’t know that i have the heart for it even. i would have to meet her in a little restaurant near their home (dog in the house- allergies) and that means n father has to drive her there. i just don’t know. I can’t talk to her in the phone; the dementia makes it impossible.
I think i have to, first and foremost, PROTECT and REPLENISH myself over xmas. so, i think that means, no visit with mom. just send the little gift and card. I have to use the same criteria for the person i am most connected to in the world, as i would for the spath- i have to focus on ME. If the things surrounding seeing my mom are going to traumatize me, then i need to not see her.
she too has constantly forsaken her children for her n husband. for much of my life I have forsaken myself for her. and as much as it hurts her not to understand why i stay away, i cannot put her first. She’s NOT ME, and she will ‘never pull me up in life’; she will die and all i will have is fucked boundaries, and the sum of my sacrifice to her. and still, there will be no one who protects me and puts me first.
aussie – re your repsonse to hearing that your father may be ill. i now i would react exactly the same way, especially as it would mean i could have a relationship with my mom.
when my father’s father, who was not a great man either, and created some serious BS in my life, killed himself, i was only relieved that i would never have to deal with him again.
i loved my father, and it is walled off. i will let it flow when he splatters his brains across his office with a shotgun (unless he is felled by a sudden heart attack, which is quite possible given his med. history, this is how he will die. that’s one thing about my family – they are all about letting me know how they will off themselves. i told him years ago that that was THE most selfish thing i have ever heard (duh!)and that if that was the course he was going to pursue he damn well better do it in the woods, because someone would have to clean up that mess and be scarred forever by it.)
i will forgive him when he is gone, and not until. but i will forgive him. if i go before he does, i will forgive him in the last moments of my life; i want to go out of this life clean, even if i don’t live free. i loved him too long and too hard to not feel burdened by nc.
Dear Aussiegirl,
That is what happens with relationships AROUND the Ns and Ps, they damage the relationships we would LIKE TO HAVE with others in their sphere.
My sons and I have a dear friend, S., who is married to a “drama queen” that we despise. She is not a psychopath but she is SO dysfunctional she is irritating to be around, but we love to be around him, so we PUT UP WITH a limited amount of her in order to associate with S. He is in poor health and there is NOT going to be a divorce, he is stuck with her and her drama and if we want to visit with him it is with her as a “side dish.”
However, because our relationship with her is not one of unbearable betrayal, more just an irritation, we can TOLERATE IT. With your mum, it is another situation entirely. It is like she is between the two of your and she has to “make a choice” because I am sure he is telling her what an ungrateful spiteful, stupid and mean child you are to treat him as you do….and she has always been the “peace keeper” between the two of you, the grease that kept the wheels turning in the family and the status quo going on. Dysfunctional but one in which NO SURPRISES HAPPENED.
Some “enablers” will be the GREASE and some will try to grease the wheels and IF YOU REFUSE TO BE GREASED they will PUNISH YOU for not complying. My grandmother was the GREASY ENABLER, but my egg donor is one that will use a ball-peen hammer to pound your square peg into her round hole and MAKE YOU COMPLY.
So I have divided the enablers into two classes in my mind, like my grandmother the “greaser” enabler and my egg donor the “ball-peen hammer” enabler.
The greaser enablers guilt you into complying with their enabling, “Your daddy has worked so hard at his job to provide for you he just didn’t know how to be gentle with you, but he loves you, so please over look his irritability>”
The “ball peen hammer” enabler will try the grease first most of the time, but if that doesn’t work it is “If you don’t do what I say, and forgive, then God will send you to hell for eternity where you will roast in fire because you didn’t forgive and trust ______(fill in the blank with the name) even though they have continued to abuse you/others, and besides, what will the neighbors think? It is YOUR fault for not forgiving and making peace. You are the one causing the uproar in the family by objecting to being abused.”
Once I realized that “forgiveness” by HER DEFINITION was not true, that I could get the bitterness out of my heart and still not TRUST THESE PEOPLE and that I was OK doing that….and realized that she (egg donor) didn’t have the ONLY direct line to God’s will, hey, life got simple, and things got less confusing.
Add in validating my own feelings and WOW! Adulthood! Hey aussie girl, I was over 60 when I finally validated my own decisions, you caught on EARLY by comparison! LOL (((hugs)))
Dear One_step,
Sometimes I think dementia is a BLESSING to the elderly, not a curse.
Having worked in a geri-psych ward in a hospital for my last job before the air craft crash, I at first felt like we were “shoveling sand on the beach” we were not going to get anything accomplished for these poor people they were not going to get their mind’s back to function or know who they were or anything else.
About the best we could do was to get them n on-combative so that staff could meet their needs for physical care and they could go back to a nursing home. Nursing homes are no longer allowed to physically “restrain” or chemically “restrain” patients like we used to do in the old days, so we would maybe spend 4-6 weeks with these patients getting them where they were still very demented and confused, but were placid and happy at least.
As I saw things change with these people I began to see that my own EXPECTATIONS FOR THEIR TREATMENT were not realistic or reasonable and that getting them “oriented to person, place and time” wasn’t reasonable, but it was OK for them to be “disoriented” as long as they were CONTENT in their disorientation.
Their brains were damaged by “Organic Brain Syndrome” or strokes, or Altzheimers or God knows what sort of damage, and we were not going to FIX that….but so what if they didn’t know their kids? or spouse? or that their husband/wife had died 10 years before and still talked too them? Or thought the aid was their child? Or carried around a Cabbage Patch doll and thought it was their baby?
So your mother being disoriented, losing her memory etc. may be God’s gift to her, it may be a salve to her soul that in her old age she doesn’t have to feel the pain from your abusive father any more? She doesn’t have the stress of trying to “fix” the problems in the family now. She may not even be aware you are not visiting or how long between visits.
I’m not sure what stage she is in as far as her memory and so on, but don’t assume that she is suffering. YOU may be suffering from not having the kind of relationship you want(ed) with her, but maybe she isn’t suffering. So hang in there One, and just play the cards you are dealt, they may be better cards than you first thought they were. (((hugs))))
oxy – even if the n parent isn’t actively maligning our personalities, our enabling parent has an alliance to the n, as supply, that predates our arrival.
my mom was perfectly groomed as supply given her background, and i am sure she didn’t even see it. but i have always known in my gut, if not consciously, that she was his supply, first and foremost and that by extension my sib and i were, also. and that i was abandoned. now, there were other circumstances in my life that deepened my sense of being alone and at risk as a kid, but she was ‘his’, and that would have been the same regardless of the circumstances.
this all looked somewhat ‘normal’ given the rural life and the ‘family’ ethic of the the decades i grew up in – kids were meant to help, that was our role. and remain silent. and not cause waves. and not ask for shit.
a few years ago, when i let her know that he had in fact not made any attempt to pay the inheritance (after years of my being ‘paient’ and trying to ‘facilitate’ the transaction) she stood up and said, ‘well, if he thinks he can get away with that! i’ll take your side’! the next day, in a full on demented moment – she came ambling across the yard, hair undone, underwear and a shirt on – but no pants on, tears streaming down her face begging me not to ‘break our family up’….All i could do was hug her and promise not to. And of course, she doesn’t remember what he has done.
hi oxy – even though i haven’t had a lot of contact with my mom in the last year, i was very involved in her life/ care and have a very good idea of her situation and how she feels. one thing i am confident of in the last few years was that my relationship to my mom as a demented person was positive, loving and realistic; and that i did a very good job of making sure i didn’t project my needs on to her. (i am the daughter who sacrifices) I spent a lot of time learning about support through the Alzheimers’ society, and implementing their guidelines. I have always been very able to meet my mother in her most gentle places – and that’s a lot of what is left for her. i am the person who would go into her world with her, and not demand that she be in some semblance of this one. i spent three years roaming around in her demented reality 24/7. in fact this is one of my biggest fights with the n dad – he keeps insisting that she show up in his n little world; expects that she continue to be supply, to do things ‘right’; to not be frustrating to be around…..and as she cannot push back against him as she used to do, he runs over her emotionally on a daily basis, laying ruin to the faculty she possesses now – her emotional life.
she is suffering emotionally because of the time and distance between us, we talk about this. she is suffering greatly because she cannot do what she has done in the past. she cannot think things through, loses the thread and cannot even remember to remember to ….anything.
she suffers a lot. i am not assuming anything; i know.
i get where you are coming from, but don’t think this is a blessing to her in any way. although i know her brain suffered a lot of physical and chemical trauma, and that one form of dementia they identified is hereditary, i have been introduced to the idea on lf that there might have been a choice on her part, in some way. it was always her greatest fear – (after losing the n). she was an RN, and was the head of nursing in geriatric wards and nursing homes. When she was nursing the prognosis for dementia patients scared the beejesus out of her. and here she is.
Dear One_step,
Well maybe not remembering (or denial) is the best she can do in her circumstances. Admitting that she has been his “supply” at the peril of not only her own soul and happiness but at her children’s too is more “truth” and subsequent pain than she can bear.
I know that my grandmother (egg donor’s mother) was a passive type of “supply” for the abusers in the family, just like her own mother had been, and her excuse for not stopping my Uncle Monster from smothering the egg donor as a infant and child was that if she told my Grandfather he would spank uncle Monster and uncle monster “might run away from home.” DUH???? She tried to keep egg donor near her so Monster wouldn’t do it in plain sight of his mother, but only when no one was around. I’ve often wondered what egg donor thought about her own mother not really protecting her, but protecting her brother Monster from the consequences of hurting her.
Egg donor is an enabler too, but if you don’t go along with it, she is also a PUNISHER and will bash your square self into her round hole of compliance if you don’t go along voluntarily by her guilt.
Took me a long time to see the differences between the passive enabler who works from keeping secrets and guilt, vs the one who will punish you if you don’t comply. Don’t know what makes the differences between one kind and the other, but I do think there is a big difference in how they work.
The punisher type wants CONTROL of your behavior, and seems to feel like whatever they have to do to MAKE YOU COMPLY is OK. The more passive kind won’t fight you, but will try to bribe you or guilt you into complying with their “don’t upset the apple cart” desires.
Sounds like your mom stood up for you, and rocked daddy-kins boat and he slapped her around.
As far as you getting back whatever your dad stole from you (I think it was from your grandmother’s inheritence wasn’t it?) don’t count on getting justice. (don’t mean to sound like a party pooper there, but as you know I don’t trust the court sytems)
naw, no slapping around oxy ( there never was) (although i do like the ‘boat reference. 😉 – i was in the house at the time. she never mentioned it to him…all of it took place inside her own heart and mind.
my dad IS a punisher. and i am fairly certain that’s why he took my inheritance. he’s punishing me for refusing to be supply to him and to his father – who i took a very active and ultimately public stand against.
supply people are fear based. not love based. so they capitulate to abusers and do not stand up for those they love. the biggest bark wins.
but we, we get to stop those cycles. they stop with us. unfortunately, many of us don’t get to pass that on as we don’t have kids – and i am sure that i didn’t because of the legacy i was still mired in. that’s a big hurt for me; it haunts me more and more. it’s in my drawer of ‘things to heal, when i am able’.
Dear One_step,
You know I wanted grandkids even more than I had wanted kids (and I DID want children!!!) NOW, I am sooooo VERY glad I did not have those grandkids to be used as pawns in the psychopathic game of life! I feel so much sadness for people with children that are used as pawns either kids or grandkids, but we even have LESS control over how our grandkids are used as we don’t even have “parental rights.”
Liane Leedom said once that there should be NO such thing as “parental rights’ just CHILDREN’s rights! I agree with her 110%.
Well, I got my meat all packed up and ready to go to the big freezer. I got myself a vacuum sealer for my birthday and it is wonderful! Sucks all the air out of the package and seals it nicely! I wish I’d done that years ago! What I get for being too CHEAP to buy myself something nice! LOL
Used up all the special bags I had for it, so awaiting the post man to bring me more I ordered off the internet. Next big processing will be over 3-day new year’s holiday, weather permitting (not too hot) Rain won’t be a problem as we can work indoors, but don’t want it to be too warm or too cold either!
Well, I hope and pray your mom doesn’t realize at this point just how dysfunctional her life has been, there comes a point that denial is self preservation for the supply victims. They get like old drunks, they can’t let go of the bottle that got them where they are, only the oblivion of dementia or death can release them from the pain.
My egg donor is there–she isn’t going to change, she couldn’t if she wanted to, she doesn’t have to tools or equipment to change, so she is stuck where she is. She isn’t demented per se, but she isn’t able to function in a normal way, can’t do it. All I can do is to minimize the damage she does to me by supplying money to P-son. I don’t wish her an early demise, but won’t be a big grief for me when she does pass, just means that I have to start on the next phase of the “keep money away from P-son” plan. Same with P son, don’t wish Bubba would shove a shiv in his gut, but I won’t grieve if it happened. I’ve done my grieving while they were alive physically, so no more need to do it when they pass away.