Someone in Your Family Is a Narcissist
It seems like there is a lot of talk about narcissism these days. Our Instagram feeds are full of psychologists asking provocative questions like “How do you know you’re with a narcissist?” Or “How do you escape a narcissist?” Or “How do you heal from the emotional abuse of a narcissist?” Much of that literature has to do with love relationships.; what I want to talk about today are my clients who have the sudden realization that someone in their family is a narcissist. It could be a parent, a sibling, or a child. And it can be just as devastating as finding out your romantic partner is a narcissist — maybe even more so, because these people are family. They are supposed to care about you. But narcissists are unable to care about anyone but themselves.
People think that a narcissist is someone who brags about themselves all the time. Many don’t realize all the different nuances, such as a person who never listens, whom you constantly have to build up without getting any of the same support in return. Sometimes I give my clients the criteria that define a narcissist, such as: an unwillingness to recognize the feelings of others; having a sense of entitlement; requiring excessive admiration with a grandiose sense of self-importance.
However they come to the understanding that someone in their family might be a narcissist, whether through social media, or diagnostic criteria, or digging deeply into their experience in session, this realization can be extraordinarily painful. They thought this person would care about them. It’s lonely to realize that for the narcissist, it’s really all about them. In the case of narcissistic parents, their children are merely a reflection of them. Anything good the children might do is because of the narcissist and anything wrong that they do is their fault. A narcissistic parent will take no responsibility.
The disappointment can be complicated by the fact that narcissists are often abusive. They announce their importance. They impress upon you how valuable, how essential, they are to your success and your peace of mind. When you’re a little kid, you can’t fight that off. You believe it; your brain isn’t yet formed. The narcissist made you feel dependent, and now that is actually an obstacle to realizing they have this diagnosis. For example, sometimes the narcissist will use money to keep you hooked. My clients may still have to play the game because they are now dependent in some way. This can happen with an older sibling as well who may be in charge of the family finances. I try to help my clients find their own agency, so that they’re able to look at a world in which the narcissists in their family might not be in charge of every decision.
Even after my clients come to the realization that someone in their family is a narcissist, however, they can still experience denial. “How could they?.. I’m his daughter/her brother/etc.?..” They can’t fully comprehend the reality because they still believe that a narcissist thinks the way they think, with empathy and self-reflection. I try to get my clients to imagine that, as smart as a narcissist can be, they are missing that dimension that controls emotional intelligence, or EQ.
EQ can be equated to self-awareness. It is the ability to read the room, to discern social cues. If that’s missing, you can’t have the deep relationship that you would like to have with somebody. If there is something major going on in your life; if you want to cry to them and for them to have compassion for you; if you want to ask for some serious advice and have a conversation where they give you real responses based on their understanding of human nature.… It’s just not going to happen. And that can be heart-breaking, at first.
Once you understand what narcissism is, like any mental health disorder, it clicks as to all the people in your life that are narcissists or were. It explains so much of the conflict, of your self-questioning, of the conversations that go nowhere. They go nowhere because they’re not about that person. People spend so much time trying to talk the narcissist into a different way of thinking.“Can’t you understand…?” they ask, sometimes beg. But while you can go around and around with narcissists, they will always be right and they will always have the last word.
What I tell people is you have to move this person back two tiers. You don’t have to get rid of them from your life, but they can no longer part of your inner circle. You don’t have to remove them, but you do have to back away slowly and move into an acceptance of them as they are.
I might counsel someone: “Find some things that you have in common with this sibling if you want to stay in a relationship with them and just focus on those things.” Maybe you and your mother like to shop or talk about pop culture. Maybe you and your brother have some sort of hobby that you can do together or you root for the same sports team. You can do those things provided you understand it’s going to be a superficial relationship, unless you want to continue to beat your head against the wall for the rest of your life.
