How to live this life if you are a narcissist

My name is Shevchenko Sergey. I am a clinical psychologist. Working with narcissistic clients is the main focus of my activity. For more than 10 years, I have been studying the specifics of the psyche and therapeutic strategies that help these individuals shift from accumulating social status to caring for their real emotional needs.

What is narcissism

Narcissism is a system of automated ways of dealing with one's emotional needs, formed in situations where caregivers do not take interest in the child's personality and emotional world, instead focusing on achievements. Whether they praise or criticize is irrelevant. What's important is that achievements are the basis on which their attitude towards the child is built.

Messages like “You are so talented! You can become a great scientist” and “You are so stupid! You can't even solve this equation” equally signal to the child that achievements define how they are treated. Moreover, this teaches the child to form their self-esteem based on achievements. Narcissists believe “I am what I achieve.”

Example

Vitaliy was born into a wealthy family. His mother told him from an early age that he has high potential that must be nurtured. She was very happy with his successes in school and sports, believing him to be a genius child. At the same time, she reacted to failures with disappointment, simply standing up and leaving the room, leaving the child alone, and remaining cold for the rest of the day.

As a result of such treatment, the child learns to ignore everything in life except achievements. After this, they may go down two paths:

1. Grandiose narcissism - over the years, he creates a 'cool' image from accumulated social status and achievements to cope with the fear of being exposed and humiliated. Using this image, he hides his 'vulnerabilities' from himself and others.

2. Deficient narcissism - he does not believe he can achieve much on his own and therefore seeks a 'cool' partner to cling to, using them to maintain his self-esteem based on the principle “if such a great person loves me, then it means I am great too.”

Due to the absolute ignorance of their emotional needs, narcissists suffer from loneliness, burnout, emotional exhaustion, and complain that nothing in life fulfills them.

Psychotherapy is a very difficult process for them, because to regain strength and zest for life, they have to fundamentally change their attitude towards themselves and others.

Here are the main steps they have to take:

1️⃣ Discover and accept their vulnerabilities

2️⃣ Start caring about their emotional needs

3️⃣ Build close stable relationships

As I have mentioned, the path of personal change is very difficult for a narcissist. Below are the mistakes they most often make in trying to improve their lives.

❌ Mistakes

1. Attempts to completely suppress the desire to criticize and devalue.

Fairly quickly in psychotherapy, the narcissist discovers that their self-criticism and criticism of others devastatingly affect their life and relationships. The first reaction to this discovery becomes a fight against this tendency. The narcissist literally tries to stop critical thoughts and give up the desire to criticize others. As a result, the desire to criticize becomes unconscious and continues to operate on its own, unnoticed. Instead of critical thoughts, vague dissatisfaction with oneself appears, and instead of criticizing others, 'jokes' with a derogatory tone appear.

In essence, nothing changes. The problem simply goes deeper, where it is harder to work with. To avoid this, from the very beginning, it is necessary to explore why criticism is happening and achieve the same goals in a different way. Then there will be no need for criticism anymore. For instance, narcissists often criticize themselves to push themselves towards greater achievements. If the narcissist starts to trust that their own natural desires are enough for growth and development, then the desire to criticize will disappear.

2. Attempts to change quickly and 'effectively'.

Narcissists treat themselves as a mechanism that creates achievements. Accordingly, they view psychotherapy as a machine that creates personal changes. And that's a dead end. As long as they treat themselves as a machine that can be quickly adjusted to work better, nothing will change. Because they continue to ignore the fact that they are human beings who need a nurturing environment and time for change, continuing to ignore their emotional needs.

3. Attempts to find the perfect partner

Narcissists like to set the goal of finding a partner that fully meets their expectations. Of course, no one in this world can do that. Therefore, narcissists always end up in relationships that do not meet these expectations. They then face a choice: abandon their expectations or the partner. Often, they choose the latter, and the cycle repeats.

What to do? To stop this, they have to notice and accept their own imperfections. When narcissists see that they themselves are far from perfect and come to terms with this, it becomes much easier for them to build stable relationships.

Now more about the path of narcissist psychotherapy.

Discover and accept your vulnerabilities

This is the most difficult step. It is challenging because narcissists do not want to do either the first or the second. The first threatens their self-esteem, and the second scares them that they will relax and lose their coolness. Narcissists only dare to do this when they have tried everything else and have no other choice. They see that if they do not accept their weaknesses, they do not accept the weaknesses of other people. They are intolerant and because of that, lose close relationships and suffer greatly from loneliness. Seeing this pattern helps them start to accept themselves.

Start caring about your emotional needs

By exploring their vulnerabilities, narcissists recognize what they deeply desire. Usually, they discover they want to be seen and loved for who they really are, without their facade of coolness. They also find they want very simple things like rest, being listened to, respected, relaxing with friends, singing, drawing, and all this fulfills them much more than their usual achievement-driven activities. Just understanding this is not enough. They have to learn to actively care for all these needs.

Build close stable relationships

I lied when I said the first point is the hardest. Actually, this one is the hardest. But it is essential. Without new relationships where the narcissist believes they can be loved not for their achievements, but for who they are, it is impossible to overcome the childhood-formed belief that everyone is loved 'for something.' Narcissists truly are convinced that this is how the world works.

Thank you for your interest.

Sergey Shevchenko, Clinical psychologist, psychotherapist at the Moscow Gestalt Institute, member of the European Association for Gestalt Therapy (EAGT)