Narcissism

Hello, everybody. Welcome to Health Chatter. Today's show is on the issue of narcissism, which is an interesting topic that's got some interesting thoughts behind it all. And we'll get to our guest in a second. We've got a wonderful crew, Maddy Levine-Wolf, Erin Collins, Deondra Howard, and Sheridan Nygaard do all our background research for us and do a wonderful job. Thank you to them. Matthew Campbell is our production director/manager gets all the shows out to you, the listening audience, and also Sheridan does our marketing as well. So it's a great crew. Thank you to all of you. You're second to none. Clarence Jones is my partner in crime on this podcast. We have a heck of a good time doing it. We chat a lot, not only online with our podcast, but offline too. 

So he's a great colleague. Clarence, thanks. You're absolutely wonderful. Hue-man Partnership is our sponsor for our shows. Wonderful community health organization. Check them out at huemanpartnership.org. Check us out at healthchatterpodcast.com. I'm Stan Shandling, co-host along with Clarence. And here we go. Today we've got Brandon Jones with us, who is the Executive Director of the Minnesota Association of Children's Mental Health. His background is in sociology, community psychology, marriage and family therapy, psychotherapist, professor, and behavioral health consultant prior to his leadership in the Minnesota Association of Children's Mental Health. He's a wonderful colleague, got wonderful background, and hopefully he can give us some insight into this subject of narcissism. So let's start it out. Brandon, thanks for being with us. So let's start first by defining for our listening, what is narcissism? 

Absolutely. Greetings and thanks for having me. I'm looking forward to our conversation today. Now, narcissism is a very popular mental health diagnosis. A lot of people take usually the negative perspective on narcissism. I try to give it a little bit more love because I understand there are people who really do live with this. diagnosis and it's not just a character defect that an individual has. So narcissism refers to the expressive self-love, self-absorption, and a lack of empathy towards others. It's rooted in a person's inflated sense of their own self-importance and a deep need to exercise attention and admiration for oneself. Some of the key features of narcissism are self-focus, the need for admiration, the lack of empathy, the inflated self-image, and fragile self-esteem. 

And those last two are usually what get in the way of people who have the diagnosis of narcissism and cause a lot of social conflict within their daily lives. So give me the positive spin on it then. You said you like to... So far, it kind of seems negative to me. Because it is a problematic... disorder. It is a problematic thing, but there are people who truly live with this diagnosis and they try to not have these negative effects, but they live with a condition like any other mental health condition. It can be very difficult to navigate. So I try to keep some positivity in there because most people who are narcissists don't realize it until it's pointed out by a professional. And then they're like, oh, this makes a lot of sense. 

This is why I've done the things that I've done or people have pointed things out to me that I never realized. But I think one of the key things is a lot of narcissist people are very successful. A lot of them find themselves in leadership positions. A lot of them find themselves in fields where they can succeed or they find themselves to the top. That's a positive aspect. And if they can control and navigate their emotions, their narcissism can lead to a very successful life. In my professional career clinically, I know for sure that I have been a therapist for four narcissists. They all were people here in the state of Minnesota. They all worked for good companies or some of the Fortune 500s that we have here. 

And they all were in leadership positions. And recently I wrote an article talking about how narcissism shows up in leadership because I'm currently doing coaching, leadership coaching. And we stumbled upon this. But one of my current clients, I'm pretty sure he has a narcissistic personality disorder. So I encouraged him to go ahead and I didn't make a referral, but I encouraged him to go ahead and talk to a therapist and get a diagnostic assessment because he may be having some issues that he's not aware of. Now, this is a really nice guy. He's nice. He talks very highly of his friends and his family members. But it's all about him. His level of empathy is so low. And we stumbled upon this because he's been having some conflicts lately. 

He's noticed a pattern that he's an entrepreneur and he noticed a pattern that when he's trying to work collaboratively with individuals, the contracts never reached their fulfillment. And what I was what I and I picked this up because I've been working with him now for about a year. And I'm like, man, there's something going on here. I didn't think I didn't think of narcissism at first. So I started to ask him about, well, what's happening in these relationships? And it gets to this point of contention where he's worried about how that person's work is going to make him look. And that's that fragile self-esteem piece that comes in. So it's one of those things that most people don't realize until it just kind of pops up. 

But again, these folks, they can be high motivators. These folks, like I said, they can learn skills very well. They can succeed socially. especially in the paradigm that we live in today, but their relationship, their personality skills are very self-centered and that doesn't always work in our humanistic society that we live in today. So Brandon, let me ask you this question. How does narcissism develop? I mean, do you just, you know, is it just something that's innate that you just do or are there social factors that causes it? You know, one of the things I wanted to share was that I have seen so many people walking down the street taking photographs of themselves on every step that they make. Like, what is this? 

I mean, I literally saw a lady almost walk into a wall. Oh, yeah. So it's like taking a selfie, narcissistic behavior. I'm like, you know, what is this? I mean, you didn't change that much. Maybe, you know, you moved your head or something. But what is it? How does it develop? Absolutely. Well, from what we know, narcissism develops kind of three factors play a role. You have environmental factors. So, you know, the parent-child dynamic, either there's too much, you know, attachment, too much adortion of a child, or there's too little. There's a lot of criticism. There's a lot of, you know, corrective action that happens for a child. So they're on one end or the other of these extremes of parenting. And then as a child's going through their developmental stages, 

They're starting to make up ideas through their worldview because of how the parents treat them. So the overabundance of love or not enough love, but just not right in the middle. So that's one element that has been associated with narcissism through research. The other is genetics. So inherited characteristics, such as just various different personality traits. So sometimes you can have some of these things passed on. Now, one would say that there's an interplay between the genetics and the environment. So if your parent... possesses these things, chances are they're going to parent with that personality type and you're going to pick up those things as well. But there's also been some more science and research that has associated itself with the neurobiology, which is just connecting the brain to the behaviors and thinking. 

So a lot of cognitive behavioral therapy, which is one of the key tools that's utilized in therapy for folks who are narcissistic. So narcissism has this kind of complex interplay between genetics, environment, and psychological factors. So I've got two questions here. Are people who are power hungry, are they typically narcissistic? They can be, absolutely. I would actually answer that question in the reverse. Most narcissistic people are power hungry. It's probably a better way to say it. Okay, got it. Because you can be power hungry and not necessarily be a narcissist. but you might like that control or you might just seize an opportunity. But if you are narcissistic, you're definitely power hungry. You're trying to find a way to not just control everything, but be that center of attention, be the top of the mountain. 

That's one of the main drives for a narcissistic person. So are there particular professions that tend to be more narcissistic? Like, you know, just that comes to my mind are like politicians. Are politicians more, do they kind of have a narcissistic tendency? Yeah, I think you can, I'm not gonna name any names, but I think through history, we've seen tons of politicians who would fit the diagnosis criteria for narcissism. I would say politicians, coaches, CEOs in general, just people who lead business, sometimes even entrepreneurs, Any position that gives you a built-in level of authority or assertiveness, I think, is a good fit for a narcissist. I've even seen them in positions like dentists. One of my clients was a dentist, so a very well-known dentist here in the Twin Cities area. 

I guess I had a few people who worked in, I'm not going to name any companies, but they worked in some of the larger companies that we have here. One was in medical. One was in a tech field. The other one worked for a big store department. They find themselves in leadership positions. Believe it or not, you may even find a lot of narcissists in religious sectors as well, people who certainly lead clergy and things of that nature. You wouldn't think it because they're usually using whatever the higher power is, but there's a level of that authority being the lead person within this spiritual realm, being the connection to you and the clergy and the higher power. You'll find folks who are also in the religious sector as well as narcissists. 

Narcissism, first of all, I can't, you know, people come, let's say to you as a therapist, do they come to you knowing that they have narcissism or do they come to you knowing that they have particular issues and then narcissism is identified as the problem? Yeah, it's more the latter. people come with particular issues and then we kind of stumble upon the narcissism as we kind of break down or filter through what is happening. Some people have been told, you know, narcissism has gained a lot of popularity due to the internet. I would say over the last maybe 10 years, there's some very popular youtubers who talk about narcissism. There's a lot of uh folks on tiktok that talk about even folks who have the diagnosis themselves on tiktok talking about their experience. 

But So the field that has highlighted this the most has been the divorce field. So there's a lot of divorce lawyers and people who've gone through the divorce. We talk about their narcissistic exes, which is a very interesting dynamic. So the heightened awareness has brought more of what you said, where people are coming in with the curiosity like, hey, I think I'm narcissistic. And here's why. Because the awareness around the diagnosis has increased due to technology, due to social media. But most people, then this is what I've encountered or what I've heard from other clinicians that I've worked with, most folks who do have the diagnosis of narcissistic personality disorder, these are folks who realize that there's something that's not going quite well with their relationships. 

They're noticing these breakdowns and it's getting to a point, this is how interesting this diagnosis is. It gets to the point where it's starting to impact their narcissism. They're wondering why aren't these people... Doing the things that I want or they're not supporting me or I don't have this image that I expect to have. And that's what's going to lead me to figure out what's wrong. Not necessarily what's wrong with me. What's wrong with these people around me? So it can be their children. You hear a lot about their children, their partners, parents, family members, things like that. But typically, that's how people kind of get the idea who have this disorder, get the idea that maybe I should go talk to someone. 

So, Brandon, let's talk about those exes, okay? Because I think what's important to know is how are they experiencing this? What are they going through? And then how do they take care of themselves in this process? Because a lot of people, as you just said, who are not narcissistic, but they're the exes or the others in those relationships, they're starting to have these real strong feelings about this person. So what is it that we need to do when we are not sure we're not doing a diagnosis, but we're like saying like, you know, there's something amiss here. Absolutely. So, you know, to, of course, just like any other strain you have in your life, you have to look at your physical health and your mental slash emotional health as well. 

A lot of people who find themselves in relationship dynamics with narcissism, they start to have high stress related issues, high levels of high, high blood pressure. You know, they might often, often develop other stress-related health concerns. Lifestyle factor becomes a problem as well, where you may disengage from social events or social clubs or things that you're supposed to be attached to because you don't want your partner to show up or you want to neglect being around them. Substance use may even increase because you're trying to figure out ways to cope with some of the strain that's happening within the household. And then something that often doesn't get talked about but happens with many people is you start to neglect your health. You start to not pay attention to some of the things that are going on. 

You start minimizing how you feel because you don't want to highlight what's going on with you because due to the narcissistic kind of bond that's created, you want to keep the attention on that individual instead of on yourself so that they're not abusing you in any way. So that's one thing that definitely can happen. And then, of course, I think there's mental and emotional health issues as well, relationship strain issues. You may be getting put down. You know, one thing that narcissists do a lot in relationships is they have these these different types of mechanisms that they utilize in their dynamic to kind of control their partners. And this is something that you see with a lot in the divorce. They talk a lot about this where they might use a lot of put downs or they might, you know, re bring up an issue that happens in the past where they like, you know, you failed me at that time or you you left me. 

You should never do those types of things. So they like to. hone on that vulnerability, which can lead to depressive and anxiety symptoms as well. Sometimes people have issues with their own empathy. They have so much of a lack of empathy that's been brought to them that they don't necessarily bring anything, that they don't have a lot to bring forth because they're like, hey, you're not showing any empathy towards me. Why should I show any towards you? So yeah, there's a lot of things. Defensiveness and aggressive behaviors also can show up in narcissistic relationships as well. So as I hear you speak about this, it seems to me that maybe narcissism per se is not curable, but all the sidebar issues that come from narcissism can be dealt with. 

Is that a reasonable thing to think about? Absolutely. Absolutely. You know, it's interesting because... The medical world and the mental health world, although there's a lot of crossover, there's not a lot of cures for mental health disorders. So what we do is we treat symptoms. We utilize strategies, coping mechanisms. And that's what a person with narcissistic personality disorder, what they would have if they were in a therapeutic dynamic or therapeutic situation is they would treat the symptoms of these things. So let's take relationships, for example. A lot of these folks have relationship strains. So we would cope, okay, communication skills. We may teach something like nonviolent communication, how to deal with their own emotions. So if they feel like their self-esteem is low, we're teaching cognitive behavioral therapy skills to help them make sure that their thinking, their behaviors, and their feelings are all aligned with one another. 

So yeah, you're treating symptoms and not necessarily finding a cure to the personality disorder. So the patients that you have seen, that have this tendency, how long does it take before they seem to be getting better? Yeah, that's a great question. I think that's a little subjective based on the person. But like with any mental health therapy, it's going to probably be between three to six months before that individual realizes that they can implement some of these things and make the change. Now, remember, They're narcissistic. So they're assessing this relationship with a therapist as well. They're wondering, you know, what is this person trying to do to me? They don't have any empathy for the therapist. They barely know you. They're utilizing a service. 

So that narcissistic dynamic also takes place in a therapeutic relationship as well. So they're going to utilize the tools that they've utilized to navigate their world with you. And you're aware of this. So it's almost like I don't want to make it seem too complicated, but it's kind of like a little bit of a chess match between you and the narcissistic person. You're trying to help them. But at the same time, they have an inflated self-image. So they may be defensive or they may minimize things. They have a fragile self-esteem. So they don't want to they don't want to hear a therapist point out, hey, you're doing something incorrect or wrong. Or maybe it was your fault or you need to take some accountability that that goes against their personality type. 

So they're usually looking for solutions for other people to do and not necessarily themselves. So it's a little bit of a chess match, but a skilled therapist who specialize with narcissistic people, they know how to work those dynamics and relationships. I would say your average kind of run of the mill therapist who's not necessarily specialized in narcissism, they'll pick it up and they'll give them some skill sets that they should be able to utilize. But if you identify you have a narcissist, you want to get someone who specializes working with that population because it will really help. So Brandon, let me ask you this question. So when you are in a relationship that's not disposable, how do you maximize your relationship with a narcissist? 

Well, I would say there's a few areas that you have to focus on to maintain yourself. Right. So a lot of times there's going to be jealousy in the dynamic. So how do you deal with jealousy with this narcissistic person? And they can be jealous of anything. You know, you get a new vehicle, you get a promotion at work, you know, your friend gives you a gift for your birthday and you know, the narcissist feels like their gift wasn't good enough. Like there's, there's all types of things around the corner that can happen. Um, I would say you have to definitely, um, uh, not minimize, but really be focused on the sensitivity to criticism. Narcissists will criticize you for a lot of things. 

Your looks, your skin color, your height, your clothing uh your laughter like they will pick on things because they want to evoke an emotion out of you that they can utilize to dictate behavior. So you have to figure out, okay, is this person utilizing one of their things to like manipulate me? Or is this individual just pointing out something that I probably should do myself? They manipulate relationships. So you have to pay attention to the other social dynamics. So let's say, let's use the husband and wife kind of dynamic because it's an easy one to talk about. But they may manipulate the children that are involved or any close family members or friends to maybe take their side or to add into the things that they're doing to you. 

Like that's something that's important to pay attention to. And then the other thing that I would suggest is that a lot of times narcissists will make unrealistic goals. They'll set up these dynamics where they want to achieve something. I'll just use something arbitrary like they want to go on an elaborate vacation. Let's go to Aruba and live it up. They have no plan. They might not have any finances to do it. There might not be anything to help, but they're going to Put it in your head that it's going to happen because they want you to believe in the inflated thought that they can make something happen. But you're ultimately going to get let down when it doesn't. And that's one of those manipulative things that these folks do. 

So they'll set these unattainable goals and they have no they have no intention of achieving any of these things. Yeah. Wow. So if we you know, we were we were talking about particular professions. I can imagine people in the entertainment industry could. could also embrace some narcissism. What feeds narcissistic behavior? I would say the feeds definitely praise. Normally, especially in the personal development world, we talk about patting yourself on the back. That's what you don't want a narcissist to do. You don't want them to pat themselves on the back. because their pat on the back is just like yeah it's like, it's like 10 times what we would normally think of a pat on the back. Right. So that praise, they can praise themselves. 

They want it. They want their praise to come through behavior actions. Right. So what i can get someone to do is definitely a huge motivator for me. And that's, that's how i know that you know that i'm okay that i'm safe quote unquote that i'm doing what i need to do as a narcissist. Um, I would say the other thing that feeds them is resources. Being able to have things and being able to show the things that you have, those rewards, those trophies, so to say, those are huge. So narcissists, they'll have the fancy sports car, right? They'll have the trophies displayed, the awards. They want to be on the front cover of the magazine or the newspaper. That feeds who they are. 

They want you to know who they're... They want that legacy and that representation. They want that. So recognition is a huge thing for these folks as well. And then ultimately, this is kind of hard to see, but a narcissist, from what we know through research, is just general control. When they have a sense that they have that control, that's when a narcissist, they're in their comfort zone. When they don't have controls, when they're dysregulated, and then that's when they start to do things that harm many different people. Yeah. So let me ask this question, Brandon. How do you protect yourself from a narcissist? And you're absolutely correct. I've been looking on YouTube. I've been seeing all these people talking about this topic. And I've been examining my own personal life, trying to look back and say, well, is there something about me as well or people that I've come in contact with? 

How do you protect yourself? I know there's this thing called gray rocking and all those kinds of things. But we wanted to bring you on so that you could just really tell us what the real deal was. Okay, so I think protect yourself. Yeah. I mean, there's a lot of different skill sets. I think I'm just going to give a general thing and not dive too far into the technical things. Some of the things that you can do like today, that don't cost you any money is I would recommend that you seek help and seek help again from someone who specializes in dealing with narcissists. because they're going to give you the great rock and they're going to give you those skill sets and those tools to 

to put in your toolbox because it's very subjective based on who you're dealing with. Now, it also depends on the relationship. It could be your boss. It could be somebody you're in a dating relationship with. It could be one of your children. It could be one of your children. It could be a neighbor. It depends on what the dynamic is to help you determine what skill sets to utilize for dealing with the narcissistic person. So definitely seeking help is, I think, the first thing you should do. Now, that seeking help can look like talking directly to someone, getting a narcissist coach. There's a lot of people who study this for a living. Or do what you just said. Go to YouTube and start watching these videos and informing yourself with what this disorder is and how do these people navigate the world around them. 

You know, one of the things, too, is if you have the opportunity to get away from the person, that's a choice as well, believe it or not. I mean... Sometimes you might not have that choice, right? It may be someone you're attached to. But if it is an option where you create that distance, I don't think that it's an inappropriate thing for one to do. I think being patient is another key thing to do. Just because you're informed now or you've figured out that this person meets the criteria for narcissism doesn't mean that the change is going to happen overnight. So you have to be patient with yourself. Pay attention. Watch what's happening. and be patient that you know change can happen but but you have to act. 

You have to do something. You can't just wait let time take place um that necessarily doesn't mean that things are going to get better uh then the next thing that i would say, too, would be uh consistency is going to be important as well so some of the some of the techniques out there that are shared with how to combat narcissistic behaviors, take time to develop. So being consistent. You know, if it doesn't work the first time, keep doing it keep keep going Because it can help you kind of navigate the dynamic that you're in, especially if you're in one of those relationships that you can't disengage from. I would also say support groups are out there. They're mostly online. But you can find victims of narcissistic personality disorder groups out there. 

They do exist. And there's tons of resources that these groups have to help you. And what else would I say? I would say that outside of the professional help piece, maintaining your own development and self-help is going to be good. And I use self-help as just a general term. Mindfulness, meditation, just making sure that your mental and emotional health is in a good space because being around or with a narcissistic person can be very draining. So let me ask you, are there, you know, you think of like a chronic disease, for instance, if you think about heart disease, you can think about it in It's mild heart disease or severe heart disease. Are there levels of narcissism? Or once you have any kind of narcissistic behavior, you have it. 

Or are there some real severe cases? Or are there mild cases? Do you see where I'm coming from? The levels. Yeah, that's a good question. So... For the most part, there's different types of narcissists that we've been able to identify. And these narcissists are usually driven by like the types of behaviors that they do. So there's like the grandiose narcissist, which is the classic, which is what I've been kind of referring to most of our conversation today, kind of showing off overly confident individual. There's what they call the convert or vulnerable narcissists. which is characterized by a lack of empathy, entitlement, hypersensitivity, passive aggressive behaviors, sense of justice, resentment, insecurity, low levels of self-esteem and high levels of depression. So these people are so internal that they start to almost develop their own depressive disorders due to their behaviors. 

I haven't come across an individual with that in my work, but there are cases out there that have been shared and researched around those types of individuals. What are the other ones? The communal narcissists are wholly engaged in the community and they post a lot of things online. So you'll see these folks really trying to make the change, but it's all about what they do in social media. So you all mentioned earlier, and I kind of didn't answer the question. I'm going to go back to it about those folks who are utilizing social media. They're taking selfies where they're posting everything that they do. There is a level of that. With narcissism, I wouldn't say it's everyone because you got to remember that's kind of our culture today. 

We have this like online persona like culture, but there are narcissistic people that have to have that post. And if they don't, then you start to see some of their mental health issues show up. They start to develop depression. They start to develop anxiety. You may see these people start to indulge in cosmetic surgeries and things of that nature because they want to appear like this perfect person, perfect life person. etc it's a it's a very interesting dynamic um there's one called uh oh man it's what is it called? is the milligan milligan i think the Milligan, or Milligan, but it looks like the dark triad. And if you're familiar with psychology, the dark triad talks about psychopathology uh machiavellianism and narcissism. And what this one, what this particular type of of narcissism is, is for individuals who are, they're very charming, but they're very political, very manipulative. 

They lack a lot of remorse. This is probably where we would put a lot of politicians to that area, unfortunately, especially the ones that we like to highlight over time. I will say that they fit within that kind of group of narcissism. Like these are very they are very influential people. Some may even say that you may even get cult leaders who would be kind of in that space where they will cause harm to individuals. But, man, they are very charismatic. We have the neglect group. They don't engage with anyone unless they have something for them. These are folks who are very isolating and state of themselves. Sometimes this narcissism gets overlooked because these individuals aren't as social. They're not pathological. They're not going to hurt anyone typically, but they're so engulfed that they just stay to themselves. 

We have people who have a lot of entitled narcissists. They're entitled narcissists. They again, they want to be on the front page of the magazine. I would say if I had to put a profession on this one, this is more of your movie star entertainer where they really feed off that light and that shine. Yeah, those are those are typically the types that I've come across. I'm pretty sure there's other ones out there. But so there's there's different types of. But I don't know if there's like levels. Like, I don't know if there's a level three narcissist that we should watch out for. Their criteria is a lot more stronger. But I would say that all those narcissistic types that I've shared, they probably have common characteristics, but it depends on how one shows up more than the other. 

So Brandon, can you just, you know, this is health chatter, so we just chat, okay? So this is politically. Can you share a story where you were surprised by someone with narcissistic behavior? Yeah, well, I'll talk about the client that I brought up earlier. That's what prompted me to write the article that I wrote. Okay. Like I said, I've been working with him for quite some time, and I didn't pick up on it at all. That's what prompted me to write the article, because I was like, dang, how did I miss this? It was like a revelation for myself. So this individual is an entrepreneur. They're trying to build a tech app for kids. who want to be like content creators. And this individual, they've been married once. 

They have, it's a male, it's a male person, heterosexual male. He has children in his first marriage. Then he got out of the marriage and had a child with another woman. So he has two sets of kids pretty much. And he originally reached out to me because he was having issues with his oldest child, which is his son. Son's a preteen, son's going through preteen stuff, typical kid stuff. But he was really struggling with this kid's identity and his kid's development. So we worked on that. We worked on that. That was good. Then he was like, you know, my business is not kicking off the way that I want it to. So we started working on his business. So I do a little bit of leadership coaching as well. 

So we'll talk about that stuff. And he had this really, really estranged relationship with what essentially was a co-founder in the business. which is typical. Again, these things happen with co-founders. Relationships start, they end. This person takes half the business. The other person takes another half. They move on. So I didn't think anything of it. So he's moving on with the business, and then he meets another woman. And when he met this woman, I'm like, wow, that sounds amazing. And not even four months into the relationship, it sounded like they'd been together for 25 years. It was like all this just started to show up. And I'm just like, man, why are you going through all this? Just leave her. You don't know her that well. 

You just start dating her. What's going on? And so this is when I started to start scratching my head and raising my eyebrow. Like, what is going on with this guy and these relationships? And then finally, it happened about three or four months ago. And again, I've been working with this man for about a year. He made some statements during our session that I was just like, wow. He just said, he started talking about how people are not smarter than him. And he said, I am smarter than 99% of the people that I meet. And I don't feel like I should have to dumb myself down to meet with those people. They should rise their level of intelligence to meet with me. And I was like, holy cow. 

What kind of statement is that? The arrogance in the statement is just very bold. I am smarter than everyone I've met. But the next level is what really was like, whoa, when he said they need to raise their level of intelligence to meet with me, I'm just like, man, he's probably had that thought process his whole life. And that's why he's run into these issues. He thinks he's smarter than everyone. Now, there's a good chance he could be. He could be great. He could have a genius IQ. But in typical socialization behavior, we don't speak like that at all about anyone. We don't talk like that. And that's an uncommon just culture that we have, that we're not taught to be overinflated with our egos that way as well. 

But he was really serious. It wasn't a joke. He was like, people are just dumb. And then he was very frustrated because, you know, his half of the business that he took, it hasn't really taken off since the split happened. And he was like, I can't get this business started. I'm smart. I should be doing these things. And he had to do a self-reflection on his life and where he's at. He's had, you know, a couple failed relationships, a big blow up. failed marriage he's just run into a lot of just losses in life and he felt like he should be in a better position than where he was at. And it got to the point of the session where I had to tell him to stop looking out the window and look in the mirror and say, Hey, like you, you are the common denominator here. 

Let's work on that. And he got really angry. Now we only had like 10 minutes left of the session. So we were able to kind of ease out of there without any issue. I mean, he was really angry. He sent me a nasty text message. I'm smarter than you. I should be coaching you. And I was like, all right, so are we terminating our relationship here? He didn't want to do that, right? He didn't want to terminate the relationship. But he was stuck in that he's so good and so better than people, but that his world should be better. But it's not because, again, I had to take him from the window and put him in the mirror and say, hey, you are the common denominator here. 

We have to work on your things. And he just couldn't get that. Now, I still work with this individual, to be honest. We've taken a lot of deeper steps. Our sessions are a lot more tense than they used to be. And this is why I've been increasing my knowledge around narcissism. Because that's when I realized, I was like, he's a narcissist. That's what's going on here. Now I have better tools and a better approach to deal with some things. So it's starting to make a lot of sense for him. But it is a struggle. Because you're asking someone to change their personality almost 180 degrees, right? You're asking them to flip how they've always been to think differently than they've always thought. So for him, he feels like i'm trying to change him as a person, which i kind of am helping him do that. 

But really, I have to get him to understand that the change happens within himself. It's not me. But again, the narcissistic brain goes to what? What you do to me, not what i do for me so it's it's that flip that has to take place. So it seems to me that, um, Part of it for a narcissistic personality is helping them learn how to be more tolerant. Right. Of themselves. Of themselves. And then hopefully that'll play out, you know, in how they interact with others as well. So let me ask you this. Are narcissist personalities, are they more extroverted or introverted? Yeah. that's a good question. I don't know the answer. That might be in my next article i'm gonna have to go ahead and do some research. 

That's a good question yeah i you know i'm gonna give you my gut response. Okay, go ahead. Yeah. I would say that narcissists are probably omnivores. They probably possess a little bit of both. Okay. And they have to bring it in or take it out depending on their relationship dynamic. So think about this, right? You're narcissistic you You feed off of Typically, you feed off of that attention. That would make you more extroverted, right? Yeah. But that's an internal feed. So you're probably processing it in your head a lot. You're thinking about control. You're thinking about manipulation, things of that nature. I would assume that an introverted person would do a lot more of that. So I think that they probably have to turn it on and turn it off from time to time just to navigate, which to me, just as a person who's not narcissistic, sounds exhausting. 

Exactly. But but but I would assume that they probably are omnibus and depend on the dynamic. They have to, you know, rev it up or, you know, bring it down, depending on what's happening. But you know what? I'm going to do some more research on that because that's an amazing thing to think about right there. That would be hard because I would think that, you know, when they reflect on, you know, everybody being, you know, dumber than they are. they have to sit down and think about that. And that kind of maybe puts them more into an introverted component as opposed to dealing with people all together. Right, right. Kind of an interesting. So tell me, what about medication? Is there medication? I don't know if there, you know, from what you're saying, I don't know if there necessarily would be medication for narcissism, but maybe the things that come from it. 

might have to be treated with medication of sorts. Yeah, I would say the levels of anxiety, there's definitely medication given for that. I don't know about depressive symptoms or anything, but more the anxiety that comes around narcissism is pretty high. Yeah, you know, I haven't even dove too deep into the medication portion of the disorder. But I do know that the anxiety is pretty high. Narcissistic people are very vulnerable to depressive symptoms. Despite the facade of being very confident individuals, again, their self-esteem is very fragile. So that makes them more susceptible to having high levels of anxiety, being these social beings. And then also depressing, too. Sometimes depression doesn't just look like people who can't get out of bed. Sometimes they're still functional, depressive people. 

but they feel so down internally that they can still, it's almost like a functional alcoholic, like you can still show up, but you're internally, you're just struggling so much. So I would assume that narcissists, more anxiety than depression, but depressive medications as well, psychotropic medications. So, you know, I'm thinking, you know, highs and lows too. You know, you think about, well, let's just take one, politicians, for instance, where they go through elections And there's this, you know, there's incredibly high level of activity and then they lose. Okay. You know, they, they, they lost the election and all of a sudden they aren't that center of attention or, yeah, we would call it back to reality, but, but what, you know, what then, you know, that real high and low, high and low, you know, entertainers might, might go through that. 

as well, you know, where they're really high, you know, in front of audiences, et cetera, then all of a sudden they aren't doing it. So anyway, yeah, Clarence. So Brandon, I think one of the things that was interesting about, you know, having you as a guest was the fact that I had been thinking about narcissism and then I started seeing you writing articles about narcissism. And as a community person, I was like, We need to talk about this because I had never really heard anybody from the community talk about it like this. So I want to ask you, what is it that we as a community should know about this issue? No, what is it that we as a community should know? I'll leave it like that. 

Yeah, absolutely. I would say that narcissists are among you. Not that you should be in fear or hiding or that they're hiding in bushes or anything, but there are real people who live with this disorder. They have families, they work, they may be your doctor, they may be the person you meet at the grocery store, they may be your neighbor, they may be your partner. There are people who live with this disorder. And I would say that there's a good chance that most narcissists that are out there have not been clinically diagnosed. So they might not know. So what I would encourage community to do is if you do have any curiosity, about somebody. And if you have a relationship with them that's healthy, make a suggestion that they should go ahead and see a mental health provider. 

If you don't have a good relationship, you don't have that rapport built, I don't recommend making those suggestions. It might start a conflict that you don't need in your life. But I do think that that's healthy to do. Please, please, please, please stay away from diagnosing people that you know. We do this very well. And That comes up a lot. Oh, you're a narcissist. Like when people get into conflict, they go into that kind of name calling and narcissism is one of those big ones. Bipolar is another one that comes up a lot. Don't do that because what can happen is a couple of things. One, you can just bring drama and conflict to your life that you don't need to. The individual that you're referring to may start going on what we what we call one of those self-diagnosis kind of rabbit holes where they're on. 

you know they're they're on uh med ed they're on the internet they're googling things and they start to really believe that they have these things without professionally getting uh assessed so you want to make sure that uh you're not influencing someone self-diagnosing themselves uh and then i would say if you're an individual who has a curiosity that you may be narcissists don't be afraid to check out some information and find someone that you can talk to professionally to figure it out. Because if you do have any of the symptoms, any of the symptoms, there is help out there for you to live your life. It's one of those things that it's part of your personality. You have it. Yes, it's a mental health disorder, but it's not something that's fatal. 

It's something that you can live with and have a healthy life, but you're going to need some tools and some skills to just navigate the world around you. You can... I think, like I said, I started off our conversation saying that, hey, narcissism can have some positive spins, but you got to do a lot of work. Otherwise, you're going to find yourself being pretty socially isolated. And in a society that we live in today, we know that social isolation is the healthiest thing for individuals. So we want to try to make sure that you're maintaining healthy relationships if you can. So that's what I would tell community. I would also say that we haven't talked about this, but there may be some cultural issues 

ethnic cultural factors as well that play a huge role in how we identify narcissists. I think that there are some cultures that have no concept for what narcissism is. They don't think about mental health like that. They just don't. For those folks who are part of those cultural groups who have either a limited worldview on mental health, I would encourage those folks, if they live in the U.S., to start understanding what narcissism is and see if there's any elements of that within your cultural dynamic. And then for folks who are a little bit more engaged in mental health from a cultural standpoint, figure out how your culture has normalized or dealt with is one of the other ways to say that narcissism. So for example, I'm black, I'm African-American person. 

I know for sure we don't talk about narcissists in our community. Right. We're talking about people being crazy. So we use a word to cover all mental health diagnosis. But there may have been people in our community that have been narcissists that we've known, but we've just said that person was quote unquote crazy. So we've minimized the disorder and we've kind of accepted the behavior and we just gave them a cover all label without truly understanding what that individual was struggling with. One person that comes to mind, and this is not an African-American person, but he had a huge impact on the African-American community, is Jim Jones back in the 70s. Jim Jones, for folks who are not familiar, he was a cult leader, let's just be clear. 

But Jim Jones had a huge influence on the African-American community in the Oakland, California area. He got these folks to even leave the country. Ultimately, what ended up happening is a fatal ending where hundreds of people lost their lives. And this is where we get the kind of the joke in the community of don't drink the Kool-Aid is it comes from the Jim Jones situation where many people lost their lives down in South America. They were poisoned after the feds were raiding the compound that all these folks relocated to. So it's important for us to identify again culturally how we've adjusted to mental health disorders and how we understand things like narcissism so that we don't just give it a cover all label and we really understand how people are living their lives and how we are adjusting to those folks. 

Yeah. You know, I, one last question before we end our show with you is, do you think that people oftentimes just have narcissistic moments? You know, it's like, you know, I can think of, you know, kids, for instance, you know, they're on the soccer field and all of a sudden, you know, one of them gets this great goal. Okay, you know, this extreme happiness or this extreme whatever gives us that perhaps that narcissistic moment, but it's not necessarily dangerous. A dangerous level of narcissism. Yeah. So do you think we have those as individuals? Absolutely. Absolutely. I had to quickly pull up the criteria here so I didn't forget what it was. But I would say that it's very common for individuals to have moments where we meet one or two of the criteria for narcissism. 

So again, this is why I don't want people to self-diagnose themselves. Because you'll go down a rabbit hole and be like, oh my God, I've been narcissistic my whole life. But again, you have to meet nine criteria to officially have this diagnosis. Through human behavior, you may have four of these things. Just because of who you are. And that's okay. But again, you have to have a grandiose sense of self-importance. You have to fantasize of the unlimited success, power, billions, beauty, and ideal love. Now, that's where my client came in. When I heard that, I was like, whoa. You have to believe in being special or unique and can only be understood by or should be associated with other special or unique or high status people. 

Again, my client. It requires excessive admiration. I am me. You should pay attention to me. You have to have a sense of entitlement, unreasonable explanation of especially favorable treatment or automatic compliance with their expectations. You have to have interpersonal exploitative. So you take advantage of others to achieve your own ends. You have to have a lack of empathy. You have to have a belief that other people are envious of you or have a level of envy of other people. And then you have to have a level, a high level of arrogance or what they call halting behaviors or attitudes. You have to meet all nine of those in order to be diagnosed. So, yes, well, we have moments where we're celebrating. You may be, you know, at my at my children's school, they always have student of the month. 

My kid's probably the most arrogant kid in second grade when she's the student of the month. She's like, yeah, that's me. That's okay. But if my kid thinks that she's going to be student of the month every month, all the kids in second grade are slow or dumb or whatever term that these kids are using. That's different. That's different, right? If she's like, I don't care about these other kids. I'm the best student. Or she starts to build a bond with her teacher where she's like, no, only I can answer the questions in class. We're looking at this kid like, OK, we're developing something here that probably shouldn't be going on. That's what we're looking for. So, yes, we have moments. Absolutely. But that does not necessarily mean that we are narcissists. 

Good, good, good, good clarification. Final thoughts, Clarence. Brandon, thank you. I have truly, truly enjoyed this conversation and I look forward to having more with you when we are in the community. And we will definitely love to bring you back and talk some more. Absolutely. Love to talk about anything you want me to bring on. There's so many different topics, so many things to talk about. Anytime you want me, I'm here. If you write a paper, my final thought is if you write a paper on introvert, extrovert, and narcissism, we're going to have you back on the show. All right. Sounds good. That's my challenge for the next 30 to 40 days. We'll do some research and put together a piece. Thanks so much. 

So for our listening audience, we've got great shows coming up. We have a show actually that could be linked to this down the pike on loneliness. So you wonder whether or not narcissistic behavior oriented people are more lonely because of the type of behavior that they have. But that's coming down the pike. We also have organ donation, great shows on health chatter. So Brandon, Thank you so much for being with us today. And to everybody out there in our listening audience, keep health chatting away.