Joe insists on starting any conversation about narcissism by acknowledging: “The idea that there’s somebody who’s a narcissist and we’re not is ridiculous. All of us have some way in which we are narcissistic.”
The best definition he’s encountered (from Lowen): narcissism is the incapacity to feel emotions on an emotional level. What he observes is that narcissists simultaneously think they’re better and worse than others — believing they’re smarter than everyone while feeling something is deeply wrong and broken in them.
Brett warns about the convenience of the label: “When you have a model that there are 5% of people who are a certain way and somehow different, it can be really easy and convenient to avoid your own feeling — to apply that label to somebody.” Calling someone a narcissist can be a way to stop your own self-examination.
Even if someone truly has narcissistic personality disorder, they still offer growth opportunities: learning to draw boundaries, staying openhearted while separating, containing their behavior without being affected by it. “If you just say they’re a narcissist, you throw all that baby out with the bathwater.”
Related Concepts
- What triggers you in others exists in you
- Superiority and shame are paired
- Boundaries, not VIEW, are the tool for narcissists
Source
- [[sources/qa-3-common-questions-uncommon-answers|Q&A #3 — Common Questions, Uncommon Answers]]