72: Four things you can work on if you think you are Narcissistic

Welcome to another episode of The Good Mood Clinic Podcast!

In this episode Justine & Gemma discuss 4 things you can start working on if you think that you might have narcissistic traits or modes.

Typically, if someone tells us they think they are narcissistic, they often are not at all.  Most clients who are narcissistic don't present for therapy unless their world is significantly compromised in some way (eg, their spouse splits up with them, they lose their job, they lose friends and people don't want to being around them anymore).  Some of our listeners have asks us to do an episode on how narcissists can change.

We have identified 4 key issues/interpersonal problems that the narcissist typically struggles with and we discuss each one describing how you can start to make small changes and improvements in these areas.

The key to all of this is of course, greater self-awareness and learning to tolerate uncomfortable emotions instead of using unhelpful coping behaviours (eg, over-compensation) to suppress or reject those emotions.  

The 4 issues discussed are

1. Learning to tolerate another person's subjectivity.  
2. Learning to do repairs. 
3. Owning your contribution to the problem.
4. Learning to tolerate shame and guilt without the need to blame others.