When Your Partner is a Narcissist, Why the Term "Narcissistic" Matters

These days, it seems like everyone is a narcissist. Is the label of narcissist or narcissistic harmful or helpful? 

This week, Lisa Sonni joins me to discuss the importance and impact of identifying narcissistic abuse and dysfunctional relationship dynamics. 

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Kerry Kerr McAvoy, Ph.D., a mental health specialist and author, is an expert on cultivating healthy relationships, deconstructing narcissism, and understanding various other mental health-related issues. Her memoir, Love You More: The Harrowing Tale of Lies, Sex Addiction, & Double Cross, gives an uncensored glimpse into the dynamics of narcissistic abuse.

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Transcript

Kerry: [00:00:00] Could you be in a relationship with a narcissist? Does this person have narcissistic personality disorder? Well, today Lisa Sunny joins me to talk about the use and misuse of the labels of narcissism and narcissistic abuse.

I know a lot of us on social media use terminologies like narcissism, narcissistic, and even narcissist pretty loosely. And yet these are diagnostic labels that take a professional to identify. And that's one of the pushbacks that I see on social media—is it right? Is it fair? Is it even kind to use these labels?

Let's get into that. Because I think there's lots of issues that swirl around this and it would be great for us to tease this apart.

Lisa: Yeah, I think, listen, I'm a coach, right? You're a psychologist. So I wonder if the use of the word on your [00:01:00] pages is different than the use on my pages or the reaction and feedback from people. But as a coach, as just a coach, I get told constantly that the word is overused or that it's, you know, pop culture. And I honestly can see some truth in that, but I fundamentally have this perspective: it's not overused, it's misunderstood because narcissism is actually a personality trait. It can be a disorder if you meet the criteria, seek the diagnosis, and you're labeled as such, but narcissistic—even when people say my ex is a narcissist, I think they mean narcissistic. They mean that this person displays the traits.

Kerry: Yeah, it is tough, but even that, I think that because we lack real clear definitions of what is narcissistic. Particularly when you get to narcissistic abuse, there's a lot of different definitions. We don't actually collectively agree. And I know that the professional community doesn't like the term. They would prefer it not to be that term. I think they prefer something more like a highly conflictual relationship or [00:02:00] antagonistic, or maybe they would say exploitative, deceptive, abusive. But there's no such thing in the professional realm as narcissistic abuse. I think we'll come to a place where we actually finalize that and then come up with a working definition. But right now there is no working definition. The closest one out there that I think that I like personally is the one by Dr. Kristen Milstead where she wrote "Making a Case for Deception" and it was on Psych Central's website. I think she even wrote that article in 2018. To me, that's the best working definition, but most people assume that narcissistic abuse can only occur by a narcissist because narcissistic abuse, narcissist, makes sense. There's an easy correlation, but I claim that you don't need to be a narcissist to be a narcissistically abusive person. That is actually just a type of abuse. It's a form of abuse. All of this becomes really super murky and I know that the people who tend to be maybe more black and white, they're maybe more of a scientific mind, you know, they like things to be super [00:03:00] clear. And especially with the amount of material and content and complaints around narcissistic behavior, the fact that it feels like there's a flood, an avalanche of it, I can understand why this gets concerning. People just feel, like you said, pop psychology feels like we just all latched on to a label and anybody we don't like, we slap that label on and we accuse them of that behavior.

Lisa: Yeah, and honestly, I mean on my page, that's what I hear, right? It's just another life coach randomly saying, you know, narcissist, her ex is a narcissist. And I mean, as an aside, mine is diagnosed, but that's not even the point because I didn't recognize it as narcissistic abuse until TikTok and it kind of opened things up for me and it fit, you know, the label seemed to fit but it provided me clarity. I was like, oh, that's what it is. And it's interesting because people who say that it's overused—Dr. Ramani was on a podcast and I can't remember which one, but I watched this video [00:04:00] and she said that in her opinion, all domestic abusers are narcissistic. That's an interesting thing coming from Dr. Ramani. I don't think I've ever felt so validated because to hear her say that, who's an expert on the topic, I've been feeling that way and I see all these coaches, therapists, psychologists agree. But to have her say that, it's not that they meet the criteria to be diagnosed necessarily, but I think she also has said 10 to 15 percent of the people in the world would be diagnosed. It's not the 1 percent that you hear, it's not the 5 percent that you hear.

Kerry: Well, yeah, I mean, even that, I bet most people don't understand where the statistics come from. I think we think it's almost like taking a census, you know, we go around the whole world or at least the United States or maybe Canada and we knock on doors and we say, are you a narcissist? And or have you been diagnosed with, yes or no, which is not how it works. I mean, to get a diagnosis, you have to go see a professional and the professionals who typically are going to give a diagnosis are going [00:05:00] to be a psychiatrist, or a psychologist, or a licensed social worker. Those are the three categories that are going to be able to do that. Yes, medical doctors can, but medical doctors would say that's not my area of expertise. It'd be like going into a cardiologist and asking him, is this skin cancer? He's going to say it's not my specialty. So he's not going to weigh in on that. So you have to go in and see

Lisa: somebody. You have to be the person walking in the room and actually sitting down and interested. And I've heard, and you may know more about this topic, but you can beat that test, right? If I was accused of being a narcissist and let's say I was one and I go in to see you and I'm seeking a diagnosis and you were providing me an assessment and I know what to say to sort of beat this assessment. I'm trying to evade a diagnosis. So in some cases, I've heard that, but fundamentally, they're not walking into anybody's office to get assessed.

Kerry: They're not walking into anybody's office. The only reasons I saw a narcissist come in for therapy are for a few and it makes sense. If you think about narcissistic [00:06:00] behavior and what motivates them, this makes logical sense. And that is they are losing somebody super, super important they weren't ready to lose and they want help getting this person back. So they wanted me to help them win this person's heart back, which I always said no and turned them away. I'm not interested in doing that. It feels very manipulative. I'm not going to be part of that strategy. The other group is something catastrophic is happening in their life, like some big legal consequence. Maybe they're losing a job or maybe their job's in jeopardy and something huge is scaring them and shaking them up and they're usually coming in for other symptoms. They now are depressed or they're anxious. Or some kind of dysfunction is happening and that would drive them into the office and sometimes they're brought in by a partner and usually the partner is hoping somehow I will rescue this person by taking on their partner, spouse, or partner as my client. But rarely did that group stay because they didn't see themselves as the problem. They saw their partner as the problem. So they're hoping that they'll just be let off. But people don't come in asking for an assessment for narcissism. I've never seen that. I [00:07:00] haven't been practicing in nine years, so maybe today that might be different because of pop culture and social media has made it more interesting. Maybe more people might have that concern, but I didn't see that group. But here's the other problem, Lisa. It's now not actually this way, but it used to be this way. The DSM-5 categorizes diagnostic issues differently today than it did when I was working with the DSM-4. When I was diagnosing people, it was a slightly different system. But here's the system. There are conditions and there are disorders. Conditions are things that are acutely wrong. Like if you come in and you're not sleeping, and you're losing weight, and you're not eating, and you feel like life has no purpose, you're coming in to be treated for those symptoms and then I would listen to you and figure out what type of depression you're struggling with. Is it a chronic type? Is it a major depression? What kind of subtype is it? Is it moderate? Is it severe? I would look at all of that and then diagnose you with the condition of depression. Disorders are things that are permanent characteristics of a [00:08:00] person. They're permanent dysfunctions. I'm autistic. That would be a disorder. So that would be what we used to categorize as Axis II. So there's five categories we call them axes. The first is a condition, the second is a disorder, the third is any physical issue that may be contributing to that, then the fourth is psychosocial stressors, and the fifth is how are you functioning overall based on this presentation. It's called Global Assessment Functioning (GAF). G A F. Now, an insurance company doesn't care about anything but number one, Axis I. It's only going to pay for Axis I. So it doesn't matter that you have other scores or characteristics or disorders listed elsewhere. They don't reimburse for that. And they'd also, for instance, don't reimburse marital therapy. They don't reimburse for family therapy. They don't reimburse anything that's not in a DSM, it's not identified as a condition. For example, right now, sex addiction is not considered a condition. So it doesn't reimburse for sex addiction because it's not in the [00:09:00] DSM-5. It literally only reimburses for things that have a category as a condition. So that means you have to pay out of pocket. We have now two problems—well, now three. You have to have walked into the room for help, you have to have a clinician that's able to identify there's narcissistic traits being presented, and number three, you now have to have a clinician who's going to bother to put it on Axis II and it now becomes part of their medical record, which is a permanent record for the rest of their life. So say, for example, an airplane pilot comes in, they have narcissistic traits, they're struggling with stuff, and you put that in. Do you think that Delta is going to keep this person employed? Or what if, you know, especially if you've got somebody young or maybe they're an attorney, do you think they really want their practice to know that they have narcissistic personality disorder? Absolutely not. It doesn't serve any purpose because it's not going to help them get reimbursed and help with their healthcare costs. And now you've just put a label that's going to follow them for the rest of their life that may affect [00:10:00] employment and other things. Why would you do that? We were actually in graduate school discouraged from identifying those. It didn't matter. We were saying maybe for your own sake, for your notes, just to say narcissistic traits. That's not the same as saying NPD. You might want to identify, yeah, I see some borderline personality traits. I see some struggles with dependency, etc. Yeah. Potentially harming a person by affecting their medical record, which is a permanent record that follows somebody. So I just listed a whole host of reasons why we don't diagnose and then they come back and say it's rare. No, it's rarely being diagnosed. It's not rare. We actually don't know what the real number is. We don't have an accurate baseline of the public. We don't. We see a subtype, a type that is willing to walk into the office, and we also don't see an accurate representation of diagnoses because clinicians aren't either trained or don't feel the freedom to put it on. So it's not that it's a rare condition. It's just rarely diagnosed.

Lisa: Yeah. And that's unfortunate. Now I [00:11:00] have to tell you, as a person who has done couples counseling with one, the motivation for him was to prove that I'm the problem. That was very clear. So it's interesting that even to get them in the chair of a therapist, it was, he would never have gone on his own. He only went with me and to prove a point to me. And as the therapist saw his behavior, she saw it, she knew, and that was validating for me. I think most people do not have that experience. I remember this one particular, very short story that she asked him a question and he sort of interrupted the question to say, I really like your hair today. You look really nice. And she was like, thank you, and then continued her question. Later, she said to me, you know, that was one of the first indicators to her that he had interrupted to give her a compliment. It was meant to throw her off balance. It was meant to build rapport, like, look, I'm such a nice guy. And she was like, no, I see right through you. I knew.

Kerry: Yeah, you're reminding me of my first internship. So when you go through school to become a psychologist, [00:12:00] one of the last things that you do is you have this full-time internship. It's usually, it's similar to like residency. It's very competitive to get these spots. And you go to a certain site and you get trained for a year and it's intensive. And there's trainings and you get to work with patients. And so, one of the first trainings we got to see, the psychologist that was training us said, I want to make sure that you know something. When you meet somebody who then makes you feel like you're a nugget of gold, be careful because the next thing they're going to do is turn you into a piece of shit. Never take the flattery. See that as idealization and know that the devaluation is coming right smack next. Yeah. Never buy into the idealization. Now I wish I could have applied that to my personal life. Right. I never forgot it professionally. So whenever somebody would have done that to me, I would have thought, hmm, interesting. That's manipulation. I wonder what's up. You know, you start to tell me how great I am or how thankful or I'm the best that you've ever met. Like, you know, that's a pedestal and you're going to knock me off in the next moment here. Yeah.

Lisa: And on that note, he ended up telling the therapist that [00:13:00] she doesn't know what she's talking about.

Kerry: See, there you go. See, he knocked her off that pedestal. Exactly. He didn't, he didn't

Lisa: want to continue seeing her because she kept siding with me. And in fairness, I have to tell you, just even objectively, she wasn't siding with anyone. She was just really looking at the behavior objectively. So it was narcissistic of him to see it in that way. So I mean, hello. She was occluding with his story. See that's, you know, she failed. But that was the goal, right? He was seeking this validation from her, like, it's Lisa's problem, right? She's the issue here. She's the problem. I remember her telling me that like my body was reacting to being abused and he was like, abuse? What?

Kerry: Yes.

Lisa: That was the first time I heard it was abuse. Wow. Wow. I watched mine do the same thing with our therapist. She was a trained psychologist who's under active supervision with one of the most reputable groups in the whole world. She was under active supervision from this very reputable institution for [00:14:00] continuing training. I watched him wrap her right up around his finger and control the treatment. I watched him contaminate it and eventually made it ineffective. It's, they're so, I mean, I would say that the level of skill mine had was high. He was very, very predatory, very dangerous, and he had practiced on many, many people. So he really honed this ability to a high level. But it's, it's amazing how you get somebody who's that sophisticated and they can pretty much railroad. We, you know, we even see this in prison systems how people are warned, be careful. There are going to be psychopaths or predatory people who are so exploitative that they're going to take advantage of the people unknowingly who are working there, or the psychiatrists, either. They're just very, I mean, we see it in court cases where they just, they completely derail and make the other person look utterly crazy. So here's the thing that I think about the terminology of narcissist, narcissism. I think it's totally fair for us to describe behavior that is what it is. And when we see [00:15:00] behavior that's arrogant or they think they're superior, when they're lacking empathy, they're behaving jealously, I think it's utterly acceptable to say that's narcissistic behavior. Do you agree? I mean, do you encourage people?

Lisa: Well, I agree full stop. And I discourage people from focusing on it because I don't think it matters. Fundamentally, I don't know if the label matters. I do know that it can bring you this sort of clarity because as soon as you can say it's narcissistic, you can start looking it up. It gives you kind of a point to focus on and traits and start learning. But I don't think that you should take that with you and carry it and just decide and label them with the disorder and hold on to that forever. I think it's a good starting point because it can give you that clarity. For me, and this is unique, I think this experience, I don't care a lot of people say this, I didn't think he was one. And it was TikTok, it was actually mentalhealness that was the beginning of me realizing, like, oh my God, this is, that's him. And I started thinking about it and then three months later I found [00:16:00] out that he is diagnosed. So I just didn't know about it. Long story. But I found out he is. And I had this moment, and when I say moment, I mean 60 seconds where I was like, oh my God, this is the most validating thing in the world, oh my God, that makes so much sense. Because now for months I've been thinking, that seems like him but he's not, it can't be, but it was. And then it was like, so what does that mean? That didn't do for me what I thought it would. It was a moment for a minute and then it was over and I'm like, but it just kind of gave me a direction. And I mean, in theory, I've put my, my coaching practice around it, but ultimately I help people exit domestic violence and abuse, yes, with a specialty of narcissistic abuse, but it's, it's irrelevant. It's psychological abuse, emotional abuse. You know, actually I outline all of that in my book, "Narcissism Unmasked," on all the different types of abuse, including the difference between narcissistic abuse, which I've even heard therapists—I don't know if you remember that one therapist who shall remain nameless on TikTok who had that [00:17:00] ridiculous song "Narcissistic Abuse Isn't Real." It was just the worst victim shaming, invalidating possible. People, you know, lit him on fire for that and to be fair, he kind of deserved it, but yes, it's not real in the sense that, to your point, it's not in the DSM-5 as a form of abuse. It's not, or maybe it's not recognized by clinicians as a form of abuse. But if you've experienced it, it's different. It's not the same. There is an insidiousness, a covertness, an intentional piece behind it that is just so destructive. And it's Sam Vaknin, right, that said it's total destruction.

Kerry: Yeah, I want to circle back to you saying people really want that diagnosis or they really want that label. And then when you got it, you found out it didn't do what you thought it would do. What did you think that it would do? And what do you see people

Lisa: wanting it to do for them? Okay, what I wanted it to do once I started to think it might be and what I think most people want, I mean, everyone's different, is that now I know what it is, he doesn't know this, now I can [00:18:00] explain it to him and then he'll change, right? Then it'll be different, now he'll take the opportunity to hear me, now I can say, look, this is you, you're a narcissist, all you have to do is—but all you have to do is what? You know, still seek the diagnosis, and so many people say, like, hey, I sent my partner your videos. Don't do that, because I bet you any money you're about to become the narcissist, right? As soon as you call them, it's so "I know you are, but what am I?" It's the most immature, petty thing of "No, you're the narcissist." And the worst thing is that that's something that narcissists will use, right? If you withdraw because they're baiting you into an argument and you're like, I have a boundary, I'm not defending myself. Now you're stonewalling and that's an abuse tactic, so you're the narcissist.

Kerry: Right, right, right. Yeah, in fact, I had that happen in my lab yesterday. I was talking about the power of journaling, how journaling will actually essentially change something essential about how you experience what you went through. And somebody said, yeah, can I write a journal and send it to him? No, I said, no, you just made it a long letter. To one end.

Lisa: Yeah. [00:19:00] Nothing's going to change it. So when I found out, like I said, it was like, oh, because now what? He'll reject this. He was given a diagnosis and he'll say he wasn't. And so what changed? Nothing.

Kerry: Yeah, it's

Lisa: ironic.

Kerry: Yeah, because mine actually knew that he was. We joked about it. I knew that he was too. I knew he was a narcissist when I met him. I knew he was a narcissist. The problem was, and this is the thing that we don't understand about psychology, is that psychology focuses on the individual, the psyche of the individual. That's where, you know, the word psychology, psych, it's the mind. It's the understanding of oneself, of the identity of self. We don't think about it in terms of what happens in the context of relationships. Now, I think it's changing, it's going to move into that because obviously we're realizing there are personality types that affect relationships and the damage occurs outside of them, not necessarily inside of them. That would be a perfect example of narcissistic personality disorder. They have a very serious dysfunction that erodes relationships. And devastating consequences to things around them. But I'd never heard that, so to me [00:20:00] getting into a relationship with him, I thought, oh, he's just going to be a bit of the bragger, he's going to be the center of attention, do I really care as an introvert that somebody is the center of attention? No, please go take that role, I don't want it anyway. I thought it would be no big deal, so we actively joked about it. And then we'd think it was a really big funny thing, but I didn't know that I was stepping into an abusive situation. In fact, for me, it was like you, I know that you experienced domestic violence and that you'd have somebody say to you, you're being abused, you're in shock. I didn't know I was being abused. I didn't know about—I'd never heard of coercive control or ambient abuse. I kind of heard of gaslighting but I couldn't have defined it for you. Again, that's not a clinical term. Clinicians don't go in and say, oh, that's gaslighting. Now maybe we do today but I'm not practicing today so I wouldn't know. But when I was practicing, we didn't. There's a lot of things that we now are talking about actively in relationships that just weren't things I was aware of. So when all this started to go down, yes, I was definitely being emotionally abused, psychologically terrorized, and I [00:21:00] recognized I was feeling a lot of terror, but I didn't consider abuse. I just thought somebody was treating me really badly. I mean, that's how I would have felt. Yeah. Like he's an awful person.

Lisa: He's cheating on me and he's betraying me. Yeah, I felt the same way. Abuse. What? He would have denied it, you know? So had I known anything at the time, if I was in it and I said you're abusing me, he would have been like stop it. Even when I said this is awful, like you treat me like garbage, he's like, oh my God, you're ridiculous. He would always just, everybody argues, this is everybody's relationship. No, it is not. Positively, but I wish, I wish that I had known sooner, but at the end of the day, everything happened for a reason. The diagnosis did nothing. The label matters in the context that it's going to start to give you a framework of understanding because in my view, to really break free of this, it's the education and the clarity that come from like what is a narcissist? What is narcissism? What's a trauma bond? What's cognitive dissonance? When you start getting into the what [00:22:00] are all the tactics? What's coercive control and ambient abuse? It's the validation that comes from the clarity that you get that you start to go, ah, it wasn't me. That brings this feeling of kind of empowerment. Now you can let go and then do the work on yourself and kind of look inwards to really start to heal and change. But the label got you there. It's like the vessel that gets you to the next step.

Kerry: I think that's the only good thing it serves. I agree with you. It is not useful to use it as a means to change the other person, a means to save this relationship because the other person has to want to save it too, and they're not invested. They're invested in keeping power and control. But I do think it really opens the door for you to begin to, for one, disown what's happened to you. Because a lot of us blame ourselves. If I had just been quieter, if I had been nicer, maybe if I didn't bring this subject up, maybe if we, you know, took a different job or I worked less or worked more, we end up really thinking somehow the fault lies on [00:23:00] us. And I think that what's great about the label is, no, gaslighting has nothing to do with you. You were made the problem. The problem wasn't you. The problem was whatever you brought up. The problem is that they made it you. Or coercive control is, no, nobody should steal all your freedoms. You have a right to exist. You have a right to feel feelings and express your feelings. You have a right to be financially a part of this relationship and have access to money and resources. I know that when I learned about coercive control and recognized what was happening around my sleep pattern, the fact that he would watch TV till 3-4 a.m. in the morning, set the alarm too early, 6 a.m. on purpose to wake me back up, that this was done to wear me out, beat me down, make me sick, that it was to keep me off balance. And then it really helped me to put things into perspective. I think that when it serves that, that's really, really helpful. But I don't think it's helpful when we think that somehow it's going to change the other person. The other person doesn't want to be changed. We forget that narcissism is a disorder of a personality in which they think they're superior and [00:24:00] that the rules don't apply to them and you're not going to break through that defensive structure, you know.

Lisa: So don't try, but I don't see that shift of what is happening. Is this abuse? And then when you get the label, you're like, perfect. Now I can explain it. So what I say to people is can you try to shift your mind and instead of thinking like, oh, he must not know that he's abusive. He must not know that he's a narcissist. If I can just make him understand, can I challenge you that he does understand or she does understand? You're coming at it from the perspective of you're going to educate them and they must not know that they're hurting people. They absolutely know that they're hurting people. Fundamentally, they know.

Kerry: Right. Which is what I want to follow up with over the podcast extras. I want to jump on that as a follow-up for this question. What do we do when we're in a relationship with somebody and we're not ready to leave, but we're hoping that we can convince them to work harder or to somehow get invested in the same way that we're invested in? What can we do around this label that could be helpful or maybe it's not [00:25:00] helpful? So let's follow that up and talk about this more, but thank you so much for getting into this topic. It's one that just drives people nuts. I mean, I hate hearing the term, but on the other hand, those who find it really love it but sometimes for the wrong reasons. And I just know there's so much ambiguity around all of this.

Well, that's a wrap for this week's episode. Are you following me on TikTok, Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube? Find me at Kerry McEvoy PhD. And whether you're in, considering leaving, or have left a narcissistic relationship, find community support at my toxic-free relationship club. You can learn about this resource as well as others at KerryMcEvoyPhD.com and I'll see you back here next week.