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Narcissism. For many, many decades, it’s been perceived as an affliction by the medical establishment. And it’s actually now becoming sort of normalized. There’s a sense that narcissism is sort of just what we do in the modern age. Well, the risk around narcissism is that if you are narcissistic, you have a tendency to be so focused on your own needs and so focused on your image that there’s nothing going on inside.
Narcissism = (Self-esteem)2 x Entitlement
So the equation for narcissism: narcissism equals self-esteem squared (so think of self-esteem with parentheses around it, almost like the parentheses being mirrors, like sort of your own little house of mirrors) times entitlement. Self-esteem is considered to be sort of something that we all aspire to, although one of the challenges in the modern era is that when people have self-esteem that’s a little bit too upgraded, they have a tendency to get so self-absorbed that they don’t have any room for anyone else. And then you’ve got this piece of entitlement, and this is, some people believe, you feel so entitled to what you’re going to get that the world just sort of revolves around you. You have a tendency to think that you have already worked hard for something and that you’re not resourceful enough to actually take the steps that most other people would take.
Breaking the “House of Mirrors”
If there’s someone in your life who you believe has got strong narcissistic tendencies, the number one thing they need to look at is how they can get out of their house of mirrors. And so it’s helping them to find compassion. And I know that’s a really hard thing to do for someone who actually is so absorbed by themself, but you can ask yourself, what are the elements? If let’s say this is your husband or your wife and you have kids, and you know that your husband, who’s a narcissist, when it comes to the kids, somehow he breaks out of his house of mirrors. So how do you have him spend more time with the kids? How do you have him start training his habits such that he moves out of that place where he’s in that empty closet that’s got mirrors around it, and instead he’s starting to learn new habits around focusing on others? That’s one piece.
A second one, you know, in terms of the entitlement piece is to sometimes ask a good question like, you know, “Why do you deserve this?” And let them just go, you know, rattle on about why they deserve it. And maybe even ask the question, “Do you deserve it more than the person who won? You didn’t win. Do you deserve it more?” And at some point, what I’ve seen with people who are narcissistic is sometimes they’ll actually start listening to themselves and realizing, “Okay, I’ve been so self-absorbed about myself, I didn’t even think about the other person who actually won what I wanted to win. Maybe they deserved to get the credit that they deserved then.” So just helping them to actually get outside of their own house of mirrors is the best advice.