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DoctorRamani
Say THIS to people who tell you not to "diagnose" narcissists
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Hey everyone, it's Dr. Romany. So this video is review, but we got a review. And we're going to go back to this idea and a reminder that a narcissist is not necessarily a person with narcissistic personality disorder. Let's break it down again. I am sorry to be pedantic and to keep saying the same thing over and over again, but I'm going to say it until everyone gets it.
This topic of narcissism, which like I said, some years ago, I don't even like, I'm not even sure that everyone knew how to say it, but as it surges in popularity, I'm both heartened because I'm glad to see that people are getting educated and I'm hoping that that will foster radical acceptance and ultimately healing, or at the very least stop those cycles of self-blame. I think all the information out there that's getting out there, great. But that said, every day I see so many inaccuracies. So I'm going to go back and be old school professor here for a minute and let's review this again.
I've talked about this on this channel before, but I am struck by how much inaccuracy there is and I think TikTok is probably the worst offender. It's the most rife with it. So I do feel that from time to time, we do need to have a refresher for anyone who is new to this party. So let's take it from the top. All of us have a personality. You me, everyone. The narcissist has a personality. Their personality is narcissistic. Though if you really want to be accurate, their personality could be described more technically as antagonistic or disagreeable. Personality is not unidimensional. Think of it as a cocktail or a recipe. Multiple ingredients that come together.
So a person may be antagonistic, but they may also be higher in a personality style called neuroticism. Those folks are your vulnerable narcissistic folks. Or a person may be antagonistic and they may be extroverted. Those are your grandiose narcissists. A person could be agreeable and introverted and conscientious. That's a nice personality. So I'd like to think that's me. I'm not a very fun party guest, but it will help with the dishes with a smile on my face. There are dozens and dozens of personality designations out there. And they're like ingredients. We mix them up, right? And there's infinite numbers of ways we can mix them up. There's infinite numbers of personalities out there.
And they add up to each person's overall personality. We take these strands of personality and braid them together. Nobody is just agreeable or just antagonistic or just disinhibited. We're people. We're complex. So let's dismantle this idea that people who are narcissistic have a personality disorder. They don't. They might. But more often than not, they don't. I was watching one of these short videos that was trying to say that the misconception out there is that people make the mistake of saying narcissist when they mean jerk or that the person's selfish. That's true. The narcissistic personality style takes in a lot more territory than that.
So to sort of summarize that a little, it's all jerks are not narcissistic, but all narcissistic people are jerks. All selfish people are not narcissistic. All narcissistic people are selfish. So that's how that works, right? But a personality disorder, that's a whole other thing, right? It is, okay, we've got to be professory on you. It is a maladaptive pattern of personality functioning that is stable, pervasive, and consistent. It appears across multiple contexts. And are you ready for it? It causes either subjective distress, fancy way of saying that the person acknowledges that their personality stuff is making them uncomfortable. They don't feel good.
Or they have this thing called social or occupational impairment, which means that the person is acknowledging or demonstrating that their life, work, or other responsibilities are suffering because of their personality style. To be a personality disorder, this has to have been going on for a long time, is not the result of some other major mental disorder. For example, if a person is only grandiose when they are manic and at other times is not, that's probably not narcissistic grandiosity. The grandiosity belongs to the bipolar disorder. Treat the bipolar mania and the grandiosity will ebb. That's not how it works in narcissism.
And like all disorders, a personality disorder has to be diagnosed by a licensed mental health professional, preferably one who knows their way around a personality disorder. And this takes a minute. It will take me weeks or even months to be confident in my diagnostic hypothesis. And we sometimes even do additional testing to firm it up. So no, someone's not figuring this out in three minutes on TikTok. Now one big challenge is that being narcissistic is often an advantage, right? Confidence, charm, charisma, making more money, being more aggressive and risk taking in business, being more likely to be successful in dating, though not good at relationships.
So folks with this personality style often do not meet the threshold of the impairments or distress, right? So they're still narcissistic, but they don't get that designation of a personality disorder diagnosis. That's most narcissistic people. Narcissism is just a series of patterns and traits that come together. The stuff I've talked about a million times on this channel, variable and inconsistent empathy, entitlement, grandiosity, arrogance, selfishness. The fancy word is egocentricity. Their self-esteem is unstable. It goes up and down depending on how much narcissistic supply they have. Poorly regulated emotions, especially when they are frustrated or when they experience injury like an insult, criticism, failure, or being the butt of a joke.
One of these things alone doesn't make a person a narcissist. So if a person is just entitled, but not the other stuff, no, that's not narcissistic. If a person is selfish, but not the other things, not narcissistic. If a person is a hothead, but not the other things, nope, they're not narcissistic. It's a package deal. A cake isn't just a pile of flour. It's all the stuff coming together. Narcissism is all of the stuff coming together. But a personality style is not a personality disorder. Narcissism's on a continuum like everything in mental health. It can be mild.
And the mild narcissism is annoying and childish, immature, self-centered, Instagram, I am a 50-year-old who still behaves like I'm an 18-year-old thing. The lack of empathy in a milder narcissist is more cluelessness. The entitlement is more of an adolescent selfishness. The dysregulation looks more like noisy attention-seeking tantrums. And most of these folks would not meet the diagnostic threshold for narcissistic personality disorder, but they're still narcissistic. And keep in mind, not to put too fine a point on it, we are getting into a diagnostic era where we are more and more likely to see all these sub-labels of personality disorders, narcissistic personality disorder, antisocial personality disorder.
All of those are going to get dumped in favor of just this big global term, personality disorder. So before you know it, I hope narcissistic personality disorder won't be a thing. And then what? It doesn't mean that there's no longer going to be narcissistic people. They'll be there. There just won't be a diagnosis. Now personality styles like narcissism are considered maladaptive because they result in behaviors that aren't healthy. In this case, they aren't healthy for other people. But the way the rules work in mental health, we really can't diagnose a person on the basis of how other people feel about them. The person themselves has to be having the problems.
And if the narcissistic person doesn't think they have any problem and they're kind of going through their lives, that doesn't mean that they don't. It may also mean that they're so good at blame shifting, projection, and denial that they don't see how they're contributing to a problem. Again, that doesn't mean that they aren't narcissistic. So you might be wondering, why is she hammering on? Why does this matter? Because if we determine or state or demand that the use of the term narcissistic means a person has a disorder and most people who are narcissistic aren't diagnosed, the estimated rates of prevalence in the population sits somewhere between 1 and 6 percent, depending on whose study you're looking at.
That means that people who are in relationships with narcissistic people, whether it's their parent, their sibling, their partner, spouse, boss, friend, may look at these TikTok videos and say, well, they've never been to a shrink and I don't think they have this diagnosis, so maybe I'm wrong about them. Or maybe I have no right to be mad at someone who has an illness or a disorder. Or if you think someone's narcissistic, you have to endure the criticisms of the people out there who say, well, you can't be mad at a narcissistic person because if you are, you're discriminating against them because they have an illness. No, they don't. They might.
But at the end of the day, even if they do have a personality disorder, abuse is abuse. So even if the abuser has an illness, it's still abuse. So let me repeat it. A narcissistic personality is just a personality style and represents, like I said, a cocktail of lots of behaviors and ways of being in the world. Just as agreeable people are warm and empathic and accommodating and humble, disagreeable slash antagonistic slash narcissistic people may seem charming and even empathic initially, but over time, you will find that they are inconsistently nice, selfish, entitled, arrogant, all of it. It's just who they are. And narcissism is just one part of a personality.
A narcissistic person can be extroverted or introverted or neurotic or conscientious or disinhibited or open to new things or closed off to new things. Narcissism is just one strand of many that form a person's personality, but narcissism is like the banana in the smoothie. It's the flavor that's always going to stick out. But if you're in one of these relationships and trying to figure out the confusion, a great place to start is to make sure you have your facts straight. Narcissism is a personality. It's not a disorder. And most people will never spend enough time in therapy or being evaluated to find out if their narcissism is a personality disorder.
And remember, even if it doesn't, a person can still be narcissistic without a diagnosis. Can't make this point strongly enough. If you're going to watch the content, let the content be accurate. One last thing, just a reminder, please check out my new book. Link is there. It's coming out in February. You can preorder it now. Thanks again. .
S K R Y B O T
Skrybot. 2023, Video transcriptions from YouTube
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