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[English]

Because the mistake people make is they're like,

'narcissists don't have any empathy.' No, they do have some.

And that's the challenge. You catch them on a good day.

They actually look really empathic. Here's the bottom line, though.

We have created a world where narcissism is incentivised and now more than ever.

I wrote one of my books about narcissism back in 2019,

and I didn't think it could get worse. It's gotten a lot worse.

Hey, you guys, it's William here, and this is What in the World.

So when you think about narcissism,

you probably think about people who have a deep need for admiration

and are perhaps a little self-obsessed.

Well, we've taken five of the most asked questions about narcissism

and put them in front of a world-renowned expert.

Just before we get into this, I want to be clear that we're talking

about narcissism as a personality style and not a diagnosable disorder.

Doctor Ramani Durvasula. Hello. Hi, how are you?

Good morning from Los Angeles. Ah, you're in LA?

I was going to ask. Yeah.

As an in-demand psychologist, author, speaker,

and narcissism expert, you travel a lot.

I do, I do, yeah. And LA is home. Yeah.

And so before we sat down, I went on TikTok and I was scrolling through

this #narctalk. That's narcissist TikTok.

And there were more than five billion views.

And scrolling through that, there were some huge emotions and related topics.

Things like narcissistic abuse recovery, narcissist survivor,

narcissistic abuse. These are really big feelings.

So I want to start by asking you, you've devoted your career to this.

What about it interests you?

I feel that this is an area in mental health,

in relationships that, bizarrely, we haven't talked about,

and yet it is so central

to often understanding why people are so distressed

as a result of their relationships and in their relationships.

It's an uncomfortable truth, I guess,

and it's something I've been doing oh gosh, since the early 2000s,

so almost the better part of 25 years.

But back then, you didn't have this kind of public platform. I was working more as an academic.

But for me it was giving, it was giving a name to people's pain,

because until then, a lot of people

in these kinds of relationships characterised by narcissism, thought,

I'm the only person going through this,

and if I say anything, everyone actually kind of thinks my partner's really cool,

so maybe there's something wrong with me. So it was a whole world of people

in the 'emperor's wearing no clothes' kind of thing.

And once there was community and we gave a name to this,

people recognised that being - they were told, 'there's something wrong with you,

you can't get along with people, you're too sensitive,

you're too demanding'. Once this had a name,

a lot of people got a lot of clarity and a lot of healing happened.

We often hear this word narcissist bandied about on social media.

It often seems like the insult of choice for people exiting relationships.

But let's start by being very clear. What is narcissism?

So narcissism is a personality style.

Narcissism as a personality style is not a healthy one,

because it means you don't get along with other people as easily.

And you tend to be quite selfish, which isn't good for people in general.

So narcissism is characterised by a person who has low and variable empathy,

and I'm really putting a fine point on that, because the mistake people make is

they're like, 'narcissists don't have any empathy.' No, they do have some.

And that's the challenge. You catch them on a good day,

they actually look really empathic and that's what confuses people.

The second thing is they're pathologically selfish.

Everything is filtered through them as the focus.

The third thing is an excessive, an excessive, need for admiration and validation.

Again, we all like a little bit of praise,

but for narcissistic people, it's everything.

If you don't give them an effusive 'thank you' for cleaning the dishes,

you're going to often have to face their anger. And speaking of anger,

narcissistic people are also quite emotionally dysregulated.

Either they throw tantrums and get angry

when they're frustrated and don't get their way,

or they feel like somebody's got more power or control than them,

or they give you the silent treatment and are passive aggressive.

Either way, it's a way of showing anger.

Narcissistic people, again, not only have that emotional dysregulation,

not only can't manage their strong emotions,

but they do have that need to be in power, in control.

And narcissistic people are deeply entitled.

In fact, entitlement is probably the defining characteristic of narcissism.

Why can't I get the first class seat? Why am I having to wait in this line?

Why isn't everything about me? You put all that in a blender

and you get narcissism. And I really want to make the point.

Just one of those things does not a narcissistic person make.

So if a person is sort of kind of selfish, I'm not going to call that narcissism.

So you have to have all the things, like a dozen eggs doesn't make a cake,

you need all the other stuff too. And again, it's not a disorder.

And also I want to say this about the whole TikTok landscape of narcissism.

Some people will go on TikTok or Instagram and

say, 'my ex is a narcissist because they cheated on me.' Maybe they are,

but cheating does not mean someone's narcissistic.

There's a lot of reasons people are unfaithful in relationships.

So the mistake a lot of people are making in the internet world of narcissism is they're picking up

on one negative trait and calling it narcissism.

Narcissism is all those things I talked about, happening at the same time.

There are a lot of threads on social media about narcissism, so I'm hoping

I can put a few of those discussions in front of you and get your take.

The first question that comes up quite common is -

how common is narcissism globally? Not as common as you'd think,

although all of us probably know at least one narcissistic person.

Some of - you know the research studies that have been done when

you're actually looking at the diagnosis of narcissistic personality disorder,

which is a whole different animal, that's probably 1-6%.

But when we're talking about the kind of narcissism,

the kind of narcissistic personality where other people would notice it,

research that I've done with my colleague, doctor Heather Harris,

we found rates of around 12% plus or minus.

And so we're talking about one in ten, you know, maybe one in nine.

Now if you know ten to 15 people, odds are one of them might be narcissistic.

But is this everybody? Absolutely not.

In fact, it is definitely a minority of people.

The thing is, though, in our social media world,

they tend to make the most noise online.

We're definitely in an era where we're celebrating noisy, clangy narcissism,

but it's only about probably one in, you know, about 12%.

And this next question comes up a lot in the context of dating.

People ask - what are some of the key traits of a narcissist

I should look out for? You know, it's a tough question,

and that's why I don't like the red flags conversation,

because what that does is, number one, it leaves the person,

the other person in the relationship, let's assume they're not narcissistic,

like the healthier person, feeling like they should be

the one having to detect this, right?

And it puts this onus on them. And this can be quite subtle.

The sorts of stuff one could look for relatively early in a relationship

is stuff like poor frustration tolerance, and that's a fancy way

of saying a person who can't tolerate not getting special treatment,

they have to wait in a line, there's traffic.

Another thing you're looking for is

how much they're actually able to maintain a balance in conversation.

Do they tend to bring it back to themselves?

Are they - do they interrupt?

They may sort of disproportionately talk negatively

about other people, especially things like ex-partners.

And some of the other darker signs you could look for are things like

- it's almost like when there's too much, too much control,

too much attention, too much communication and anger

when you're not giving it back in kind, like, 'hey,

I texted you five minutes ago, why didn't you respond?

Why do you have to go out with your friends every Thursday?

Like what's that? Aren't you into this relationship?'

So it's a sense of feeling more and more getting isolated

and pulled out of usual supports.

Another question I came across was - can narcissists change or be treated?

You know, ish. And what I mean by ish,

if I was a betting person, I'd bet on probably not,

because the vast majority of narcissistic people do not have

what we call self-reflection. They're not able to look inward

and have awareness and say, whew, that wasn't okay.

I've worked with a lot of narcissistic clients myself,

and I really, really, really enjoyed the work with them.

But it is slower. It is much harder on the therapist.

Over half the time the narcissistic client drops out of therapy

when we really start pushing on the accelerator and doing the hard work.

That said, in my career I've seen in some cases

the person hit the so-called rock bottom.

They committed to the work and they did make some progress.

Was it enough for everyone around them?

In some cases, yes. And some cases no.

So changing personality is really, really, really hard.

It's like it's like tearing down a skyscraper.

It's not easy to do. Of course,

in the Greek myth, Narcissus falls in love with his own reflection.

He wastes away. There's a moral to that story.

Self-obsession, vanity. It's harmful. It can destroy you.

It's harmful.

Do you think being a narcissist makes life more difficult for narcissists?

It depends. Narcissistic people make more money.

Narcissistic people are overrepresented in leadership.

Narcissistic people have better luck at dating

and narcissistic people actually do, you know,

sometimes walk around and they take better care of themselves.

In fact, my early research showed that narcissistic people are actually

really good at taking care of their own health.

They just don't care about anyone else's. Here's the bottom line, though.

We have created a world where narcissism is incentivised.

And now more than ever.

I wrote one of my books about narcissism back in 2019,

and I didn't think it could get worse. It's gotten a lot worse.

And so the way people make money, the way people get attention,

the way we have incentivised entitlement and selfishness,

it's a good time to be a narcissist, at least economically.

Now, in the long term, again, it's all

- now we get into philosophical discussion.

I think it's a really rough way to go through life,

to always put yourself first and always feel so insecure.

Narcissistic people often feel like the world is out to get them.

Victimhood is a very big part of narcissism.

I don't know that it feels comfortable to always feel

like you're afraid that someone else has a better car than you,

or is prettier than you, or has a better life than you.

That's a tough way to live, and it's very hard

for narcissistic people to sort of live with that insecurity.

But at the surface level, it really looks

like narcissistic people are winning the game.

I think if you dig a little deeper, I'm not so sure I agree with that.

I want to end with a question that kept coming up online,

and that's - how can our viewers, how can our listeners protect themselves from narcissists?

You know, knowledge is power, right? It's knowing it.

But I'm going to tell you this,

and this is probably going to seem like odd guidance to your listeners,

but listen to it, because I think it could save you a lot of heartache.

Pay attention to your body and pay attention to your sense of safety.

Your body actually is really great at saying something's not right here.

This doesn't feel good.

And it may not always be a five alarm fire saying 'get out.' Sometimes it is,

but sometimes it's like 'I'm not fully in my body here.'

But I think from an early age we have been trained to get along

or even give in to people who aren't safe for us.

How many kids are told, 'go hug that uncle of yours' and

you're like, 'I don't want to hug them', but they get 'no,

no, that's the right thing to do.' It's actually not.

And you don't have to walk around saying, 'uh, I'm not talking to her,

she's narcissistic.' But you might say, like, 'I'm going to take my time

with this, I'm not going to run with reckless abandon in this relationship,

I'm going to pay attention to these patterns.' And,

you know, really take a page out of Doctor Maya Angelou's work.

You know, 'when someone shows you who they really are the first time,

believe them.' You know, like when you see these patterns,

and a pattern to me is something happens three times.

That's my metric.

Someone does something, not comfortable three times, listen to it, disengage.

It doesn't mean you have to block them from your phone.

It doesn't mean you have to get into a big showdown.

But you might say, 'you know what, I don't know

that I'm going to show all my cards to this person.

They don't feel safe.' If we could honour that within ourselves,

we could save ourselves a lot of heartache.

I feel like you have saved me a lot of heartache. Thank you so much.

Thank you so much. Thank you for this opportunity.

If you liked this video, please do give us a like

and be sure to scribble your comments down below.

And why not consider subscribing to the BBC World Service YouTube channel

so you don't miss our future episodes? We'll see you later. Bye.

Key Vocabulary

Vocabulary	Meanings
narcissism /ˈnɑːrsɪsɪzəm/ C2	noun - excessive self-centeredness and vanity
empathy /ˈɛmpəθi/ B2	noun - the ability to understand and share another person's feelings
personality /ˌpɜːrsəˈnæləti/ B1	noun - the set of qualities that make a person distinct
admiration /ˌædməˈreɪʃən/ B1	noun - respect and warm approval
disorder /dɪˈsɔːrdər/ B1	noun - a mental condition characterized by disorganizing symptoms
abuse /əˈbjuːs/ B1	noun - cruel or violent treatment of another person verb - to treat someone cruelly or violently
recovery /rɪˈkʌvəri/ B1	noun - the process of regaining health or strength after illness or trauma
survivor /sərˈvaɪvər/ B1	noun - a person who has survived a difficult experience
selfish /ˈsɛlfɪʃ/ A2	adjective - concerned primarily with one's own interests
entitled /ɛnˈtaɪtəld/ B2	adjective - believing that one deserves special treatment
validation /ˌvælɪˈdeɪʃən/ B2	noun - the confirmation or approval of something
praise /preɪz/ B1	noun - expression of approval or admiration verb - to express approval or admiration
anger /ˈæŋɡər/ B1	noun - a strong feeling of annoyance or displeasure verb - to make someone angry
dysregulated /dɪsˈrɛɡjəleɪtɪd/ C1	adjective - unable to control emotions properly
research /ˈriːsɜːrtʃ/ B1	noun - systematic study to find information verb - to investigate systematically
trait /treɪt/ B1	noun - a characteristic or quality of someone or something
balance /ˈbæləns/ B1	noun - an even distribution of weight allowing someone to remain upright verb - to remain steady and stable
isolated /ˈaɪsəleɪtɪd/ B2	adjective - separated from others
reflection /rɪˈflɛkʃən/ B1	noun - thinking deeply about something
self-obsession /ˌsɛlf əbˈsɛʃən/ C2	noun - excessive preoccupation with oneself