Psychotherapy expert: Children of Narcissists

Vol XXVI: Our mother was a "textbook" narcissist. My sister and I are now approaching retirement. We've always been isolated and alone. Is there a simple thing we can do for relief? I take depression meds but am anxious around other people. We do work and own a home, but we're unable to socialize!

By DR. MIKE GROPPER
dr mike 88 (photo credit: )
dr mike 88
(photo credit: )
Dr. Mike is a licensed clinical social worker (USA and Israel) in private practice in Ra'anana and Jerusalem. He is also founder and director of SmokeQuitters. He recently wrote a column called "Psych-Talk with Dr. Mike" in which the feedback from readers was excellent. He has decided to shift gears and invite readers to submit their questions concerning a wide range of topics: child development, adult problems, addictions, ADHD, adjustment problems, crises and transitions, trauma, phobia, mental disorders such as anxiety, depression, and bi-polar. He also welcomes questions concerning your marital or couple relationship, family issues, parenting, problems at work, self-confidence, shyness and much more. To arrange a consultation (Israel and international), call or e-mail Dr. Gropper at (972) 9 774-1913 or at drmikegropper@gmail.com "I take pleasure having the opportunity to answer your questions in what I hope will be an informative and exciting weekly column in the Jerusalem Post-online edition. Look forward to hearing from you soon." Send your questions for Dr. Mike and please leave your comments on the Q&A below. * * * Psych-Talk with Dr. Mike: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12 Click here for Volumes I-IV Click here for Volumes V-IX Click here for Volumes X-XIII Click here for Volumes XIV-XV Click here for Volumes XVI-XIX Click here for Volume XX Click here for Volume XXI-XXII Click here for Volume XXIII-XXIV * * * This column is intended solely to educate and is not a substitute for personal diagnosis or treatment. If you have a difficult problem, please seek advice from your own doctor or mental-health professional. * * * Vol XXVI Q: Our mother was a "textbook" narcissist. She was very cruel. My sister and I are now approaching retirement. We've always been isolated and alone. Our few remaining relatives don't care to associate with us, I'm sure our mother filled their heads with lies about us. She has since passed away. We live together with our pets. Is there a simple thing we can do for relief? A little trick to help us out? I take depression meds but still am anxious around other people. We do work and own a home, but we're unable to socialize. Help! A: Narcissism is named after the ancient Greek myth of Narcissus, a handsome Greek youth who rejected the desperate advances of the nymph Echo. In punishment for his cruelty, he was doomed to fall in love with his own reflection in a pool of water. Unable to consummate his love, he pined away and changed into the flower that bears his name to this very day. Because they need continuous proof of the significance of their "voice," narcissists must find people, particularly important people, to hear and value them. If they are not heard, their childhood wound opens, and they quickly begin to feel threatened. This terrifies them. Narcissists use everyone around them to keep themselves inflated. Often they find flaws in others and criticize them fiercely, as this further "distinguishes" them from those who are "defective." Repeatedly, in order to keep himself inflated, the narcissist has to control and dominate those that are around him; usually these are his immediate family members. There is not enough room for more than one correct viewpoint in the mind of a narcissist, unless that viewpoint is in agreement with his own. The narcissist does not really like others. Rather, others are used to reflect back the image he quite cleverly imposes on the world to keep his grandiosity inflated. The problem is that many people reared in homes with narcissistic parents in order to survive and avoid severe rejection and painful ridicule have had to put their own personalities on ice, seal them away in a deep freeze or else risk rejection. In the case of you and your sister, you chose to withdraw into a isolation from the world i.e. never getting married, choosing each other as your primary friends, and minimizing most outside relationships. At the core of this behavioral choice, are usually extreme negative views of one's self worth and value. The social world is viewed as negative, uncertain, and even dangerous, therefore it is not surprising that you and your sister have chosen to avoid it. I am sure that in contrast, you both view yourselves more positively when alone and in situations that you do not find threatening. Help Cognitive-behavioral psychotherapy is the treatment of choice for adult-children maltreated by narcissistic relationships. Adult children of a narcissistic relationship often come into therapy complaining that they are depressed or anxious or that they have some type of psychosomatic symptom that does not have any medical origin. The goal is to help the individual counter false images of herself and to overcome self-dislike. Therapy aims at helping this individual, perhaps for the first time to develop a sense of yourselves as people with your own view of the world, and to begin to like yourselves without being afraid of stepping on someone else's emotional toes for doing so. While antidepressant medication can certainly take the edge off of accompanying depressive and anxiety symptoms, it is cognitive-behavioral psychotherapy with a caring therapist that can really help you and your sister to confront the emotional demons that you have both internalized which need to be transformed into a more positive and cohesive sense of self and to begin to learn and utilize some new social coping skills. It's never too late to learn. Good luck. * * * Vol XXV Q: Often when I am anxious, particularly in social situations, I become so tense that my body begins to make jerking movements and I blush. This happens so frequently that I now obsess about these symptoms expecting them to occur in social situations when I meet people. I am a single young female in her 20s, and when I meet men, the same thing occurs. I think what if the symptoms that I described above occur, and no sooner than I think about this, they start to happen. My strange behavior with these symptoms has been happening in the workplace around this male coworker who, when I ask him a question, and I'm experiencing these symptoms, he gives me a mean, disapproving look, since he's so uncomfortable seeing this strange behavior in me. He probably thinks I'm attracted to him, and that I want to date him and he's bothered by my assumed "interest" in him. Since this behavior is similar to symptoms of attraction for somebody, right away people assume I have the hots for someone. It's happening also with my supervisor, and now with a male friend of mine there! It's awful. The worst part is that I'm driving people away from me because of these outward manifestations and I'm having trouble concentrating on my work when I experience this problem, and even though my supervisor is a nice, easy going guy, I'm afraid that my behavior will cause him to fire me. I'm very worried I may lose my male friend at work because of this defect of mine. He's seen my strange behavior today and then he started acting the same way a bit... He's a great buddy he makes me laugh at work; he's very funny, and now he probably thinks I'm becoming attracted to him, (which isn't true!), and that will put a block in our friendship. These negative thoughts of mine are uncontrollable when they happen, even though I try hard to put a good thought to replace these bad ones. But the bad ones overrule my mind still! I've seen therapists for this problem, but they haven't helped. The current one I'm seeing just says to concentrate on my job. Well that's no help because it doesn't work for me. I've taken lots of different medications (I think just about all of them!), but none of them seem to lick this problem... I cry about it. A lot. I wish G-d would kill me or something, just so I wouldn't have to be this way around people, me driving them all away. Can you offer a way I can resolve this problem, that I feel will be with me all my life? I don't know what to do anymore, no matter how hard I try to think positively. Those negative thoughts are possessing me instead, and I think I'm going crazy!.. I thank you for reading this long message, and I'd really appreciate your response to this pressing problem of mine. Thank you. A: Cognitive therapy postulates that people suffer from anxiety and depression because they are generating automatic thoughts that are inaccurate and usually skewed in the negative direction. It was Aaron Beck in 1960s who first proposed that the negative automatic thoughts about an individual's self, personal world, and future were the key symptom features of clinical depression and anxiety. Beck went on to develop a very useful and practical treatment model called cognitive therapy. In cognitive therapy, the therapist works together with the client to help him or her examine the beliefs and thoughts and meanings that an individual gives to situations, to one self, and/or the future and to empirically test out and determine how true these thoughts actually are. The outcome of this clinical work is to give the client coping skills to learn how to change the direction of negative thoughts and to see the things more realistically. In your case, you write the following four beliefs which in fact cause you're a great deal of stress and depression: 1) that your behavior is a manifestation of being attracted to someone; 2) that you are driving people away from you with your behavior; 3) that you are worried that your behavior will get you fired; and 4) that you will have this problem for the rest of your life, therefore you feel like it is driving you crazy. It seems what you should be looking at is how true and what real evidence proves that there is any validity to your four beliefs. I suspect that your beliefs are in fact exaggerated and a cognitive therapist could help you to examine these beliefs more closely and hopefully help you to change their direction, thereby feeling better. Medication, while a useful adjunct that could take the edge off of your anxiety and depression, cannot replace the importance of doing some cognitive restructuring of your automatic thoughts that in my view are at the core of your problem. Find yourself a good cognitive therapist. Good luck. * * * Send your comments >> Cafe Oleh experts have been chosen for their knowledge and reputation. Cafe Oleh does not take responsibility for any advice they offer.
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