Narcissism in the Gay Community

[00:00:03] Matt Landsiedel: Welcome to Gay Men Going Deeper, a podcast series by the Gay Men’s Brotherhood where we talk about personal development, mental health and sexuality. I am your host, Matt Lanl. I’m a counselor and facilitator specializing in healing and empowerment. My areas of expertise are teaching people how to heal toxic shame and attachment trauma and embody their authentic self so they can have more meaningful connections in their lives. I specialize in working with highly sensitive people, empaths, and gay men to develop a stronger sense of self-worth. Today’s topic is narcissism in the gay community and we are joined by Ken Reid.

Welcome, Ken.

[00:00:37] Ken Reid: Thanks, Matt. Very good to be back again for the third time. We’ve done a major discussion on something.

[00:00:43] Matt Landsiedel: Yeah, yeah. This is your first time on Gaming Going Deeper. But you, you’ve been a guest on my other podcast twice. So I was looking forward to having you on here to unpack this topic. The first I thought about doing this topic, you’re the first person that came to mind. I was like, okay, let’s unpack this.

[00:01:01] Ken Reid: I feel like that’s such a. Like, that’s a bit of a role to live up to, especially considering the fact that narcissism isn’t a topic that nobody’s talking about. Like, there are so many people, including armchair psychologists, who love to talk about this. So I’m glad and thank you very much.

[00:01:18] Matt Landsiedel: Yeah, yeah, it is. And it’s become almost like the word authenticity. It’s like a buzzword. And so I want to definitely we’re going to unpack that today and kind of what that means. But before we go into that, I just wanted to, you know, formally introduce you that you, Ken, is an attachment and trauma informed counselor who specializes in grief recovery, relationship guidance, and CPTSD recovery. So lots of overlap in what we do. And I think we come from a very much an attachment model, trauma informed model. And I think we’re going to be able to really share with the audience a lot of really good things.

So what we’re going to be talking about today is obviously what is narcissism? So unpacking narcissistic personality disorder and differing that from people with narcissistic tendencies, what is that? What’s the difference between these two things? Analyzing the spectrum. So looking at different types of narcissism and how it shows up, what causes narcissism, what might be or why might it be more prevalent for gay men? And you know, kind of might as a strong word there, because I want to highlight that I’ve never come across any studies that show that, you know, within the gay community there’s higher incidence of narcissistic personality disorder. But from my own personal perspective, and I’m sure you’d probably share that same sentiment, Ken, that we see higher incidence of, of narcissistic traits in our community. So that’s what we’re going to be primarily talking about.

How does it show up in the gay community? So again, more adding on to that conversation.

Dating a narcissist, what would it look like? I think this will be an area where you’ll be able to share some really good stuff because I know you do a lot of this work in, in your practice in, in that people that are recovering from dating, whether that be narcissistic people or avoidant attachers or whatever that might be. So, and then how can we deal with narcissistic people is how we’ll wrap up the conversation. What are some things we can do to make sure that we are informed and protecting ourselves against people that don’t have our best interests at heart?

Okay, so the first thing I want to say off the top is we’re not here to condemn or further pathologize people really. This is about spreading awareness of what this might mean. So like I said, there is people that actually are clinically diagnosed with narcissistic personality disorder, and then there’s, you know, the whole spectrum of people that have traits. And from my, my perspective, I think most human beings have some form of narcissistic traits. And if we’re looking at that, it could be things like selfishness, egotistical behavior, self absorption, gaslighting, manipulative vein, like these sort of qualities that would lump in to narcissism. I think a lot of human being beings exhibit these. So we want to spread awareness of both. So what if you look at the dsm where narcissistic personality disorder would fall under, would be under personality disorder. So it’s called cluster B personality disorder. So that would include antisocial, borderline histrionic, and narcissistic personality disorders. So the common thread among all of these personality disorders are going to be difficulty in regulating emotions and behavior.

And usually from my perspective through the lens I look at this through, it’s usually caused by childhood trauma. So we’re going to be unpacking that a little bit further as well.

And there, there is a big overuse in the term narcissistic. I hear it a lot. It’s like probably, if you type that, that’s probably one of the biggest searches on YouTube and Instagram. So we want to really unpack what that means.

Again, having narcissistic personality disorder and the traits is going to be different. So we’re going to unpack that.

And then I just wrote down here, narcissistic people are severely traumatized people. They tend to have been relationally injured and they develop narcissistic personality traits as an attempt to keep themselves safe through only thinking about themselves. So I, I view it as a severe form of self preservation or a preoccupation with self with no regard for others. So it’s just a very, very probably at the time adaptive strategy used when you, they’re growing up in these really toxic or chaotic home environments where maybe there’s abuse or significant forms of trauma and they develop this, this overinflated sense of self as a way to protect in that environment. So I try to look at it through that lens.

I have worked with people on this, on this spectrum throughout my career. I did work at the jail for a few years. So definitely you see that type of, or these type of cluster B traits in the jail. And there’s always an underpinning of trauma in working with these individuals. So I try my best to lead with compassion as much as, but sometimes the behavior of these people can make that really hard to lead with compassion. So, and I want to just read, read the criteria here. So the DSM 4 and DSM 5 criteria for personality disorders, which for those of you who don’t know that it’s a diagnostic statistical manual that’s used by mental health practitioners to diagnose psychopathologies, really at the end of the day. So, so basically it’s a pervasive pattern of grandiosity in fantasy or behavior that is characterized by a need for admiration, a lack of empathy beginning by early adulthood and present in a variety of contexts as indicated by five or more of the following.

So has a grandiose sense of self importance. So what they exaggerate achievements and talents expecting to be recognized as superior without consummate achievements.

Is preoccupied with fantasies or unlimited success of unlimited success, power, brilliance, beauty or ideal love.

Believes that he or she is special and unique and can only be understood by or should associate with other special or high status people or institutions.

Requires excessive admiration.

Has a sense of entitlement, so unreasonably expectations of especially favorable treatment or automatic compliance with his or her expectations.

Is interpersonally exploitative. So takes advantage of others to achieve his or her own ends. Lacks empathy. Is unwilling to recognize or identify with the feelings and needs of others, is often envious of others or believes that they are envious of others, him or her, and shows arrogant hottie behaviors or attitudes. So for myself I characterized it by 3e. That’s just a very easy way that I categorize it. So lack of empathy, entitlement and exploitation. Usually those three things all have to be present in order for someone to have npd.

And just to note that it is tough to diagnose due to a lack of self reporting. Self responsibility, self awareness and shame usually. So people that have these characteristics that are not able to have self awareness or take responsibility for themselves, they would never go to say a psychiatrist to get diagnosed. So diagnostics are low incidence, probably higher because of this. So just important to understand that.

So yeah, narcissistic personality disorder requires self reported disturbances in two major domains. So that would be social and occupational. So within your interpersonal relationships and or, or work, in your work situation. So you’d have disturbances in these areas. People that do have enough enlightenment to be able to go, if they have this as a pathology, they would go to a psychiatrist and they would likely be reporting high incidence of social and occupational disturbance. Just to make that clear.

So and then there are different types of narcissists and different types of narcissism. So I want to pass it over to you Ken, to just give us a bit of a rundown on what different types of, of narcissism are there.

[00:09:34] Ken Reid: Sure can. So firstly, thank you for explaining the dimensionality of narcissism based on your own lived experience and also the DSM 5. I think one of the biggest challenges people have when it comes to interacting with individuals who they suspect might have at the very least narcissistic traits is the fact that people with strong narcissistic traits or npd, you know, can be very different in the way they show up. And if you look at it just exclusively by the DSM 5, then one of two things is going to happen. Everyone’s a narcissist, including yourself, or you end up just feeling like, yeah, but they don’t do exploitation of others, they don’t seem really haughty and they don’t seem really charismatic. So maybe they’re not a narcissist. So this is where the types have been really practical for people to be like, oh I can put a name on this and actually understand it better because to what Matt was saying earlier about how you don’t really need say 7 out of 7 of the traits to be Diagnosed as a narcissist, even a sufficient number would necess you would classify as someone at the very least with high narcissism. So getting straight into it, I think some of the types that we would see normally, especially in our community, would include ones like, for example, covert narcissists. So this is a really good example of someone who would not be your traditional narcissist. This is someone who might appear shy, sullen, maybe feels like they haven’t had a lot going on in their life. So this might be a person who feels, you know, like they’ve nothing has ever gone right in their world. They’ve been bullied as a kid that the boat of opportunities has well and truly sailed. They’ve missed out on so many things. And people tend to take pity on these individuals and think, oh, you know, poor person, this is really sad. But as this individual starts to get to know this person with COVID narcissism, they may start to realize things very late on in a relationship, sometimes like six, ten years down the line, where they realize this person actually isn’t doing anything to get better. They always seem to be in this victim mindset. They don’t seem to be seeking admiration and also getting, you know, tons of attention from other people. What they do is they need to feel constantly like they’re getting supply from people that are closest to them saying, oh, woe, pity is you. You’ve had such a hard life. And so often these individuals are ones where these relationships can go on for 15, 20 plus years and it’s just draining to anyone involved. And it’s really what I describe as someone who’s very irritable, depressed. These individuals are not great, sexually speaking, and it just sort of feels like you’re dating someone who’s very cold and lacks any empathy towards you. So this is a good example of someone who doesn’t really sound like a classical narcissist, yet still is very much a prevalent type of a narcissist. Then on the flip side, we have your classical overt narcissist, someone who obviously likes attention, charismatic, haughty. They really have a very debonair streak to them. They like to hang out with, you know, the IT crowd, keeping up with the Joneses. And they’re very good at putting people down and making their incivility known whenever they feel ashamed. If you, you know, if they have like a bad day at work, they’ll let you know about it by raging at you about it. If they’re not necess necessarily getting A promotion that they thought that was entitled to them, they will be in a complete meltdown over it. And it can feel like you’re going through a blitzkrieg that you didn’t even ask for. And then on, you know. Another type of narcissist that I think we would definitely see in our community is more of a somatic narcissist. So this is someone who is very self obsessed with their body. But I want to make it very clear I don’t mean self loving in accepting of their body. What these individuals would do is manicure perfect and commodify their body to try and get validation from others. So we typically see this from people who have fitness models, bodybuilders. And I want to make it very clear, not every fitness model or bodybuilder is a somatic narcissist. But individuals, you know, might be drawn into those professions because it means they get tons of external validation through social media because of their appearance. Many people have thought, oh, maybe these individuals are just sex addicts, but they’re not. They’re more interested in conquest, going out and getting validation through their appearance and then also brutally discarding people along the line. You might find that these individuals, if they ever were treated for sex addiction, nothing really changes because their primary motivator is not one of, you know, loneliness and also feeling like they’re not good enough and dealing with a lot of emotional stuff. It’s actually a drive to, you know, feel better about themselves through external validation. So it’s very different from sex addiction.

[00:14:22] Matt Landsiedel: Yeah.

[00:14:22] Ken Reid: And then you’ve got things I was.

[00:14:25] Matt Landsiedel: Gonna say maybe even to alleviate shame. Right. Because a lot of people go into this low self worth caused by shame. Let’s post pictures of ourselves and get all this external validation as a way to do that. Right. So I just wanted to point that out as well.

[00:14:38] Ken Reid: It’s a good point to raise because I was going to say, I think we all, to a degree, you know, post pictures of ourselves every now and then. But a few photos of ourselves does not mean a chronic habit and also, you know, a disrespect for others, especially romantic partners as well too. So I think that’s where so much context comes into play with this sort of stuff. So you’re absolutely on point with that. Other types include communal narcissists. These might be the individuals drawn to charities, religious organizations, wanting to show how holier than thou they are by, you know, always showing up for particular people in need for doing things, you know, for others. But it’s not really for the people in need. It’s actually to demonstrate to others how seemingly good they are and getting external validation through their charitable efforts. It really doesn’t feel authentic when you’re around these folk. And if they’re not getting their way and being praised enough for their holy Samaritan work, they often rage at the people around them. And then there’s also your malignant narcissists, which are very close to your sociopaths, your psychopaths, in that they’re very exploitative. They’re very much driven by power, privilege, prestige. And they’re individuals who can be very manipulative, highly paranoid. These are like the CEOs who are keeping tabs on what people are saying about them. The parents who are installing security cameras all over the home, monitoring what goes on your phone, constantly cross checking so much stuff to make sure that no one is saying even a little thing about them at all. And then micromanage everything in order to make sure they feel like their reputation is intact. These individuals are very Machiavellian. So as you can see through some of the types that I just listed, this is very big as a spectrum. There is no, just like, oh, you’re someone who seemingly has this charismatic attitude, therefore you’re a narcissist. No, there’s so many different dimensions to people with strong narcissistic tendencies or narcissistic personality disorder.

[00:16:42] Matt Landsiedel: Yeah. Yeah, good job. That was a really good job. Great way to break it down. And I’m sure everybody’s kind of nodding like, yep, I know that person. You know, kind of, you know, going through our minds and the Rolodex of people we know because those, those qualities are definitely common in our society. And it almost feels like from when I was younger to, you know, the time social media hit the, the market to now, it’s like self obsession has become so prevalent. Like I, it’s almost like, you know, these younger generations, it’s just like they’re being primed to just be so self absorbed and self involved and you know, like it’s just, you know, the, the generation of the selfie, I guess. So it’s interest. Interesting to see, you know, as things go on, you know, 10 years from now, what we’re going to be seeing as far as maybe the, the incident rates of, of narcissism increasing or.

Yeah, it’s interesting.

There are a couple resources I just wanted to share off the top. So Dr. Romani does some really great work. She’s probably my favorite resource on YouTube. She’s got. It does a lot of good videos. Yeah. On that as well. And I did. I created a. A video, what’s more like a workshop on YouTube called the Narcissist and the Empath Trauma Bonding, Codependency and Healing Through Authenticity. So that might be something to check out if you’re an empath or a sensitive person and you attract narcissistic people. Because that is the. Is the resource that I created to help empaths and sensitive people understand themselves and the wounds they might be carrying around that are attracting narcissistic people into their life. So just wanted to put that out there.

[00:18:26] Ken Reid: I think it’s actually a very good point that you write because I find that in my experience, a lot of people who are from codependent backgrounds, usually because I’ve been raised by a narcissistic parent, often find themselves dating narcissistic individuals too. And say, I’ve seen it, a lot of it, I fortunately have it, so I can’t comment on that. But I was going to say no shame to anyone who has, because quite frankly, I think a lot of people have and it’s very common in our society. I think that when it comes to battling codependency, I’d argue that’s its own thing to deal with and that’s a very challenging thing to overcome. But whilst our live today is obviously focused or live episode today is obviously focused today on narcissism, I think it is one of those things where actually the first step of a lot of this is actually just acknowledging the fact that maybe there is a narcissist in your life. Because stage one for a lot of all of this is just acknowledge reality. And for a lot of people, you kind of have to accept the fact that what you’re dealing with is someone who is that way. And you don’t really need to have a DSM 5 or a psychiatrist diagnose this person for you if it’s really impacting your life.

[00:19:36] Matt Landsiedel: Totally, totally. And the way that a narcissist would work is they would come into your life and they would love bomb. And you know, they basically. It’s like the frog in the. In the warm water and then it starts to boil. That’s how narcissists work. They manipulate a situation so it’s feels like love, it feels real. And then all of a sudden it just. It starts to shift very slowly. So before you know it, you’re kind of under their spell. Right. So interesting. But we’re getting ahead of ourselves. I Want to talk a bit about the causes of narcissism. So from your perspective, I’m curious, what, what are you. What do you think causes narcissism?

[00:20:10] Ken Reid: Well, I think there’s a few things. And generally speaking, there is still a bit of academic debate as to what may be the primary cause for a lot of this. But generally speaking, the research seems to suggest that there’s a combination of things that are going on, that there might be a genetic component that might be activated under certain circumstances that causes and contributes to the development of high narcissism in an individual. There also is trauma, which relates to your experience with interacting with individuals with npd, that they’ve often come from a history of trauma. Although I will add that that’s not always the case as well, too, in the sense that emotional deprivation and spoiled upbringings can also be a contributor to the development of narcissism. To say if someone was maybe emotionally neglected as a kid but was spoiled and was given all that they wanted, they might grow up with a lot of arrested development and think that they can just get away with anything without even taking. Taking into the consideration of how other people are feeling based on their behavior. And then generally, you know, environmental factors might also contribute to this too, because to what you were saying earlier, Matt, about how this is also rooted in survival. If you’ve grown up in a narcissistic household, not. You’re not always necessarily going to develop into a narcissist. Or even if you’ve been in a narcissistic relationship, there is a term that’s thrown around which is called fleas, which is this idea that you might have picked up a few narcissistic behaviors here and there just to survive said environment. But again, it doesn’t necessarily make you a narcissist, but it’s still relevant to think about because our social environment can have such a huge impact on dispositions and traits. So it is important to think about that. Our formative years are arguably some of the most fertile ground for this developing. And I think even Dr. Ramani said, if you wanted to really get to the root of this and cut it out, you’d really want to start having some intervention when people are very much growing up in their, you know, teen years, because that can be where course correction can occur.

[00:22:18] Matt Landsiedel: Yeah, I like that. And like I think in most things in mental health that are.

[00:22:22] Ken Reid: That are.

[00:22:22] Matt Landsiedel: That trauma has an underpinning. The sooner we can get to it, the better, in my opinion, or even prevent it from happening.

But it’s tough. It’s really tough.

Okay, yeah, great. I love all those and I second all those. I don’t know much about the genetics. I tend to be more, I would say nurture over nature. And in the case of this I would say it’s a lack of nurture, actually a lack of nurturement or not nurturing in, within childhood. So that could look like relational or attachment trauma. So it could be abuse, it could be neglect, it could be abandonment. It could be something where things felt so out of control in this person’s life that they felt like they had to shut down, right? Shut down empathy, shut down any ability to feel so they could become highly dissociative. And, and then the other, the other aspect of this I think too would be like you said, arrested development. And I think for me it would be the arrested development in the person’s sense of self. So when we’re younger and we go through like let’s say an individuation process, we start to have ego formation occurring and there’s some sort of disturbance that happens in this period. Usually this is when we develop like, I always categorize it as like when we’re younger we have little S, little self, big other, right? And as we, we individuate we start to develop like medium s, medium other. And that’s like a healthy individuation. And when somebody goes through a significant amounts of trauma they might develop big S, little O. Right. Highly, highly preoccupied with self and very little, little concern with other. And again it’s, it’s an adaptive thing we do when we’re younger and we’re in an environment where there is no validation for us. There is no encouragement of our authentication, authenticity or of our sense of self. So we basically develop this big reliance on ourself. We become hyper independent, super self sufficient and we start to disregard other people. Right.

And then you know, again we go through more developmental stages and things and this just gets affirmed. So from my perspective it would probably be, I think narcissism is created in when we’re a lot younger and we don’t go through healthy individuation, healthy ego formation, development, these sorts of things.

And actually this is another good resource for probably people like us. I don’t know if the lay, lay person or just you know, the average listener would be into this, but it’s the point of existence transformations of narcissism in self realization. So this is ah. Almis is probably in my opinion one of the pioneers in depth psychology. And I studied this, this book in university actually in a transpersonal psychotherapy class. And it was like life changing for me. It really opened up my eyes to the struct structures of the mind and the development and trauma and these sorts of things. But he, ah. Almis says narcissism is fundamentally the central expression of the alienation from one’s true self.

So again, individuation, ego formation, these sort of sorts of things, they encourage boundaries, they encourage the development of our authentic self. If there’s an injury or a rupture in this, then we’re going to have alienation from our true self. Right? We got to develop all these masks, these Personas, these ways of getting our needs met through manipulation and that I think that’s a big, big cause here in my, Just from my perspective.

[00:25:50] Ken Reid: Completely agree with you. And I think that the other thing that I was going to say too is it is the development of a very, very fragile, sticky ego as well. It’s very much about putting up a false self in order to feel better about oneself. And to a degree, hey, like, we all have egos. We all. And I don’t necessarily think the ego is bad. I know there’s a lot of talk about ego, death and all this sort of stuff, and I don’t think that necessarily, you know, one’s ego is necessarily the root of all evil. But I do think that when it comes to being highly narcissistic, you know, it really is exactly as you describe. It’s almost a tool to serve big S over little O, to really gain a lot of validation. A narcissism in general is like being an addict for validation in order to feel better about, you know, your big S. Because really that big S is sitting on a foundation of asbestos that could crumble very easily. And when it does, it can be a disaster in clinical settings. But that’s a story for another day.

[00:26:57] Matt Landsiedel: Yeah, well, and why do you think, you know, people that are narcissistic have narcissistic rage because the, the big S that’s sitting on the asbestos on the cracky foundation when it crumbles, right? It’s like it’s so fragile, their sense of self is so fragile. So they’re, they’re manipulating everything around them to give them this sense of self because it’s actually not coming from within, it’s coming from outside themselves. So again, it’s a, it’s a, it’s almost like an addiction or two to external validation, like you said. So really well put. I love that, but it’s a good, good way to look at it.

Okay, so moving into why it might be more prevalent for gay men. And again, I want to just read this definition. Narcissism is fundamentally the central expression of the alienation from one’s true self.

So many gay men, we have injury to the development of our authentic self because we have to hide who we are for most of our upbringing. Right. We can’t be gay, we can’t be sensitive, we can’t be emotional, we can’t be feminine. We got to shut down a lot of who we are. And I think this is a recipe, this is one of the ingredients to the recipe that could potentially lead to people developing narcissistic traits. What are your thoughts about that?

[00:28:10] Ken Reid: I was going to say the other day, to be honest.

So I’m going to do my best to really turn this into a very pithy summary. Yes, everything you said.

So my thoughts are as follows. I want to echo something you said at the very beginning of this, which is to say, whilst there is not necessarily any research to suggest, hey, if you’re gay, there’s a high incidence that you might develop into a narcissist. It’s more to say that with what we’ve discussed already, that trauma, upbringing, you know, alienation, bullying, abuse can all be a recipe for the development of narcissism in an adult. So when we think about the gay community in general, I have to say now this is statistically proven mental health for gay men is not exactly fantastic. So let’s just use that as a bit of a statistical point to say there is therefore a high likelihood that people with, you know, in our community are going to maybe develop some form of personality disorder, even narcissistic traits. So let’s dive straight in. I think you’re absolutely right. I think that I’ll start actually with being closeted because I think that is a huge one for many, many men and women and people who are non binary in terms of, you know, really coming to themselves and not feeling like they can. I think that for a lot of people who may develop into covert now, narcissist, and I’m just using this as an example, might deny their own sexuality because they’ve been forever told that they can’t be themselves or have been made to feel like they can’t be themselves. So, you know, being closeted for them is their way of protecting themselves from any shame, embarrassment, and they really need to maintain this veneer that they’re fitting in with everyone when in fact, they actually have some traits of being, you know, part of our beautiful LGBTQIA space. But of course, there is a strong societal undertone which says, being straight is okay. Anything else, not so great. So understandably, it could definitely, you know, we. I’ve heard so many cases of people who are closeted who actually also do have high narcissism. But I want to make it very clear, not everyone who is closeted is a narcissist. It depends on how. To your point earlier, how that person is weaponizing this, like the big S to obtain external validation from others, and how they’re doing that to protect that shaky asbestos foundation which, you know, where all those, you know, beautiful, messy parts of them exist. I think that for a lot of gay men, we. I think there’s tremendous internalized homophobia about who we are, and I think that can lead to the development of other styles of narcissism as well. Take the somatic narcissism in our community, too. How many, you know, men in our community are very body focused, too, to the point where maybe it’s done in such a way where their obsession with their body and using it to, you know, have sexual partners is not done because they want an authentic relationship, but it’s to prop up that big S to make them feel better about themselves, too. And I also think, as well, now, now, everybody bear with me on this one. I also think the hyper femininity and hyper masculinity of people in our community can also see a lot of people who are narcissistic too, because again, it’s that representation of big S and how they show up that makes them feel safe. You know, you have people who are on very big pendulums of how they represent themselves, and they may show up incredibly antagonistic, be putting people down, exploitative and creating these power structures with their friends in order to feel better about themselves. And honestly, it can feel like you’re back in the schoolyard.

[00:31:55] Matt Landsiedel: Yeah.

[00:31:55] Ken Reid: And so, generally speaking, I think our community definitely sees a lot of narcissism.

[00:32:02] Matt Landsiedel: Yeah, Yeah, I agree. And you know, what you were saying. And again, I’m not gonna. I’m not generalizing and lumping all into this, but drag queens and, like, seeing, you know, going to drag shows and seeing the way that they can be so catty and so mean. It’s almost like an alter ego they’ve created so they can express some of this. This energy that’s inside of them, around. Maybe it is the rage, you know, the gay rage that is not it’s being repressed. Right. The anger that we all have that we didn’t get to be our authentic selves, we didn’t get to date, we didn’t get to have sex when we were younger. So we have a lot of this pent up energy inside of us and that can manifest indefinitely into narcissistic traits and qualities in people. So.

And then, you know, again, I would probably say too like the two points I put what we become masters of disguise and learn to manipulate the world around us to feel safe. And again, what does, what do narcissistic people do? They manipulate. That’s one of the biggest qualities. Right. And they disguise themselves and they show up as X when they’re really Y and they. Right. So there’s, there’s this, this energy. So again, that can really lend itself to, to the development as well. And then I think shame for me, you know, everything always comes back to shame because I’ve struggled with it so much in my life and I did. I wouldn’t say I was a somatic narcissist, but I would say I definitely like, well, and I pathology, I pathologically used my body for, for validation. So I guess you could say that I, at that point in my life I was, I was a somatic narcissist to a certain degree.

And I felt very small. I felt like, you know, very, very little. And I, and the only time I would feel good about myself was when I would get those likes or that validation. Right. So I realized the fragility of my sense of self at that, at that age. That was about five years ago. And I just went on this really long journey of, of healing and growing and learning how to love my body in isolation of a mirror or a selfie or these sorts of things. And it was a tremendous amount of work, but it’s, it’s, it’s very, very doable.

Yeah.

[00:34:06] Ken Reid: So can I just quickly interrupt you there though?

I don’t want anyone listening to this thinking, oh well, if you could do it, my partner, my family member must be able to overcome their narcissism too, because I just want to say. Yeah, generally speaking, I don’t know we’re going to talk about this. The research says higher than likely your chances is. No. So I just say healing narcissism, if it’s like, you know, put it like this, if it’s not going to destroy you as a human being, your chances are you probably will be able to overcome it. But it’s not for everyone.

[00:34:37] Matt Landsiedel: Yeah, yeah. I agree. And, you know, I think one of the biggest characteristics you look at, the three E’s, they have to be present lack of empathy. So I’ve never once in my life had a lack of empathy. If anything, I’ve had to learn how to turn down my empathy because I feel way too much for people. So I know right there that I probably would not categorize myself as a narcissist, but definitely wounded and injured in my sense of self and needed to learn how to love myself and. And how to develop self worth intrinsically and not just always extrinsically. So, okay, so I think we touched on this a little bit, but I want to just open it up in case there’s anything else that you want to say as far as how it shows up in the gay community.

[00:35:18] Ken Reid: Well, I guess outside of how it might show up in some of the types of men that exist in our community, I was going to say I. I probably don’t have much more to add in terms of, like, the dimensionality. But maybe what I would say is that generally speaking, maybe I’ll use your example because I think this is actually really relevant too. I think that for many gay men, I think generally speaking, we use external validation as a way to feel safe in our community and, you know, to, you know, like, what you were saying doesn’t make you a narcissist exclusively. Like, you might just have this trait of yours that needs and thrives on needing to have people like you because you yourself have not been able to feel love. I think that for many gay men, you know, narcissism is our ticket to feeling popular, to over, to seemingly overcoming the trauma of what we had when we were growing up, when we were younger. And that, you know, as you called it, like that shame rage or that velvet rage that we often have, I think really, you know, comes out of us when we feel like it’s so unfair. I never got to necessarily be myself and to do all these things that seemingly other people can do. So I think, you know, for many of us, and I can definitely say this for myself, I think there is a phase where we are living out our trauma, and that includes being, you know, very narcissistic at times in order to try and feel big, you know, in our surroundings. And I think that, you know, for many of us too, it’s one of those things where it can contribute to a lot of arrested development where we date very similar people. We end up feeling like we’re just, you know, never satisfied or at Peace with ourselves. There’s so much internal self loathing. And I think that in a community that espouses authenticity and learning to love oneself, we ourselves are often the worst at it because our inner critics are just, you know, tearing us apart. And that’s only, you know, like, that’s for general people. And then when you add actual people with high levels of narcissism and narcissistic personality disorder, you know, these are individuals who are really, I think, using. It’s almost like they weaponize their sexuality, they weaponize themselves. They weaponize their presence in the community to prop them up. Because without it, they would have to face a very black pit inside of them, which is they’ve got nothing inside of them, you know, that makes them feel good. And I think that when it comes to our community, I honestly think that it does incentivize the creation of narcissism. And it is one of those things where it is my hope that true authenticity, which isn’t just the creation of that big S, is valued. It’s really about how do we undo a lot of that narc rage inside of us, that shame, that guilt. Not guilt so much, but more of that sort of shame about who we are and start to accept us for who we are. Because that is a very hard journey for us to achieve.

[00:38:24] Matt Landsiedel: Yeah, yeah, I fully agree. I second everything you said. I love how we’re still on the same page. It’s great.

Yeah. For me, you know, again, it’s. It’s all this the same. Well, there’s similar things that I say on this podcast, really. Like, I fully agree with the somatic side of things. I think that shows up tremendously in our community.

I also see, again, with this obsession with body and the physical body. I see a lot of intimacy avoidance and I think a lot of hypersexuality, promiscuity, casual sex oftentimes comes from people not having a strongly developed sense of self or sense of self worth. Right. It’s like, I’m only going to share with you. My physical body and intimacy avoidance is usually caused because we don’t feel secure enough in ourselves to share the emotional, the mental, the spiritual parts of who we are. Right. So we hold those back. So I’m not. These aren’t really don’t have to be directly even linked to narcissism. It’s just how it shows up in the community and how we might have, you know, this lack of sense of self.

I also see that in the community too. It’s like a Lot of trends that people just grab onto, right. And. And people that are just grabbing onto trends blindly and doing things that everybody else is doing because everyone else is doing it, it feels a little bit like, like conformity or, you know, because we don’t have a sense of self, so we’re just going to do what everyone else is doing. So it’s like the selfies and the butt picks and the dick pics and all this stuff, it just feels like there’s this element of like. Like I’m just doing it because I feel like I have to do it to fit into this community. Right. And I would just love for us more to like, stand up and say, do I actually want to do this? Right? Because there’s nothing wrong with it. If you want to do it and it feels good for you, by all means, go ahead and do it. Right. I even do it sometimes, right. So it’s like. But if you’re doing it because you think you have to do it to fit in, I would really question. Question that and get clear about, you know, what it is that you want, what it is that makes you feel good.

So those are kind of just some of the more dysfunctional ways. And I would say probably other, a couple other ones would be lack of empathy for one another as gay men. Like, the mean girl gay energy is, Is pretty prevalent in our community. And like I said, like, I know some of it is alter ego with drag queens, but drag queens, I tend to, any ones that I’ve ever seen really embody that mean. That mean energy in and. But again, there’s probably tons of drag queens out there that embody love too, right? So I’m not lumping them all in the same category.

And then the other one that probably could. It could show up too in our community would be creating hierarchy. And I know this is, this is a human thing, but I do, I do see it a lot in the community, which is like, this a gay mentality. It’s like I’m part of the a gays and we look down on all the other gays, or I’m white and privileged and I look down on people of color, whatever it might be, right. There’s this thing where, like, we feel like we have to be better than other people, which is very, very linked to narcissistic qualities, for sure.

Yeah.

Okay.

[00:41:27] Ken Reid: I was going to say I seen and witnessed all of what you’ve said. You know, even in little old Sydney in Australia, like, I really feel like it’s a very prominent thing and it’s funny because, like, I’ve heard that story being told, you know, time and time again, you know, across many people in different cities of the world. And I think that it’s almost just like we’re back in the schoolyard fighting for the cool club without actually asking ourselves, is this a club that we want to be a part of? Many, many men I’ve worked with who are sort of transitioning into accepting the fact that they might actually be gay often say to me, I feel like I’m going to lose myself. Like, this is not a group of people that I want to be a part of. And to be honest, you know, I’ve also had those thoughts myself where it’s just sort of like, well, if I were to accept my sexuality, what does, you know, identifying myself with a, you know, this hyper aggressive crowd of people and how they, you know, represent. Sure, there might be a bit of internalized homophobia and a bit of fear about, you know, being gay, but, you know, does that necessarily mean, to your point that I want to be doing dick pics, butt picks, all these other things? No. And I think that, you know, it’s very easy, you know, I think it’s very easy for a lot of people to feel like being gay means you’re automatically lumping yourself with this I, you know, this very hyper sexualized, hyper aggressive crowd of people when it couldn’t be further from the truth. But it does, I will have to say, I think for a lot of people, that is the shortcut to feeling accepted.

[00:42:54] Matt Landsiedel: Yeah.

[00:42:55] Ken Reid: Validated and at peace with their big S. Exactly.

[00:42:59] Matt Landsiedel: And it makes me so sad because. And that’s again, one of the. One of the main reasons why I started the brotherhood was because I’m like, that’s all I’m seeing. I’m just seeing this mainstream community. I want to create offshoot subsets of communities where people can go and find connection when they don’t feel like they fit into that mainstream culture. Right. So, yeah.

All right, so dating a narcissist, what would it look like? How would somebody know they’re dating a narcissist?

[00:43:28] Ken Reid: Great question. I want to be first off to say sorry. I want to start off this by saying no shame to anyone who has. For the reason that many people do not know what a narcissist is in terms of their disposition, their traits, their qualities. And to be fair to most people who are narcissists, they can still love, you know, maybe at an immature level, and it’s okay to grieve These individuals, if you know, you did indeed have a strong bond with them. So with that all out of the way, let’s talk about what it actually looks like. The shorthand version is there’s love bombing, devaluing, discarding. So in the early days of courtship, you might find that these people are incredibly debonair, they’re charming, they’re usually blowing you up with a lot of big compliments and saying things like, you’re the love of my life. I see us getting married together and having this soulmate style relationship. And I mean, that’s on the very overt side. But if it’s not necessarily that, it just might feel like this person’s giving you a lot of time, attention. And for people who are, particularly for a lot of us who are gay, we are often, you know, very love starved. And so having another man who we might find attractive, who we might find down on their luck, someone who we really connect with out of a place of empathy or, you know, yearning for, feeling desired. It is very easy in this phase to overlook some glaring red flags which then start to crop up, you know, down the line. I often find narcissistic relationships tend generally to last a while in that they are ones where you have this glorious honeymoon phase where things can feel so great, feels so fresh to then slight mood shifts starting to happen. Your partner who’s narcissistic says something to you that really ruffles your feathers. You know, they’ll start making comments about your body, saying things that, you know, you’re too sensitive. And a cycle of gaslighting starts to occur around this particular point in time where you’re made to feel like you’re going crazy. And it this phase of devaluing where you really start to feel like any day could turn into a thunderstorm, you know, where you just almost feel like you’re walking on eggshells, waiting for the next thunderstorm of rage to come out of the person. You know, it’s really this feeling of absolute terror that you don’t know what day it’s going to be with your partner because one minute they’re joyful and the next minute they’re sullen and tearing you apart for being who you are. It’s almost like they derive pleasure out of destroying you. And so you get these really nasty hot and cold cycles of intermittent reinforcement. And I want to take a pause here to say this is very addictive.

Getting this amount of intermittent reinforcement is, you know, akin to, to issues with codependency. Being in a situation where you can’t really understand what’s right or wrong. Add in the gaslighting too. You often start blaming yourself for your partner’s mood shifts and their behavior. And this can take a long bloody time to realize it’s not me, it’s them.

[00:46:37] Matt Landsiedel: Yeah.

[00:46:38] Ken Reid: And you can finally reverse that Taylor Swift song. And then as for the discard phase, now, this doesn’t always happen. Yeah, sometimes they’ll, you know, sometimes they will have cheated on you, you know, years ago. And I’ve had a litany of partners behind the scenes. Sometimes I’ll start at a family without you. Sometimes, you know, they’ll just up and leave and, you know, you’ll be left wondering what the hell just happened. But usually you might be the one to leave them after getting so tired and burnt out with this. You might have a kid with this partner and see that, excuse me, they’re abusing your child and are like, no way, I will not put up with this at all. You don’t get to speak to my child that way. And you leave.

But I think when people look back on it, generally I’d say The reaction is 50, 50. They either feel devastated after being dumped or leaving the narcissist, or they feel relief like, thank God I’m out and I’m not putting up with that anymore because it was just so much. And I find that generally speaking that you know, this having been through this, and I imagine you probably felt this too, once you’ve dated one, you usually start to be like, holy crap, I’m starting to see knocks everywhere. It’s like being in the Sixth sense. Instead of seeing dead people everywhere, you start to see narcissism everywhere. Holy crap. So this becomes a bit of a point where people are like, I need to start actually cross checking the people in my life who are actually healthy and narcissistic and maybe even ask myself the question, when you’re ready for it, what am I doing to enable and allow these people in my life?

[00:48:17] Matt Landsiedel: Yeah. Oh my God. That’s such a great segue to what I was going to say because I’m a firm believer of taking responsibility for ourselves.

Early stages, it’s easy to get lured in love. Bombing can feel like, oh my God, this feels amazing. Right? But when we are healthy and we’ve done a lot of work on ourselves and we were able to identify red flags, we don’t attract these people. So I think a lot of people who have trauma in their childhood and they are empaths or sensitive people, they end up attracting people who resemble the qualities that they that are in their family system. Right. So if there was a lot of red flags in your family system growing up as an empath, you likely learned how to develop tolerance to these red flags.

Okay, so what the work is that we need to do as empathic people is we need to actually decrease our tolerance to red flags, and we need to become more sensitive to seeing red flags, and we need to be able to notice green flags in. In people. So I’m a huge believer in that. I think, you know, if you’re attracting narcissistic people into your dating world, I would significantly encourage you to look at yourself instead of blaming the narcissist and saying, you did this to me. How dare you. I would remove yourself from the relationship if you know, and I would get into therapy and I would start working on healing codependency issues, because that was what was getting me into dating guys that were scoring high. More higher on narcissism was I didn’t have a very strong sense of self. My sense of self came from the relationship, and I was an empath without boundaries. It’s like, that’s the perfect recipe for a narcissist. That’s exactly what they’re looking for. Someone without boundaries, with high empathy that will dote on them and is easily manipulated. Right. It’s like, so I love how you said that, because I think that’s really important.

And the gaslighting you said gaslighting. I’m curious if you wanted to share with the audience what that means.

[00:50:21] Ken Reid: Sure. So gaslighting in its short form is basically attacking someone by invalidating their reality. And it’s not simply just saying, I disagree with you. I think people get that twisted. And it’s like, no, no, no, no, no. This is. It’s a pattern, and it involves a lot of different steps. It involves someone constantly saying things to you or about you that are simply not true over time. For example, being like, Matt, you’re so sensitive, Matt, you just seem so confused about everything. It may involve projection, taking the worst parts of yourself and throwing it onto the other person to avoid accountability for your own stuff and to make the other person, you know, deal with stuff that isn’t theirs to begin with. We have to understand that for the gaslighter, you know, a lot of the time, this is going to sound twisted. Bear with me. They’re not doing it intentionally. Like, I don’t even think narcissists are doing this. Usually a lot of the time with the intentionality to, you know, confuse people. I generally think it’s a very reactive response. If people disagree with me, that’s totally fine. But having seen many people who do generally gaslight, it’s usually done because they themselves are not comfortable with their own reality. They do not like dealing with their own levels of accountability with stuff. They don’t want to acknowledge their own shit. That’s why many times, if you ever call a gaslighter out on stuff that they’ve said done, how they behave, they’ll throw it back to you because they don’t want to feel shame, they don’t want to feel. So it’s far easier for them to throw the facts back at your face and make it seem like you’re the problem with. You know, you’re the one with the problem with the issues and all this sort of stuff. I think that it’s one of those things where the impact is if you’re feeling generally quite confused, that you’re feeling like you’re becoming quite powerless, and that the person that’s talking to you has essentially become your sole reference point for what’s right, what’s wrong. They’re telling you two plus two equals three, and it’s starting to feel like an Orwellian nightmare. Chances are you’re being gaslit. And usually it is because that person themselves, quite frankly, is delusional and in massive denial over their reality.

[00:52:35] Matt Landsiedel: Yeah, this is such a common one that I see too. And even people that I’ve. That I, that I work with, you know, saying that their partner was gaslighting them or the guy they’re dating is gaslighting them and he’s a narcissist. And, you know, it’s really interesting because I would say gaslighting is so common because it’s. And I would say it’s common amongst people with, with low emotional maturity. Because people with low emotional maturity don’t want to take responsibility for themselves. So if they’re wrong, instead of saying they’re wrong, they will gaslight and they’ll try and contort the situation into saying, no, you don’t feel that way. This is actually how you feel. Right. So they’re trying to manipulate the situation. So, yes, it is, it is somebody. It could be a trait in somebody with, with narcissistic personality disorder, but it can also just be general. People that are not wanting to take responsibility for themselves, that are contorting the reality to. To make it more so they don’t have to take responsibility for themselves. So, yeah, I see it’s quite common. It’s very common.

[00:53:35] Ken Reid: It was the Marianne Webster word of the year last year, I think, or the year before that. So I’m not surprised. A lot of people have found this word and like, oh, my God, I know what it means. And I get to use. It’s like, settle down, everyone. Let’s actually use this accurately. I myself have used it inaccurately many a time. So, you know, there is a thing with that. But I’d also take this moment to say, for the record, and I know we discussed this even before we jumped on this, I see so many people calling avoidant attaches narcissists. And for the love of God, they’re not, for the most part. And that’s a conversation for a whole nother day. But it really speaks to your point that I think we jump the gun too often and think, well, if they’re gaslighting, they’re a narcissist. If they’re love bombing, they’re a narcissist. Many people can do those behaviors and are still not narcissists. And that’s why we need to really have a lot of critical thinking around this. Because.

Because having worked with many people who are, you know, who have been in relationships with people who, to your point, have clearly demonstrated low emotional intelligence, it’s been very easy for me to go, yeah, this person doesn’t sound like. It doesn’t sound like the person you dated is necessarily a narcissist. It just sounds like they don’t have a very high emotional intelligence.

[00:54:42] Matt Landsiedel: Yeah, yeah, exactly. And I. I agree with you with the avoidant attachment comment, because. And, you know, if you. If we got. We even went to that degree, it could be that somebody that was anxiously attached in protest behavior could also exhibit, you know, narcissistic qualities as well. Right. So we’re just essentially looking at people with dysregulated nervous system and the coping strategies that they’re using to try and make their environment safe. Right. It’s.

Yeah. So we all need to just kind of, you know, settle down a little bit and not be calling everybody a narcissist just because they invalidated our feelings or they. They were showing signs of emotional immaturity or they were avoidant of intimacy. So we just have to be a little bit more discerning, in my opinion.

[00:55:29] Ken Reid: Yeah, I completely agree. One of my favorite things about being in this space as a mental health worker is you really learn to value the word context. And one of my favorite things to ask my clients is, okay, how did your partner get triggered, like, in times during emotional stress? How did the hit the fan? And if it’s an avoidant. Attached with severe avoidant attachment, usually it’s when people get close to them and things are starting to get more vulnerable. That’s when they back away. People who are more anxiously attached, if they feel you’re pulling away and it’s quite severe for them, that’s when their protest behaviors come out. And the thing is, is that, you know, insecure attachment can coexist with narcissism. So I think people think that, you know, it’s separate. When it’s like, no, no, no. An attachment system has to coexist with this as well.

[00:56:13] Matt Landsiedel: Yeah, yeah, I agree. I agree. And it’s funny because the narcissistic person would never show to anybody that they have insecurity in their attachment. Right? It’s like that’s the last thing you would see in a narcissistic person. But really, all of the same qualities that you would see in insecure attachment also would show up in somebody that has npd. It’s very fascinating.

[00:56:34] Ken Reid: Hence.

[00:56:35] Matt Landsiedel: Hence why they have disturbance in their social and their occupational interpersonal domains. Right? Insecure attachment. They don’t know how to attach to people in a healthy way. So, okay, so lastly, how can we deal with narcissistic people? What would you say? What’s your. What’s some of your best tips that you would give to somebody that’s dealing with a narcissistic person?

[00:56:59] Ken Reid: Matt, My only. My one and only tip is you don’t deal with a narcissist.

But if I’m being a bit more practical than that, I would. It’s like an earthquake. Just don’t go near it.

If we’re in the center of an earthquake and we can’t control the outcome, here’s what I’d say. Firstly, if you. Okay, being compassionate and kind, say you’re in a situation where you are dating a narcissist and your finances are tied up with them, that’s a different story. So I think the first thing I would say to anyone, regardless of your circumstance, is radical acceptance. Please understand and respect this person for who they are and how they show up. If this is a person who’s demonstrated a lot of the behavior that we’ve talked about today, you don’t necessarily need to get your PhD in narcissism to understand whether or not they’re actually a narc or not. I spin the question back to how does this person make you feel when you’re consistently in this relationship. Do you feel like you’re stepping on eggshells? Is your physical health going to the shitter where you’re feeling like you have fibromyalgia? Well, not feeling like you actually have fibromyalgia, chronic fatigue issues, ibs. Because your physical health can be detrimentally impacted by those quality of your relationships. So if you’re starting to notice your physical health is coming undone, that arguably should be your first alarm that something is not quite right. Secondly, really understand the importance of this individual in your life. Is craving external validation or supply going. Learning how to go gray rock, which is the technique of becoming boring in conversation. Talking about the weather and not really talking about your personal life much. Avoiding topics and conversations which would cause them to rage or gaslight you becomes paramount at this particular point in time. And it does mean that the quality of your relationship might suffer. But arguably that’s in your benefit because it does help you get to a point where you’re not as interested and romantically invested in this person too. And arguably one of the biggest things that you can learn for yourself is boundaries. You have to understand that many people who are narcissistic have terrible boundaries and are not great at respecting yours. It’s not about necessarily implementing boundaries, just with them. It’s actually about having boundaries with yourself. It’s really about learning to understand how much you’re going to tolerate with these individuals and also how much you’re willing to put up with them. I will say for many people, walking away is not an option. And it’s really about figuring out how much distance you can create with that person in your life in terms of maybe it’s just how much you disclose how much you interact with that person on a daily basis. I know many family members who simply can’t give up their parents because, you know, there are financial constraints or they genuinely still care about their folks. But when they’re too physically close, they may be under the same roof. That’s when it just, it spirals and all of this narcissistic rage and crap comes out that really affects that child’s self esteem. But they’re like, you know what, you’re great at a distance. I’ll see you once every month. And that actually is enough for me. So it’s really important, if I had to round this out, is to say, generally speaking, we want to be mindful of the people in our life and how they’re impacting our mental and emotional wellbeing. And I don’t mean just triggered. Like being triggered is not in and of itself a sign that someone is good or bad for you. I’m talking if you’re noticing that over time your mental, emotional and physical wellbeing is, is really decreasing exponentially as a consequence of this. You’ve tried maybe talking about this with your partner and nothing seems for parent or family, friend. You know, you’ve tried talking about this, but nothing seems to necessarily be changing. And there doesn’t seem to be any indicator that this person wants to do any work on this. I think we have to then get to a place of radical acceptance where we understand that this is what it is. What do you need to do? Because you’re the only one who can control this situation. I want to be very clear, make a blanket statement that. But trying to encourage these people to go to therapy for the most part doesn’t really work. And welcome to try all your life. But generally speaking, you may find that option quickly gets ticked off as being an impossibility. So, yeah, that’s my TED Talk on that.

[01:01:07] Matt Landsiedel: Yeah, yeah, well, and they’ll often promise that, oh yeah, I’ll go to, I’ll go to therapy. I’ll go to therapy until the cloud blows over. Right. And then you stop holding them accountable. A few days goes by, they don’t go to therapy, you’re no longer upset anymore. Right. And it’s just. That’s how it gets, gets prolonged.

Yeah, it’s. It’s really interesting. There’s a few things. So I, I second everything that you said. But I, and I think the, the, the. One of the main things that I wanted to, to piggyback on what you said was about boundaries.

Boundaries and immune function. They. Our immune system acts like our body’s boundary. Right. It’s constantly keeping out what’s not good for us, filtering things. That’s. It acts no different than a boundary would. So people that have autoimmune disorders, people that have all the conditions that you listed. Right. Tend to be people that struggle with boundaries. So it’s really interesting. So boundaries, I think, are one of the most important things in life, really. Feeling your emotions, understanding the needs that are associated with those emotions, and setting boundaries to protect those needs. It’s like it’s really the recipe for everything. When you’re talking about personal development, healing, therapeutic work. Right. So important. So that’s the big one. Remove yourself from the relationship if possible. Again, second, seconding what you said. Like sometimes you’re married to one and you have a child with one or your parent is, is a narcissist or whatever. Right. If you can’t remove yourself from the situation, you need to limit time and you need to set very strong boundaries with these people.

And the last thing I want to say is authenticity. And that’s the, the workshop that I recorded on my YouTube channel, which will be linked in the show Notes, by the way, is all about this, how to use, how to heal this codependent pattern of attracting these people with authenticity. A narcissistic person, the, the anecdote, anecdote to them is like, is authenticity is somebody who has boundaries, who’s feeling their emotions, who’s real, who calls things out, who speaks up. Right. They, a narcissistic person will never want to be around somebody like that because they know they can’t manipulate, manipulate them and they can’t control them. They can’t gaslight them because they trust their own intuition. Like it’s so really doing some work on becoming boundaries, speaking your truth, not people pleasing these sorts of qualities. Really, really important when dealing with a narcissistic person.

[01:03:30] Ken Reid: Yeah, I think if I had to wrap my face up on this is just to say that, you know, when it comes to, I think when it comes to becoming more authentic and being more vulnerable, it’s going to save people so much time and effort in so many areas of their life. Because especially if you’re looking to date again after being with someone who is highly narcissistic, the more you overcome codependency, if that is something relevant to you, if you learn to also work on yourself and also go on a journey of becoming more self accepting, self loving, if the term, you know, sits with you, it’s going to help so much because I find people with insecure attachment, people with narcissism are very allergic to particularly vulnerability boundaries because it often shines a light on areas of them that they have not necessarily worked on. And to be in a healthy relationship requires being seen, validated vulnerability. And you know, if you’re, if you. Someone who doesn’t feel safe being, you know, exposed and vulnerable, you’re probably not going to want to be with someone where you fear they might reject you. So generally speaking, getting healthy and taking the time to work through this, as Matt was saying, is such a pathway to many great things. It’s cliche, but this truth in it for a reason.

[01:05:02] Matt Landsiedel: Yeah, yeah, exactly. Yeah. And if, and I know this is an area that you specialize in, same with me. So if you’re somebody that’s Attracting narcissistic people and you’re looking for support in how to develop some of these qualities, learn how to stop people pleasing, develop a strong sense of self, self worth, authenticity, these sorts of things. Don’t hesitate to reach out to [email protected] au and I’m sure you have other resources on your website too, if you’re not taking clients or whatever. But anything else you want to say to the audience before we wrap up?

[01:05:38] Ken Reid: I guess what I would say to everyone who is listening to us today is to respect that everyone is at very different stages of their journey with this. Meaning you might be someone who’s in a narcissistic family dating a narcissist. You yourself might be listening to us being like, oh, I’m worried that I am a narcissist. I wanted to say generally most narcissists will not self reflect. So if you are self reflecting on this and are actually willing to take steps to work on this, I wanted to say hats off to you because it is not an easy journey to do, but it will actually help you in so many areas of your life. Yeah, I think that the key thing to understand when overcoming this is that it’s not pleasant, it’s not easy, but I would also. So the last thing I’ll say is I would not do this alone. And it’s not me trying to throw in a sales pitch to be like, work with me and my team. It’s more just to say, please speak to professionals about this, to talk about it. You deserve a support team who can help you. If that is not possibility due to financial constraints, I totally get it. Self education. Look at, you know, resources like Dr. Ramani, Sand bank and people that I quoted and even referenced even through today’s Live as well too.

You know, the point is that you can do a lot on your own as well to educate and understand a lot of this stuff and to help yourself, you know, work on this sort of stuff too. But don’t be closed off to seeking professional help if it’s necessary.

[01:07:00] Matt Landsiedel: Yeah, definitely. And whether you’re on, you know, we’ll call it the victimhood side or, or the perpetrator side, whether you’re struggling with narcissistic personality disorder or traits, or you’re like an empathic person that’s attracting that seek out somebody that is trauma trained, I think that’s really important because it’ll always come back to working through trauma, in my opinion. So great. Well, I want to just thank you for Coming and sharing your wisdom with us and spending an hour and.

Yeah, it’s been nice. It’s. It’s always nice to connect with you and exchange.

Exchange, great conversation and wisdom and all the things. So, yeah, no, man, look, thank you.

[01:07:44] Ken Reid: Very much for thinking of me and inviting me to this because as I said to you, I have two major feelings about narcissism. On one hand, it’s my guilty pleasure topic. Talking about it too much, I’m like, oh, God, now I just feel like I’m giving so much supply to this topic that I feel like I’m in a narcissistic relationship talking about this.

But it is one of those things where it requires a lot of depth, nuanced understanding, and I think people want simple answers for complicated things. So thank you for allowing me to spend this morning with you talking about it, because I gotta be honest, I really enjoyed it. So thank you very much for the interaction.

[01:08:18] Matt Landsiedel: Yeah, yeah, you’re welcome. You’re welcome. And for those, for the listener, if you have not joined us already, you can join us on Facebook at the Gay Men’s Brotherhood. Come join us and even start a conversation around what this topic means to you. And if you’re watching on YouTube, please leave us any questions or comments that you might have. I’d love to hear of any experiences that you’ve had in this. In this topic, so please leave those. And if you’re listening on your favorite podcast platform, please leave us a star rating, preferably five stars. If you enjoyed what you heard today so our voices can get into the ears of people that need this episode, please share it with with people that you think might benefit from it. So much love to everybody and we will see you in the next episode.