Hammock
What would make you care about somebody so much you want to hold their hand and put your arm around them in public? I always felt different my entire life growing up.
Kittleson
Six years ago, clinical psychologist and narcissism expert Dr. Ramani told me and the world about narcissism.
Dr. Ramani
One rule of thumb to remember right off the bat, every psychopath is narcissistic, but not every narcissist is psychopathic.
Kittleson
That was our very first video and now has more than 15 million views. MedCircle has produced more than 50 videos on narcissism since just for our YouTube channel and many more at MedCircle.com for our members. Dr. Ramani has helped many victims and at the same time has caused quite the stir.
Hammock
I know who Dr. Ramani is. I’m part of a lot of self-aware narcissist Facebook groups and people mention her all the time in there as well. They don’t give her a glowing review.
Kittleson
While MedCircle’s production quality has drastically improved and my interview style for that matter has improved, one thing has certainly stayed the same. Narcissism is widespread and misunderstood. But in my hundreds of hours of interviewing dozens of doctors on the topic and focusing on helping victims, I’ve never once heard the narcissist perspective.
That is, until I met self-aware narcissist Lee Hammock. Growing up, Lee always felt different. Relationships were difficult and he didn’t understand how someone could care so deeply about another person.
Hammock
Every single relationship that I got into always ended the same exact way. I would be madly in love with somebody, just they would be the center of my earth and then just one day I would wake up in that person. It’s like the lights would go off in our relationship.
Kittleson
But as an adult, Lee got married to his wife Delaney and after an explosive fight with her, Lee decided it was time to seek help.
Hammock
And then one day, my wife had went to work or something like that and I was watching my five, six-month-old son and he was just crying and I was trying to do something. I was like, oh, this is why I’m not successful.
Because I got these screaming babies and kids and wives held me back and I was just yelling and going, I was literally like narcissistic, I was losing my mind. And she just happened to come back in the house and me and her got into a huge argument and I just told her to get out. And she’s on the way out and she’s like, it’s so hard living with a narcissist.
I was like, what? But then she left and then I was so steaming hot that I just pulled out my phone and was like, why don’t you call me a narcissist? So I got on her and typed the word narcissist into Google and it said, did you mean narcissistic personality disorder?
So I clicked on it and then of course, it’s just like narcissistic personality disorder, all the traits and signs and symptoms. And I was reading it and I was just like, this is me. I am a narcissist.
Kittleson
During his therapy sessions, Lee uncovered some painful truths about his family history and his childhood.
Hammock
My father, on the other hand, he was extremely, he’s just emotionally neglectful. I feel like he focused on just women and having more children and whatnot.
And I feel like there’s nothing that I could do to make him happy. And I carried that burden with me until I actually got into the therapy. My therapist, she’ll be like, when people mention your dad and you get angry, your dad has control over you.
That sucks. So how do I get rid of this? Maybe he can help you to figure out where he came from, why he is the way he is.
I don’t know his dad. He died when my dad was younger. We found his death certificate. No pictures, no birth certificate, no nothing. I was like, oh, okay, cool. His death certificate. So I started going through it. Saw the date he died, day he was born, cause of death, gunshot wound to the head.
I was like, wait, what? Oh, wow. It was like suicide. It was like small caliber gunshot wound to the head.
My dad found him, you know? So being seven or eight years old in the seventies, there’s no therapy for no little boys. And my therapist was like, I don’t have schizophrenia, but she’d take my grandfather had undiagnosed schizophrenia, which caused him to, you know, take his own life, which my father found him, which traumatized him, which caused him to grow up to be a neglectful parent, which traumatized me and made me lead to my narcissistic personality disorder.
So there’s a little bit of, nature and nurture in that space right there.
Kittleson
With the conversations I’ve had with experts on the topic of narcissism, most would say that it comes from a combination of nature and nurture, perhaps with an emphasis on nurture. Here’s what Dr. Ramani has to say.
Ramani
It’s mostly made, but there’s a little bit of born. We see people come from invalidating early environments or overindulged or spoiled early environments, and they don’t turn out narcissistic. So it’s got to be something else at play, right? And that’s probably where that temperamental piece comes in. Kids are likely more hypersensitive, hyper-emotional.
Kittleson
Throughout therapy, Lee also learned a lot about his own behavior and relationships, especially with his wife.
Hammock
I’ve tried to find other therapists, not because like she’s been a bad therapist, because like she’s had kids throughout our therapy session, throughout our kind of journey together. And every time she has a kid, she goes off for like two or three months.
And every time that that would happen, my wife would end up leaving. I was like, I would use therapy. It’s kind of like a venting session for things that I was holding in, things that I felt like I wasn’t comfortable sharing with my wife.
So I would use my therapist as kind of the event right there to share certain things and how I felt about my relationship, but also about my past. And she would just kind of got me. Me and my therapist have such a, I trust her so much, you know, to tell her certain things I wouldn’t tell anybody else.
But that also became problematic in my relationship. I told you every time she would go out, my wife would leave. And that’s because I was still not sharing things with my wife that I was going to have going on inside of my head.
One of my biggest regrets is that all my kids get different versions of me. I have a 16-year-old, right? And I’ve been in therapy for seven years.
So he had seven, eight years of me just being just the narcissist that had a baby because he felt like he wanted to have kids, you know, my seven-year-old, you know, he was the one I was screaming at, you know, when I was like, he was like, when he was a baby, three-year-old, she just get the best version of me. And I don’t even yell at her, you know, it’s just like, just a couple of years ago, you’d get it born in the right decade. But it’s just like, that’s the biggest struggle.
It’s just like acknowledging I was a different person for each birth of each one of my kids.
Kittleson
But with all of this new information that Lee has about himself, can he actually change? Can a narcissist develop more empathy? Well, here’s what Dr. Ramani has to say.
Ramani
I haven’t seen any change. The heartbreak of narcissism is that you can actually train this person to be a little bit more empathic, to not be so jerky and not be so entitled and actually listen to other people.
As soon as there’s some stress in the system, they blow again, the rubber band is right back. And so narcissists don’t tend to retain that growth, maybe a tiny bit, but usually not enough for anyone to notice.
Kittleson
But what does Lee seem to think? Has he become a quote, better person?
Hammock
Self-awareness just means, you know, self-aware and taking the next steps to being better.
That’s a whole different dynamic. Now, my first thought is still narcissistic. And I was just like, hey, you know what? It’s crazy. How it’s still, how can this serve me? Now I ask a follow-up question.
How does this serve them? I would say that I have way more cognitive empathy than emotional empathy. Like I understand what people are going through.
I understand why you would feel that way. I just don’t connect to it on an emotional level.
Ramani
Like Dr. Ramani and many narcissistic abuse survivors. And for that sake, many narcissists themselves. I also believe that a narcissist can really only change if they really want to change, seek out help and are consistent. And even then that change is going to be quite small.
Narcissism is a global epidemic. And if we want to bring solutions and peace and understanding to the masses, then we need to tackle this from every perspective. And that includes the perspective of the narcissist.
