I've come across a video that presents some clues about how to differentiate between traumatic responses and narcissism - the presenter does raise psychopathy but seem to miss the boat in a number of places - for example, he seems to be of the opinion that a successful person who hasn't done anything illegal or criminal is not a psychopath and he uses Christian Bale from 50 Shades of Grey as an example of this. He also acknowledges that psychopaths don't feel, but then attributes psychopathic rage to shame rather than loss of resource. So that's all a bit mixed up. But I wonder whether the same differentiations that he points out about whether narcissism is trauma based or not could be used to distinguish between primary and secondary psychopaths? He doesn't mention female psychopaths and he also doesn't mention that people could be born that way even though he is distinguishing the trauma related. He does say, however, if it's not trauma based then it's not treatable - so maybe he's just dancing around and avoiding coming straight out and saying some are just born that way!
Language warning - the presenter drops the F bomb a few times throughout.
11:00 talks about drawing the differences between traits and trauma and lists some traits of:
BDP (emotional labile, self destructive, fragile, push/pull relationship style, counter dependency)
HSP (infantile, vain, reaction seeking, and hyper sexuality)
...and says that both the traits of BDP and HSP can be present in the female narcissist. But the distinguishing characteristics that indicate that the narcissism is trauma based or not is whether there is also exploitativeness and entitlement.
20:20 'Sexual abuse can be a boundary breaking, unwarranted level of sexual attention from the wrong source that is also abusive...if a mother or father is looking at a little girl or a little boy, looking at, talking to, talking about them in a way that is inappropriate it is boundary breaking and it causes huge problems in the personality when they grow up. It is really tricky because that person can't actually say they were sexually abused, they can only say that 'it was kind of icky for me growing up, mum would look at me funny when I wasn't wearing clothes' and they can't quite figure out what it is that's gone wrong. But we're told that unless you were actually physically assaulted it's not an assault - it creates problems. I suspect a very large number of people are walking around with this as an issue because of boundary broken hyper sexualised attention in childhood that was completely inappropriate.'
This is very concerning given the latest trend to push transgenderism on children. I would think that that could be a similar boundary breech and have similar effects as sexual abuse if he is right on this point and so we might expect that these kids may become hyper sexual.
25:30 [the symptoms of BDP, HPD and ASPD - the latter of which he equates with psychopathy] 'is how many women think they should be in the world. I see a lot of men encouraging this but more often than not, based on my experience, this is encouraged by women. It's encouraged by traumatised mothers who put this on their daughters, they entrain this onto their daughters. When I started my project back in 2012 my client base was only the daughters of narcissistic mothers.'
He then goes on to say that if the daughter rejected this entrainment they were targeted as the black sheep, the mother experienced narcissistic injury, expressed narcissistic rage and punished the daughter - but the daughter may never be clear on what exactly it was that attracted the punishment. The daughter that rejected the narcissistic entrainment then also usually tried to invert the BDP and HSP symptoms and become the opposite of those traits, but usually will still have developed hyper sexuality because they were treated as an adult who is to 'garner sexual attention in order to have value in the world'.
The over all effect of narcissistic abuse is one of PTSD or C-PTSD. He gives the symptoms as damaged sense of self, emotional dis-regulation which leads to not being able to discern what is really going on in a situation, uncomfortable visual or emotional flashbacks, isolation and addictions or addictive coping strategies. All of which can give appearance of BDP, HSP or ASPD.
In his idea on how to treat it all, he quotes Jordan Petersons lobster example and puts forth a theory that the connected depression is to do with lower serotonin levels and these can increase with improving position in a social hierarchy - not that you have to climb a social hierarchy ladder, but more that you improve your own perception of social standing or sense of personal significance by: connecting, contributing, offering value and making progress.
