Psychopath and Narcissist Survivors Support Group • View topic - Confronting a Narcissist With His Own Behavior ... ll-happen/Confronting a Narcissist With His Own Behavior: What Will Happen?Written by Alexander Burgemeester on January 31, 2014 · 21 Comments Should you confront a narcissist? What happens if you do confront him or her? Does the proverbial kitten really turn into a lion? Answers to those questions depend on the circumstances and the people involved. Reason for ConfrontationIf you have just discovered that your partner or parent is a narcissist, you may have a strong urge to confront them with that information in the hopes that they will recognize themselves in what you describe and be remorseful for the pain they have caused. The narcissist’s sense of self has not developed beyond that of a young child and cannot cope with a truth that shows them to be less than perfect. Before considering strategies about how to confront a narcissist, take a look at what you want out of the interaction. 1. 2. How to Confront?
The Zen Dilemma I received an interesting email from a friend today. He has just started getting into meditation and has bumped up against an issue a lot of people run into: “I have been reading Eckhart Tolle’s book on The Power of Now and it has got me thinking about Zen philosophy again. I heard that you used to practice meditation quite a bit and I wanted to ask you about it.“Zen is contradictory to most of the philosophy I invest in, but it’s unclear whether or not it has to be exclusive. One struggle I have is the idea that ruminating in the past or future is detrimental to one’s overall consciousness, even when it is positive. I started meditating when I was 16. With that said, this is a pretty common dilemma for people who are exposed to zen and eastern philosophy — that the idea of “unattachment” isn’t exactly practical or even applicable in modern life. The problem comes with the explanation of attachment. By that definition of desire and attachment, you’re screwed if you do or you don’t.
Compatibility and Chemistry in Relationships Most dating advice glosses over the concepts of compatibility and chemistry, assuming most people have an intuitive grasp of what they are and why they’re important. When you have chemistry with someone, you just feel it. When you’re dating someone you’re not compatible with, it’s obvious — like biting into a piece of spoiled fruit, the discomfort is impossible to ignore. Compatibility and chemistry are mostly ignored by dating advice because they’re things that can’t be faked or changed. Compatibility and chemistry, although not the same thing, are often used by people interchangeably. Compatibility is a natural alignment of lifestyle choices and values between two people. Compatibility usually corresponds to the long-term potential between two people. Chemistry on the other hand, represents the emotional connection present when you’re with each other. Call it passion. Specific examples of what creates strong chemistry are harder to peg. Chemistry is also reflected in the bedroom.
The Levels of Eye Contact Eye contact is important, especially in dating and gauging people’s attraction to you. Everyone should have a basic understanding of what each person is eye-coding them in any given situation, and it doesn’t take a cryptographer to figure it out. Or if it does, then fuck it, I’m that cryptographer. Here is an entirely overly-analytical, and mostly-satircal-but-kinda-true-too guide to the levels of eye contact and what they mean: Level (-1): No Contact (Intentional) - Beyond the lowest level of eye contact, this is when someone is not only not making eye contact with you, but they-re consciously making an effort to NOT look at you. That or you have some mustard on your face. Level 0: No Contact (Unintentional) - An unintentional absence of eye contact signals a lack of knowledge you exist. Level 1: Glance (Unconscious) - An unconscious glance is that moment when someone looks up at you and then immediately looks away, although they’re not aware of what they’re looking at.
Attachment Theory Attachment theory is an area of psychology that describes the nature of emotional attachment between humans. It begins with the our attachment as a child with our parents. The nature of this attachment, and how well it’s fostered and cared for, will then determine the nature of our attachment to romantic partners later in our life. Attachment theory began in the 1950s and has since amassed a small mountain of research behind it. Two researchers named Bowlby and Ainsworth independently found that the nature in which infants get their needs met by their parents will determine their “attachment strategy” throughout their lives.1 Your attachment strategy probably explains a great deal of why your relationships have succeeded/failed in the manner they did, why you’re attracted to the people you are attracted to, and the nature of the relationship problems that come up again and again for you. Attachment Types Relationship Configurations Knowing and Changing Your Attachment Type
Love is Biased, Not Blind I am still amazed at how terrible I am at evaluating my own romantic and sexual situations objectively. In fact, I’m sad to report that I think I’m better than most at it, and I’m still terrible. The fact is that we’re all terrible at it. We’re all terribly unobjective with our emotional lives. Perhaps the biggest problem with both psychological research on attraction and relationships/dating advice is that we’re trying to measure and quantify something we can’t be completely objective about. Below are ten perceptual biases that most of us fall victim to, five which distort how attractive we perceive someone to be, and five that distort how emotionally connected to a person we feel. Perceptual Biases of Attraction 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. The barriers bias also affects relationships or perceptions of relationship material as well. Perceptual Biases in Relationships 6. This one definitely afflicts me often, and I hate that it does. 7. 8. 9. This can play out in a number of ways. 10.
Are You An Emotional Vampire? Here’s a quick quiz for you to take. Answer the following questions. Be as honest as possible: Do you feel that people often don’t (or can’t) understand you or your problems? If you answered “yes” to more than half of the questions above, then please read this post carefully. If you did answer “yes” to at least half of the above questions, chances are you are an emotional vampire. By now you may be saying, “Fuck this guy, what does he know? Who Are Emotional Vampires? Emotional vampires are called emotional vampires because they have a tendency to drain the emotional energy out of everyone they come in contact with. All emotional vampires suffer from low self-esteem, but not all people with low self-esteem are emotional vampires. Emotional vampires exhibit three specific traits simultaneously: an excessive need for validation/attention from others, the belief that little to nothing that occurs is their fault, and the lack of self-awareness to recognize their self-defeating patterns. 1.
Psychotherapy Everyone has heard of therapy in some form or another, but a lot of people don’t have a clear idea of what it is or what they’re getting into. One stereotype is that you lay on a couch and cry like a child. Another is that it’s just some guy who prescribes you pills. Another is that it’s some guy who shows you ink blots and asks you what you see. As with many things, these are caricatures created by pop culture for entertainment purposes. Most therapy is far more dull and far more personal than this. The idea behind psychotherapy is that most of our decision making comes from unconscious aspects of our mind. For instance, a man who gets uncontrollably angry when his girlfriend doesn’t call him back, there’s something buried within his unconscious which is causing him to react in such an irrational manner. Another popular form of therapy is Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy (CBT). Problems with Therapy Do You Need Therapy? I’ve actually referred a lot people to therapy over the years.
When Shit Hits The Fan I can’t lie. I expected my 10 Things Americans Don’t Know About America to stir up some controversy. And I had hopes it would be shared and attract some new readers to the site. In fact, I had been sitting on it for a few months. The article felt like something which needed to be saved for the right moment. The moment came last weekend. Over 50,000 visitors flooded the site over the next day and a half, and with them hundreds of angry (mostly Indian) commenters posting about how I was either brilliant, a moron, completely naïve, or some combination of all three. How would I feel? What I got was more than I ever expected, in every way imaginable. The Comment Cesspool And along with that avalanche of traffic came the commenters. Not to say there weren’t some really bright and insightful comments; there were plenty and I appreciate them. But what a mess. And look, I realize I was asking for it. I’d like to take a moment and address a few of the more common attacks made: So there’s my vent.
Your Two Minds Close your eyes. Wait, don’t close them yet. Finish reading this paragraph, then close them. OK, close your eyes and try to think about nothing for 30 seconds. Ready? Go. (Waiting…) Wasn’t easy was it? Now, I want you to try the same exercise again, except this time I want you to pay attention to which specific thoughts and images pop up. What were they? Chances are you were able to notice them for a little while, but then you quickly find yourself getting sucked into thinking about them involuntarily. If you’ve ever meditated, even a little bit, you’re familiar with the experience you just had. You closed your eyes and tried to shut your mind up, even if for 30 seconds, and despite your best efforts the spigot of thought vomit just kept pouring out. If you’ve ever attended meditation retreats or been involved in some movement such as Zen like I was for a while, they talk a lot about this “mind chatter” that you suffered through. And the thing is, that “mind chatter” never stops. Whoa…
The Guide to Strong Boundaries This post is long overdue. Since I wrote Models: Attract Women Through Honesty and mentioned the importance of maintaining strong personal boundaries, people have been asking me what boundaries actually are, what they look like, how to build them and maintain them, do they help that much, are they that important, do they stop your girlfriend from farting too much in her sleep, where are my keys, have you seen my keys, where are my damn keys? PSA: Setting strong personal boundaries are not a cure-all for your relationship woes (or your lost keys). In fact, they’re more of a side effect of having a healthy self-esteem and a general low level of neediness with people around you. Boundaries work both ways: they create emotional health and are created by people with emotional health. And yes, believe it or not, boundaries are also hot. But first, let’s do the obligatory bullet point list every blog must do for these types of posts. What are Personal Boundaries? Some examples of poor boundaries:
20 Paradoxes That Are True Some of the most important truths in life are contradictory on the surface. They seem like impossibilities, yet experience proves them to be obvious over and over again. It isn’t until you look a bit deeper, beneath the surface contradictions, that the real grains of wisdom emerge. Below are 20 paradoxes I’ve come across which are, paradoxically, still true: 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20.
Sex and Our Psychological Needs Last week’s don’t-fuck-up-your-dating-life trilogy (here, here and here) was received with a lot of enthusiasm, much more than I expected. I even received a number of emails from men who, within days, implemented some of the principles in those posts by ending toxic relationships they had been maintaining with women, or finally establishing some solid boundaries. But there was a little bit of criticism as well. Although I don’t believe this for a minute, it did get me thinking about an assumption a lot of men make about women and sex. Until now… *cue dramatic music* There’s a fundamental assumption a lot of men make about sex. But to explain that, I need to explain psychological needs. Psychological Needs and Strategies All humans possess fundamental psychological needs. Psychologists have studied a number of psychological needs, but you can really narrow them down to four fundamental needs: security1, self-esteem2, autonomy3, and connection4. So here’s the doozy: How do we know this? Why?
The Vulnerability Primer I’ve talked a lot about the benefits of vulnerability and how we can implement it in our lives to make deeper connections and ultimately have more satisfying relationships. Interestingly, I get a lot of questions surrounding the same issues about vulnerability, so I figured I’d try to clarify myself here, once and for all. As a quick refresher, vulnerability is consciously choosing to NOT hide your emotions or desires from others. This can be as simple as complimenting someone on how good they look, approaching an attractive stranger you don’t know, establishing clear and strong boundaries, or expressing your undying love to someone. Vulnerability is the cornerstone concept of my book Models: Attract Women Through Honesty. The benefits to vulnerability are massive, although not always pleasantly achieved. And no, you don’t have to be unbelievably good-looking, or rich, or whatever. People don’t realize this, but honesty is sexy. The logic is simple: The Two Mistakes Emotional Vomit and You