NPD Book Review “Children of the Self-Absorbed”

Transcript

Hi everyone Dr Liz here.

This is another book for children adult children grown-up children of narcissistic parents this one is by Nina Brown and um it’s called Children of the Self- Absorbed a grown-up’s Guide to Getting Over Narcissistic Parents now it’s not written specifically for Daughters of Narcissistic Mothers like the McBride book is that I have a whole series on.

This one is really for either gender and both child and adult like parent sorry like your parent. Your parent could be a mom or dad or identify as neither one as well as the grown-up child. And this one also is far less narrative I would say than the other two that I’ve talked about. It has a lot of exercises, a lot of information in it.

Like this one is why use protective strategies. It talks about what is splitting, what is projection, what is identification. Developing your emotional insulation – it’s a really good way to put it. Sometimes in my practice I call it your shield. It’s like you need a shield with some kind of opening in it so that information you need can get through. But everything else can bounce off. So we often create a shield. I think it’s a wonderful exercise for anyone.

When I used to go home to visit my mother, me and my friends we’d be like “Shields up! Shields up!”  Like that’s just how it was. I had to have those in place to be able to handle visiting her. And I tried to visit her once every two years is about what I could manage. Really like a weekend or so, not more than that.

So she has lots of good things about that she talks about –  criticism and blame. When they criticize you and blame you for stuff how to become indifferent.

You know people will tell you “Oh just don’t worry about it, ignore them, whatever.” Become indifferent basically. And it’s like well how exactly do you do that? How do you not get sucked in? So she gives some good strategies in here for that.

How to handle demeaning, devaluating comments. How to handle them. Flattery is big. Really. I took a whole course by accident on working with narcissists and I really thought it was for victims of narcissists. I don’t know how I missed it. But I had already signed up and I wasn’t going to ask for a refund. So I took the course and flattery is a big strategy – various forms of flattery is a big strategy for narcissists.

Personal example of this is my daughter’s therapist said “Hey she really is looking for attention from her dad.” And so I had to tell her “Dad like you’re really important to her she really needs you to show up because you’re so important to her.” And it was honest. He is really important to her and he really didn’t realize it he was like “Really?”

But it was a conscious strategy on my part too of like how do I get him to show up for her? This is how. So she talks about all kinds of strategies like that and working with your narcissistic parent so I highly recommend that one. I really do think it could be very very helpful.

All right everyone you want to see more about me or work with me. I do telehealth and hypnosis all over the US and many parts of the world. So feel free to drop me a line or give me a call, set up a a free Zoom consultation. Wherever you’re located we’ll figure it out. I’ll talk to you soon. Peace.

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Peace and Health,

Dr. Liz