What’s the Treatment for Narcissism?
There is no standard treatment protocol for narcissism.
The idea that there is ‘no cure’ for narcissism probably comes from a popular myth in psychology that says that someone has to want to get better and be prepared to work hard on themselves if they are ever going to hope to change their behaviour. I believe this is often wrong. Tough love and parenting bratty kids are two examples of where a problem individual has no motivation to change but the effort of the people around them can bring enormously beneficial results.
We believe it would be more accurate for the professionals to say that NPD is not generally helped by conventional therapy or that no standard treatment protocol has yet been found.
There is research however, quoted by Daniel Goleman in “Emotional Intelligence” that shows that a ‘reparative relationship’ can be very beneficial in personality disordered individuals.
Before believing that there is no hope for treatment (as you easily could by reading most info that is on-line) please consider these points;
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a.Are you sure of the diagnosis? Even professionals have trouble distinguishing between narcissism and narcissistic tendencies and the prognosis for each is completely different.
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b.Just because standard therapy has been largely unsuccessful does not mean that there are not other important steps that you can and should take.
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c.Even if you are not able to ‘tame the tiger’, you will need to learn good self protection skills to defend yourself from their abuse.
Narcissism thrives when there are people around the narcissistic individual who allow themselves to be scape-goated for the narcissists bad behaviour; people who are not skilled at standing up for themselves that the narcissist can blame their bad behaviour on. It is a condition that appears in relationship and not in isolation. It takes more than one person for this pattern of behaviour to continue.
So we suggest accordingly, that the treatment for narcissism must be to strengthen and train the family of this individual to stand up for themselves and respond in more helpful and healthy ways to this person’s abuse while also helping them fill in their developmental gaps and learn a new way of operating in the world. Our program for this works in four key areas
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a.Strengthening trust and attachment
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b.Limiting Abuse
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c.Emotional Intelligence Training - Particularly Self Soothing
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d.Developmental Gap work
This work is generally taken on by the partner or family members of the narcissistic person and you will find more information on this here;
Or a person suffering from this disorder can help themselves by visiting our site here;
