Can Narcissists Really Change? w/ Dr. Elinor Greenberg | S2E13

You can’t love a narcissist hard enough to make them change.

And loyalty isn’t the cure — it’s the trap.
In this powerful conversation, Lisa sits down with psychologist and narcissism expert Dr. Elinor Greenberg to dismantle the fantasy that love or faith can “fix” someone who refuses to see themselves. Dr. Greenberg breaks down why narcissists don’t collaborate in therapy, how “reluctant obedience” can masquerade as progress, and why their apologies often serve performance, not repair. Together, they expose the illusion of change and the emotional cost of waiting for it.

Dr. Greenberg also introduces her concept of Narcissistic Judo — practical, reality-based strategies to help survivors protect their peace when they can’t yet leave. This episode is both validating and disarming, cutting through the noise with clarity and compassion: you didn’t fail to love them right. They failed to love you at all.

Transcript

00:00:00:06 - 00:00:08:17
Music


00:00:08:19 - 00:00:34:06
Lisa Sonni
This is real talk with Lisa Sonni Relationships uncensored, the podcast. They don't want you listening to. If you've ever heard the words I'm changing, I'm working on myself. And you wanted to believe your husband. You wanted to believe your abusive partner. This episode is for you. Because this isn't really about whether or not they can change. It's about how they pretend to change the performative change, that version of them.

00:00:34:06 - 00:01:21:16
Lisa Sonni
It sort of looks like remorse. And they're going to therapy and they seem self-aware, but it really just resets the cycle of control. My guest today is Doctor Elinor Greenberg, licensed psychologist and author of borderline narcissistic and schizoid adaptations The Pursuit of Love, Admiration, and Safety. She's also an international expert who has spent over five decades now. It feels like teaching and treating narcissistic personality adaptations.

00:00:59:23 - 00:01:21:16
Lisa Sonni
She's trained psychotherapists around the world how to recognize it, how to diagnose, how to treat it. So she has a real amazing way of kind of cutting through the noise. So let's talk today about what performative change really looks like. So I want to ask the sort of like first question to you, when you hear a client say he's changing or I hope that he's changing, what comes to mind for you?

00:01:21:18 - 00:01:57:00
Dr. Elinor Greenberg
Well, the first thing that comes to mind, if he's not currently in therapy with an acknowledged expert in personality disorders who specialized for a minimum of three years and narcissistic personality disorder at a place and training that certified that person to treat narcissistic personality disorder. It's a waste of time and money and experts do not usually take insurance, and they charge three times what insurance pays at best, and you pay out of pocket for it.

00:01:57:02 - 00:02:38:16
Dr. Elinor Greenberg
And there's very few places in the United States that train people and systems that are acknowledged to successfully train people in the treatment of narcissistic personality disorder. And the two that are mainly focused on this are the object relations training systems, a theoretical approach that with a very unfortunate name, don't you think? Yeah. And the cell psychologist. So if you've never heard of them and your husband says he's going to a therapist and they are not trained in self psychology treatment of narcissism, there might be a hundred people in America good enough to treat him.

00:02:38:17 - 00:02:46:13
Lisa Sonni
Wow. That's a very small number. Most of the time what I hear is he's in therapy and he's seeing your sort of average psychotherapist.

00:02:46:15 - 00:03:08:23
Dr. Elinor Greenberg
I'm going to tell you why even going to one in the experts can be a waste of time for you. There's two main object relations theorists whose systems are used in the United States. One is Otto Cronenberg, the other is James F Masterson. I went to see Otto Cronenberg lecture and teach, and he was just too tough for my clients.

00:03:09:01 - 00:03:32:09
Dr. Elinor Greenberg
He was dealing with very disturbed people. I'm dealing with high functioning people who want to come to for private therapy. Mostly they have good jobs, most of them not. People with narcissistic personality disorder that I see are successful at work, but they're not successful in their intimate relationships, and they blame other people for their lack of success. And they try over and over again.

00:03:32:13 - 00:03:56:13
Dr. Elinor Greenberg
So I have a basic set of rules right now. I don't take a narcissist under 58 because before 50 they are arrogant and they think the next woman, the next job, the next promotion, the next time you take them back will fix all their problems. Getting you pregnant will fix their problems. Something will fix their problems. It's not gone to.

00:03:56:15 - 00:04:03:23
Dr. Elinor Greenberg
Now I'll explain to you why. Where did you learn to drive Canada? What side of the road do you drive on in Canada? The right.

00:04:03:23 - 00:04:04:07
Lisa Sonni
Side.

00:04:04:12 - 00:04:10:20
Dr. Elinor Greenberg
That's right. So you can come to America and drive. What happens if you go to the UK or Bermuda? Do you drive.

00:04:10:20 - 00:04:14:18
Lisa Sonni
There? I actually was in England last year. My mum drove. Not me. Absolutely.

00:04:14:19 - 00:04:32:20
Dr. Elinor Greenberg
Now why not? It's the same reason as why they can't go to those therapists, and they just can't talk themselves out of being a narcissist. You know which side of the road you drive on in England? You know that you have to do everything. The opposite. Does that help you know? What do you have to do if you want to drive in the UK.

00:04:32:21 - 00:04:42:07
Lisa Sonni
Get a driver's license, practice, hire the right person to teach me. Change my brain. I don't know. I would always be thinking about this side so it would be hard for me to shift.

00:04:42:09 - 00:04:59:08
Dr. Elinor Greenberg
Now let's imagine that you play guitar and you decide to take up tuba. Now let's imagine your first language is English. So if you want to learn French, what do you have to do? Do you just say, well, I know that they speak it differently. So from today on, I'm going to speak French. Is that going to help you?

00:04:59:10 - 00:05:02:18
Lisa Sonni
No. Do you take lessons? Yeah. Hire someone to take lessons.

00:05:03:00 - 00:05:06:06
Dr. Elinor Greenberg
And do they have to know French and how to teach French specifically?

00:05:06:07 - 00:05:06:23
Lisa Sonni
Yes, they do.

00:05:07:04 - 00:05:31:12
Dr. Elinor Greenberg
And I have to give you homework. Oh, yeah? And how many years do you expect it to be before you're fluent in French or tuba or driving in the UK? They're just brain based neuronal networks that have to connect in your brain. What you have to do is you have to inhibit to learn something new, like driving. You have to inhibit the old response, which means you have to become aware of the old responses.

00:05:31:14 - 00:05:55:02
Dr. Elinor Greenberg
So you have to bring them into awareness. Then you have to have already a substitute response learned. Your brain does not care about a lot of stuff. It's designed to form neuronal networks. When you repeat something. That network of the things the first time you do it, it's very awkward, like driving in the UK on the other side, you're going to make mistakes.

00:05:55:02 - 00:06:20:02
Dr. Elinor Greenberg
You're going to be in danger. You want to do it someplace safe. You want a lot of practice. Now, the next time you're in the situation, you're going to have to remember to not do the thing that you do in Toronto and to substitute the other. Now, this is going to eventually with hundreds and hundreds of repetitions of inhibiting meals response successfully and substituting the no.

00:06:20:02 - 00:07:03:06
Dr. Elinor Greenberg
One. Eventually, the new neuronal networks get stronger than the old one that's been degraded at that point. What's called neuronal Darwinism kicks in. Your brain essentially uses whatever is most repeated, whether it's useful or not. In this situation, its automatic response is unconscious. So when you tell me you're a narcissist and let's assume he is a narcissist for a minute, let's assume you're correct and he has narcissistic personality disorder, because that's the easiest thing to assume here, because whatever he has narcissistic trait, narcissistic coping mechanisms, it is mediated by a neuronal network in his brain.

00:07:03:07 - 00:07:32:17
Dr. Elinor Greenberg
And as Doctor Edelman said, the one that shows up is your most practiced one. You've been practicing narcissistic responses since before the age of ten. The personality is formed before five and post five. You get Oedipal type responses, according to Freud. You know, not this intense one on one disturbance and intimacy. So we know that you've been practicing this your entire life.

00:07:32:22 - 00:08:11:22
Dr. Elinor Greenberg
It feels like you. That's why it feels like you. It's your natural response. You've been doing it, and the no response is going to feel fake and false. But you're going to have to practice it anyway. And not only are you going to have to practice it, you're going to have to inhibit the other one, and you're going to have to do it well, being triggered by something that your wife said, because research has demonstrated what every person in a relationship with a narcissist already knows, they are hypersensitive to minor slights and criticisms, and they get triggered where other people just pass it.

00:08:12:01 - 00:08:31:13
Dr. Elinor Greenberg
You know, it's not a problem. So now we have a hypersensitive person who you know very well you're married to them, or you're going with them, and he comes to you and he says, I'm going to change. And you say, great, what's your plan? And he says, oh, I'll find a therapist, my insurance to pay for it. Is this a good plan likely to work?

00:08:31:14 - 00:09:00:23
Lisa Sonni
No. No, never. Oh yeah. That's superiority right there. Absolutely. I since when I mean, I not that I deal with narcissists directly, but the stories that I hear are all rooted in, like, I deserve to be able to treat you this way. I get to do this, and I am the victim. They so believe that. So the ones that are in therapy are seeing an average therapist and, you know, doing talk therapy and come home and say things like, you know, my therapist thinks that you're the narcissist.

00:09:01:01 - 00:09:02:03
Lisa Sonni
We hear that a lot.

00:09:02:08 - 00:09:29:08
Dr. Elinor Greenberg
Yes. And I'll tell you something even worse. And this is something that the women will really understand. Couples therapy or talking to family or friends living with a narcissist. And I don't care if you have the nicest one in the world, because some of the guys I've treated underneath it all, when I take off their uniform of narcissism, when they take off all their narcissistic defenses, I find a very vulnerable.

00:09:29:11 - 00:09:52:11
Dr. Elinor Greenberg
I try and I can take who I want. Now I had a waiting list. I had exhibitionist narcissists, successful business and wanting to compete and have a bidding war for my services to become less narcissistic. So they get back with their wife, would kick them out. So I had a batch of guys all kicked out and their children were speaking to them, and all the sons were taking the wife's side.

00:09:52:12 - 00:10:15:11
Dr. Elinor Greenberg
That's the situation in my clients, because I could pick and choose, and these guys were all because I knew I needed. I wanted to start a different version of my therapy that required a five year commitment. And payment in advance for each session, and I wasn't taking insurance because insurance wasn't going to pay the amount that I was going to charge to do this with them.

00:10:15:11 - 00:10:41:05
Dr. Elinor Greenberg
Because as you already know from living with a narcissist, this is highly unpleasant. What a narcissist want to do when they want to feel good, they want to give you advice. If they're an exhibitionist, they want to tell you how to better run your life and pick out all the things you're doing wrong that you could improve. Do they ever pick out one of their things and saying, would you help me improve this?

00:10:41:07 - 00:10:42:08
Lisa Sonni
No. They're perfect.

00:10:42:10 - 00:10:55:21
Dr. Elinor Greenberg
Your things. Do they isolate you from people who are supportive of you? Do they try and take over control over your life if they're at all that type? Does it slowly happen like a frog in hot water?

00:10:55:22 - 00:10:57:13
Lisa Sonni
Yes. Yeah. You don't even realize.

00:10:57:14 - 00:11:10:15
Dr. Elinor Greenberg
One day you find yourself broken. Exhausted. You know the reason I get asked? Seriously, when I first went on Quora are are they possessed by demons? Are they are they evil?

00:11:10:16 - 00:11:12:02
Lisa Sonni
I get asked that every day.

00:11:12:06 - 00:11:43:15
Dr. Elinor Greenberg
No they're not. They are small children that adapt to a situation. And since then, the software in their brain took in what they learned as a small child and has not been consciously updated ever. So they've updated the phones, they've updated their computer, sometimes updated their friends, their girlfriends, their wives for newer models, and they never updated their own thinking that was set before they were a teenager.

00:11:43:15 - 00:12:04:11
Lisa Sonni
That's so true. You know, you're reminding me so much of something that I heard Doctor Peter Solano when say that narcissists see the only problem in the relationship as that thing that you keep talking about, if you would just stop talking, the problem would go away. This made up issue would just go away if you would just. And it's really like the compliance, right?

00:12:04:11 - 00:12:20:01
Lisa Sonni
They want you to just do it. Their way, accept that they're right and then everything will be fine. Arguably no, it won't be fine because they also like to pick fights constantly, but they seem to want to convince other people to just do it. Their way, and then everything will be okay. And I don't think that's true at all.

00:12:20:07 - 00:12:45:07
Dr. Elinor Greenberg
Yes. And would you want to then spend thousands of dollars studying how to spend your days treating those people where they say that to you, about you, and you have to find out how to get past the devaluing defenses and the blame and the lack of appreciation for everything you're trying to do for them, because they'll quit in the middle of therapy the moment you don't do the thing.

00:12:45:10 - 00:13:10:05
Dr. Elinor Greenberg
And they bully their therapist, too. They attempt to bully us. And if we don't accept the bullying, they quit on us the same way they quit on you after being as nasty as possible. So the truth about this situation is don't wait for the guy. Don't wait for him, don't wait for him. Don't wait for him. Unless you've verified the credentials of everyone that he's saying he's seeing for therapy and what their approaches.

00:13:10:05 - 00:13:13:06
Dr. Elinor Greenberg
And you can do this online. You can find out these things.

00:13:13:06 - 00:13:41:16
Lisa Sonni
I think it takes a lot to specialize. And although it's always baffled me that couples therapists, just your average couples therapist can't even spot domestic violence and abuse, let alone a personality disorder. And I think that a lot of couples are at risk of sitting in sessions and saying things and saying their experience and being invalidated. One of the biggest things I hear from clients is I was in therapy with my partner or I, you know, he was in therapy, I've been in therapy and I've been invalidated.

00:13:41:16 - 00:13:59:13
Lisa Sonni
I didn't know I was being abused because the therapist told me I was the issue or, you know, I needed to change something. I needed to focus and and they only end up getting more gaslit and more disconnected from themselves, feeling like they're the problem when really, what's going on? Is this this abusive ness that they kind of can't name.

00:13:59:18 - 00:14:02:04
Lisa Sonni
So. So then they get super invalidated.

00:14:02:06 - 00:14:15:00
Dr. Elinor Greenberg
Now I'm going to ask you a question and you can I can ask it of you personally, and you can answer it as personal as you are comfortable with. Have you ever been to couples therapy with someone you thought was a narcissist?

00:14:15:00 - 00:14:18:09
Lisa Sonni
I have been to couples therapy with a diagnosed narcissist.

00:14:18:11 - 00:14:21:19
Dr. Elinor Greenberg
And what degrees did your couples therapist have.

00:14:21:20 - 00:14:45:14
Lisa Sonni
A master's degree? I believe in psychotherapy. However, she's not skilled in treating. But I will say that I am lucky beyond anything I could say because she recognized that there was a personality disorder in the room and fired us. But I was lucky. I don't hear that very often. Typically what I hear is a master's degree in psychotherapy or social work or whatever, and there is no recognition at all.

00:14:45:19 - 00:14:47:22
Dr. Elinor Greenberg
And here in Canada, I believe.

00:14:47:23 - 00:14:48:08
Lisa Sonni
Yes.

00:14:48:08 - 00:14:55:02
Dr. Elinor Greenberg
In the United States they don't have to have a master's degree in couples therapy or psychotherapy.

00:14:55:04 - 00:14:58:17
Lisa Sonni
That's wild to me. That's alarming and that's dangerous.

00:14:58:17 - 00:15:22:01
Dr. Elinor Greenberg
Couples therapy, training them. Many of the couples therapists, my clients have gone too wild. They were just bold with a narcissist, I mean, zero. Imagine you're going to your GP, your family doctor, and that's you need heart surgery. You need open heart surgery. Do you expect your family doctor to be trained in that you respect a referral to an expert?

00:15:22:05 - 00:15:52:04
Dr. Elinor Greenberg
Do you expect the expert to first be a cardiologist? Yes. Then do you expect them on top of an expert cardiology tap? Then a further thing and an expert in cardiac be a diplomat in cardiac surgery was certified before you let them open your heart so hundred percent. Why would you expect less you wouldn't go to? Was someone not trained as a dentist for dentistry your root canal and let them dig up your mouth.

00:15:49:08 - 00:15:52:06
Dr. Elinor Greenberg
Why are they digging in your brain without credentials?

00:15:52:06 - 00:16:08:06
Lisa Sonni
There's this hope though, that you're just completely wrong and that it's not abuse, that it's not narcissism. Because of course, the narcissist is convincing you that this is, you know, made up and you're actually the problem or that they're traumatized. I always find that, I mean, I'm oversimplifying.

00:16:08:06 - 00:16:30:13
Dr. Elinor Greenberg
But they're traumatized. I'm traumatized. You've been traumatized. We've all been traumatized. Now, if we're going to go strictly for trauma, do we have PTSD from a trauma? I repeat, I had for four documented rape attempts. You know what I mean? The last one by the guy that was supposed to be head of my committee for my dissertation, and I had to change dissertation topics.

00:16:30:15 - 00:16:41:15
Dr. Elinor Greenberg
So, yeah, I have trauma. So you tell me you have trauma. So go to trauma therapy for your trauma and come to the right person for your narcissism. They can't treat everything about you.

00:16:41:18 - 00:16:49:14
Lisa Sonni
But it's in the victim's mind. In the wife's mind. I just hear so often like it's not abuse. It's just that it's trauma. As in the meanness.

00:16:49:16 - 00:17:09:10
Dr. Elinor Greenberg
Cruelty is a person who says he was traumatized. Who I know, right. But it's still abuse. So we're on traumatized. They were narcissist. I have a high I have a high functioning client who was not traumatized by his family. They were just very non feeling people. The other thing I look for is a lack of emotional empathy. Yeah.

00:17:09:11 - 00:17:29:19
Dr. Elinor Greenberg
Now there's a difference between cognitive empathy and emotional empathy. Cognitive empathy. You can stop, think, try and put yourself in the other person's shoes. Some people do better than others. Some people have no idea what it feels like to be in anyone else's shoes, and they have to stop and think about, are they hurting you? How should they say this?

00:17:29:20 - 00:17:50:08
Dr. Elinor Greenberg
Is this a good thing to say to you? And then they think about how you will feel receiving it, and then they stop because you'll feel bad. Does that make sense to you that the narcissist in your life is going to start making himself feel good at your expense, because he figures out that it's going to make you feel bad?

00:17:50:12 - 00:18:15:02
Dr. Elinor Greenberg
No, he's going to find a reason to justify it. He's going to tell himself a story that you're a bad person and you deserve this abuse, and you're lucky to have him. And then he's going to tell you that story and try and convince you of that fact, because that means he doesn't have to change anything, because if he is flawed, he lacks logic relations, and he can only see himself as all good or all bad.

00:18:15:04 - 00:18:31:05
Dr. Elinor Greenberg
So there's two containers. Isn't the all good container that feels good to him? He feels special. He feels unique. He feels perfect. All the bad is projected onto you. If only you would change or keep your mouth shut about what you don't like about him. Everything would be fine.

00:18:31:05 - 00:18:53:11
Lisa Sonni
You've heard that, right? Oh yeah, that distortion is wild though. They're so black and white, right? And I think it even carries on to like, you're you're with me or against me. So if you say, hey, maybe you'd benefit from seeking therapy because you're really mean to me and you say it's trauma, so please go help yourself. You may as well have told him he's a POS because they take it as such an attack like you.

00:18:53:11 - 00:19:16:03
Lisa Sonni
You think I'm awful? What I hear a lot is. Oh, so you think I'm a piece of shit? Like that's the amount of women that tell me that exact phrase. So let me ask you, in your experience, do you ever see them be collaborative? Do you like do they do so people who are narcissistic and truly have the disorder or even the traits, to be fair, do they show up to actually collaborate in therapy or do you see this as their stage?

00:19:16:03 - 00:19:20:03
Lisa Sonni
Are they performing therapy and are they performing it for you or their wife or?

00:19:20:07 - 00:19:47:08
Dr. Elinor Greenberg
Well, I can create a collaboration with a subgroup of narcissists. I'm really good at it. And, you have to be because otherwise you'll get walked over so I can play good cop and bad cop, but they wouldn't collaborate with me naturally, unless there was enormous pressure on them to do so. Or they found God. I had one person who was a good client because he went back straight to Catholicism.

00:19:47:08 - 00:19:50:16
Dr. Elinor Greenberg
Goes to mass every day, multiple rosaries. You know.

00:19:50:16 - 00:20:05:15
Lisa Sonni
You said something. It's so interesting. It made me think of Doctor Gregory. Lester has said that they don't misunderstand right and wrong. They just don't care. And George Simon has actually said the same thing, right? It's like they just don't care. They absolutely know that they're hurting you. They don't care.

00:20:05:18 - 00:20:31:10
Dr. Elinor Greenberg
Well, it depends which right and wrong you're talking about the right and wrongs that affect them. They're very sensitive to that amount of money. Teach them at a time. Be mean to them. Have the slightest disagreement. They suddenly understand, right? Wrong. Really? Well, what they don't care about is you, your feelings. They don't care deeply about the people that they claim to love, because they don't know what intimate love involves.

00:20:31:12 - 00:20:54:00
Dr. Elinor Greenberg
Intimate love involves wanting the best for the person you love, even if that means something you don't want to do. Love is getting up and taking care of your kid in the middle of the night, knowing you have to go to work tomorrow, but your kid is crying and you're not going to leave it. They're crying alone with the fever because you got to go to work the next day.

00:20:54:04 - 00:21:04:06
Dr. Elinor Greenberg
So you get up and you do what's necessary and you suffer for it. But you know in advance it's worth it to you because your job is to take care of this child.

00:21:04:09 - 00:21:21:21
Lisa Sonni
Yeah. I want to actually take you to this part of the episode called Real Talk. From the comment sections. I spend a ton of time on social media talking about abuse recovery and trauma bonds and whatnot, and I get a lot of comments from people, and I get a lot of comments from women who are certainly victims or survivors of this.

00:21:21:21 - 00:21:40:08
Lisa Sonni
But I get a lot of comments from people that I think might be narcissists. But that aside, I want to read you two comments and get your reaction to these comments and just tell me what you think. Okay, so the first comment is, I used to be a narcissist, but my ex leaving me was the wake up call that I needed.

00:21:40:13 - 00:21:48:00
Lisa Sonni
I'm a totally different person now and she'll never find anyone who loves her like I did. I know she's going to regret this for the rest of her life.

00:21:48:05 - 00:22:13:17
Dr. Elinor Greenberg
Okay, so he's splitting. So let's listen to the splitting. I am totally now not a narcissist, right? He's going to regret this for the rest of her life. Does he have emotional empathy? She's she's just. He's trying to scare her into coming back to him. What a loving person. Try and scare the person they love. Has he changed then?

00:22:13:19 - 00:22:25:02
Dr. Elinor Greenberg
He's trying to scare his mate into coming back with him and telling him the usual. Is this the usual narcissist thing? Without me, you're nothing. You will regret it for the rest of your life.

00:22:25:04 - 00:22:32:17
Lisa Sonni
Right? So what's changed? I used to be a narcissist and I just sound exactly like one now. Even still, like it's wild. Yeah.

00:22:32:18 - 00:22:55:06
Dr. Elinor Greenberg
Now you know that instantaneously just deciding that you don't want to be your driver, like in the U.S or in Toronto. You want to drive the way they do in the UK. What good will that do you? Will you be instantly able to be a UK driver based on your new desire? No. What will you have to do to change your brain?

00:22:55:10 - 00:23:13:04
Lisa Sonni
Well, practice, but apparently at least a thousand times. But I think more than anything you have to even have the motivation and to me, like that's the piece that is missing you. May you probably see more people who are even remotely motivated or at least pretending to be motivated. Plenty just refuse altogether to even try to get help.

00:23:13:07 - 00:23:21:20
Lisa Sonni
They already promised change. In fact, my ex abuser did not promise change. Never. Not once. It was my fault. I was wrong to think this was bad to begin with.

00:23:21:20 - 00:23:36:20
Dr. Elinor Greenberg
You didn't even. And what did you do when? So I get people in long term marriages who want to stay married. Everybody. Now here's something that you're going to hear and you may want to end before this. So you tell me. But everybody says all narcissists cheat. They don't.

00:23:37:01 - 00:23:38:06
Lisa Sonni
Agreed. No, they don't.

00:23:38:06 - 00:24:02:17
Dr. Elinor Greenberg
And not all narcissists want to leave you for someone else. There are lots of areas and cultures and cultural subgroups that support marriage in our society, and if they belong to one of those subgroups, they will be despised if they try. And I see people who play golf, the country clubs, you do not bring your girlfriend to your wife's country club?

00:24:02:00 - 00:24:02:18
Lisa Sonni
Course not.

00:24:02:18 - 00:24:25:17
Dr. Elinor Greenberg
What would happen if you did so? If you are in a long term country club marriage, you want to stay married because your marriage, your failure to stay married and leaving your wife unless your wife is soundly disliked by every other person at that country club, you will be looked at as a bad guy, as a loser, as somebody who couldn't cut it.

00:24:25:17 - 00:24:47:07
Dr. Elinor Greenberg
Or is is is ruining a family fun? If you cheat with too many women, you'll be looked at as somebody maybe they don't want in a club because their wives won't talk to those at men's girlfriends or wives. They they. I have met people whose new wife was given the cold shoulder by every other woman at the club.

00:24:47:11 - 00:24:48:13
Lisa Sonni
Yeah. She wasn't.

00:24:48:15 - 00:24:50:03
Dr. Elinor Greenberg
It isn't fun for her.

00:24:50:06 - 00:25:26:07
Lisa Sonni
Yeah. For him, it's the image management, right? Like he doesn't want people to see him as a philanderer for. Got to be the good country club.

00:24:57:17 - 00:25:26:04
Dr. Elinor Greenberg
You want to get ahead, is it? And they want to ruin your image before you can ruin their. So if they're convinced that you will leave them, they will spread very often secrets about you that are exaggerated, that are from your past, that they swore they would never say, that you told them in moments of trust and vulnerability, and they will try and get everybody to dislike you intensely and suspect you, and they will call you borderline if you have emotions at all.

00:25:26:09 - 00:25:58:12
Dr. Elinor Greenberg
Right. Many of you, you go to couples therapy and you're the borderline because you're well, this is why story before is you're emotionally broken by now. You're crying. You're hurt. They come in calmly. They have no emotional. It's they they're faking it. They're in their narcissistic grandiosity. So they're looking their strategy is to remain calm. Have you be emotional, have this naive couple therapists who has a master's degree and nothing individual not understand anything about personality disorders.

00:25:58:12 - 00:26:06:23
Dr. Elinor Greenberg
They've heard the word borderline. You call your wife borderline. Look how emotional she is. Look how come I am. This is how she is at home. I'm the abused one.

00:26:06:23 - 00:26:30:15
Lisa Sonni
Narcissistic people. In my experience. It's not that they drive you to actually borderline personality disorder, but they drive you to have these wild swings of emotion because you're constantly being pulled in every direction. So I always sort of joke, like, are you even a victim of narcissistic abuse if you've not, you know, googled, am I a borderline or am I a narcissist because they really convince you that you've lost your mind?

00:26:30:15 - 00:26:43:12
Lisa Sonni
I'm going to read you the second comment. This one actually just oh, it was brutal. Women just give up on marriage and men way too fast. The cure for narcissism isn't divorce, it's loyalty. Women are loyal like they used to be.

00:26:43:14 - 00:27:05:17
Dr. Elinor Greenberg
Oh, that's silly, that's just silly. Okay, so what does this say? Loyalty doesn't cure narcissism. Does loyalty teach you the drive in the UK? This is why I use the drive. Yeah. Does you? You wanted to learn to. But this loyalty give you tuba training, not kiss you train. If you want to cure narcissism, you have to find someone that knows how to cure narcissism.

00:27:05:21 - 00:27:28:01
Dr. Elinor Greenberg
Then the person has to go to therapy and be sincerely motivated to do the exercises. And they think about what they've been asked to reflect on, whether it's a self reflection based thing, whether it's a tool based treatment, whatever the basis of the treatment is, they have to do the work or they're not going to learn it. I can't learn to do to play a tuba from looking at a tuba.

00:27:28:01 - 00:27:30:08
Dr. Elinor Greenberg
I'm sorry. So call me on gifted.

00:27:30:10 - 00:27:48:11
Lisa Sonni
Yeah, yeah, you absolutely can't I? Loyalty is one of those things too, that I think, gosh, we have too much of that. You know, I like, think about Sandra L Brown's work and her her discussions around the super traits and how victims and survivors tend to be really conscientious. And the ties to loyalty. We are way too loyal.

00:27:48:13 - 00:28:00:10
Dr. Elinor Greenberg
Listen. And who is who do you think asked you that question? Did the wife and spouse or girlfriend of a narcissist or what do you think that was, a male narcissist?

00:28:00:12 - 00:28:13:03
Lisa Sonni
Well, I do know that it was a man who left the comment and had left multiple comments on one of my videos about women and his views on women that were highly misogynistic, and his comments were very combative.

00:28:13:04 - 00:28:32:00
Dr. Elinor Greenberg
So what evidence do you see of whole object relations in his comments? The first thing I do is I look for all evidence of all object relations, some evidence that he sees the other side's point of view and that he can see both sides, and that people aren't entirely evil or wrong for rejecting him. Does show any evidence of this.

00:28:32:00 - 00:28:33:20
Lisa Sonni
No, that's missing completely.

00:28:33:20 - 00:28:43:18
Dr. Elinor Greenberg
Okay, so you have you have a lack of evidence of whole object. So do you have any evidence of part object relations where they see people as either all special or all worthless?

00:28:43:19 - 00:29:05:18
Lisa Sonni
All worthless? Right. Women collectively are all he's generalizing.

00:28:47:16 - 00:29:05:18
Dr. Elinor Greenberg
Oh, so do we have evidence of splitting? This is called splitting informally. And a lack of whole object relations. So we have no evidence so far of whole object for you guys. We'll just do this scientifically like a therapist would. So I'm looking at the data. I'm not making assumptions. I'm not looking at my intuition. I'm looking at data.

00:29:05:20 - 00:29:22:10
Dr. Elinor Greenberg
You gave me data. So first we have no evidence of whole object relations under many common. Second, we have evidence of split object relations. Is that true? Now, do we have evidence of emotional empathy or cognitive empathy here of any kind?

00:29:22:12 - 00:29:22:21
Lisa Sonni
I don't.

00:29:22:21 - 00:29:44:03
Dr. Elinor Greenberg
See it. That's right. And so now we have a lack of emotional and cognitive empathy or the use of cognitive empathy. We have evidence of splitting in the writing, and we have no evidence of whole object relations. Now, we don't know which personality disorder, but the one that's most, the one that he's writing about. And then he's complaining about his narcissist.

00:29:44:03 - 00:30:07:02
Dr. Elinor Greenberg
But let's assume that that's his interest, and that's the case he's making. I'm not a narcissist. They need to be more loyal. It is their problem. So who would make that case? So that's not a borderline case. That's not a schizoid case. That's not even a closet narcissistic case. That's the case made by an exhibitionist narcissist with an ax to grind and not much else to do with his life.

00:30:07:02 - 00:30:22:12
Dr. Elinor Greenberg
So we're not even dealing with the successful guy. My odds are that a successful guys that were earning is 100 million like my clients are. My clients are not writing in complaining in my comment section. The guys complaining in my comment section don't have meaningful jobs.

00:30:22:16 - 00:30:34:09
Lisa Sonni
Oh yeah, they but they come in all the time like I'm a busy, wealthy man with a beautiful wife. You're none of those things, sir. You are none of those things because busy, wealthy men are out making money.

00:30:34:12 - 00:30:38:06
Dr. Elinor Greenberg
So we have this guy repeat to me what he says.

00:30:38:08 - 00:30:46:21
Lisa Sonni
He says women just give up on marriage and men way too fast. The cure for narcissism isn't divorce. It's loyalty. Women are loyal like they used to be.

00:30:46:23 - 00:30:50:02
Dr. Elinor Greenberg
Okay, so do we see evidence of blame here?

00:30:50:06 - 00:30:50:23
Lisa Sonni
100%?

00:30:51:01 - 00:30:57:18
Dr. Elinor Greenberg
How much self-reflection do we say? Zero? Okay, so we see. And when blaming, who is he blaming.

00:30:57:23 - 00:30:59:11
Lisa Sonni
Women collectively.

00:30:59:13 - 00:31:24:13
Dr. Elinor Greenberg
And is he blaming them for the things that he's doing? We have a male figure who is blaming women exclusively for giving up on him, for what he has done to them and with them. So based on the data points of diagnosing narcissism, which first we diagnose a personality disorder, which first we diagnose by seeing a lack of all object relations.

00:31:24:15 - 00:31:46:13
Dr. Elinor Greenberg
We've established that there's no evidence of no object relations. We do say this evidence of splitting. Then we go on to the next thing that differentiates narcissists from some of the other personality disorders. The other personality sorts can lose their emotional empathy when they're splitting, and they can have the variable amount of it, but they usually have it when they're not splitting.

00:31:46:15 - 00:31:56:21
Dr. Elinor Greenberg
Does this person show any evidence whatsoever of any type of empathy for anyone but himself? None. Now, does he show hatred for any group?

00:31:57:00 - 00:32:00:11
Lisa Sonni
I see that personally. Yeah, a hatred of women who called them misogyny.

00:32:00:15 - 00:32:22:20
Dr. Elinor Greenberg
Goodness, as someone who hates women by definition. So we see hatred and we see it. Do we see nuanced hatred like, I can't, you know, I don't hate all women. I only hate women who do this, or I only hate the young women now of this group. But my mother was a good person. We said, you know, we some evidence of being able to see any woman.

00:32:22:20 - 00:32:28:17
Dr. Elinor Greenberg
Do we see evidence of being able to see any female? No. As an okay human being ever.

00:32:28:17 - 00:32:30:11
Lisa Sonni
No, not at all. Okay. All right.

00:32:30:12 - 00:32:33:15
Dr. Elinor Greenberg
So what's their diagnosis from your point of view, what you've learned today.

00:32:33:20 - 00:32:37:10
Lisa Sonni
I am diagnosing him with narcissism for sure.

00:32:37:12 - 00:32:41:02
Dr. Elinor Greenberg
Thank you. And a personality disorder or just narcissistic traits.

00:32:41:04 - 00:32:42:21
Lisa Sonni
Probably a personality disorder.

00:32:43:01 - 00:33:09:00
Dr. Elinor Greenberg
Now you already now can tell me that you're diagnosing him as difference between traits and personality based on these, and we have to give it a provi. So in real life he may be capable of more. We only are diagnosing now based on this written evidence. Okay. Are you comfortable with that diagnosis? I am well thank you. So you've had your first lesson in the diagnosis of narcissistic personality disorder.

00:33:09:02 - 00:33:30:01
Lisa Sonni
I love it, we all have had that today. That's perfect. I make jokes often that we all feel like we have a PhD in narcissistic abuse, which I know isn't a real PhD, but we spent so much time learning about narcissism, and I think pop culture learning, right? We're watching YouTube videos and reading books, but not certainly not close to the training that you've had and your colleagues have had.

00:33:30:03 - 00:33:44:04
Lisa Sonni
But we feel like, oh, that's a narcissist. I know my husband is a narcissist. I know my partner is a narcissist. It feels like it's true. I don't think the label really matters in the sense of the women who are stuck. I think that his intent and the guidance are you.

00:33:44:04 - 00:34:04:21
Dr. Elinor Greenberg
I have a clue that the women who are stuck, I forgot to mention it. Tell me. I wrote an article for you guys called narcissistic pseudo narcissists are Inherently unstable. You've had the bad side of the instability where they turn on you. Initially, they love you, then they turn on you. Well, anything that is inherently unstable, we can turn back.

00:34:04:23 - 00:34:19:07
Dr. Elinor Greenberg
I wrote this article on how to use every narcissistic trait to strategize, to manipulate, to get what you want, and some peace and quiet from the narcissist that you cannot get out of your life for one reason or another.

00:34:19:09 - 00:34:42:20
Lisa Sonni
Absolutely. Those little tips and tricks is amazing. I'm going to link all the articles that you talked about in the description, so that people can access all of this information and learn more about it. That's incredible. Thank you so much. I hope that people listening, you know, can kind of gather that it's just unbelievably difficult to have any kind of change unless you're really working with the right therapist.

00:34:42:20 - 00:34:54:22
Lisa Sonni
And it sounds like there are very few that are qualified therapists. And also very few people who are disordered that are even interested in this kind of change. I think that's the the best takeaway.

00:34:54:23 - 00:35:04:13
Dr. Elinor Greenberg
Yes. And there's one or this thing that I did for psych today, and I've done it in other places, the ten stages in the treatment of narcissistic personality disorder.

00:35:04:15 - 00:35:22:15
Lisa Sonni
That it's honestly very profound, right? There's so many variables in whether or not you're going to see even a shred of progress, but it sounds like a long time to hope and a long time for a victim or a survivor to be stuck and waiting and hoping. And I mean, I have I have other episodes on how to focus on yourself.

00:35:22:21 - 00:35:42:09
Lisa Sonni
So people are going to have to catch catch those ones, how to how to live without all of this chaos. But thank you so much for being here today. This was unbelievably insightful and I hope everybody checks out all of your your articles and absolutely reads your book. I'll put the link to your book in the description as well, so that people can go out and buy that and read that.

00:35:42:11 - 00:35:53:17
Lisa Sonni
Thank you so much for being here. If this episode gave you clarity, share it with someone who needs it. Thanks for being here and for being honest with yourself. And remember, you're stronger than before.

00:35:53:18 - 00:35:57:23
Music
Stronger than before.