How to Spot a Narcissis

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Welcome to today's episode of The Mindset Mentor podcast. I am your host Rob Dial. If you have not yet done so, hit that subscribe button so you never miss another podcast episode. And if you want to finish this year strong, join my free three day challenge October 27th to 29th live with me. Here's why. Because most people check out around this time of year, they look at their goals that they've set, they see how far away they are, and then tell themselves that they'll start over again in January. Don't do that. There's still enough time for you to make real progress this year. You just have to use it. Over these three days, I'm going to teach you how to deprogram and reprogram your identity, how to start taking real action, and also how to start changing your brain to the new you. You're going to get a 60-day roadmap for the rest of 2026 and a workbook, so you know exactly what you need to focus on next. To join for free, go to finish2026strong.com.

Once again, finish2026strong.com, and I'll see you live on the challenge. Today, we're going to be talking about narcissists, and we're going to be doing a deep dive into narcissism. And if you get on the Internet at all, you might notice people on social media that are calling people narcissists. These days, people are just kind of saying, oh, well, my ex-boyfriend was this way, so he's a narcissist, or my mom is this way, so she's a narcissist. And it's people that are just calling too many people narcissists without really, truly understanding what it means. And so what I want to do is actually have you understand what is a narcissist. I want to slow it down. I want to talk about it, because when we just throw out the word narcissist and we put it out there too loosely, we're kind of thinking, number one, that way too many people are that haven't actually been diagnosed with it. But then also we miss the real signs of a narcissist, which means that we also miss the real danger as well. And so what I want to do is I want to get into the facts of what a narcissist is, how to identify one, how to deal with one, and then how to protect yourself and your own mental health against somebody who is actually a narcissist. Okay. First off, as I was saying, narcissism is not what Instagram says that it is. The thing that I want to get straight is that narcissism is not just someone who loves themselves too much, or seems too cocky, or someone who is selfish in some sort of way. It's not like a personality quirk. It's not a character flaw. And it's definitely not like somebody who ghosted you after having three great dates with them. And you're like, oh, well, she's just a narcissist. That's why she did it. Because too many people are calling a selfish person a narcissist. And those are two completely different things. Like actual narcissistic personality disorder is a clinical diagnosis. And NPD usually includes stuff like this. So you can kind of start to get an idea of like, is my dad selfish just as a person, or is he actually a real narcissist? Okay, so NPD, this is really what it comes down to. They have an inflated but very, very fragile sense of self. And so you want to think like they have an ego that's basically made of glass. They have a really deep need for admiration of other people and attention from other people. They have a major, major lack of empathy for other people. And I'm going to talk about why that is. They're also very manipulative and they exploit people in relationships. They they usually fantasize about power over other people or massive amounts of success. And they are hyper reactive to criticism. Mostly because of the fact that they have a very, very fragile sense of self, which is that ego made of glass that we were talking about. And so scientific studies show that people with NPD have significantly reduced gray matter in their brains and the parts of their brains that are tied to emotional empathy. And so when you look at somebody, you're like, yeah, that person kind of like really, really lacks empathy. They actually have reduced gray matter in their brains that are tied with emotional empathy. So these, especially the parts that are called the anterior insula and the medial frontal prefrontal cortex. Meaning, basically, this is what you understand.