Moment 176: 5 RED FLAGS Of A Secret Narcissist: The Narcissism Doctor

Steven Bartlett (0:00)

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How do you know if you are a narcissist? Does a narcissist know they are one? Is there a narcissist test one can do?

Ramani Durvasula (1:03)

There's about five to six tests out there that are designed to detect narcissism in its various ways. All of them have flaws, like I said, and it's not even fully the fault of the test, because this is a very difficult thing to measure. We're trying to measure things that are not socially desirable. That's really tough to measure. So a lot of the narcissism tests will measure things like some entitlement, assertiveness, self-importance, that people may not find as offensive. But the research actually shows that narcissistic people overestimate their empathy and underestimate their negative effect on other people. They do not have a clear look at themselves. They really have an almost diluted sense of who they are and how they go through the world. So when a person says to me, I think I'm narcissistic, I always say hold the presses. You need to tell me a little bit about you. Because there's a lot of people out there who think of themselves as narcissistic because they're in relationships with narcissistic people who have told them over the years, you are such a selfish person because this unfortunate person is doing simple things like saying, hey, could we go where I want to go for dinner once?

Or I want to talk about my feelings. And then their narcissistic partner saying, oh my gosh, you're so selfish. And they're really sort of indoctrinated into this idea, gaslighted into this idea that there's something narcissistic about them. Once we clear the decks of that, is there a subset of people out there who are narcissistic and are kind of in some awareness like this might be who I am? Yes. And we call them self aware narcissistic people. They're out there. Some of them view narcissism as their superpower. They say like, don't take this away from me. This is why I've got the edge. This is why I close the sale. This is why I'm the man. I had one client who was like, I'm the man. I go, my gosh, sound like a six year old, but okay.

Steven Bartlett (2:57)

Do people, men come to you, women come to you and say, I am a narcissist?

Ramani Durvasula (3:01)

Yes, I've had that happen. It's not common. I can count on one hand the number of times it's happened.

Steven Bartlett (3:05)

And did you agree with them?

Ramani Durvasula (3:06)

In about an hour, yeah.

Steven Bartlett (3:09)

What were they, how did they figure out they were a narcissist? What were they saying?

Ramani Durvasula (3:14)

They might have read my books or more likely saw a YouTube video. They might have sort of again, seen my content. Someone might have said that to them. And then they looked it up on Google and they're like, that is kind of me. But they did in many ways rationalize it saying, this is why I always close the deal. This is who I am. Like, you know, what was it? Don't hate the player, hate the game. They would try that kind of stuff with me. And I'd say, but your behavior is offensive. Like this is not okay. What you're doing, what you did, you're doing on an ongoing basis to your spouse or partner is not okay. And so they would have that awareness, like almost like from a checklist. Yeah, like, yeah, I don't care that much about people's feelings. And yeah, I guess I kind of think the rules don't apply to me. They'll have that awareness. It's pretty uncommon. Like I said, most narcissistic people veer into this idea of they overestimate their goodness and generosity underestimate how negatively they're viewed by other people.

Steven Bartlett (4:09)

So let's talk then about the impacts of narcissism on relationships in particular. What kind of people do narcissists attract in relationships? And what kind of people are attracted to narcissists?