Welcome to Joy Lab!: [00:00:00] Welcome to the Joy Lab podcast, where we help you uncover and foster your most joyful self. Your hosts, Dr. Henry Emmons and Dr. Aimee Prasek, bring you the ideal mix of soulful and scientifically sound tools to spark your joy, even when it feels dark. When you're ready to experiment with more joy, combine this podcast with the full Joy Lab program over at JoyLab.coach
Henry: Hello, I'm Henry Emmons and welcome back to Joy Lab.
Aimee Prasek: and I am Aimee Prasek. So this month we are in our Element of Love, and today we are talking specifically about love. To get us started, I wanna use the myth of Narcissus. So first of all, I should say that I have not read, I think it's Ovid's Metamorphoses, I think for this for any, but for any of my Greek mythology, this is not original source. I have exclusively relied on Stephen Fry's [00:01:00] books, particularly his audio books on Greek myths, which are fantastic.
Henry: I can attest to that, Aimee, I, I think you might have turned me onto those and I
Aimee Prasek: did
Henry: love them.
Aimee Prasek: you guys. They're so good. So if you want more Greek myths in your life, Steven Fry audiobooks are amazing. So I don't, I think they're fairly accurate, but I'm pulling from his inspiration here. So here it goes. ago there lived a young man named Narcissus. His beauty was legendary. Anyone who saw him just fell in love with him. But Narcissus had no love to give. So of course there's like a whole back drama here of all the gods and other stories that I'm just gonna ignore for a moment. We'll just breeze past all that. It's so complicated. And we'll just say that Narcissus was kind of a jerk. Reject, he'd mock, just be genuinely terrible to anyone [00:02:00] who expressed their love to him. And so word spread about how terrible Narcissus was and spread to Nemesis, the goddess of retribution. Of
Henry: Ooh, I remember Nemesis.
Aimee Prasek: So good. These myths, they're just, they just get into the complexities of humans.
Henry: They do.
Aimee Prasek: They seem extreme, but then it's well, no, it's probably pretty accurate.
Henry: It's funny how that stuff is still so woven into our, our psyches.
Aimee Prasek: Yeah, our language, our everything. She vowed that he would learn, Narcissus would learn what it meant to only love oneself, so Nemesis lured Narcissus back to a pond in the forest. And when Narcissus bent to drink, he saw this gorgeous creature staring back at him.
Henry: Wow.
Aimee Prasek: And that face of desire he'd seen before was right there, [00:03:00] but this time he wanted that beautiful creature that was staring back at him he fell into obsession with this creature, not realizing it was his reflection. Right, so...
Henry: Yep. No mirrors back then.
Aimee Prasek: Yeah, so a Narcissus remained on the edge of the pond, just staring. He couldn't look away. He stared and he didn't eat, and he stared and he didn't sleep. He was consumed stayed there staring at his image obsessing until he finally took his final breath consumed by his self obsession that could never nourish him. And he died alone.
Henry: Ugh.
Aimee Prasek: ever experiencing true love.
Henry: Oh.
Aimee Prasek: Yep. So that's Narcissus and narcissism, of course. Right. So definitely not a love story.
Aimee Prasek: None of the myths are maybe a few, but this is like maybe [00:04:00] even peak unrequited love. It's kind of self obsession that gets nothing in return. Very interesting. I think this myth highlights some of the differences really well between self-love and narcissism, and I wanna get more into those details. And just to note first, actually, we're not gonna dig into the intricacies of narcissism because it's really, it's complex, right? Instead, yeah, we wanna talk more about how self-love and narcissism are different because they often get thrown around like synonyms, that self-love is narcissism. That if I love myself, then I'm a narcissist. And I think there's confusion here because of maybe just, there's just so much misinformation out there on narcissism. It's easy to throw it around as just a blanket adjective for anybody who we think is a jerk.
Henry: Yeah.
Aimee Prasek: Yeah, I get. Said it multiple times [00:05:00] to myself when somebody cuts me off or something.
Aimee Prasek: So Henry, do you wanna give us, though a little bit more insight into narcissism, just enough to kind of set the table for us so that we don't just throw it out at everybody who budges in line in front of us.
Henry: Yeah, yeah. Let me say though that the, the way you portrayed Aimee, I'm feeling a little bad for Narcissus.
Aimee Prasek: I, yeah. There's a whole backstory too that makes me feel even worse for him.
Henry: I mean, what a, what a
Aimee Prasek: a-hole.
Henry: bad deal, you know, dying, you know, craving something he can't have and alone and jeepers. But, you know, that does kind of get us to the crux of the difference between narcissism and self-love. And it's, you know, simply put, narcissism is pathological. It creates more suffering for the person who has [00:06:00] it.
Henry: So, you know, just to give a little background , a little caveat on this, you know, throughout my career, I can hardly think of someone I've worked with who I consider to be a true narcissist. I mean, it's that degree of, of, uh, I guess unhealthiness, pathology, I, I think is pretty rare actually. And I think also it, I'm really careful about using those labels for people. Because remember, everything exists on a spectrum in the world of mental health, right? We've talked about this and there's a wide range of normal that can include a little bit of what we might consider self-absorption or being self-referential, at least from time to time, you know, and, and who among us doesn't really want to be special once in a [00:07:00] while or to be recognized for something good to be praised. You know, I mean.
Aimee Prasek: Absolutely.
Henry: Really. So there's a lot of normal that I think we can easily get into labeling as a, as unhealthy that I don't think is actually unhealthy. So in order for there to, to truly be a clinical diagnosis there, by definition, there needs to be some significant impairment. And especially in areas of life where it's just not working for them because of their condition, because of this narcissistic uh, personality.
Henry: So oftentimes with, narcissism, that shows up in the realm of relationships. And so work can be a problem, you know, because it's a little hard for them to function with others well at work. And someone who's really [00:08:00] caught up in narcissism, usually does not see that the problem that they have the problem, they don't see it in themselves. They see it in everybody else. And why aren't they treating me better? Or something like that. So oftentimes they fail to see that there's a need for them to change.
Henry: Instead, everybody around them should change, you know, from, from their point of view. So I, I think that gives us a little sense for it. There's just a profound absorption with self, you know, so much so that other people, if, if they see them at all, they're seen as either unimportant or just a means to their own ends.
Henry: And I even think that there's, there's a little overlap with what we call sociopathy or you know, sociopath because there can be what, what seems like a complete [00:09:00] lack of empathy for other people. Just not able to get yourself into what another person's life might be like, or struggles that they might be having.
Henry: So. Narcissists tend to think that they're not only that they're special, but they are so special that everyone else should kowtow to them. There's a, there's a degree of grandiosity that almost borders on delusional, you know, it's just such a, just such an extreme degree, and there's this constant need for admiration and praise that is never enough. It never fills them up. They just need more. It's, it's like that, that Buddhist concept of the hungry ghost. You, you, you are never, ever satisfied and in this case, they're never satisfied with this need to feel special [00:10:00] somehow. So, you know, you can imagine this is a very fragile psychological state to be in.
Henry: And so if something goes badly in their lives, it's pretty easy to tip into a really severe downward spiral of something like envy, you know, of someone else or shame. And these emotions can be so intense and yet hard for them to really tune in and, and even see or understand that they're having these emotions. Very hard to connect with them.
Henry: And it's, that makes it extremely hard then to develop healthy emotional connections to other people. And so just like our, our poor old Greek Narcissus, it can be a pretty lonely life.
Aimee Prasek: Fragile and lonely. Like those are pretty much the opposites [00:11:00] of love.
Henry: And a tough, tough combination.
Aimee Prasek: Yeah. I think, thank you, Henry. That gives us a good foundation to work from. We're starting to see that narcissism and self-love are very different concepts. To come back to Narcissus real quick, he's so obsessed with his external image that he, he ignores his, he ignores the presence, the love, the support of everyone else around, but he also ignores his own wellbeing. I think that's kind of interesting in this. His narcissism, his obsession with his external image or his status causes him to actually ignore his own wellbeing and he withers and dies. And you said, you know, the, of course narcissistic personality disorder, when it gets into this pathological territory that the suffering is greatest for the person. I'm sure those of you who maybe have lived with a narcissist are like, well, it's pretty terrible for me too [00:12:00] and everybody else, but,
Henry: Yeah, you don't get, you don't get much back.
Aimee Prasek: But I mean, it's God, you know, dying at the end of the pond 'cause you're staring yourself, lonely and fragile is pretty terrible. So it's just interesting to really think about it. Again, if you've lived with a narcissist or a close friend or somebody in your circle, very hard to be with those folks.
Aimee Prasek: But man, it's a, it is a tough way to live.
Henry: Yeah.
Aimee Prasek: But I think what's really interesting is that when we're talking about self-love, like self-love doesn't let those things happen. You're not gonna sit on the edge of the pond and wither away and die. When we are practicing self-love, we take care of our wellbeing to the best of our abilities.
Aimee Prasek: Self-love means that we respect ourselves. We identify boundaries that support our wellbeing. We talk kindly to ourselves, and we challenge ourselves too when it comes to self-love. Self-love [00:13:00] supports behavior change. We talked a lot about this at Joy Lab. We can create more lasting, meaningful changes in our lives when we're using self-love as kind of both a compass and the fuel.
Aimee Prasek: It directs us and it sustains us. But it's hard and I think we discount self-love so easily. Part of the problem as we've gotten into a little bit is that we conflate the two, as I noted, and we put them on one end of the spectrum. So we put narcissism and self-love on one end then self-hate and low self-esteem on the other.
Aimee Prasek: And that's just not true. These are not opposites. Self-loveand narcissism are not on that same side. So first off with the, to kind of break that down a little bit, many folks with narcissistic tendencies, so I'm not speaking about narcissistic personality disorder, but if you have higher [00:14:00] narcissistic tendencies, particularly those with what are sometimes called vulnerable or covert types of tendencies or narcissism, they often have lower self-esteem compared to those with fewer narcissistic tendencies.
Aimee Prasek: So,
Henry: I would, I would completely agree with that,
Aimee Prasek: Right? I, and I'm sure again, if you've had somebody in your circle, it's just, it's kind of so obvious. So narcissism is not just an issue of overblown self-love. I don't even think it's a slippery slope. Self-love into narcissism. They're just completely unrelated. For example, someone with good self-love might say to themselves, "I love myself. I am worthy of love." Someone with strong narcissistic tendencies would instead say, "I'm better than others.
Aimee Prasek: I'm better than you. I'm more deserving than you." So those are very different statements. I think it's important to note that self-love [00:15:00] will not take you into a slide of narcissism.
Henry: Yeah. Yeah. The way you phrased it earlier, Aimee, I think you said, back to the myth of narcissus that he, he withered away and died
Aimee Prasek: Yes.
Henry: and, that reminds me, this is a bit of a leap, sorry, but
Aimee Prasek: Let's do it. Jump, jump, jump.
Henry: It reminds me of what happens to neurons, brain cells, new, new brain cells. Okay, so this gets back to the, the way the brain is able to repair and replace neurons throughout our lifetimes. Okay? It's creating new ones. However, if, if that new brain cell fails to connect with enough other brain cells, the description is just like that. It withers away and dies. It doesn't [00:16:00] matter if that's the best brain cell in the whole brain, it's still going to wither away and die
Aimee Prasek: Oh wow, yeah.
Henry: If it's not interconnected. And, I think it really gets to, to me, one of the real fundamental differences between the two is that genuine self-love creates more connection. And I would even argue that, that focusing on self-love will protect you from the pitfalls of narcissism or self-absorption. You know, as I was saying earlier, somewhat true narcissist has created just a terribly fragile house of cards, e motionally and psychically. And it will collapse if it isn't constantly propped up from the outside. That's just a, a, a terrible thing to have to rely on because those outside inputs are unreliable. Whereas with self-love, you [00:17:00] know, you are consciously trying to build a solid foundation of self-esteem.
Henry: Good, normal, healthy self-esteem, more emotional awareness, healthier relationships with mutual give and take and respect. And with self-love you can say, you know, I'm really a good person and so are you. And let's hang out. So I think learning to love oneself protects not only against narcissism, but really against almost all mental health challenges. For years as you know, Aimee, I, I ran a program called Resilience Training, and we worked with folks, lots of them who had had anxiety or depression had and had not fully recovered for one reason or another. And we, we used a whole bunch of different approaches to it, lots of natural therapies, some form of exercise, [00:18:00] solid take on nutrition, mindfulness meditation.
Henry: And there were two things that emerged over years of doing this, that clearly seemed to make the biggest difference for who fully recovered versus those who didn't. And one of them was being connected to others, just like we talked about. But the other one was to really create a greater sense of connection with oneself.
Henry: You know, self-love, self-compassion. I mean, clearly that is a, the lack of that is a risk factor for anxiety and depression. And strengthening that genuine, you know, authentic approach to how you, seeing the good in yourself and loving that part of you, and using that in order to connect, create a, a stronger web of connection with others.
Henry: You know, being kinder to oneself, [00:19:00] that is super protective.
Aimee Prasek: Yeah. So surprisingly powerful. we can't bottle it though, can we? We have to practice it
Aimee Prasek: so
Henry: Right. It's not
Aimee Prasek: covered by insurance, unfortunately. We put ourselves in this situation, but we can practice it every day. Actually. Speaking of practice as well, one more note about narcissism and neuroplasticity, which I love that you brought that in, Henry. There is always room for change, I think. As you noted, Henry, with clinical, with a diagnosis of narcissistic personality disorder, certainly it can be very hard to see the struggle, what is contributing to symptoms. However, I think it's also important to note and I'll link to some really great studies here that these tendencies, that diagnosis, it is not concrete. There is room for [00:20:00] change. There's this great study from Dr. Erica Carlson and colleagues, I have to shout out the title of this article too. "You Probably Think This Paper's About You: Narcissist Perceptions of Their Personality and Reputation." It's so good. You probably think this paper's about you narcissism. Okay. So, I wanna explain this a little bit. I think it's really helpful to put into context here as we're talking about narcissism and thinking oh, it's just way on the end of the spectrum and it's too far gone. They, these researchers wanted understand a little bit more about how folks who score high on narcissistic tendencies really saw themselves. And so in the study they found that folks with higher narcissistic tendencies, there were like three things that I wanna call out. First that they do understand that others see themselves less positively [00:21:00] than they see themselves, which I think is really interesting. So this gets at something called meta perception, which is how we think others perceive us. So I'm not, you know, they might not think that what they're doing is wrong, but they do often see that they're not seen as positively as they see themselves. If there's an acknowledgement or recognized discrepancy here, so they're seeing that discrepancy.
Aimee Prasek: I think that gives a lot of space for awareness and change. It's like a little door in, maybe I'm not as special as I think. Right? Self-love and self-love can hold that. So we can apply self-love as a tool, as a therapeutic tool to support this type of work for folks, with narcissistic tendencies. You know, "Maybe I am special, but no more special than anyone else, and that's okay." I can hold that because I have that self-love that can be [00:22:00] applied. in this study, they also found folks with higher narcissistic scores, can see that they make positive first impressions that deteriorate over time. Which
Henry: And, and, and you're saying, are they aware of that,
Aimee Prasek: So
Henry: Aimee?
Henry: Yeah, so they can see that Yeah.
Aimee Prasek: "Oh I make really good first impressions," but for some reason it seems to get worse. It seems
Aimee Prasek: to degrade over time. So again, maybe they're not maybe knowing why, but there's that door and then we can work with this stuff.
Aimee Prasek: If, if you have narcissistic tendencies, it has not a curse. you do not have to die at the end of a pond. Um, the final thing I wanted to note, they also found that these folks often describe themselves as arrogant. So they they can kind of see it. But, and something there to work with. And I think also important in the research is that when folks receive evidence-based treatment for NPD [00:23:00] Narcissistic Personality Disorder, they often improve. Treatment is supportive. It will have good clinical outcomes for a lot of folks. I think it's really important to call out of all the narcissistic misinformation lately, it's essential to know that narcissism is not the same as self-love, and folks who have higher narcissistic tendencies or even NPD are not permanently cursed. Is not a terminal concrete, unchangeable condition. There is so much room for, for change and healing here. So, Henry, you wanna say anything about kind of like the application even of self-love?
Henry: Yeah. Well, yeah. I wanna comment on a, a term you used, I think you said meta awareness, or was it metacognition?
Aimee Prasek: Yeah. Metaperception.
Henry: Meta perception.
Aimee Prasek: Yeah.
Henry: So, you know, in the way I understand that is the, the, the, the term meta to me means [00:24:00] something above or on top of, or be, you know, beyond. And so here's how I understand it. In, in mindfulness practice, one of the core skills, which is not too difficult to obtain, but then you need to keep working with it,
Henry: and that is the skill of the observing self, connecting with your, your observer. Which to me is that meta perception awareness.
Aimee Prasek: Yep.
Henry: It's, it's, there's something that's above and beyond our usual day-to-day awareness and our kind of self knowledge and how we, observing how we interact with people.
Henry: There's something, if we can connect to it, that is able to kinda watch all of that unfold and, and give us a great deal of insight into what's happening. And that insight then is something [00:25:00] we can utilize to create the kind of changes we want. And one of the reasons for it is that that part of ourselves is not caught up in all of the drama and emotion of it.
Henry: It's, it's really not. It's, it's like this, this part that is I don't know, a unaffected observer that's a huge ally for us. And, and so this is something that we really try to work with in the Joy Lab Program because as Aimee said earlier, it is a skill, it's a set of skills to be able to work with things, and this is one of the core skills that most of us don't naturally identify with, but once you do, it's like that first learning to ride a bike. It's a little tricky and once you get it, you've got it and you can keep returning to it and using it again and again and with a little guidance, you know, you can [00:26:00] apply it to any number of things.
Henry: That is super helpful. So it's a way of, of tapping into this capacity to create greater self-love. Without all the worry that, oh, I'm, I'm becoming too self-absorbed or whatever, because it's not the case, and you can see it, witness it firsthand.
Aimee Prasek: Yes. I love that. Thanks for highlighting it that kind of positive self-distancing practices. We do so much of that in Joy Lab, I'm just picturing Narcissus at the edge of the pond, just sort of hyper-focused on self and to be able to pull back and see oneself. Or even just imagining if you saw somebody sitting at the edge of the pond, clearly distraught, withering, and dying, how would you approach that person?
Henry: Mm-hmm.
Aimee Prasek: With love. With attention. And you [00:27:00] know, if Narcissus sort of pulled back and looked around, "Wow, I am alone here. Something is awry, something not quite right." You can kind of see it, you take yourself out of, out of the drama and then applying that self-love, to sort of just shift perception. I think it's really powerful. Yeah, we do that a lot at the Joy Lab Program. Come join us there if you're not already. And I think that maybe what's unique about what we do here at the Podcast and the Program is that instead of focusing on what is always wrong with us, we like to practice bringing more focus to what's right and how we can build on that. Because I think when we do that, when we see what is good in us, as you're saying, Henry, when we give ourselves some love, then so much of our world expands.
Henry: Mm-hmm.
Aimee Prasek: Our sense of optimism for ourselves and our world, our courage to create changes when we give [00:28:00] ourselves some love, it's like giving ourselves some real nutritious food. It gives us some energy to live, and really live our life with more meaning and joy. So give yourselves some good food today, some self-love. It is essential, like you would if you were approaching somebody who needed a bit of support. Give yourself that support, that love, that care. To close our time today, I do wanna share some wisdom, some nourishment from Bell Hooks.
Aimee Prasek: I think it applies so well right here. This is from her book All About Love. Here it
Aimee Prasek: "One of the best guides to how to be self-loving is to give ourselves the love we are often dreaming about receiving from others. There was a time when I felt lousy about my over 40 body, saw myself as too fat to this or too that. Yet I fantasized about finding a lover who would give me the gift of [00:29:00] being loved as I am. It is silly, isn't it, that I would dream of someone else offering to me the acceptance and affirmation I was withholding from myself. This was a moment when the maxim, 'you can never love anybody if you are unable to love yourself,' made clear sense. And I add, do not expect to receive the love from someone else. You do not give yourself."
Henry: Hmm.
Aimee Prasek: Thank you for listening to the Joy Lab podcast. If you enjoy today's show, visit JoyLab.coach to learn more about the full Joy Lab program. Be sure to rate and review us wherever you listen to your favorite podcasts.
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