The One Thing That Turns Difficult Children Into Narcissistic Adults | Dr. Ramani Durvasula

0:00Hi, my name is Lewis Howes and welcome to the Daily Motivation Show.

0:11When is our personality shaped? Well, there's two pieces of personality. We're born, sort of the genetic part of personality, if you will, it's called our temperament. Our temperament. Temperament. So you're born and you're either a crier or not a crier or you're... I can make it ultra simple. Like, you know, there's some kids out there who have really difficult temperaments. They're born into the world difficult. Talk to a parent, they're kids who are difficult to soothe. They're to make them stop crying to help them sleep as time goes on. They're just difficult kids They don't play as nice. They have low frustration tolerance.

0:43They're difficult with their siblings. They're punchy fighty They get to school they can't sit still they're always getting into trouble and none of the adults like them So these kids with these difficult temperaments actually have this relationship with the world that's pretty unpleasant Everyone's like sit down stop that don't do that And there's even this vibe these kids get like nobody really wants to spend time with them because they're a real handful. Is it their fault? I mean, they can't really change that when you're five. No, you can't. But the difficult temperament's a risk factor for the adult narcissistic personality.

1:14Now, not everybody with a difficult temperament goes on to become narcissistic. So it's not a slam dunk, but it's definitely when we tell that story backwards, every narcissistic client I've ever worked with without exception had a difficult temperament as a child. So that either they, every so often I'd get lucky, we'd phone the parent during therapy and say, can we talk about this. Sometimes they don't ask the parent and the parent would come clean on that and say, yeah, you were a real, because you had siblings, right? So they'd compare them to siblings. Some siblings have this great, easy temperament.

1:44It's not quite, so temperament is that biological part of our personality. It's how you might see your personality in either one of your parents or in a grandparent or an entrant uncle. You'll say, wow, I have such a similar personality to them. That's the genetic side. All the rest of it is shaped by the world. Environment, parents, society, how you were treated and what you're exposed to. So if you had a, let's say, a challenging temperament growing up, is there hope for you to, you know, I guess, shift your personality into a different style with environment? I think so. I think so. I think a couple of things have to happen.

2:22That kid needs to be met where they're at. So let's say you have a boy with a difficult temperament who's just energy and you get them into athletics or you get them into something where they're using their hands, whatever that might be. building things or something like that. And you really are with them. Instead of saying you're being so bad, you're so difficult, like, whoa, look at that rocky you built. Or like, oh my gosh, you ran 10 miles today. Or you threw the ball. Or like, this is great. Like, let's do it together. And they have a parent who wants to maybe do those things with them. I've heard of some, this is where it's interesting.

2:51I hear a lot of these stories, if not in athletics, but people who do things like climb mountains, that kind of thing. And sometimes the parents got them into these things because the kid was just a bolus of energy. and then they would and then the parents would really encourage them might even go with them with them or whatever so I do think if that child feels loved safe protected attached they feel like they have a safe base to return to which is usually their primary caregiver they can relax and they have success experiences right so maybe they're not the best kid in school but they're really like they feel loved no matter what whether they can read or not whether they can do math or not, they're loved, and that they have these other outlets, and that a school is supporting them and meeting them.

3:37How many kids do you know who have things lined up like that? I can count on one hand the number of kids I know who got that lined up. I mean, who had all the support and love. We love you no matter what. It's very challenging. It's interesting because I interviewed Kobe Bryant before he passed, obviously, and he said his father, one summer when he was playing basketball, I think he was 13, he said he He didn't score one point the whole summer in like this summer competition league. And he said, my father told me no matter what, I'm going to love you. Whether you score zero points or you're the highest scorer, I'm going to love you no matter what you do.

4:13No matter how good or how bad you are, I love you no matter what. And he said that conversation with his dad gave him the confidence to say, I'm going to go out and go for it. No matter what happens, I'm loved is the way he explained it. And I thought that was interesting. but not a lot of people have had like the school support and parent support and sibling support and like the encouragement but it sounds like you can't change a personality but you can channel a personality into other activities to support their growth is that right so every human being has the same sort of essential ingredients that they need in terms of wanting you know a like again a safe base yes a safe place of attachment um a sense of being loved no matter what yeah their behavior could be called out like no you cannot tear up the living room that behavior is not okay i love you you know i love you whether you get the 13 points or the no points just like still grounded but i love you you're so grounded you know i love you you know and so that sort of consistency and safety but it was interesting i was just reading a research paper from 2014 and in this paper they were talking about how do you basically how do you make a narcissistic adult out of a kid one thing we're seeing a little bit is right now is this problem of children being overvalued for nothing.

5:31Celebrated for just being. Celebrated for like, you're just so great. And it's, you're saying, well, what should we tell kids if they're not great? Well, great means something, right? Great is excelling. So you love a child, you cultivate their strengths, but the idea being that narcissistic parents are very vulnerable to thinking their kids are great because they have to be. They're my kids, so they better be great kids. So these kids are being told they're all that over and over and you're all that, you're all that. You shouldn't, you're special. You shouldn't have to struggle with the slings and arrows of the world.

6:06Well, then they get to adulthood and the slings and arrows happen and they are not having it. And that's where you see that on top of everything else can also be what fosters the building of the narcissistic child, just overindulge. And what happens is they're almost they're overindulged for their outsides and you're so special, but their their emotional world isn't nourished. So nobody is sitting with their emotions and letting them be sad. It's many times like, come on, let's all be happy. You know, it's a lot of that. And that's a dangerous game to play.

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