There are all sorts of disagreements regarding people like Steve Jobs*, Newt Gingrich and Bill O’Reilly, but one thing most people are in agreement about is that you don’t want to get on the wrong side of them.

Other characteristic traits of such narcissists** (and this also applies to the female variety) include:

• Control freaks
• Irritability
• Short fuses
• Low frustration tolerance
• Argumentative
• Need to have the last word
• Unable to lose
• Won’t take “No” for an answer
  
• Quick to anger if you don’t accommodate them
• Quick to being aggressively defensive if you call them on any deficiency, fault or responsibility
• Can’t apologize or if do, can’t do it sincerely
• Rarely say, “Thank you” or “Congratulations”
• Don’t feel or demonstrate remorse
• Feel entitled to enthusiastic and appreciative approval, adoration, agreement and obedience
• Gloat in victory, sullen in defeat
• Quick to rage if you humiliate them

What is the connection between narcissism and rage?

There is a saying that when you’re a hammer the world looks like a nail.  When you’re a narcissist, the world looks like it should approve, adore, agree and obey you. Anything less than that feels like an assault and because of that causes a narcissist to feel justified in raging back at it.

What is at the core of narcissists is not what is often referred to as low self-esteem.  I don’t think that is accurate, but something that the people around them say to themselves to mollify their own rage at the narcissist, i.e. “Oh, they only act that way, because they lack self-esteem.”

What is really at the core of narcissists is an instability in their ability to feel and sustain feeling bigger, larger, smarter and more successful than everyone else which they need to feel stable.  And because of that and just as Hamlet’s mother said, “the lady doth protest too much,” “the narcissist doth brag, scorn, talk down, primp and belittle too much” in order to continually prove to the world and themselves that they are larger than life.  This is not to increase their self-esteem as much as it is to continually spackle the holes in their core that lead to a feeling of instability that if not spackled will lead to brittleness and then fragmentation.

Narcissistic rage occurs when that instability at their core is threatened and furthermore threatened to destabilize them even further.  Not unlike a wounded animal being the most vicious (because they think the next wound would kill them), narcissistic rage occurs when narcissists believe the next insult/assault to their grandiose based stability would shatter them.

In essence the reason narcissists are so self-centered is that their grandiosity based center needs to be constantly reinforced to remain stable.

What to do when a narcissist rages at you?

Don’t let them cross over the line to physical violence, but if it looks like they will follow you to keep verbally assaulting you and then maybe escalate, just listen to them until they sputter out.  Don’t try to engage them verbally.

After they calm down or better the next day, say to them: “I didn’t want to say this when you were yelling at or being sullen with at me, but going forward the next time you get so angry at me and verbally yell at me, speak contemptuously or act sullen, I will say once, ‘Please speak to me or act in a respectful manner,’ and if that doesn’t stop you, I will walk away and go to some other part of the house, office, company.  Following that conversation, if it happens again, I will simply walk away saying, ‘I have other things to do.’ This is not an ultimatum, but just a heads up of what I will do if those exchanges happen again”  (please modify as you see fit to sound more like your words, but I hope you get the idea).

One of the takeaways from this is that “words sometimes respond to words, but actions (which narcissistic rage is) respond to actions in the form of consequences.”  The challenge is to make your action response just right and not go to overkill which you will have to take back or underkill which will only allow them to keep raging at you.

The more important takeaway is to weigh what such people bring to your life and if what they take from it and inflict on you is much more, get out.

* Regarding Steve Jobs and why he seemed to have gotten away with being such a rageaholic is that his perfectionism about products was more about, “This is great… see for yourself” vs. “I am great.”  And with regard to Apple products’ ability to delight, seeing has been believing.  With regard to Gingrich and O’Reilly, neither of them have a tangible product, they have an intangible and highly reactive point of view, where there’s nothing to see to believe.

** There are other less rageful narcissists who rather than raging, will act out in usually devious ways to get what they feel are entitled when denied it in their real life.

I don’t know how often this occurs, but there is a not infrequent situation where a man is sure about wanting sex and may wax and wane eloquently about a wondrous future filled with romantic vacations to a woman he is pursuing in order to land her in bed. Once he has her, those promises can often fade and if the woman asks about his fulfilling what he promised, he accuses her of pressuring him and tells her to stop nagging. To compound the problem there are few things that take away a man’s desire to spend his life with a woman than her pressuring him to make good on what he promised.

However even as he resists and can become petulant about it, he may nevertheless be building an emotional dependency on her underneath. If she reaches the point, especially after her friends and family insist that he is toying with her, of delivering an ultimatum of either get engaged/married or break up and if it is not a bluff, the fear of losing her can cause that man to accede to her insistence for all the wrong reasons — not wanting to lose her vs. wanting to be with her.

Also not infrequently if the man under pressure agrees to the marriage, but feels he didn’t choose it, he can respond by withholding love and attention. And if the woman is oblivious as she becomes consumed with planning the wedding with her friends and family while the man feels like a unengaged Ken doll onlooker, he can further react by becoming even less loving.

Sadly I have seen such a switching off of desire last for decades in the man as a reaction to feeling he didn’t choose the marriage but was forced even as the couple produces children, buys a homes, etc.

Here is the real rub.  One of the worst feelings a woman can have is to feel coldness, contempt or nothing in the part of her where she is supposed to feel warmth.  Women have confided in me that a woman without warmth is not a woman (alternatively men have confided in me that a man without courage is not a man).  When men withdraw or withhold caring towards a woman or worse act sullen, petulant or complaining (since they have lost that loving feeling), it can cause a woman to lose her warm feelings towards that man.  And underneath the anger a woman may feel toward a non-loving or unloving man is an unconscious fear that she has lost her warmth, is no longer a woman and is trapped.

What’s a woman to do to prevent this very sad fate?

At any given moment when the man’s desire is waning you can tell him he is “free to leave” and that you don’t want to be with him unless he wants to be with you. Ironically, if you do that, the men worth keeping may then rediscover their desire. In fact a woman who is wise enough to never let the man feel so sure of her may have a man always desiring her. We call this being coy and it is not game playing, but rather knowing that a man feels better when he is pursuing a prize than when he is being told to do something.

What’s a man to do if he has lost that loving feeling because she “pressured” him to get married?

Realize that she didn’t put a gun to your head.  You’re the one who made the promises that you didn’t intend on keeping or did until you realized that it meant living up to a lot of responsibilities, which may have intimidated you.  Instead of pulling away and emotionally disengaging for  years or even the entirety of your marriage, tell your girl friend/fiance that the fear of not living up to those responsibilities mixed with her excitement about getting married and planning the wedding is very upsetting.  That will hopefully give her the opportunity to say to you, “I understand that and I think we can figure out and meet those responsibilities together. If you don’t want to get married or if you can’t decide until that fear goes away, I don’t think it will.  However I think every couple and every husband to be goes through this, but at least we’re talking about it.”  Just that understanding can cause you to realize why you love and want to marry to her.

I remember years ago a very touching scene when a woman was by the bed of her dying husband after being married for sixty years. In an unforgettable moment she whispered to him, “I’ve been lying to you for over sixty years.”

Half conscious he looked confused and said, “What?” whereupon she said, “Yes, for our entire life together, I’ve been mad about you and sexually crazy about you, but I never told you, because I knew you liked the chase.”

At that point he reached over to her and smiled weakly and said, “That’s one of the things I loved you for.”

- Mark Goulston, M.D.

The 6 Secrets of a Lasting Relationship: How to Fall in Love Again …and Stay There (Perigee, $15.95)

How often do you and your partner put a smile on each other’s face that touched each other’s heart? If that happens almost always, congratulations, go out in the world and serve as a role model and beacon of hope to other less happy couples.  If that doesn’t happen take the following quiz and then learn how to bring it back.

To find out what your scoring means and how to use this quiz with your partner to bring back liking (and adoring) each other that you once felt contact drgoulston@gmail.com.

And… if you like each other, but your sex life is kaput check out: Are You More Roommates than Lovers?

Yeller – someone who absolutely refuses to take, “No,” for an answer and woe be it to those who attempt to say it to them.

Why is it that a complainer will rarely complain to another complainer? First, complainers think that if they complain to another complainer that that other person will just complain or make an excuse about why they can’t help. Second, complainers perceive themselves as weak and perceive other complainers as weak and therefore don’t see that another complainer has anything to give them.

Instead complainers will usually complain to yellers. Why? Because complainers perceive yellers to be strong, powerful and having something to give them. They also believe that that strong person will either intervene on the complainer’s behalf, take care of something for them or let the complainer off the hook. The real problem that complainers don’t realize is that yellers are often not strong, they’re just angry.

What’s the solution for you in dealing with a complainer or yeller? First, don’t expect them not to react in a negative way (by complaining or yelling) if you want something from them that they don’t want to do or give. Second, after they complain or yell at you for something, calmly pause for at least ten seconds. That will drive them crazy, but rather than being frightened by them, see that as a temper tantrum at not being able to manipulate you.

If they do escalate and complain or yell louder about why you’re saying nothing respond by saying, “I’m just trying to figure out what you’re so frustrated about and what we and most likely you can do to make the situation better.”

There is a good chance they won’t like your saying “we” or “you” to them, when what they really wanted was for you to take care of the situation by yourself. If that is the case, they may become even more upset. But if you notice carefully, you will begin to see that they are more frustrated than angry, because they know you have caught them, refused to be manipulated and they don’t have a back up plan.

If they do throw the situation back at you to fix or say they can’t do anything to make their problem better, calmly respond, “Sorry to hear that, because I certainly don’t have any room on my plate to take care of this for you, so we’ll either have to figure out a way for you to handle it or you will have to figure that out by yourself and then handle it on your own.”

If they continue to dig their heels in or even attack you, calmly respond, “Look, I’m sorry you feel that way, but it doesn’t change anything. Either we figure out what you need to do to make it better or you will need to figure it out and handle it on your own.”

If they still refuse to cooperate with that (i.e. their last ditch effort to manipulate you) and even threaten to do something harmful to themselves, tell them, “Well I hope you won’t do that.” If they threaten to do something to someone or something else, say, “If that’s the case I’ll have to deal with that appropriately.” If they threaten to do nothing, say, “If you do nothing when it is your responsibility and it blows up or turns negative, you’ll have to deal with it or pay the consequences. I’m sorry if you don’t like that, but it’s what all of us have to do when we are responsible for something.”

By the way, you might wonder why yellers don’t yell at other yellers. It occasionally does happen as shown in the iconic movie, The War of the Roses, but as that film demonstrates, left unchecked yelling vs. yelling begets violence and sometimes murder.

- Mark Goulston, M.D.

In another blog I wrote about relationships ending not because you stop loving each other, but because you stop liking each other.  Several people told me that might be fine for older couples, but for younger couples who like each other, intimate relationships can end when you stop feeling sexual excitement and start feeling like roommates or brother and sister.

Point well taken. So to check out where the Sexual Excitement stands take the  quiz.

To find out what your scoring means and how to use this quiz with your partner to bring back your sexual excitement that you once had contact drgoulston@gmail.com.

Oprah: For all those couples out there who are having problems or going the first time around and want to avoid some of the disasters that we’ve heard about today, what’s the number one thing they can do today to turn things around in their relationship?

Dr. Mark: Be yourself as soon as possible in the relationship and get your spouse to be themselves, because why would you want to be with anyone who doesn’t like you for you?

Oprah: Yeah (surprised), and oy, we like that!

Watch video/audio clip for more

Look into the eyes of the person you love, but have problems with.  When you initially look, what you might see is:

• Their resentment
• Their stubbornness
• Their sullenness
• Their being shut down
• Their being closed off
• Their being passive aggressive

And how do those make you feel?  Probably makes you feel (and also look) resentful, stubborn, frustrated, exasperated, angry and/or hurt. And how does feeling any of those make you look to them? Probably impatient, ticked off or about to pounce on them.

Keep looking and now look to see:

• Their fear of you and your disappointment in them
• Their need to prove to you that they are not bad or wrong about everything they do
• Their need to show you that they are not bad or wrong about everything they do
• Their need to look for a way to protect themselves from your feeling judgmental, disdainful and dismissive towards them
• Their need to hide anything that would make you further upset with them

In other words look to see that they are not being stubborn, resistant or rebellious, but rather they are locked in a state of nonrational (i.e. not based on current situation, but reacting based on prior interactions with you or even someone from their distant past), nonfunctional (i.e. if locked in that way of reacting, they are unable to move the current conversation in a productive direction), self-preservation (i.e. they may feel that you believe their thoughts, feelings and actions, a.k.a. their “self” is wrong, stupid and they need to change all of them).

Why do this exercise?

Because if you realize that where they are truly coming from is a place of nonrational, nonfunctional, self-preservation instead of stubborn, rebellious resistance, you will instantly (and transformationally) be able to speak with them instead of at or over them.

An analogy would be imagine you walked out to your car and saw a young man peeing on the side of it.  You would be angry, belligerent and want to yell at them.  But then imagine that when you yelled out, “Hey!” they turned around and you saw that they were severely mentally impaired and didn’t know what they were doing, you would immediately change your tone.

Looking at people in this empathic, caring way is simple in that all it takes is looking at people through the eyes of love.  However it is not easy for those people that are “loving challenged,” because to them “love” is only a noun and something to receive, and not in the best sense of that word, a verb and something to give.

If you’re too afraid to do that, it’s probably time to leave that relationship (because they are not going to change), you just haven’t figured out the way.

On the other hand what about if someone does admit to it being their fault and then doesn’t go ballistic when you agree, but rather becomes even more contrite and says, “I’m sorry,” and means it?

Then there’s hope.

In fact this relates to something I call the Narcissistic Index.  The Narcissistic Index is the ratio of: Disappointment in others/Disappointment in oneself.  Narcissists generally are much more disappointed in others than in themselves and the extreme cases (with at 10/1 index) literally don’t believe that they ever do anything wrong.  Healthy people’s index is 1/1.  At the extreme end are people with an index of 1/10 where they are sincerely much more disappointed in themselves than in others and those are the people who are most lacking in self-esteem (i.e. they have trouble believing that there is anything good about them or that regardless of how good they are, it’s never good enough).

Why is that?  In the case of the reformed a-hole it’s because when you suddenly no longer have to fear and hate such people, the high is as powerful as pure grade heroine.

Also getting love and caring from a nice person doesn’t feel very special since they give it to everyone.  But getting love and caring from a dyed-in-the-wool b-itch or a-hole… that’s a real prize (especially since love and caring from such a person doesn’t exist).

But in addition to how special love and caring from such awful people can feel what else causes them to be treated better?

One of the things that b-tches and a-holes possess or more accurately don’t have is the neediness and whininess that emotionally needy people demonstrate.  And rightly or wrongly, emotional neediness is the kiss of death in both personal and professional life.

Why is it that emotional neediness so offends and even more so than the demanding behavior of b-tches and a-holes?

One reason is that you know where you stand with b-tches and a-holes and you know where their anger is.  I once heard someone say at a self-help meeting that you don’t really know someone until you’ve seen how angry they are capable of getting at its worst.  Until you see that, they are always holding back something.  In some way there is a relief to be able to see it so transparently in b-tches and a-holes, whereas with nice people the hurt has to reach a very high level before they will show their anger.

Perhaps the more powerful reason it offends is that you often have what is referred to as a transference reaction to whiny and emotionally needy people.  That reaction unconsciously conjures up the memory of an invasive, passive aggressive, guilt tripping parent who may have driven you crazy growing up and the kind of personality you always said you would steer clear of as an adult.

How offensive emotional neediness can be may explain why many financially independent, but emotionally needy people are treated so much worse than very financially dependent, but non emotionally needy and demanding b-tches and a-holes.

Now it gets a little more complicated as you grow up.  For as the title of this blog entry implied, often the b-tches and a-holes do better initially, but if you have a brain in your head you will do everything you can to get away from them after you realize that they’re just not that into you as much as they’re into dominating and controlling you.

A wonderful example of this played out in the finale in the hit sitcom Mad About You starring Helen Hunt and Paul Reiser.  In that long running show Helen Hunt’s character was always the b-tchy one to Paul Reiser’s ever consoling, ever calming and ever reassuring character.  She was always the one to suggest breaking up and the one threatening divorce.  He was always talking her out of it.  In the finale, the show focuses on the couple 22 years later when their daughter had grown up and when they had finally become divorced.

Interestingly, Helen Hunt’s character shared with her friends, “Can you believe it? After all those years of my threatening divorce, he divorced me.”  On the other hand Paul Reiser’s character shared with his friends essentially that after years of focusing on her being disappointed in him (a.k.a. a negative b-tch), he didn’t realize how disappointed he had become in her for being so critical, negative, unforgiving and unloving.  And in the end it corroded his loving feelings from the inside out.

What’s the takeaway?

Nice guys may finish last early on, but if they persevere, they will attract people that value them for their kindness and so in the end, they often get the chance to finish first.

Too bad it takes one or two marriages to get it straight.

Why not ask the people who want the best for you and who will be candid with you?  And when you do, ask them how much they feel that your being in one or the other columns affects how much people respect you.

Hmm… do you think I’m expressing an opinion or being opinionated?
My guess is that if you fall into the “Having an Opinion” column, you’ll see me as having an opinion,
but if you fall into the “Opinionated” column, you’ll view me as opinionated or even as a “know it all.”
Is that what they mean when they say, “Takes one to know one?”