Healing the Covert Narcissist

Years ago, the term narcissism became a veritable buzzword in our culture, popping up in therapists’ conversations, clinical workshops, and untold thousands of blogs, podcasts, and social media posts. And as more people grew attuned to the damaging pattern of relational behaviors that accompany it, another term seemed to explode into our common lexicon: narcissistic abuse.

These days, there are specialized therapists, and even more unlicensed coaches, claiming to help survivors of this abuse understand and heal from it. Many of them are now focusing their campaigns on a separate but related form of abuse, coercive control, which, like narcissistic abuse, includes gaslighting, belittlement, manipulation, and isolation of partners.

Coercive controllers who exert power over another person in these ways are often narcissists, but not always. Why does that matter? Because entitlement—the characteristic that best indicates when coercive control is narcissistically driven—makes treatment especially challenging. Yes, I’m talking about treating the coercive controller.

I’m all for increased awareness around the deleterious effects narcissists can have on others, and for the surge of clinical interest in treating people who’ve fallen victim to their abuse. But I disagree with the general notion in our field, one I’ve spent my entire career proving to be false, that the narcissists themselves can’t be engaged in therapy, and therefore can’t be motivated to heal the deeply entrenched childhood wounds driving their behaviors. I acknowledge that this treatment isn’t easy, nor does it happen enough, but it is possible, especially if we can challenge the narcissist’s sense of entitlement when they vigorously duck all responsibility for their behavior, crouching behind the self-protective walls of denial, defensiveness, devaluation, and disengagement.

Sucked In

“I just don’t understand,” Alison says, wringing her hands. “Matthew was so kind and supportive. He seemed to really care about me. How could I have missed it? What’s wrong with me?” She lifts her eyes from her lap, a look of desperation on her face.

I lean toward her, witnessing the long-held narrative emerging in the present moment: a little girl who longed for empathy, attunement, and stability in a household with a depressed, alcoholic mom and an emotionally inhibited, mostly absent dad. I sense the little girl who blamed herself for the gaping hole in her emotional reservoir and learned to stifle her frustrations and fears, sacrifice her needs, and shoulder the burden of caring for her mom in order to earn bits of positive attention and fleeting moments of security.

In spite of everything, Alison was a bright and affable child whose emotional survival was preserved by a love of reading and learning, daydreaming, being a loyal friend, and caring for her younger brother, Gabe, despite the fact he was the favored child. As a young adult, Alison dated very little, spending much of her time cultivating a career in public policy she could feel proud of, one that afforded her independence and financial security.

She met Matthew through mutual friends and found him unusually attentive and charming. She felt seen and special in his presence. Within six months, they’d moved in together, but almost immediately she started noticing subtle changes in his behavior. He became increasingly curious about her whereabouts and interactions with others—colleagues, friends, family, even people she encountered at the supermarket—which would lead to a style of questioning that bordered on interrogation: “What did you talk about? What’s with you? Why did you say that? Why do you feel the need to spend so much time away from me?”

Alison suspected Matthew might be feeling excluded, vulnerable, and lonely, as he had few close friends, was estranged from his family, and worked from home. So she indulged his questioning and gradually began offering reassuring responses, minimizing the value of her interactions with others.

A Shrinking World

Soon, Matthew began discouraging her from seeing friends and family in other ways, like creating conflicts whenever she planned to go out by saying things like, “It feels really invalidating that you want to hang out with people who clearly don’t like me,” then he’d present her with some flimsy example of not being liked, or he’d say, “Whenever you’re around those people, you start acting really ditzy, and I don’t even see them laughing at your jokes.” It made Alison feel guilty about his upsets and conjured up doubt about the quality of her relationships with others. She began to wonder, Could he be right?

Within a year of living together, he’d insisted on creating a shared email address and joint social media accounts, where he’d read, edit, and delete unwanted messages. He became critical of Alison’s clothing choices, declaring that he had a better aesthetic sense than she did, a quality of his she didn’t appreciate enough. He also started questioning every expense, eventually proposing that all purchases be discussed beforehand, arguing it just made good financial sense in a partnership.

If ever she let him know that she felt embarrassed by his behaviors or even just felt sad and anxious, he’d accuse her of trying to control him with her emotions and “sucking all the energy out of the room.” He’d tell her she was “high-strung” and “hard to be with,” and minutes later would cook her an elaborate dinner and put on her favorite show to binge.

Eventually, she began to doubt her own judgment and felt drained of energy from the constant effort to anticipate and withstand his attacks. She got sick more often and started forgetting things, like if she’d sent certain emails at work or where she’d left her phone. The good times, albeit ephemeral, felt like such a relief that her brain would whoosh away all the bad ones and leave her questioning her beliefs about what should truly matter to her. Feeling increasingly powerless and ashamed, she sunk into anxiety and depression. “If you’d just listen to me, you’d be fine,” he told her. Then he delivered another dose of guilt: “Think of what all this is doing to me.”

Untying the Binds

When Alison’s closest friend first began to notice her dejection and pressed her to talk about it, Alison blamed it on work stress. Only years later did she slowly begin to share snapshots of what was really happening. Fortunately, her friend recognized the signs of narcissism in Matthew and encouraged her to get help. That’s when she reached out to me for a consultation.

Her decision to work with me—a schema therapist and narcissism expert—meant we co-constructed the goals. First, I supported her in becoming more fluent in her understanding of narcissism, coercive control, and the motivations behind these behaviors, which helped her gain clarity and begin to emancipate herself from self-doubt and self-blame. Next, we worked to fortify an emotional connection to her personal narrative, identifying her early maladaptive schemas (key emotional life themes), unmet needs, and lifelong coping patterns.

Through emotion-focused strategies such as imagery rescripting, cognitive-behavioral work, and the limited reparenting offered in the therapy relationship, Alison began to experience the grief and relief of finally getting her early needs met. She was able to see and sense the innocence of her vulnerable inner child, take in that young person’s worth, and experience the sadness of losses that had never been her fault or responsibility. She was able to vent frustration and anger about the injustices she’d suffered as a child. In so doing, her lifelong impulse to cope through subjugation and self-sacrifice not only became clearer to her, but began to diminish.

But Alison didn’t want to give up on her relationship with Matthew. She hoped to inspire him to get help for himself, and possibly, when the time was right, for them to seek help as a couple. In the meantime, she understood the need to put their relationship on pause in order to protect herself from further abuse and increase the likelihood that her partner would seriously consider getting help.

The Overcontroller

Begrudgingly, Matthew agreed to meet with me for a couple of consultations, with the primary goal of placating Alison and winning her back. In typical narcissistic fashion, he started our first session by laying on the charm, hoping I’d see that he had only noble intentions when it came to helping Alison with her “mental health problems.”

When I didn’t respond to this version of events, and instead proceeded to inquire about what activated this part of him (The Overcontroller) with Alison, he became angry. “Therapy is bullshit,” he spat. “I don’t need this crap.”

“Are you sure, Matthew?” I asked. “I mean, does all of you agree with you?” This question, which I developed for working with narcissistic clients, serves to simplify for them the notion that human beings aren’t monoliths, but rather have distinct sides, parts, modes, and stances when it comes to their personality and emotional makeup.

Following a rigorous assessment, which included the use of the therapy relationship to identify interpersonal patterns, it became clear to me that Matthew met the criteria for a covert narcissistic personality disorder. A covert narcissist is somewhat different from the more classic bombastic and grandiose type, though they have overlapping features. Covert types tend to be characterized by high vulnerability and sensitivity to rejection and criticism, low empathy, and a tremendous need for reassurance. They struggle with accountability for their hurtful actions and can present with a need to maintain an extraordinary victim/martyr identity, in which they feel wholly entitled to their actions. Compared to grandiose types, covert narcissists also tend to have suffered more trauma in their early lives.

Matthew was initially resistant to sharing his childhood experiences with me—not an atypical response in early treatment with a narcissistic client. But with gentle persistence, reminders of the consequences at stake, and a sprinkle of science, I was able to gain his confidence and cooperation. I spoke about how the human condition is shaped by temperament, the environment where we grow up, and how we seek to get our emotional needs met. I helped Matthew see that since we all live at the mercy of our memory, if he sees his story as a backdrop and an informer of his here-and-now experiences, he could connect the dots and see the negative effects on his sense of self, his view of relationships, his fears, and profound need to maintain control. Slowly, he began to identify old, constructed coping modes that had served him when he was young and helpless, but would later come to sabotage numerous intimate relationships. Alison was not the first.

Once spared the toxic shame embedded in moments of perceived rejection and looming abandonment, Matthew began to better understand the overcompensating part of him that manifested as the bully, the controller, the warden. We also spotted an internal demanding critic in his mode profile—a daily crier that proclaimed, You’re not good enough!—the leftover refrain of a childhood bristling with critical caregivers and playground bullies.

In our sessions, we empathically connected with the little boy who at age six was already barraged by the sky-high expectations of a dad who rather than supporting him, undermined him constantly. “You’re so scrawny, Matty,” he’d say. “You’ll never be a great athlete, or a great anything. You’re just too weak. You cry too much!” His mom ran hot and cold: one moment Matty was the glorified prince who could do no wrong, and the next, he was the biggest regret of her life. “You took away my chances of being a successful performer!” she’d rage at him. Her bouts of drunken wrath were often followed by social outings with people who, according to her, “have actually made something of themselves, unlike your useless father.”

At age 10, with a much older sister who was planning her exit to college and a dad who’d long since left the family, Matthew was left alone to manage the perilous highs and lows of life with his mom. A troubled but gifted child, he stumbled along. Often bullied by peers for his small stature, he nonetheless managed to succeed in school and, later, to secure a well-paying job as an engineer.

Unsurprisingly, he wasn’t successful when it came to interpersonal interactions. Hounded by an implicit fear of being judged, he’d impulsively interrupt and talk over people in conversations. Over time, numerous partners were driven away by his pervasive negativity, externalizing blame, lack of empathy, suffocating surveillance, and bouts of rage or cold silence when a partner didn’t yield to his demands. Alison was probably the longest partner in captivity.

A Path Toward Healing

Following their work in individual therapy, Matthew and Alison engaged in couples work with me, with the hope of forging a path forward together. They soon discovered, however, that they couldn’t see a future in which Alison would feel safe enough to resurrect a sexually intimate bond with Matthew. Accumulated hurts and resentments had eroded their intimacy such that they chose to redirect the therapy, focusing instead on better understanding their maladaptive patterns, grieving the losses of their hopes and dreams, and creating a departure plan. While this is not an uncommon outcome, I’ve also worked with couples who were able to heal their relationships in the wake of narcissistically driven coercive control, but the treatment journey is typically long and arduous.

After Matthew and Alison separated, she continued to work with me individually, giving careful scrutiny to her own reactions and responses in relationships. She became a mindful witness to the conditions under which she became triggered and slipped into old self-sacrificing stances. Over time, she learned to rise above these knee-jerk patterns and reclaim a healthy, honest, self-advocating voice.

Matthew also chose to continue individual therapy, and we worked productively together for more than two years, in spite of several false starts driven by the desperate loneliness of the shamed little boy inside him. Throughout, I exhibited my persistent faith in his capacity to override his self-defeating patterns and used empathic confrontation when needed. His trust in our bond allowed us to connect with little Matty and meet his unmet emotional needs, which gave the adult Matthew the fortitude he needed to recognize when fears of deprivation, abandonment, and rejection got triggered in here-and-now situations. He learned healthy ways to self-soothe and comfort his vulnerability through imagery, self-talk, breath- and body-focused work, and behavioral redirection for impulse control. And ultimately, he’d be able to choose a partner instead of a prisoner.

At this point, you might be thinking, Really? Can coercively controlling narcissists actually heal and change? Yes, they can—though it doesn’t happen enough. Why? First, there usually aren’t enough meaningful consequences to get them into therapy, or to keep them there if they do start. Second, therapists often become triggered and overwhelmed when working with these individuals, and thereby have trouble sustaining the sturdy, persistent, empathically confronting posture necessary to meet their client’s needs. Third, many therapists are unaware that successful treatment with this kind of abuser involves much more than behavior-change strategies. It involves diving deep into several intersecting worlds, including the abuser’s biopsychosocial makeup, early life experiences, and rigidly held emotional beliefs and reactions to activating conditions. To heal, these clients need thoughtfully tailored, emotion-focused strategies as well as the use of the therapy relationship as a microcosm—and a model—of the world beyond the treatment room.

With these elements in place, there’s hope for meaningful and sustainable change. Let me be clear: successful therapy with a narcissistically driven coercive controller is no easy feat. But it’s possible. And given the stakes involved, I believe it’s worth a try.