How to Handle a Narcissist

How to Handle a Narcissist:

A Message for the Media

I'm seeing a lot of news that criticizes Trump. Salon.com compares him to "your semi-coherent racist uncle after too many beers." I see analysis on whether or not he's a tyrant-to-be, a cocaine addict, or a sociopath. I haven't yet seen much helpful advice on how to effectively handle him, however. So far, the media’s approach to his behavior has served only to embolden him. We have been missing the point. 

We can call Donald Trump many things: master manipulator, demagogue, abuser, egomaniac. All of these things are true. He is an unusually frightening individual and we need to take a different approach to him than we would to normal human beings. I've had my fair share of experience with narcissists both personally and professionally. The narcissist's question is, "What’s in it for me? " He thinks in terms of rewards and punishments. We know that Trump’s primary rewards are money, power, beautiful women, and above all, attention. Every move he makes aims to gain one of those things, and he will work mercilessly toward them, without regard to truth, ethics, or human suffering until he is stopped. 

Trump is not human like most of us are. He does not have the empathy, the moral center, the intellectual grounding, or the compassion that make our civilization function relatively well. He is an ever-shifting opportunist who will do or say anything toward his one goal: self-interest. We must take a firm, aggressive stance with him, and the media must change some of its tactics in order to resist him effectively.

#1: Don’t just fact check him. Instead, analyze what he stands to gain from his lies.

We know Trump doesn’t care about facts. Unfortunately, his supporters don’t either. They don’t take his words literally. They care about how he makes them feel.

Take a recent example: Trump’s Twitter tirade about millions of illegal immigrants voting in the election. Most of us know this is a cruel lie. As I listened and read several media outlets’ coverage of this lie, I generally saw the same approach: fact-checking Trump, using experts to explain that this was a lie, and possibly shaming him.

What was the result? Those who oppose Trump thought, “Horrible! I can’t believe he lied again!” We retreated into outrage or despair. Then, those who support Trump probably thought, “Who cares! Screw those illegals! The mean media is just bashing him again!” They retreated into outrage or self-righteousness. This coverage only served to continue our divide.

Trump knows he is lying. He lies to gain power. Sometimes he lies to distract. Sometimes he lies to fire up his base so that they follow his lead. Journalists need to spend less time reporting the facts and more time analyzing the effects of his lies.

Trump’s lie about the popular vote aims to build fury toward illegal immigrants. He is preying upon the fear and anger his supporters have toward non-citizens. Why would he want to do that? Most likely to drum up support for whatever harmful steps he means to take next: slashing voting rights, deporting immigrants, building the literal or the metaphorical wall. Bernie Sanders got it right during his interview with Conan O’Brian on November 29^th. What if media coverage included more of that kind of analysis? Journalists need to send Trump the message: We see right through you. We hear your hidden messages and we won’t stand for them.

The best thing you can say to a bully is: I see what you’re doing here. You can’t fool me and you can’t scare me.

#2. Don’t shame him. Instead, appeal to his supporters.

Appealing to empathy won’t work with Trump. He doesn’t have any. He doesn’t care what harm he does. Stop trying to guilt him. Stop trying to appeal to his humanity. He will simply laugh in our faces.

A better approach would be to appeal directly to his supporters. They don’t care about the terrible things Trump has said and done. They care about jobs, their dignity, and their communities. They would probably hate to hear that Trump is playing them for fools. He is making them look stupid for voting for him. He is bringing to light the fact that they are uninformed about immigration. He is making them seem like ignorant racists. Most of all, he is already ignoring their needs.

When he does his “Thank-You Tour” and tells his supporters he won in a landslide, we need to see headlines like: “Trump thinks his supporters are uninformed!”

We need to see a ticker across the top of the screen: “243 Days Without a Jobs Plan for the Rust Belt.”

When he talks about building a wall, we need to see: “Trump wants to use your tax dollars to clog the courts with immigrants!”

When he appoints other power-grabbing billionaires, we can say, “Trump appoints man responsible for West Virginia coal mine explosion/Man who took jobs to Mexico/Billionaire elites.”

I believe many Trump supporters are intelligent people who thought they were doing the right thing by voting for him. The media can speak directly to those people, to elucidate how he is humiliating them. He is taking their good faith and distorting it for his own purposes.

This may mean blurring the lines between reporting facts and analyzing them. It may also mean making an enemy out of Trump. But there is no other way. You are either his enemy or his accomplice. There are no other roles to him. We need every story to include analysis now. We need news outlets everywhere on the liberal-conservative spectrum to tell Trump this message: Your lies are not the real story. The real story is how far you will go to grab at power, even degrading those who supported you.

#3: Give far less attention to his antics. Instead, highlight the real heroes.

The media can punish Trump by taking him off the front page.  Ignore his childish outbursts. He finds ways to bypass the media to get those messages across anyway, like Twitter. He doesn’t need you to cover his ridiculous lies and stunts. Journalists need to pay far more attention to the real stories, like those in politics who are telling the truth and doing good work. For example, Democrats in Congress have been advocating for increased health care funds for mine workers. Despite their appeals to coal country, Republicans have been fighting this legislation. This needs to be front-page news. Give attention to the people who really are working for the working-class, for the hurting communities in the Midwest, for the jobless. It would drive Trump crazy to see these heroes get more attention than he gets.

It would also drive Trump up the wall to see those leading the resistance on the front page. Bernie Sanders is fighting to reduce drug prices. Robert Reich is informing the public of all the ways Trump is attacking our nation’s institutions. Van Jones is forming a “Love Army.” These stories need to be bigger. Don’t put Trump on the front page unless he does something in line with our nation’s values.  

The media can punish Trump further by giving more voice to those he has hurt. We need to hear more stories of immigrants who pay their taxes and overcome impossible odds. We need to see Muslims who believe in nonviolence. We need to hear from black people who want more than “law and order.” We know through social science research that individual stories are our most effective tool for changing minds. What if each night, on the nightly news, we heard stores like this?

Trump’s attempts to silence and undermine the media are frightening. He knows journalists are the only people holding him accountable, the only ones standing in the way of his ability to shape our narrative however he wants. He will not stop his attacks until he gains full control. We need to fight back in these ways aggressively, now, while we still can.

A Therapist's Perspective on Trump

"When someone shows you who they are, believe them the first time."
-Maya Angelou

I know we’re all ready for this election to be over. I may not change anyone’s mind at this point, but I want to offer what wisdom I have based on ten years of experience in mental health. There has been a lot of speculation about Trump’s mental status. Is he narcissistic? Sociopathic? Brilliant? On cocaine? And how do we cope with the grossness of this election? In an attempt to detach myself from the noise and outrage, I have started looking at Trump with my therapist hat on.

Right now I work at a hospital, doing assessments for addiction and psychiatric services. I can tell you that if Donald Trump walked through our doors, I would immediately:

1)     Give him a drug screen. Sniffling aside, his speech and behavior are so erratic that I would suspect he was under the influence of something.

2)     Flag him as someone no one should be alone with. His emotional dysregulation sends up red flags that he can’t be trusted to stay calm and respectful.

3)     Recommend that he get treatment appropriate for personality disorders.

While it’s not appropriate for anyone to diagnose someone without interviewing them in person, we have a LOT of information to go on based on interviews, decades in show business, and dozens of sources. And although I cringe when the word “narcissist” gets thrown around too much, it has clinical meaning and is actually quite appropriate in his case. Narcissistic Personality Disorder involves a special combination of grandiosity, ego-centricity, entitlement, and insecurity, and it would be first on my differential.

The thing about this disorder, though, is that it can’t be treated the way depression can. If Trump had a mood disorder, I’d say we should extend compassion and make sure he gets treatment, because there is goodness and humanity in him as well. Personality disorders are different. They are pervasive, pathological character traits that extend throughout all areas of life and throughout a person’s lifetime.

Can they get better? Sure. But they are not “healed.” They are unlearned. A person has to have enough motivation to learn entirely different ways of behaving and thinking. What motivates them are rewards and consequences. Trump will not change because someone tells him, “You hurt me.” Appealing to empathy won’t work because he doesn’t have any and he doesn’t see the benefit. He might be motivated if someone told him, “If you keep acting this way, you lose your wealth/we cancel your show/we don’t vote for you.”

 Unfortunately, our culture often rewards certain pathological traits. That’s why many people with high levels of psychopathy, for example, make great CEOs and surgeons. Donald Trump has been rewarded throughout his lifetime by making money, getting attention, getting attractive women to marry him, and now getting votes. He sees far more reward in staying the same than he ever would in changing. The man is SEVENTY years old. I hate to say this as a therapist, but he’s probably a lost cause.

I think Trump’s supporters are hoping that he will use his cunning for the good of the country. Instead of acting in his own self-interest, he will act in the best interest of the country. However, based on all the evidence we have about him, I see no shred of evidence to say that he is capable of acting in the best interest of a group:

·       Not his investors. (Mark Cuban, an actual billionaire who pays taxes and has never declared bankruptcy, asked an important question: Has anyone said, “Donald Trump made me rich”?)

·       Not his contractors. (He stiffed them and claimed they did low-quality work. We’ll never know. Remember the USA Freedom Girls who sang and danced at one of his rallies? He stiffed them too.)

·       Not his employees. (He ran casinos into the ground because it made him money.)

·       Not his charity. (He used his charity to pay off lawsuits and buy paintings of himself.)

·       Not his family. (Note the number of wives and mistresses and accusers.)

What makes people think that, if elected President, he would suddenly be able to think communally rather than selfishly? His history shows that he acts only out of self-interest. Period. Why do we think electing him would change him?

Just because he’s pathological doesn’t mean he isn’t smart. He’s a world-class con artist. He tells people what they want to hear and makes them feel what they want to feel. As a result, masses of people project onto him what they want to see. When people meet with him individually, they are charmed and sing his praises. That’s entirely in line with narcissism: social interactions are carefully calculated to win people over toward his own gain.

So what are we to do?

How do we keep ourselves from sinking into the dark hole of despair? What bothers me most is the fact that so many people hear Trump’s hatred and say, “Well, I don’t like it, but it’s not a dealbreaker.” By supporting him, we continue to reinforce his self-centeredness and bad behavior. He forces his supporters to rationalize his behavior. By doing that, he gets his slime all over them.

I think there is a bright side. Donald Trump is forcing our country’s dark underbelly into the light. Our country has a history of denying, minimizing, and smoothing over its dark side. Just a few years ago, the Supreme Court said that we don’t need Affirmative Action because racism is basically over. Now, we can no longer deny that racism is still rampant, misogyny is real, we consistently deny facts and science, and we worship celebrity and wealth. He’s not wrong when he says that celebrities can get away with almost anything. Look at Woody Allen. Look at Joe Paterno (he was honored by Penn State at homecoming this year).

Trump represents the logical extension of cultural problems that were already there. He is forcing us to face the darkness that is still among us. I think he gets some credit for the Black Lives Matter movement gaining so much traction. I think people are listening to sexual assault survivors anew because of his words. We can no longer deny that we have real problems. I am hoping that by becoming our villain, by becoming the symbol of the worst parts of us, he will instigate some sort of catharsis that moves us toward progress and makes us all better people.

We can hope.