Does your culture protect the NARCISSIST?

[00:00:00]So, I'm going to take a interesting tack here in this video. So, bear with me for a minute. Now, many people are aware of this whole concept of collectivism, right? And the distinction between collectivism and individualism. The United States is traditionally considered to be a very individualistic culture, a culture that values autonomy, the needs, the wants, and the aspirations, and the rights of the individual being put ahead of or at least on equal footing with collective groups such as family and communities. It's okay to exert your individual rights in an individualistic culture.

[00:00:38]Individual ambition is rewarded in individualistic cultures. And it may at some level be every person for themselves, and there's research suggesting that kinship and community ties may not be as strong. Like I said, the United States is a great example of probably of the largest individualistic culture, society, structure. Now, within a large large large collective culture like the United States, there absolutely can be collective sub communities, families, etc. within it. But the culture, the way the United States is organized, it is individualism. Now, collectivism is a system in which the needs, the rights, and the values of the group, and the family, and the community are placed ahead of those of the individual per se, right? And in those system in collectivistic systems, we might see sort of interdependence within the system. People are expected to help each other out. It almost feels like a requirement in a collectivistic system.

[00:01:33]Accomplishments and successes are viewed collectively. So, one person's success may benefit many people, like for example, in a large family. It The The interest is in keeping the group cohesive and together, and the well-being of the group is the most important thing, as is the many cases the honor of the group. Now, in a collectivistic system, there are often big problems for anyone who makes the system look bad. Or if anyone violates the norms of the group, some I don't know, dating before marriage or something like that or sex before marriage.

[00:02:14]Now, I remember gazillion years ago when I was in graduate school, and a lot of what we were reading and some of the prevailing rhetoric then, again, it was 35 years plus or so ago, was that kind of in general, broad strokes, collectivism good, individualism bad. This idea that collectivism is community and looking out for each other and being focused on the family, the community, the tribe, call it what you will.

[00:02:41]And isn't that better than sort of selfish individualism, lone world wolf, people doing what works for them?

[00:02:48]I grew up in a family that came from a collectivistic culture, but I grew up in an individualistic one.

[00:02:57]Now, that got messy.

[00:02:59]Ultimately, I have to say it was my salvation because an individualistic culture like the United States gave me places where I could be myself and be supported for that. That would have been a lot harder in a collectivistic culture.

[00:03:14]But in some of my own graduate school research and published research, I did explore how collectivism may have impacted the willingness to engage in behaviors that might face stigma, like seeking out mental health services.

[00:03:29]So, the news on the collectivism wasn't always good, right? But we still like, "Oh, that's so collectivistic. Isn't that nice? Families stick together."

[00:03:36]kind of thing.

[00:03:37]Well, the thing they didn't teach me in graduate school, there were a lot of things, but this one in in absolutely was, you know, central.

[00:03:46]They didn't tell us, most of us, that narcissism flourishes in collectivistic cultures. You may like, "What? Why ever so?

[00:03:57]Isn't narcissism all about like, you know, individualism on steroids? I mean, if individualism isn't valued, then how would the selfishness and the low empathy flourish?"

[00:04:08]Well, narcissism itself develops through multiple pathways, right? It's this kind of coming together of temperament and adversity, attachment issues, trauma, overvaluation, and put that all in a blender.

[00:04:24]And as a result, the ingredients that kind of amp up the odds or the probability of narcissistic personality development, they exist in all cultures, right? You may also wonder if this individualism isn't valued, like somebody can't go out and be their own person, then why would narcissism flourish so well in a collectivistic, less individualistic culture? Well, here's the problem. If you grow up like you know what I'm talking about. The larger issues in the collectivistic systems, especially the focus on honor, is that the system is more important than the individual people in it. And the optics of the system, that it does need to look like unitary and good to the world, that stepping out of line in a collectivistic system brings shame on the entire family, and the ultimate focus is on the system over the individuals in the system can actually sometimes mean that in a collectivistic culture, it's like a petri dish for narcissistic abuse and frankly trauma.

[00:05:26]Because within a collectivistic system, there's a very clear implicit awareness that if you step out of line, if you voice or do something that is in defiance to what the larger, typically family system wants, if you express yourself individually, if you individuate too much, or or if you actually identify that someone within the family is doing something wrong, especially if the person you're pointing out is behaving badly is someone who might be super superficially valued as successful, maybe because they're an elder, maybe because they're financially successful, maybe because they're of the valued gender, or if you were to call out someone in one of those systems for behaving manipulatively or abusively, in those systems and collectivistic systems, the person pointing it out is the problem.

[00:06:18]In a collectivistic system, people using terms like gaslighting and narcissistic are often the ones that are labeled as the problem.

[00:06:26]And setting boundaries is something that is often shamed and viewed as arrogance and as hubris.

[00:06:34]And this can all but guarantee intergenerational cycles, right?

[00:06:40]For example, the narcissistic grandparent is never called out, the narcissistic parent is never called out, the narcissistic siblings are never called out, and as such, there's a normalization of these patterns.

[00:06:54]And the demands of collectivistic systems, which will often close ranks to protect the family when there is a belief that someone within the system is calling the family out, means that many people who grew up in or are in collectivistic systems don't want to face the existential fear of losing their place in that family or community, so nothing gets said and certainly nothing really changes.

[00:07:24]In short, family systems and other community systems within collectivistic cultures are more likely to be willing to ignore, deny, minimize, invalidate, or gaslight the harm suffered by someone in the system than to take the risk of destabilizing the whole system. And as a result, trauma survivors in collectivistic systems, and especially when it's more of the relational emotional abuse trauma we see in narcissistic abuse, will often report feeling far more alone and unsupported than people might actually report feeling in individualistic systems in which there may be more different options. And perhaps if you step out of the family, some more validating voices.

[00:08:11]The collectivistic drive to protect the system, the entity, means that the outspoken outspoken individual who's calling out abuse is the one who'll be called out.

[00:08:22]Now, there are different ways that narcissistic people can show up in collectivistic systems. There is the narcissistic person who knows how to play the game. This is the person who would know how to play nice with the aunties and the grandparents and the parents, while undermining siblings or other people in the system. And again, this isn't surprising that it goes down this way given the capacity of a narcissistic person to be able to sort of maintain different personas and different repertoires of behavior.

[00:09:02]Social perceptiveness can be quite high when it is self-serving for narcissistic people.

[00:09:10]Now, the narcissistic people are able to figure out who the key players are and play it being virtuous with them and are pretty much given an open path to behave badly. Because anyone who would dare call the narcissistic person out is the one who will be viewed as the problem, especially by those with the strongest and most trusted voices in the system, who may be people who are older or already have existing power in the system. The narcissistic person knows how to work systems.

[00:09:44]Then, within collectivistic systems, there was the narcissistic person who remains the entitled perpetual child.

[00:09:53]The sort of vulnerable narcissistic person who definitely may remain sort of emotionally stunted and still get their laundry done and their dinner served well past the age that might be considered sort of appropriate in many cultures. In many collectivistic family systems, having people close and at home or living at home, even if it comes with the cost of their emotional limitedness and entitled expectations and never quite launching into adulthood, they may actually be even more enabled and more emboldened than the person within that collectivistic family system who wants to be more independent of the system and is willing to do their own damn laundry.

[00:10:39]Now, the golden child narcissist in these kinds of collectivistic collectivistic systems may be a sort of crown prince, if you will, whether through luck of gender or birth order or success in what matters to the family.

[00:10:57]So, for example, the the one who has an affinity for the family business or has certain kinds of academic skills, this may be the apple of the parents' eye and of the larger family systems' eye and is someone who might actually be able to behave horrifically and abusively to other family members and anyone who has a problem with that golden child narcissist behavior, that's the person who's going to get shamed and shut down, not the person who's mistreating people.

[00:11:26]Now, I've had the privilege in in my career of training therapists and talking to folks in more culturally collectivistic regions of the world. And it is next-level stuff when it comes to guiding clients who are actually having to deal with narcissistic abuse. So, clients who are dealing with everything from trauma bonding to feeling safe enough to see the narcissistic dynamics clearly. Frankly, in most of these, you know, kinds of conferences and presentations, what I've heard is that the narcissistic abuse is often much worse, there's less protection, there are fewer places for people to turn to for help, and the stakes of saying something in collectivistic countries, spaces, cultures are so high that many people find themselves locked in perpetual trauma-bonded cycles, cognitive dissonance, self-abandonment, and shame for a lifetime. And it's understandable, right? Change is very unlikely, and the system is almost always going to take the stance that everyone can and should find a way to compromise and get along. That particular stance is very beneficial to the narcissistic person.

[00:12:40]The acceptable sacrifice to folks in collectivistic systems is often the person who's being harmed by the narcissist, and then the illusion of the collectivistic system gets to persist.

[00:12:52]Because other people other people in the system, in order to belong and remain attached and be a part of this family or whatever, because they will make the compromises, and when everyone else is compromising to make the whole system work, then the narcissistic ones don't have to ever compromise. It's a bit like herd immunity.

[00:13:15]As a result, narcissistic people often thrive in collective systems, because everyone has to bend to their will in order to belong or in order to not kind of crack the system. Now, what does any of this mean for healing? It means a lot.

[00:13:31]The healing is often going to be more difficult for folks from more collectivistic cultures and systems when they're experiencing narcissistic abuse because they're most like much like much less likely to be able to make big moves. They're less likely to have help or to access help. And the cost of leaving and even the cost of seeing the dynamics is very high.

[00:13:52]It often means massive sacrifice if someone decides to make the leap, losing a family of origin, losing a place in society or in the culture, or facing tremendous shame which may also be faced by other folks like the person's own children within that system about being frozen out. And then there's that fear of regret. You know, will I ever feel comfortable with never being a part of a family again or losing key family relationships?

[00:14:20]And in the most severe cases, even physical abuse could happen if somebody decides to sort of say, "I'm not doing this anymore." Listen, people have and often do create separate lives from a family of origin when they do come from a collectivistic culture. Some people may emigrate to a faraway country.

[00:14:38]Perhaps some may even marry out of the culture.

[00:14:41]What's ironic is that those behaviors and those choices may be far more tolerated like you just moving away or you moving marrying someone different. That may be even more tolerated than calling out people within the collectivistic system family for example, for behaving in a manner that is manipulative, abusive, or toxic, or trying to set meaningful boundaries, or being unwilling to engage with certain family members because of their antagonistic behavior. It's almost like how dare you call this family out?

[00:15:14]And remember, just because a family may physically again emigrate away from their original cultural space, it doesn't mean the collectivism goes away.

[00:15:25]In fact, it's often held onto more tightly in the new culture, meaning that even if a collectivistic family moves into an individualistic culture, the collectivistic vibe may be as strong if not stronger than ever. But that doesn't mean that healing is impossible. While healing is certainly far easier when you do have people that validate your experience and people who bear witness and having some spaces in your life where it's validated, a therapist, a friend, a person even within your collectivistic family system who sees it and is as caught up in the collectivistic sort of confines as you are, all of that can help you feel less alone, more sane, uh more trusting of your judgment, but it is definitely a longer, more lonely walk. It may mean having to cultivate safe spaces outside of the collectivistic system and culture and may involve building meaning and purpose into your life and learning engage to engage differently with the narcissistic folks, especially within the family and their enablers without drawing attention to what it is you are doing. And in some cases, it may mean making the ultimate leap out of the entire family despite the grief and the loss that come with it. That leap may be much more dramatic and carry much more permanent losses.

[00:16:53]I've had to navigate this. I've had to watch family members navigate this and what and I've had to walk clients through this.

[00:17:00]Making, for example, painful no contact decisions within a family that's embedded in a collectivistic culture is messy.

[00:17:09]Listen, in my case, in order for me to even get there, I needed to have my own life. I needed to be indifferent to losing big pieces of the system. I had to be able to care for myself financially. And big surprise, once I did finally plant that flag, it was bye-bye Romany. Peace out. You don't get to call us out. They were much more likely, in my case, to close ranks around the narcissistic person and protect her than to hear that this person's behavior was harmful. When I was a kid, and even when I was a younger adult, I didn't have that power or self-trust. I had to hit a wall of indifference about losing everyone to finally do something that should have been done a long time ago.

[00:17:52]There is a definitely something a more culty feeling about collective systems because there is such willful denial of the toxic patterns and such willingness to castigate and shame the people in those systems who see things that are problem and are willing to call them out.

[00:18:17]Now, listen. Don't get me wrong. This is not meant to say individualistic systems have it all figured out. They bring their own struggles and the narcissistic folks are often given damn parades within individualistic cultures, literally given parades. But there may be more paths out in individualistic systems, maybe more places to find to be yourself.

[00:18:39]Listen.

[00:18:40]And when collectivistic systems work and they're safe and they're protective, I am sure it is lovely to be a part of something, to be in a place where all ships are lifted on a rising tide, to be in a community that values community.

[00:18:58]But when it devolves and degenerates into honor for honor's sake or control or simply creates a betraying environment where abusers know they can abuse in plain sight knowing there will be little accountability, it's dangerous.

[00:19:16]Ultimately, individualistic, collectivistic, or anything in between, it comes down to safety, to integrity, to respect, to compassion, mutuality, and empathy.

[00:19:33]A culture that got organized around that, not that, is a culture I'd like to be part of. Thanks again.