When someone says, “I think my partner is a narcissist,” they’re usually not chasing a diagnosis—they’re trying to make sense of a relationship that feels controlling, confusing, and painful. This episode slows it way down and compares narcissism with insecure attachment patterns (pursuer/withdrawer) and neurodivergence, since the impact can look similar even when the why is totally different. The big differentiator they keep coming back to is flexibility: is there willingness to reflect, learn, repair, and change—even if slowly?
Main talking points
- Impact over labels
- Spectrum, not binary
- Rigidity vs flexibility
- Withdrawer mislabels
- Neurodivergent overlap
- Curiosity “experiments”
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