Is Your Teen a Magnet to Narcissists???

By Lisa Charlebois, LCSW

Are you concerned about your teen or a teen you know because it seems like he or she is a magnet to narcissists?
This is a very common struggle for many teens because the developmental stage that they are in makes them particularly vulnerable. It is normal for teens to feel quite inadequate at times as they go through the normal struggles with identity that all teens face. For most teens to truly feel secure, they need to feel like they belong to a group of friends or to a group of peers with common interests. This helps them form their “identity.” They need safe people that they can be their “real selves” with—meaning people they can practice with sharing how they really feel and what they believe about various issues that are important to them. They also need to practice taking on different identity traits. They watch other teens closely and practice borrowing various behavioral traits and styles that seem to be working well for their peers…like trying to be more outgoing when they, themselves, struggle with shyness, trying to act more calm, cool and collected when they struggle with anxiety etc… This propensity to copy others’ identities is why teens are so easy to influence and explains how they can suddenly change dramatically if they change the peer group they are hanging out with. Many parents will say, “_____is a totally different kid since he started hanging out with ______.” This of course can be a good thing or a bad thing…
When teens don’t have a solid group of healthy peers to hang out with during their identity struggling years, they will often feel lonely and left out. This can lead to feelings of shame, inadequacy and self-doubt which can then make them quite vulnerable to narcissists who show them favor.
The lonely or inadequate feeling teen will tend to idealize an ego-maniac as this can result in he, himself, feeling more worthy…because he has now attached himself to his new friend’s inflated sense of self.
Consequently, the devalued teen will feed the ego of the inflated one… The inflated one will talk despairingly about others (sometimes this is very subtle) and can give the impression that only the “chosen” will be fortunate to be in HIS presence. The unspoken message is that if a person falls from HIS favor, he or she will be cast out and devalued. Narcissists pick people who will follow them and idealize them. This is how they gain their own sense of security. Narcissistically acting teens will give others the impression that they will have more value just for being closely associated with them. This is actually often true because teens tend to envy the kids that seem to be the most popular or highly esteemed. For teens with struggling self-images (which means almost all teens at one time or another!!!), hanging out with these highly esteemed peers help themselves feel more worthy.
Sometimes, the more vulnerable teen will compromise his own wishes and desires and he will, therefore, concede again and again to the wishes and desires of his “puffed up” friend. Teens tend to be the most vulnerable when they have a temporary break in a solid peer group (eg. a fight with a close friend, moving to a new school, changing churches etc…). However, the teens who are the most vulnerable are the ones who are chronically lonely not just at school or church, but even within their own families. This emotional isolation can be caused from family dysfunction such as abuse or neglect or can be due to a parental addiction to drugs, alcohol, perfectionism, work... Another very vulnerable (perhaps the most vulnerable) group of teens for becoming magnets to narcissists is teens that have been raised in families wherein there was narcissism. In narcissistic families, an open discussion of feelings is not allowed. Much of the focus in the family is on performance; however, not much instruction takes place because the parents are too busy or distracted with other things to spend time teaching their children how to do things. Instead, the kids are just expected “to know” how to excel in academics, sports, social skills, and so on. When they don’t quite meet the mark, their parent or parents look shocked and wonder how the kid could have blown it like he did. A child from a narcissistic family will internalize many feelings of shame and inadequacy. Therefore, children from narcissistic families will tend to gravitate toward other narcissistically injured children…It is truly all they know… Hence, if the child or teen tends to devalue himself, as a result of how he was parented, he will be predisposed to becoming a magnet to narcissistically acting kids. Furthermore, he is often completely numb to feeling or knowing what his OWN wishes or desires even ARE—because his family never acknowledged his feelings!)
It is crucial that this tendency to gravitate towards narcissists gets pointed out so that it does not become an engrained behavior pattern. Again, the most vulnerable youth are those who come from families with parents who have narcissistic struggles. It is not uncommon for adults raised in narcissistic homes to come into counseling seeking to learn how to make their relationships healthier…only to discover that they have filled their lives with narcissistic spouses, co-workers, friends, bosses, and so on…

ADVICE: Trying to Help a Teen who is a Magnet to Narcissists:
Remember teens will be much more open to feedback if you speak from a place of “I’m just wondering...” rather than from a place of judgment about their friends.

~Point out to them that you wonder if they feel the need to deny their real feelings or feel they have to give in too much with a particular friend or that you feel you have observed them conceding too much… or you can say, “Does it seem like______thinks they’re right all of the time?” If the teen becomes defensive, you can merely state, “Oh good…so you are able to disagree with him and he’ll listen to your perspectives too?”; OR “Oh good, so you don’t have to just do what she wants all the time but you get to choose what you want or what would be good for you too?”; OR, “Oh good, so you don’t feel like he’s subtly putting you down if you don’t completely agree with him all the time?” (Often the teen will insist things are fine because they haven’t been conscious of these behaviors but these selfish traits will start bugging them more and more as they happen in future interactions…)
~ Point out to the teen all of his or her inherent God given strengths, abilities, and good attributes and that it is important for us to find people who will appreciate, value and love us as we really are. If you are a parent, ask the youth pastor or other people in your teen’s life who he or she looks up to to reaffirm these accurate truths about your son or daughter. I still get completely shocked (even though I shouldn’t be by now…because it’s happened so often over the years!!!) when one of my kids (now ages 21, 18 and 15) comes through the door and espouses some great new insight about him or herself or some new fact about health etc… that they just gleaned from their youth pastor, or teacher or coach. It’s truly as if they’ve never heard it before when my husband and I could have said the same thing dozens of times over the years!!! Even though I know it’s normal because teens are trying to separate from their parents, I still find it shocking and even comical!!! Sometimes, when I let my pride get to me, I say to my kids, “YOU KNOW A LOT OF PEOPLE ACTUALLY PAY ME for MY ADVICE!!!” Note: Telling teens that it doesn’t matter what others think about them because it is only what God thinks that matters is not very helpful. However, it is helpful to state that it is good to look at ourselves like God’s children whom He loves and that we are supposed to take correction from those who “speak the truth in love” but we are to be suspect of people who puff themselves up (even subtly) by condemning us like the Pharisees continually did with Jesus.

~Remind them that in healthy relationships, we are able to become more aware of and honest about how we feel, what we believe, what we want, and what we like and dislike.

~Remind them of the importance of setting boundaries (expressing our feelings to people when they are hurting us or angering us and being able to articulate to them what we want and need and what we will do if they don’t listen or respond).

~Remind them that it is important for all people to learn how to negotiate and compromise (wherein both peoples’ views and feelings are considered, not just one).

~Remind them of the importance of how we all need to find more SAFE people in our lives…people we can be real with, people who show us empathy and grace and don’t attack and devalue our thoughts and feelings. And, safe people will tell us the truth about ourselves when they see us faking it or being self-destructive, or when we’re acting out… Furthermore, safe people allow us to tell them the truth about how we see and feel about them. With safe people, we do not feel as if we are walking on eggshells to avoid rejection or abandonment. We know we do not have to risk losing the relationship if we have a conflict we need to work through with each other.

~Try to help teens to understand that most of the time, people are doing the best they can with what they have been taught from their own experiences and it will actually be good for their friends to receive healthy feedback and that most people want to learn and grow and mature in ways that develop healthier relationships; and yet, some people truly are cruel and destructive and we need to distance ourselves from them.

~Acknowledge that it is part of our human nature to sometimes think and act in narcissistic ways. When we do act self-righteous or overly critical of others, we need to apologize and express empathy for their feelings.

For more information, click on Lisa Charlebois’s page on www.grcca.com which has information on the book: You Might Be A Narcissist If… by Paul Meier, M.D., Lisa Charlebois, L.C.S.W. and Cynthia Munz, L.M.F.T.