Narcissist Rising: What's Behind This Terrifying New TikTok Trend?

There is a terrifying new trend taking root in vulnerable spaces on TikTok. Have you fallen prey to it?

Today, I'm breaking down a scary new trend overtaking the #NarcTok communities on TikTok. Over and over again we see it happen. People with Narcissistic Personality Disorder gaining massive platforms of avid (mostly female) followers that they exploit for views, validation, and money.  

What is behind this worrying trend? Is there anything we can do to stop it? I'm going to explain this and a lot more in this new episode of the Practical Growth Podcast. 

Chapters

• 0:00 Narcissistic Influencers on TikTok
• 16:07 Addressing Narcissism in Healing Spaces

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:00

Welcome to the Practical Growth podcast with me, ebi Johnson. Author, nlpmp and cognitive reappraisal coach. This is the podcast created for people like you, people looking for more, more health, more peace, more happiness. Each week, I explore new topic in pop psychology and help you build a better life and better relationships. Join me for special guests, exciting ideas and practical advice that you can use to improve your life from the inside out. Let's get into it.

Speaker 1: 0:34

Hello, hello, hello my lovelies, it is me, ebi Johnson, your favorite podcast host, your favorite mediumcom writer and your favorite TikTok coach and cognitive reappraisal specialist. And we are gonna be getting into it today because, folks, there is a troubling new trend taking over TikTok, specifically taking over the NarkTalk spaces for abuse survivors, mental health recovery spaces full of vulnerable people, and we gotta talk about it, we gotta break it down and figure out how to stop it. Now I came across this trend a few days ago when I was scrolling, and as I was scrolling on TikTok, I came across a gentleman who claims to have been diagnosed with narcissistic personality disorder. Now, that alone was. You know, that'll put your hair up, that'll put the hackles up when you're someone who's survived narcissistic abuse, but that wasn't my real problem. Okay, and that's not the worrying part of this new trend. The really concerning thing about his video is that he was talking slow, considerably to the camera, and he was talking about how we need to have compassion for narcissists because, yes, you may have been hurt by a narcissist, but you need to have compassion for those narcissists because those narcissists are trying to change. Wow, huge red flags and the even bigger red flags that this gentleman, who has now built a pretty large platform on TikTok.

Speaker 1: 2:04

The comments were just full of women, full of women saying things like oh, thank you so much. I'm so relieved to hear you say this. You have cleared my mind and you've shown me that I just need to hold onto my narcissist a little bit longer. He'll change one day. He really wants to change. Things are bad, but I just gotta hold on Hundreds of comments like that, and this is specifically the worrying trend that needs to be talked about because it's happening in narc talk, but that's not the only space, as we're seeing across the board, with so many of our fan favorites being outed as monsters, we are not very good at keeping the narcissist out of positions of power, and that is very specifically happening in these narc talk spaces, people who are claiming to and these are primarily men.

Speaker 1: 2:52

These are mostly men who have claimed to have been diagnosed by a professional with narcissistic personality disorder, and they build these platforms saying I'm gonna teach you how to spot a narcissist, all you gotta do is come and get coached by me and pay me money. I'm gonna teach you how to torture a narcissist. I'm gonna teach you how to manipulate a narcissist. I'm gonna teach you how to cure them. Did you know? All narcissists are trauma victims. This is what's happening in this space.

Speaker 1: 3:23

Okay, it's a huge problem and I'm gonna lay out the real big four issues, with these people with narcissistic personality disorder being given these huge platforms and the space to spread their manipulation. Now, number one the first big problem with these narcissists being platformed in these spaces, with vulnerable people who are trying to heal from abusers like them, is that narcissistic people, they build their bad behavior and their beliefs okay, those important beliefs that they have that they're better than other people, so they should be able to do whatever they want to other people. They build that partially on the validation and supply that they get right. They do these negative things and they get power and they get control and they get whatever kind of success and internal validation they want from that, from those external circumstances, and that is what teaches them yeah, this is good to do, keep doing this, because this gives you what you want. Okay, that's how narcissists build these manipulative, coercive, abusive patterns of behavior. Okay, they get this validation and they get praise. So here's the first big problem If that's how a narcissist is working, how is a narcissist going to heal by getting up in front of people and getting that same supply praise and validation without doing any of the work? They're saying words, but we never see them in therapy. We've never seen a therapist validate for a second that any of them are clients of that therapist, which, frankly, if you're trying to build a public persona on your abusive personality disorder, you should have to have a little bit of verification. There should be some, some validation for your public to make sure that they are safe because you are a harmful person. Okay, these narcissists.

Speaker 1: 5:16

Here's the deeper issue. These narcissists is not just like oh, that feels nice, they get dopamine hits. Narcissistic people get dopamine supply when they subjugate someone, when they make them feel bad, when they're able to like, dump their nastiness and their negativity and their anger and their trauma on other people. It literally gives them like a ooh, a buzz in their brain, like you playing bejeweled on your phone. Okay, so tell me and this is still this first big problem tell me how a narcissist getting on tech talk and, as we know from the extensive research that's been done, getting those same dopamine hits from all the women who get in their comments and coo and ooh and ah, and I love you and thank you for doing the work If they're still getting those dopamine hits, where's the incentive for them to change? It's not a trick.

Speaker 1: 6:07

Question Number two the second big problem with every single one of these accounts, every single one of them, including that big account that I got into with a few months ago is every single one of these MPD I'm a diagnosed MPD accounts, except for one, which is also, coincidentally, the only one of a female is that they claim that they are just helpless people. They all say I'm a narcissist because of my trauma. Every single one of them, every single one of them say that, completely ignoring the fact that the re it takes five seconds of googling, you get right onto the Mayo Clinic's extensive database of research on narcissism in which they say it is not just from trauma it can be, but it's also biological, it's genetic, it's there's chemical components. But none of these narcissists say that. They all say I'm a helpless person and I'm just compassionately trying to make the world a better place.

Speaker 1: 7:04

Yeah, okay, robin Hood, narcissism to get a narcissism diagnosis means a professional has interacted with you over a long-term basis not just one session over a long-term basis and has marked a substantial empathy deficit. Okay, you need to understand that, like narcissism on the scale of personality disorders is basically like a couple of steps above psychopathy as far as empathy. Okay, they, they got their finger on the trigger of empathy. There you get what I'm saying. So these people who say they're diagnosed, if they've sat across from a therapist, a professional who knows what they're doing, and that person said you don't have the correct empathy, your empathy is cognitive at best, if it's even on at all, how is that person then creating an altruistic platform on a major social media profile? You know what I'm saying. It doesn't make sense and, at the very least, any altruism, any altruistic acts from someone who has been diagnosed with narcissistic personality disorder has to be questioned. I don't care if they're changing in their healing. You still always because narcissism is what Incurable have to question any altruistic acts that a narcissist does, including creating TikTok profiles where they claim they're trying to make the world a better place while people throw money and praise at their feet for doing nothing.

Speaker 1: 8:41

Now, the third biggest issue here out of these four major issues is probably one of the biggest, and it is this Again, every single one of these accounts, every single one of these men, these so-called diagnosed narcissists who sit on these platforms, claim that they're completely harmless. They're completely harmless people. They would never hurt anyone, ever. They're working so hard to cure themselves. Some of them claim they are cured, which shows they don't know what they're talking about, if they are even diagnosed, but they claim that they are harmless people. Let me explain to you why that's wrong. Okay, if someone is diagnosed with narcissism, again they've walked their happy little asses into that therapy office and they sat their happy little asses for a number of months across from a substantial professional who has done a lot of research and has a lot of experience with narcissistic personality disorder. If they've gotten that diagnosis, here's what that professional has noted Over an extended period of time that professional has had conversations with this narcissist and they have deemed that this person displays substantial patterns of abusive and manipulative behavior, both to themselves and to others.

Speaker 1: 10:08

You can't get a diagnosis of narcissistic personality disorder without being harmful to others. You don't necessarily have to physically knock people around, you just have to be emotionally manipulative and abusive, psychologically abusive and manipulative. You have to display years of that to get an actual quality diagnosis of narcissistic personality disorder Years of a consistent pattern of negative behavior that negatively affects others. So again and I hope some of you send it to some of these little narcissists creators again I would love to have it explain to me how someone is going to sit on a platform in front of millions of people and say I'm harmless. I'm harmless and completely skirt around the word abuser abusive to their children, abusive to their partners, abusive to anyone that they deemed as less than them and still do in their lives. You can't get an NPD diagnosis without being a harmful person. So to get on a platform and say you're a harmless person is disingenuous Narcissists. Someone who's been diagnosed with NPD will always be a threat and someone who's actually doing the work understands that they will always be a threat to others unless they consciously and intentionally manage their behaviors, thoughts, patterns and reactions at all times.

Speaker 1: 11:36

Now, the fourth big problem, as I see it is, it stems from that third one, right? So these people, if they do have a diagnosis, then they are proven as being harmful and abusive and manipulative and coercive and toxic to other people. That diagnosis had to have years of evidence behind it. No, the therapist may not have sat there for years, but this therapist will have spent months, if this diagnosis is real, going back with this patient, digging, getting to the root of real answers, maybe even talking to family and friends, because a true narcissist who wanted to change would actually bring in the people that they've hurt to include in these therapy sessions, because that would be real accountability. So if they've gotten that diagnosis and that diagnosis shows, yeah, for years this person's been a piece of shit, how then are we to believe that these narcissists who the most I've seen is one of them claims to have been in therapy for about five years? You're telling me that you undid 20 years worth of your bad habits, 30, 40 years worth of your bad habits in two to five years of therapy. In two to five years of therapy.

Speaker 1: 12:45

Nah, I don't buy that, especially knowing that narcissistic personality disorder cannot be cured. And if you don't want to hear that from me, then you can just jog your happy butts over to the Mayo Clinic and again, look at their evidence, look at their research. Get on Google Scholar and look it up and, yes, you will find some, some. Some quote unquote evidence that some, a very small number, like less than 1% of people diagnosed with narcissistic personality disorder, can show improvement with years of psychotherapy. But then here's the asterisk right, which the narcissist never liked to talk about. Many of those narcissists who are included within that did actually see a relapse in negative behaviors and thought patterns. Okay, especially if they ended psychotherapy.

Speaker 1: 13:40

Narcissistic personality disorder can't be cured, so I'm not buying anything from someone who claims to be a diagnosed narcissist who is acting as though a couple of years of therapy have undone the 30 years of them being a huge piece of shit. So those are the problems, right? That's pretty apparent. You can see that I'm quite passionate about it because, again, we don't just see this on Narc Talk. This is happening on Narc Talk, but we see this everywhere. A narcissistic person is given a big platform of celebrity. Okay, this is what we see over and over and over again. You can pick any celebrity scandal and you're going to find shades of exactly what I'm talking about here. So we pointed out the issue why is this happening? Right, because that's what helps me. Let's understand why it's happening and then, if we understand the mechanisms behind it, maybe we can fix those mechanisms. Maybe we can oil the machine, add some extra cogs, make it stop malfunctioning, right? So again, as I see it from my years of study and experience of this number one people are gullible. People are so gullible they see what they want to see and then, once they've seen that, that's it. They ain't asking questions, they're not digging any further.

Speaker 1: 14:54

Narcissists are experts at showing people what they want to see and making them feel comfortable. You guys have probably heard me rant sometimes, if you follow me on TikTok, I'm like I wish I was a narcissist, because I would be so much more popular. I would make so much more out of myself. I would go so much further because I'd be able to make people comfortable. They lie, they mirror and that makes them popular. They can make anybody feel like the center of the room. They can make them feel hopeful, optimistic, warm and fuzzy and then, once people get that, they just swallow it. They don't care if it's a lie, they just want to be told oh, look at me, look at me, look at my lies, believe in my lies and then maybe your terrible person will change too. They have no problem selling snake oil and they're actually really, really good at it. They're good at it, and people, because they are so gullible, because they are desperate to see what they want to see, they just swallow it up. And it's ironic because it's the same people who claim they want to heal. But then this comes down to the work part of it. When it comes to do that work, which includes cutting off bad people, they don't want to do it. They'd rather swallow the poison.

Speaker 1: 16:07

Number two I find that a lot of people flock to these narcissists. They're so willing to keep giving them platforms because they're trying to subconsciously change the past. They think, oh yeah, look at this person, this person has done it. Even though they haven't right, They've just swallowed that lie because that's what they want. This person has done it. So that means my mom and dad can do it. That means that my partner that I'm going to go home to tonight that's going to hit me and call me fat. He'll change one day too, because this guy on TikTok told me he's going to change. It's absolutely ignorant, but so many trauma survivors because they're so hopeful, they want that hurt resolved by the other person being fixed. They see that narcissist as a representation of that fantasy. But that's it. It's a fucking fantasy. They're lying to you. They're lying. They're lying. There's three.

Speaker 1: 16:56

I've also noticed there's a lot of people out there that just want to self-sabotage. Y'all just want to hurt. You want to hurt. You want to be miserable. You want the drama you feed off of. I'm not saying that you're a narcissist yourselves, but you might have a bit of Colin Robinson if you know what I'm saying. Because you feed off of these negative personalities, something in you inherently knows it's bullshit. You know it's a lie and you stick around anyway. And then when you get slapped across the face by the huge pile of scandal and all your positive comments that you were leaving on the scandal videos, it doesn't feel so good. And then you have to backtrack and make apologies and then you get to be the victim again and the cycle repeats. There's some people that just want to be in it. They just want to be in it. They just like being in these spaces saying they want to heal, because they just want to be in the mud and the muck and the mire.

Speaker 1: 17:47

Last but not least, the one that people never like to hear, and I swear to God I will go to my grave saying this Nark talk is full of narcissists, not in front of the camera, behind it, in the comments, in the hashtags, lingering with their private, their private profiles Narcissists, narcissists, narcissists, narcissists. I have never seen so many Narcissistic people, and you know what I used to do beauty pageants when I was in high school. Okay, I, I've never seen so many Narcissistic people hiding in one space as in the Nark talk space. There are so many people who even follow me, who ingest my content like crazy, who show so many narcissistic trades, and it's like they're gonna slap every other label on themselves, co-opt every other label for themselves, except the one they need to to be accountable. A lot of these narcissists, these Diagnosed, so so-called diagnosed narcissists, diagnosed NPD people that are building these platforms. They're getting there because they're being built up by other narcissists who see something in them that resonates. Maybe they like oh yeah, I'm not a narcissist or I can change, so I'm just not gonna acknowledge that or I can do what he's doing one day, and then that will make me a good person and then I can just keep doing whatever else I want without doing any substantial work of psychotherapy.

Speaker 1: 19:26

There are a lot of people in Nark talk and other mental health spaces, especially these corners, that talk about narcissism, that coat themselves in labels to hide behind the fact that they Choose to hurt people. They choose to do everything but the hard work of taking their medication, going to a frickin therapist and there's therapists on tick-tock who do work for free. So I don't want to hear like that's not accessible anymore because there's people out here doing good work. Even me, my coaching programs I I you know get people scholarships. I let people you know break it down, pay what they need to pay so that they can actually get the help that they need. Right, there's people out there doing work. So the accessibility thing isn't always gonna fly as far as some people want to take it, but that again it takes work. It's just easier to play victim than it is to step into the light, and so People hide in the shadows of Nark talk and other healing spaces and they take advantage of the vulnerable people and they build themselves up and they build these monoliths which are destined to fail.

Speaker 1: 20:33

That's the problem, all laid out pretty succinctly, I think. Right, so you know as it goes. How do we fix it? How do we fix it? If this is the problem? How do we stop this? Because, make no mistake, it is dangerous. It is dangerous.

Speaker 1: 20:47

All this work that so many of us have done to kind of like name, claim and shame the Toxic families that we came from, the bad relationships that almost broke us, that's all gonna be undone by those same abusers taking up all the oxygen and twisting the narrative. They are twisting the narrative, they are twisting minds and they are creating more victims, a fertile breeding ground for victims as we speak. So how does that stop? First and foremost and this is why I think it probably won't stop we all have to be real uncomfortable. We're all going to have to get uncomfortable. A you're going to have to get comfortable listening to uncomfortable truths, accepting uncomfortable truths about yourself and getting rid of shitty people on social media. It means not feeding into them, it means playing Beetlejuice. You stop saying their name, you stop giving them air, you de-platform them, which is what number two is.

Speaker 1: 21:48

We have to actively de-platform these people. Why are we giving abusers platforms to build brand deals, to be flown across the world, to be interviewed, to make money off of victims? Do you know how many clients I've had that have come to me saying, oh well, I gave all my money to this guy with NPD who was an asshole to me and I had to quit halfway through. They are thieves and abusers who are coercing and manipulating people and they're using these social media platforms to do it. No one who has an NPD diagnosis should be given a mainstream platform. They should be podcast guests at the very best. You get what I'm saying Sidecar attraction. They should not be the main event when they are abusers, when we have to question their motives and intentions and everything they do, just like any healed narcissist this quote-unquote healed narcissist would have to do. They know that If there's a narcissist listening to this who's been through the treatment, who's actually done the work, then they know that conscious and intentional 100% of the time where they will slip back into the pattern, 100% of the time.

Speaker 1: 23:02

Get rid of these people. Decenter them in your healing experiences, whether that's on TikTok, whether that's on Medium, whether that's on Instagram, wherever it is, de-platform these people. Last but not least, and I really think that this is the most important part, get offline and educate yourselves, please. It doesn't even have to be fully offline. Just get off social media. Stop getting your narcissism information in totality from a social media platform. The damn things are labeled as entertainment. These are not reliable platforms, even my content.

Speaker 1: 23:46

Everything I say to you, I say it 100%, assuming that you, like me, are going to get off here and go and get on Google and Google everything I've said. You should be reading things off of Google Scholar, google Scholar, google Scholar. Don't just read psychology today. Don't just read PsychCentral. Don't just listen to these douchebags on Narc Talk. Get offline, go and buy an abnormal psychology textbook. I'm dead serious. Go and buy college textbooks. They don't have to be the newest one. Go buy cheap used college textbooks that have been made in the last 10 to 15 years, because you can get a deal and you will learn a lot.

Speaker 1: 24:32

Go and download a talk from Dr Bramani. Go and download some talks from Gabor Mate. Get off TikTok, get off Instagram and actually read research and recalibrate what you think narcissism is, because it is so much more subtle than so many of you think it is. It's not all Donald Trumps, it's not all Mussolini's, it's not all these crazy kooky music celebrities who are getting themselves stung. It's not Chelsea Hart, it's not Womblands. Narcism can be so much more subtle than that, and some of you need a refresher with actual facts.

Speaker 1: 25:13

The last thing that I will say along the lines of this, with the education stuff, is this I'm telling you this because this is how serious you need to take narcissism. It's been turned into this colloquial little term, but it's not. You need to understand this. Go and look up dark triads. Go and look up the dark triad and then I want you to remember this All psychopaths are narcissists, but only some narcissists are psychopaths. That means that there is a portion of us who have interacted with narcissists who are also psychopaths, diagnosable psychopaths. The two can happen at the same time. There's an incredibly high co-morbidity between narcissism and psychopaths Narcissism and psychopathy.

Speaker 1: 26:17

So do your research. Know about all elements of these toxic personality spectrums, how they fluctuate and how they interact and commingle with one another, because you're seeing it happen in real time. You're being taken advantage of by narcissists and psychopaths in social media spaces in real time and that is way more powerful than you realize. All right, all right, all right, that is it. That's it. That's my lecture for this week. I know I've been lecturing you guys now for about 25, 26 minutes so sorry, that's the name of the game, but I hope you've taken that lesson home.

Speaker 1: 26:52

Be more conscious in your social media spaces. Stop platforming these people who are lying to you. Start following people and I'm not talking about me, right? There's amazing psychotherapists. I can't even remember the main one. I'm thinking of British woman. She's brilliant. There's so many different psychotherapists on TikTok, off TikTok, who are doing incredible work in these narcissistic spaces and who are really, really sharing real information, not manipulative half truths that are meant to suck you into something that you're going to have a hard time getting out of, okay. So I hope you've gotten that. I hope you're going to be more conscious and mindful, moving forward with the people that you platform, where you get your information and how you're doing your research. Okay, because that's how we're going to get better.

Speaker 1: 27:34

So, if you love the podcast, please go and leave a quick five star review on Apple podcast for me. It just helps me get found by the people who need to see it and it helps them get this information so that they can protect themselves. If you want to learn more about protecting yourselves from narcissism or you want to work with me, I do coaching. I've got a new program opening up at the end of August, start of September. It's all about cognitive reappraisal, right Accepting and changing instead of avoiding and denying. So if you want to be a part of that program, all you have to do is head to therealevjohnsoncom, click on working with me to apply. I only take six people at a time and most of the spots are gone, but if you're feeling lucky, go ahead and get in there and get your application in now For everyone else. Again, thank you for listening. I hope you grow from this and I hope we all get better. Until then, keep your heads up, keep your eyes on the stars and keep moving forward. See you next time, bye, bye.