Compassionate Narcissist
“Hearts understand in ways our minds cannot.” – Lois Wilson
Introduction
As healers of addictions, we have had enough clients referred to us with narcissistic traits. This narcissist process is because people who have been addicted have been told and sold that is what addiction is. “You only think of yourself!” type of statements. So, we do not discriminate with gender because both women and men have these traits built in, but what we see is that narcissism has become a buzzword for some time now and that it is used against people who are in situations that would require that they rise to the occasion with a take no prisoners-type of mentality. This looks different when there is a relationship that matters to both people. To summarize, narcissism is mostly presenting in substance use disorders because the observer sees drug use and addiction behaviors as selfish. Our work shows the opposite is also possible (O’Brien, 2023a). This living paradox is often what is revealed in life and investigation.
Our doctoral work highlighted the different perspective of the ones doing the labeling versus that of those who are experiencing the “disease” of addiction are saying. This is where we see an implicit bias that is not holding up to our qualitative analysis (O’Brien, 2024c). Who the observer is and who they are not becomes important when ascribing meaning to the words chosen or identified implicit biases (HERE), as if that was so important (HERE). Narcissism is no different because people are missing the experience of it, which is survival mode. However, we would agree that a person who is addicted to their outcomes is going to come off as narcissistic, to the outside observer whose frame of reference is influenced by their role, job, position, or relationship. This is not a bad personality trait because it is a part of the self and not the totality of the person, but societally this is where we see the most interpersonal conflicts arise and developmental and attachment traumas get stuck, become impacted, and eventually atrophied.
Orientation
While the seeds of narcissism may be strong in our modern day world, with anger (HERE), resentment, and hurt, let’s not confuse narcissism with addiction traits and what addiction really is (O’Brien, 2023a). Also, let’s not confuse personality disorders with addiction. Also, let’s not confuse pathology with humanity.
Someone who is living dissociated is living their experience being in survival mode and cannot make the most informed decisions that are societally sanctioned or reinforced through parenting styles and conditioning. Being on survival mode and knowing it is dual awareness. For evolutionary and instinctual reasons, this autopilot knows where it is going and why. This comes from a different source of intelligence and is what we find clinically over and over again (O’Brien, 2024c: HERE). But we live in a world that is unaware of the terms used (O’Brien, 2023a) where people police the social landscape like they know what they are talking about (e.g., addiction).
Narcissism is another great example of this labeling issue (HERE), but yet again, we find that people are calling others for what they are themselves. This is the same thing that self-help found with Al-anon, in a relatively free solution (suggested dollar donation), that you cannot not have one with the other (O’Brien, 2023a (concept of Mutual Arising)). Yet, don’t people use it? Here is our 90-in-90 challenge: HERE. Let’s see who takes us up on the challenge and what they find.
Compassionate narcissism is a term now being used to describe caregivers who are performing this role in an addictive way; it has become a major issue for society. Women mostly have the role of caregiver and their psychological role is different from men in societal needs, but their experience is still human. If the flip-side of addiction is enabling, then what is recovery enabling when it does not speak up against systematic versions of the same condition (HERE; HERE; HERE)? We will have to see if the readers can figure out which side of the line and history they are on (HERE).
Reorientation
While leading a substance use group years ago, we asked about the definition of addiction and its diagnostics. One participant stated that they thought that the definition and diagnosis of addiction was a personality disorder because that is what they have always heard. They thought they have an “addictive personality” as a result and that meant that they have a disorder if they cannot stop their addiction. We highlighted that there was a personality disorder that could fit: Dependent Personality Disorder.
Under what conditions must this type of personality develop? As mothers are usually the ones to blame for the children’s shortcomings, the emotional logic used to hold women accountable is what is narcissistic; hence their response is as well. For example, parenting styles are societally and culturally sanctioned when parenting in public because what one does and what one says are based on their beliefs. These are influenced by societal norms and cultural stories of unresolved traumas (e.g., missing kid’s pictures on milk cartons or drugs are dangerous). If society is using words that do not align with their meaning or promote fear in the name of love, then the professionals who are using them should also be held accountable to the impact on society and the parent’s lack of choices (HERE) as a result of client’s legal choices and freedoms are impacted or removed. What we have come to know and see occurring is that professionals are using illegal psychology to support theirs and society’s need to have things run smoothly (HERE). Despite having less scientific rigor (HERE; HERE) and/or lack of philosophical foundations (O’Brien, 2024c; HERE) and moral development (HERE; HERE), psychology stands to also be the correction that members of society needs to heal together.
Data
Please watch this video on where we learned of the term compassionate narcissism (HERE). We are using our findings of altruism addiction to basically say the same thing, but until psychology can industrialize and institutionalize our operationalized the definition of addiction that we have provide, we fear that the field of psychology will remain living dissociated without not knowing it (O’Brien, 2023a; O’Brien, 2023c; O’Brien, 2024a; O’Brien, 2024e).
Discussion
All narcissism is produced and is a byproduct of stress and trauma-induced dissociation, which then causes people to live dissociated (O’Brien, 2023a) or living on “survival mode”. Like children, people get these labels because their inner children are regressing unconsciously in a moment of stress where there is confusion and a personality switch happens. Switching is supposed to happen when going from drive to reverse in a car or going from the sympathetic nervous system to the parasympathetic nervous system when activated by the environment. However, what is activated? Memories or the body? Is there a difference? If the physical body is the psychological unconscious, then no there really isn’t one (HERE); but what if psychological professionals could directly talk with the unconscious (and get a response!), a clients could follow their own innate wisdom, and psychology was not the “all knowing” being that clients either believe of reject.
If they were to obtain unconscious informed consent (O’Brien, 2023a; O’Brien, 2023c), psychology professionals would be off the hook for legal responsibility for their clients’ choices and behaviors. But as Freud observed, “people do not really want freedom, because freedom involves responsibility, and most people are frighted of responsibility.” With our claim that we can obtain unconscious informed consent from the unconscious body and mind, we would have different terms for the ones we use and are legally beholden to. In turn, our clients use different language (HERE; HERE; HERE; HERE; HERE) and if addiction is not defined by the profession that is supposed to define it, then who should?
Our observation is that more often than not, caregivers are societally forced to confront the brutal realities of the outside world (e.g., the War in Vietnam in the living room or sex appeal in commercials) and all of the adult themes polluting children’s minds unconsciously without much choice. Having to deal with situations that are way beyond their control would lead to a part of self to rise to the opportunity when the kids playing war and they hurt someone else. This is the memory that gets activated in moms when their child, now 18, says they are going to war and she can only ask for what?
Freedom of choice, common decency, and independence are the only things that people have required of their government thus far in human history. Now with a dependency issue, we have to look to what works and led with practice based evidence. Freedom and, as Freud pointed out we do not want because we are dependent on not having it (e.g., in exchange for a life of comfort), and are addicted to the things that distract us from the reality of death (e.g., addictions) or that are creating it (e.g., comforts of the body). The healer artist is who knows the difference enough to be able to explain them (O’Brien, 2024c).
All creation, process, and art are a manifestation of death and the dying process. Artists and healers alike believe is time to require more balance in the professional atmosphere of gender bias, professional slavery, generational profiteering, and intergenerational abuse occurring because it is not fair. This is what the compassionate narcissist sees and knows that people are dissociated from their truths because they are stressed; therefore, they are living dissociated. In the absence of feminine logic, compassionate narcissism is what is socially raising children.
Conclusion
Where science and the law should be is that if science says that the human brain is not fully developed until the age of 25, then requiring legally binding decisions or student loans are not in their best interest. Living dissociated starts when dissociation becomes addicting. This also marks the line between abuse and parenting styles. Abuse starts as an end to the means, but the question becomes whose children are the ones doing the abusing? Inner-children or outer-children? Who is supposed to be driving our lives? Who is the wisest in the bunch?
In a moment of stress and dissociation, no one parents as they would want to and no one becomes who they want to be remembered as if modern society is selling false narratives as their products. What happens is that people get labels, which they may have well earned, but under the conditions of an addicted society and dissociative stress, narcissistic is what the next generations will label us as. Compassion is the solution that we need now, but for how the dead died, as well as the living.
Implications
Feminine psychology has a more thorough understanding of the nature of addiction in relational bonds and attachment styles (O’Brien, 2023a). Feminine psychology is better understood by men and women when both are allowed to be involved. So, both should be involved in policymaking for healthcare and medical freedom, and the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) should be passed (predated Biden…). The ERA is about freedom of choice for all, but it protects children from the professional compassionate narcissistic professions that still do not know the meaning of the words they use because they have conveniently not bothered to operationally define them (O’Brien, 2023a).
Future Directions
The relationship between dissociation and trauma has not been fully captured and psychology as a profession has failed to develop moral maturity (O’Brien, 2024b) because of professional dependence on not (HERE), greed (HERE), and lack of awareness (HERE). Greed is no longer good; it is the disease of the disease, which has now become the living cure (O’Brien, 2025). Until everyone wants, needs, and desires more less, then less of more is what we will get. These truths are why Abigail Adams wrote to her husband John, “don’t forget about the women.” His response is why the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) has not passed, psychedelics are still illegal, and the government illegally shutdown society.
What appears to be the same logic that daylight savings was a good idea at the time, what reason can they give now to those who died needlessly because some professions did not understand how the unconscious works or that they psyche is the body (O’Brien, 2024c; HERE). How about all of those families’ lives destroyed because their loved ones were wrongfully imprisoned for a healing psychedelics like weed or mushrooms and a “war on drugs”? With mothers against drunk driving, we do not see any of them for it. Our aim is to help mothers not have to become narcissistic by helping them resolve their trauma and dissociation from the addictive reality that is innately and codependently bred into relationships. But what compassion and narcissism have in common is the need for more more, just like every other addict who desires more more.
References
O’Brien, A. (2023a). Addiction as Trauma-Related Dissociation: A Phenomenological Investigation of the Addictive State. International University of Graduate Studies. (Dissertation). Retrieved at woundedhealersinstitute.org/courses/addiction-as-dissociation-model-course/
O’Brien, A. (2023b). Memory Reconsolidation in Psychedelics Therapy. In Path of the Wounded Healer: A Dissociative-Focused Phase Model for Normative and Pathological States of Consciousness: Training Manual and Guide. Albany, NY: Wounded Healers Institute. Retrieved at woundedhealersinstitute.org/courses/addiction-as-dissociation-model-course/
O’Brien, A. (2023c). Path of the Wounded Healer: A Dissociative-Focused Phase Model for Normative and Pathological States of Consciousness: Training Manual and Guide. Albany, NY: Wounded Healers Institute. Retrieved at woundedhealersinstitute.org/
O’Brien, A. (2024a). Healer and Healing: The re-education of the healer and healing professions as an advocation. Re-educational and Training Manual and Guide. Albany, NY: Wounded Healers Institute. Retrieved at woundedhealersinstitute.org/
O’Brien, A. (2024b). Diagnostic Privilege: Meta-Critical Analysis. In Healer and Healing: The re-education of the healer and the healing profession as an advocation. Re-educational and Training Manual and Guide. Appendix 2. Albany, NY: Wounded Healers Institute. Retrieved at woundedhealersinstitute.org/courses/addiction-as-dissociation-model-course/
O’Brien, A. (2024c). Meta-Critical Analysis: The “Science” of Pseudoscience. In Healer and Healing: The re-education of the healer and the healing profession as an advocation. Re-educational and Training Manual and Guide. Appendix 3. Albany, NY: Wounded Healers Institute. Retrieved at woundedhealersinstitute.org/courses/addiction-as-dissociation-model-course/
O’Brien, A. (2024d). Moral-Ethics. In Healer and Healing: The re-education of the healer andhealing professions as an advocation. Re-educational and Training Manual and Guide. Chapter 14. Albany, NY: Wounded Healers Institute. Retrieved at woundedhealersinstitute.org/
O’Brien, A. (2024e). Path of the Wounded Healers for Thrivers: Perfectionism, Altruism, and Ambition Addictions; Re-education and training manual for Abusers, Activists, Batterers, Bullies, Enablers, Killers, Narcissists, Offenders, Parents, Perpetrators, and Warriors. Re-Education and Training Manual and Guide. Albany, NY: Wounded Healers Institute. Retrieved at woundedhealersinstitute.org/
O’Brien, A. (2025). American Made Addiction Recovery: A Healer’s Journey Through Professional Recovery. Albany, NY: Wounded Healers Institute. Retrieved at woundedhealersinstitute.org/
