Transcription
Hi everyone, it's Dr. Romani, and welcome back to this series, the sort of glossary of terms that are related to understanding narcissism and narcissistic relationships. This series was born out of an idea where many people weren't always fully understanding the terms that float around there on the various videos and blogs and articles about narcissism. But also, there are some terms out there that people may not be as familiar with, but can really shed a lot of understanding of narcissism and narcissistic relationships. So, it's my hope that the series will do both of those things.
Today, we're going to take on a term called cognitive dissonance. But before I get to that, as always, if you're new to this channel, please consider subscribing. Hit the button that says subscribe. And if you want notifications every time we put out new content, please go ahead and hit that bell, and you'll you'll be notified every time a new video comes out.
So, let's talk about this idea, a concept, if you took a psychology class, you might already know called cognitive dissonance. In the classical fable by Aesop, the Fox sees a luscious bunch of grapes hanging high up on a vine, and he wants to eat them. He tries everything he can to jump up high and get them, but he's not able to. He looks up at the grapes and reconciles himself to saying, "It's probably good that I wasn't able to jump up there and get those grapes because those grapes, they're probably sour. They probably wouldn't even taste good."
Now, what's interesting, if you think about it, you know the story. The Fox could not reconcile not getting the grapes, especially if they were good grapes, and he would then miss out. So, he has to tell himself they're not tasty so he can walk away from the grapes and feel less psychological distress. This parable is probably the most classical illustration of a concept in psychology called cognitive dissonance. This term was initially coined by social psychologist Leon Festinger, who defined it as being an inconsistency between beliefs, behavior, and information, and that inconsistency results in psychological tension. And so, we change one of those elements to make it a consistent and then reduce the tension.
All of us should actually really understand this topic in the polarized world that we live in these days. We're constantly hearing divisive news reports, and when we hear something that runs against our beliefs, how convenient. We can just go find another news source. But the bottom line is, when we don't have that option, it's always something has to give to reduce that psychological tension. Either we change our behavior, we change our belief, or we change a source of information, or the kind of information we read or see to reduce this sense of discomfort, this sense of inconsistency.
So, why does, why does this old-school psychological concept matter so much in narcissistic relationships? Because it's absolutely a core principle to understanding why people get stuck in narcissistic relationships and stay for many, many years. Think about it. You meet someone, they're attractive, they're kind of successful, they take you out to dinner, and they check all the boxes, and you're having fun. And over time, you have some similar interests, your friends and family may even like them. But you also notice as you get to know them that they're prone to rage, that they're pretty critical of you, and they kind of say nasty things to you. They doubt your reality, and they question your feelings. It's kind of really uncomfortable. Not only those negative things uncomfortable, what's even more uncomfortable is that tension because now that tension, those insults, and that conflict are in massive contrast to the good days you have and that life you started to envision together.
So, what the heck are you supposed to do? They keep on salting, insulting me, but we want the same kind of house. You find a way to justify their behavior. If you find a way to justify their rage, and their gaslighting, and their criticism, and their lying, if you can find a way to do that, then the pieces of the puzzle will fit quite nicely, and you will stop experiencing that tension. You might say things like, "He isn't really lying, it was just an honest miscommunication. He does have a lot going on, and maybe, maybe I heard it wrong. She isn't gaslighting me, she just wasn't thinking when she's focused. She's been running around, she's doing so many things at the same time. Yeah, he is, I mean, yeah, he has these rages from time to time, but, you know what, he had a really abusive father. I understand where it comes from now." It all fits. You have an explanation, and the psychological tension between all those things. Great on paper, new partner who behaves badly. Now you can reconcile it, and now you can stick around and not have to deal with other uncomfortable feelings like fear. Am I going to be alone? What am I doing? As you can see, cognitive dissonance clearly can explain why you justify so often in a narcissistic relationship.
Now, take a look at the family relationship. When you have a narcissistic family system, your parent is your parent. It's a mom, it could be a dad, and you want your family to be happy like other families you've seen who seem happy, or what you're told a family should be. But your narcissistic or toxic parent isn't so nice. They criticize you, they scapegoat you, invalidate you, they tell you that you don't measure up, they ignore you. It's not what you thought it was supposed to happen in a nice family. So, what do you do? Maybe you blame yourself. You know what? They're not nice to me. Maybe I'm really not good enough. Maybe you make up a story. "Our dad works so hard to take care of the family. Yeah, there's rage, and sure he yells at us, but he worked so hard." Maybe you demonize other family members. "Mom sure does ask a lot of Dad, so maybe that's why he gets so irritated and he gets so angry. He storms off like that. Maybe that's why he says those things." She's really tough on him.
Kids are particularly vulnerable to cognitive dissonance. They experience that tension, and in childhood, they generate those justifications. You can see how this can become a lifelong pattern. Now, cognitive dissonance is the mechanism whereby you can create such a pseudo reality in a narcissistic relationship. You sort of end up writing a false narrative that you hold on to so tight that you start to believe that that false narrative is real. You talk yourself into believing that you really are the happy family on the holiday card. You really do believe that, "Yeah, I came from a happy family, and we're a real close-knit group." You believe it. You believe the false narrative you created so you can knock down and ease that tension and stay in that family relationship. Because if you really took a hard look at the truth, why would you stay in this mess?
Now, a child doesn't have that luxury. A child can't leave his or her parents, so they are stuck. As a result, cognitive dissonance is all they've got. And once you get good at it in childhood, it really does become your normal. You become a master justifier. We are all, all of us, every human being, because of how our brains are wired, we are all vulnerable to cognitive dissonance. And clearly, this phenomenon is part of human nature. It's been around for a very long time, or Aesop would not have written about it or noticed it over 2,000 years ago. It's how we cope, and it's how we make sense of stuff and to not feel as bad. Just like the Fox.
The challenge is though, when it holds us in sticking into bad situations. The sour grapes story actually raises how cognitive dissonance plays out for narcissists themselves, because they are just as vulnerable as we are. Narcissists do not always get their way, and they are terrible at coping with disappointment. In fact, they are, I was actually saying, like a narcissist is like cognitive dissonance on steroids. At those times, you can observe this in the most pronounced manner when you're the one who decides to leave a narcissistic relationship or step away from any kind of narcissistic relationship. And this can be a romantic relationship, a marriage, family relationship, or a job.
If you decide to leave a narcissistic relationship, they will definitely sour grapes you, saying things like, "I am glad that B-word is gone. She is below me." And then proceed to launch a smear campaign anywhere they can, social media, your friends, your family, anywhere. Or, if it's your family, it's the family that says, "Good riddance. We're glad he's no longer talking to us. He is so snooty and thinks he's all that." When you, that can happen when you step away from the family because they're toxic. They'll say things like, "He's selfish and pompous, and we are so glad he is gone. We are so tired of him." And when you leave that toxic workplace, and many of us have experienced this, your difficult and narcissistic boss may take the stance of, "You guys, we're glad we got rid of that deadweight. Hoof man act, that was just a waste of time." Even though you were carrying more than the weight.
But the reason cognitive dissonance is so compelling in the narcissism realm is that it results in the dangerous pattern, the very problematic pattern of keeping you stuck in these narcissistic relationships. So, how does this happen? How do you get stuck? For two reasons we've already talked about: justification and rationalization. It's because you will end up doing things like rationalizing their bad behavior, or you actually really get pulled into that trauma bond and tell other people how wonderful this person is, even though they're narcissistic. Think about the times, think about the times in your own narcissistic relationship where you would expose the virtues of your narcissistic partner or narcissistic parents, almost as if you were, that you were probably your experience was, "If I can sell the world on them, then if you could sell the world on them, you can end the tension and the dissonance and manage that bad behavior." In the sense of like, "Husbands bathing badly," and it's for this reason, actually, some of you have known I've done this. For this reason, I advise people to make what I call their "ick list." It's a list of all the terrible things that your narcissist has done to you, right? Type it, put it in your phone, put it someplace safe, safe. Add to it. But somehow, seeing it in one place helps, even when you're trying to ease that cognitively dissonant tension. You're like, "Oh yeah, no, I can't make this look good. This is not good."
Now, anyone who has ever been in a relationship with a narcissistic partner who keeps cheating, and you go back, you understand the power of denial as a dynamic in maintaining a narcissistic relationship. You literally somehow conveniently forget that not only have they cheated on you before, but maybe even cheated on you with your best friend or someone from the office, etc., etc., etc. Denial is not just something that narcissists do. It's also a way that people are able to stay in these toxic relationships, and it reflects that sort of codependent dynamic, which we've spoken about in another episode in this series. This codependent dynamic that often creates the sticky, sticky glue that keeps people in these relationships.
Euphoric recall. Remember we talked about euphoric recall? Euphoric recall is often a byproduct of the cognitive dissonance dynamic. Euphoric recall is when you conveniently forget the bad times and then only remember the good times. Used, and then, or you might think, "We just went on a vacation, everything's good." No, that's denial spinning and turning into the cognitive. Now, then there's also, of course, the trap of falling for their backstory and allowing their backstory to be a justification for their behavior and of their emotional abuse. This is where you fall into the trap of, they tell you they had such a tough childhood, and their father was abusive, and maybe they grew up in terrible, terrible poverty. Or maybe it's even more current. They like, "My ex-husband or ex-wife is so terrible a person." Now, these are all terrible things. If when they're true, they're terrible things, and they should be received with compassion. However, to turn them into a justification for staying in a psychologically abusive and invalidating relationship is another example of cognitive dissonance. No matter what's happened to anyone, it is never, ever a rationalization for emotional or physical abuse of any kind.
Now, storytelling is another way that cognitive dissonance works. You tell yourself and you sell yourself the narrative that, "Look at us, we're a happy, beautiful family, and we have a happy, beautiful home, and we take happy, beautiful trips." Social media has really been a big platform to sell the story. "Look at how attractive this family is on the beach. Look how attractive we were on that night out." You tell yourself, "We're gonna grow old together, and don't we look so good together?" Or you tell yourself other things. "My mother's my best friend, 'cause we wouldn't want that." Or you tell yourself, "My adult son, he's my best friend." And you really tell the story, and you sell the story. Cognitive dissonance often manifests this way, the storytelling in narcissistic relationships. And I must say that as a therapist working with clients who engage in this kind of storytelling, "Look how great this is. Look at all wonderful it is." I need everything but a hammer and a to chip away at these really tightly held and rock-solid narratives that are almost delusional but feel impossible to permeate, even when reality is presented to the person who's making up these stories. It takes a while to chip away.
Now, cognitive dissonance definitely actually takes a toll on a person in a narcissistic relationship because the fact is, you are not delusional. So, even as you hear the story come out of your mouth about how great everything is, "Look at how happy are we are," or you make the justification, or you make the rationalization, you recognize how hollow it sounds. And over time, this can chip away at your sense of self-worth and self-respect. Narcissistic relationships are confusing by definition, and the cognitive dissonance makes them even more confusing. But we're happy, right? Like, "Look at us. I do look happy in this picture, don't I? My mom does love me, doesn't she? Right? She does love me." You literally find yourself caught up in these questions. You don't want the bad thing to be true.
Now, cognitive dissonance can also result in a twisted form of protection. You actually attempt to protect your false narrative and keep out all the information that's at odds with the story that you want to maintain so you can stay in this relationship. You turn to blunt, you'll turn a blind eye to the late-night texts, or you'll sort of try to ignore the way your parents differentially treat you and your siblings, or treat you versus other family members. You look away from the social media posts or behavior that are questionable by your partner. You pretend not to notice the late nights out that your partner may be spending, or you rationalize them away. And then you may blame yourself. It can't be your partner who is bad all the time. It can't just be your parent or family who is bad. It must be you. So, you do the things to try to set it straight. You may lose weight, or keep the house impeccably clean, or you get the straight A's or the scholarship, or you make more money. This may please your narcissist, Olli, at least you think it will. It'll please the narcissist, and then you believe they will stop behaving this way. There will be a hedge against the bad behavior from the narcissist. And then, if you don't do those things, you don't lose the weight, or the house is messy, or you don't do well in school or in your job, then you can blame yourself for the narcissist's bad behavior. "It's my fault. I gained weight. I don't earn enough money. I don't carry my weight around here. The house is a mess. I'm just not enough." That's another way cognitive dissonance works. Now you've got a bad guy, and it's you.
Cognitive dissonance actually is addressed quite handily with the usual tools we use when we're helping somebody deal with the fallout of narcissistic abuse. And it always, as always, comes down to the premise that the narcissist will not change. They don't. They're not going to change. So, no matter how much weight you lose, even if the refrigerator and the items in the refrigerator are alphabetized, or you get a Nobel Prize, or you win the lottery, none of it will change the narcissist's behavior because, you know what, they're just going to move the goalposts again. They really won't change, and they don't take responsibility for their behavior. So, cognitive dissonance results in you taking responsibility for their behavior. How fun.
But ultimately, the healing comes from validation. Now, where does that validation come from? It can be a therapist, and it often is. But it may also be a friend or someone close to you who sees it and who gets it. And that is a crucial step because even if you leave this relationship, you will be played by the confusion. So, the validation is important.
Cognitive dissonance, as Aesop and the sour grapes have taught us, is a universal phenomenon. We always create rationalizations of some kind when we experience that psychological tension, when things don't work out or are inconsistent, and that inconsistency feels very uncomfortable. Here's an example. We hate finding out that our childhood hero is actually a jerk, or that a prostitute, a mentor is a thief, or that we didn't get the job we so desperately wanted, or that somebody else got the last concert ticket. And so, just like the Fox, we do our sour grapes. And if it's benign, the concert ticket, for example, "It's such a nuisance to park at that arena anyhow." It becomes a way to overcome the disappointment so it doesn't sting so much.
Now, listen. In an ideal circumstance, we get to learn to be okay with this psychological tension. The fact is, it's okay to be sad about not getting to go to that concert. It's okay to be sad about not getting that dream job. Dream job, or to feel disappointed by your colleague. It's okay to be with and stick with that feeling, even if it's uncomfortable, and not feel so compelled to make an excuse. The bottom line, it's okay to call something out. It's okay for that Fox to have said, "Those grapes would have been so delicious. I am so bummed out that I can't partake. It's disappointing, and I'm a little bit sad." But when cognitive dissonance becomes a daily or an hourly way of softening and backpedaling on the invalidation and emotional abuse you experience in a narcissistic relationship, that's when it starts becoming a little bit more than just sour grapes.
Cognitive dissonance is a universal theme in narcissistic relationships, and once you understand it, you may be able to check it and stop yourself from writing an elaborate and damaging narrative that you are never able to crawl out of. Here is that, here's the bottom line. We've heard it before. I mean, in some ways, it never matters more than here, that the truth will set you free. In a narcissistic relationship, the truth does set you free. It's very uncomfortable because that truth can pull that tension of the cognitive dissonance even more and more and more taut. And let's face it, the acceptance of that truth may often mean this relationship can't work anymore, or I may not, I may have to distance myself from my parents, or me and my best friend, this isn't working out, this person I thought was my best friend, or I may need to leave this job. Yeah, the truth can set us free, but sometimes seeking out that freedom can be very uncomfortable and forces to face down fears. But cognitive dissonance teaches us that those complicated rationalizations we create to ease the tension, to be able to deal with that the fact that this person where we want it to be good is bad, everybody wants to be from a happy family, a lot of us aren't. To be able to bridge that gap, we may do things that really put us into prisons. And once again, remembering that the truth will set you free.
So, I do hope that this introduction to cognitive dissonance, a very, very long-standing concept in social psychology, helps you understand one of the main reasons people get stuck in narcissistic relationships. Thanks again for tuning in, and as always, please hit that subscribe button to subscribe to this channel, and notifications, the bell, to get the notifications anytime we put out a new video. Thanks again.