224 – Narcissistic Personality Disorder

Life Scripts in Transactional Analysis – Not Being Defined by Your Work

In Episode 224 of the Counselling Tutor Podcast, your hosts Rory Lees-Oakes and Ken Kelly discuss this week’s three topics:

• In ‘Counselling Foundations’, we look at life scripts from transactional analysis.
• Then in ‘Focus on Self’, we’ll look at making sure you’re not defining yourself by the work you do.
• And lastly in ‘Practice Matters’, Rory speaks with Amy Launder about narcissistic personality disorder.

Life Scripts in Transactional Analysis [starts at 01:53 mins]

Quite a few theories support the idea of our current traits being influenced by our upbringing, an example of this being the idea of life scripts.

The main points of this discussion include:

• A life script is a ‘script’ we live out due to what we were told as children.
• Traits that have been reinforced through your upbringing.
• You may act in ways that help to fulfill the script.
• In stressful situations, you’re likely to retreat into your script.
• Try to recognise and rationalize your script.

Not Being Defined by Your Work [starts at 20:50 mins]

It’s important to identify as more than just your work, and in this section, Rory and Ken reflect on themselves as we think about this.

The key themes of this section are:

• If all you do is work, you’ll also only meet people in the same line of work – it’ll become you.
• Don’t be defined by work, be defined by who you are.
• Taught that counselling is a way of being, but you’re still a human being – see yourself holistically.
• Embrace all of you.
• What do you do that interests you outside of work?

Narcissistic Personality Disorder [starts at 33:32 mins]

In this week’s ‘Practice Matters’, Rory speaks with Amy Launder on Narcissistic Personality Disorder.

The key points of this discussion are:

• Narcissistic traits can include:
  • Thinking highly of themselves.
  • Viewing themselves as better than others.
  • Looking down on others.
• This can greatly affect the relationships they have with others as a result of this.
• They can make their partner feel unlovable, will want to ‘win’ a breakup.
• They can also aim to be in a relationship with someone they consider better than themselves, but will begin to feel threatened by this and attempt to break them down.
• There is a difference between just having narcissistic traits and having a narcissistic personality disorder – this will depend on how many of the traits they’re showing, how prolonged they are, and the effect this has on their relationships and daily life.
• Difficult to treat, as those with narcissistic personality disorder don’t believe anything is wrong with them.
• Not everyone with narcissistic traits is a bad person.

Links and Resources

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Basic Counselling Skills: A Student Guide

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Counselling Theory in Practice: A Student Guide

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Website

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