Navigating Narcissism with Courage and Empathy – Clinical Tools and Techniques

Narcissists are notoriously difficult clients. While often intelligent, charming, and self-confident, they also tend to be highly self-absorbed, arrogant, demanding, condescending, incapable of empathy, and possessed with a sense of entitlement. As therapists, the complexities of the narcissist can arouse our curiosity but treating them can arouse our sense of inadequacy.

While their exploitative and arrogant demeanor can leave you weary, irritated, intimidated and even defeated—all you really want is to feel competent, confident, and effective with making a difference in their lives; and even more so, in the lives of the narcissist’s family.

Watch best-selling author and narcissist expert, Wendy T. Behary, MSW, LCSW, as she guides you through highly effective techniques that will  transform your clinical practice!

Wendy’s innovative techniques will help you navigate and breakthrough narcissistic self-defeating patterns and achieve enduring change! Learn how to skilfully:

• Set healthy limits, bypass obstacles, hold the client accountable
• Confront avoidance, approval-seeking, entitlement, and aggression
• Connect with the vulnerable part of the narcissist
• Conquer the most challenging moments in sessions

That’s right, no more feeling frustrated with the lack of treatment progress. No more feeling intimidated and defeated. No more feelings of dread in the pit of your stomach when their name is on your schedule!

Enrol today, to learn how to transform your treatment approach to these challenging clients!

This course aims to equip you with the knowledge, tools, and strategies to deal with this challenging population and promote meaningful and sustainable change.

As therapists, we need to identify and stabilize our personal challenges, such as our own schemas, which can be a significant obstacle to treatment effectiveness. This course will help you develop a sturdy self in the chair to deal with the challenges of working with narcissistic clients effectively.

We will also teach you how to create customized dialogues that maintain leverage and enhance opportunities to access client vulnerability and emotion. Finally, we will show you how to facilitate treatment with offended partners, which involves the recovery and fortifying of a voice of advocacy, setting limits, cultivating leverage for accountability, identifying the impact of unacceptable behaviors, and enforcing reasonable consequences that act as motivational drivers for the narcissist to seek treatment.

This training will provide participants clinical knowledge and tools to:

a). Describe the Schema Therapy model and how to comprehensively conceptualize Narcissism and NPD in formulating treatment strategies.

b). Acquire the use of a highly effective strategy known as empathic confrontation to gain and maintain leverage and avoid power struggles, address entitlement and lack of reciprocity, access reasonable responsibility, and set limits with the narcissist.

c). Learn and observe how to apply specific strategies such as replacing self-defeating patterns and coping modes with healthy and adaptive modes via the moment-to-moment encounters in the therapy relationship.

d). Develop a sturdy self in the chair by identifying and stabilizing the therapist’s personal challenges—our own schemas—a major obstacle to treatment effectiveness.

e). Create customized dialogues that maintain leverage and enhance opportunities to access client vulnerability and emotion.

f). Learn how to facilitate treatment with offended partners; the recovery and fortifying of a voice of advocacy; setting limits, cultivating leverage for accountability; identifying the impact of unacceptable behaviors, and enforcing reasonable consequences that act as motivational drivers for the narcissist to seek treatment.

Wendy Behary, MSW, LCSW
With 25+ years of professional experience and advanced level certifications, Wendy Behary is the founder and director of The Cognitive Therapy Center of New Jersey and The Schema Therapy Institutes of NJ-NYC-DC. She has been treating clients, training professionals and supervising psychotherapists for more than 20 years. Wendy was on the faculty of the Cognitive Therapy Center and Schema Therapy Institute of New York (until the Institutes merged in 2012), where she trained and worked with Dr. Jeffrey Young since 1989. She is a founding fellow and consulting supervisor for The Academy of Cognitive Therapy (Aaron T. Beck’s Institute). Wendy served as the President of the Executive Board of the International Society of Schema Therapy (ISST) from 2010-2014 and served as the Training and Certification Coordinator for the ISST Executive Board from 2008-2010.

She is currently the chair of the Schema Therapy Development Programs Sub-Committee for the ISST. Wendy Behary has co-authored several chapters and articles on Schema Therapy and Cognitive Therapy. She is the author of an international bestselling book, “Disarming the Narcissist…” translated in 15 languages. The Third Edition was recently released. Wendy has a specialty in treating narcissists and the people who live with and deal with them. As an author and an expert on the subject of narcissism, she is a contributing chapter author of several chapters on schema therapy for narcissism for professional readers.

She lectures both nationally and internationally to professional and general audiences on schema therapy, narcissism, interpersonal relationships, anger, and dealing with difficult people. She receives consistent high praise for her clear and articulate teaching style and her ability to bring the therapy to life through dramatic demonstrations of client interactions in the treatment room. Her work industry business speaking engagements focus on interpersonal conflict resolution. Her private practice is primarily devoted to treating narcissists, partners/people dealing with them, and couples experiencing relationship problems.

This online training program will give you instant access to video content, accessible via streaming on our website, as well as downloadable PowerPoint slides and other supplemental materials. You can view the course content in your own time, there is no time limit on access.

The duration of this course is 6 learning hours.

Please click the “Mark Complete” button on each module as you progress through the course. A certificate of completion will be generated upon finishing the course and completing a multiple-choice evaluation quiz (39 questions). Please consult your professional organisation/association to confirm whether you are able to claim any CPD points/hours for this online training program.