Everyday Narcissism

Yours, Mine, and Ours

By: Nancy Van Dyken

Narrated by: Valerie Gilbert

Length: 6 hrs and 45 mins

Publisher's summary

Narcissism is a belief that the world revolves around us, and that what happens in the world happens because of us. Most of us live with a form of narcissism so common and so deeply embedded that we don't even know we have it. This "everyday narcissism" (EN) comes from a combination of childhood wounds and powerful myths we were taught as children. Everyday Narcissism helps listeners understand how EN manifests in their own lives, and teaches them how to heal it. It also helps listeners learn to recognize EN in others and respond in healthy ways. This awareness provides a foundation for creating greater happiness, more fulfilling relationships, less reactivity, and more meaning.

• An essential purchase for anyone having difficulty in a relationship, with a partner, coworker, family member, or other loved one
• This is the first book for a general audience to specifically address everyday narcissism (EN)
• Features a foreword by Anne Katherine, best-selling author of Boundaries and Where to Draw the Line

Nancy Van Dyken is a licensed psychologist and licensed independent clinical social worker in Minneapolis. She specializes in counseling individuals, couples, parents, and teens with depression and anxiety, and has helped people heal relationships of all kinds for over 30 years. She has led workshops on codependency for HealthPartners, and has taught similar workshops in five cities for PESI Mental Health Continuing Education.

©2017 Nancy Van Dyken (P)2017 Central Recovery Press

This book will likely upset you, and that’s a good thing.

I’d say in my family, I’m at a 50% completion rate on my healing journey. This book is about the great majority of our lives, how we constantly devalue our own reality (what we want in life), victimize ourselves and put strain on our relationships. There’s plenty of actionable advice on combatting our own self-destructive tendencies. I felt uncomfortable with myself as things I was doing to deflect my responsibility to change how I operate in the world. If I listened to this book at the start of this journey, I would have denied that anything in it applied to me. I would rationalize that while some of the described topics sound familiar, like victim energy, it clearly applied to other people. I only recently realized that I had buried what I want in life so deep that I was looking for relationship (friends, dating) that would repress it even more. I don’t like the dynamics of my parent’s relationship, but realized that I’d been subconsciously searching out that same dynamic in my own relationships. The perverse nature of familiarity makes an unhealthy dynamic seem normal and healthy relationships (with honesty, communication and vulnerability) seem suspicious. Hiding my perceived faults is exhausting and the biggest waste of time. This book has been very enlightening, if ego-bruising at times (no one likes to think parts of themselves can be so typical as to be put on a list), and a great resource to grow. No one looks for a book like this out of random curiosity, and they definitely don’t read reviews on it. Something drew us to it. Listen to that something and give it an honest go.

Disappointing

Started off well - first half covers the definitions, how to recognise, etc. The second half purports to give concrete suggestion, but it does not deliver. One was "be open to letting people's bumper-stickers resonate". Absolute garbage.

Audible has some terrible narrators, but this is one of the worst. Barely tolerable if you speed it up to 1.05-1.10 Insists on doing terrible voices for the quotes, which is very distracting.