We recently explored how JADEing can happen when people have unreasonable expectations in a relationship with a person with narcissistic traits. I mentioned you’re unlikely to see changed behavior in the person with narcissistic traits. Unless a person with narcissistic traits does some serious internal work, they will usually return to their old behaviors sooner rather than later. This especially true if the person chronically engages in significantly narcissistic behaviors.
So, if you’re in a relationship with someone with narcissistic traits, how can you know whether you should believe them when they say they’ll change, or tell you that they've changed?
As it happens, understanding first-order versus second-order change can help you with both weight management and narcissism recovery. Knowing the difference between them can help you decide whether your motivations for weight loss will help you lose weight and keep it off. It can also help you decide whether your person with narcissistic traits is making lasting change, or just saying what you want to hear. That's because first-order vs. second-order change explores the motivation for behavior change.
In first-order change, people change because they are seeking to satisfy someone else. The motivation for change is external (outside of the person doing the changing).
In weight management, examples of first-order change include wanting to lose 20 pounds before a child’s wedding or a class reunion, or wanting to lose weight to fit into a particular dress or pant size. Once you get to the goal, your motivation to continue with the behaviors that led to weight loss is likely to fade. If you go back to your old behaviors, you’re likely to regain the weight you lost, and you may gain a few extra pounds, too.
In narcissism recovery, first-order change is when a person with narcissistic traits says they will make behavior change, without acknowledging their narcissistic behavior. This usually happens when you tell them you will end the relationship if they don’t change.
Because the person with narcissistic traits isn’t acknowledging their own behavior, they never get to where they address their childhood trauma and its impact on their development and behavior. So, first-order change isn’t real or lasting. As soon as the person with narcissistic traits no longer feels the external need to change, they return to their previous behaviors.
In contrast, second-order change happens when a person has an internal motivation for change. You don't make change to make someone else happy -- you make change because you believe it's the right thing to do.
In weight management, this looks like wanting to lose weight for health and mobility, rather than social approval. When you are internally motivated to lose weight, you’ll naturally become interested in why you treat your body the way you do. You're motivated to make positive changes, like taking time to eat healthy, engaging in daily physical activity, turning off technology so you get enough sleep, and going to therapy to manage stress or make sense of childhood trauma. You want to be able to maintain the changes you make for a lifetime, so your motivation isn’t losing weight so you look good. Your motivation is enjoying a happy, healthy relationship with your body!
For a person with narcissistic traits, second-order change includes acknowledging that their behavior is hurtful to them and others. It means healing childhood hurts, developing healthy self-esteem and self-concept, and working on improving relationship skills—and in that general order. If a person with narcissistic traits tells you they can and will improve their relationship skills with you without making any other changes, it begs the question: Why haven’t they done so already?
There are plenty of people on social media who claim people with narcissistic traits “know what they’re doing” and deliberately engage in narcissistic behaviors. I’ll admit to being a humanist, but sheer common sense suggests to me that this is not the case. Why would someone deliberately engage in behaviors that lead to difficult relationships?
I prefer a common-sense approach, and one that’s backed up by what we know from brain research and child development. People with narcissistic traits learn in childhood to rely on what they can convince others to think about them, rather than relying on healthy self-esteem (that is, loving themselves unconditionally simply because they are) and self-concept. Some researchers consider narcissistic personality disorder a process addiction, like gambling or shopping, and consider people with the disorder to be addicted to getting esteem from others.
So, if narcissistic behaviors stem from low self-esteem and artificially inflated self-concept, second-order change means the person with narcissistic traits will need to address how they got to where they are. They'll need to heal the hurts of a childhood in which they didn't receive the kind of unconditional love they needed from the people who raised them. They'll need to forgive themselves for the things they've done to others. And they'll need skills that allow them to be in healthy relationships with others.
These are not easy tasks. In particular, healing childhood hurts takes time. If healing childhood hurts requires overcoming narcissistic traits, it usually requires professional help. If a person with narcissistic traits believes they can change overnight, or they don't need help to change, strongly consider whether you're looking at first-order or second-order change. If it's first-order change, it's unlikely the changes will be lasting.
Of course, the same is true when you’re considering your own motivation for change. Having some external motivation for behavior change isn't a bad thing unto itself, but if your only motivation for behavior change is external, it's hard to maintain change. I encourage you to explore both external and internal motivations for behavior change, and make your primary reason for change internally motivated.
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