More on NPD and custody litigation: Dr K’s top 10 list of tips and tools

More on NPD and custody litigation: Dr K’s top 10 list of tips and tools

After more than 30 years as a consultant to family lawyers and their clients (and as a custody evaluator/expert and therapist), I have been involved with hundreds of cases where one of the parents is a narcissist (NPD-usually the dad). What follows is some lessons learned from coaching their former spouses during and after they divorce the NPD, and try to co-parent their kids with them.

1. Former spouses of NPDs are traumatized and need treatment even if they look like they’re fine.

NPDs inflict major but usually invisible and long-lasting wounds on their spouses. The damage to the self-esteem and self-confidence, not to mention the trust, of the spouse is remarkably deep and pervasive. What’s more, many of the spouses are so wounded that don’t realize how wounded they are. They may have lived an outwardly very affluent and seemlingly happy life but behind closed doors at home, their existence was a wasteland of criticism, cruelty, and loneliness which they daren’t not reveal to anyone. By the time of the divorce, they doubt their own perceptions and judgment, as they have been “gaslighted” into near insanity by the controlling  and lying NPD. Despite their physical attractiveness (NPDs never marry average looking women) and expensive and tasteful wardrobes (NPDs would never been seen in public with someone that’s not wearing designer clothes), they are emotionally exhausted and impoverished on the inside. They are are emotionally prepared to litigate against an NPD whose goal is not just to win but to destroy them personally.

2. Former spouses of NPDs are frequently incompently treated by counselors and therapists.

The internal dynamics of former spouses of NPDs is much like traumatized combat veterans. Having lost their trust in their own perceptions of reality, and having been brainwashed by alternating periods of worshipful devotion and unexpected cruelty and denigration, they are anxious, depressed, and distrusting, bordering on paranoid. They are also able to pay for therapy, and difficult to engage in meaningful dialogue; for poorly trained or unethical mental health professionals, these are long-term patients who keep coming but have the same unending complaints and symptoms. Some of these women have been therapy for years without signficant progress or relief, believing their lack of improvement is their fault (another legacy of a close relationship with an NPD).

3. Children of an NPD parent are at significant risk for damage to their emotional, cognitive, and relational development.

The NPDs lack of empathy and overwhelming self-absorbsion means children are treated both as “furniture” and also as “reflections of perfection” of the NPD. NPDs need unending and uninterrupted worship and devotion; hence parenting is extremely unsatisfying and bothersome for them. Rules for children are arbitrary, usually cruel and unreasonable, and change at the drop of a hat.

Because NPDs see the world in black/white/all good/all bad terms, failure by the children to be “perfect” (whatever that might be at a given moment) results in harsh criticism, personal attacks and belittling, public humiliation, and/or rage and physical abuse, usually followed by complete neglect and emotional abandonment. Nearly all of these kids underperform at school, act out in rebellious or defiant ways with authority figures, have poor peer relationships, and are at very high risk for anxiety and depression. The greater the exposure to the NPD parent, the greater the risk and harm for the child. 

Post divorce visitation with an NPD parent is almost always represents a significant increase in the risk of harm to the normal growth and development of the child, since mom has usually buffered the kids from as much of the chaos from the NPD as she could. NPD single parent dads are frequently incompetent and uncaring parents with limited parenting skills and absolutely no real interest in their children. 

4.  Consequently, co-parenting with an NPD is impossible; “parallel parent”.

NPD’s do NOT “play well with others”; never have, never will. What a NPD hears when the court order says “co-parent” is this: “great, I am still in charge. I can do what I want, and I can make her do what I want, just like old times”.  Any attempt by Parenting Facilitators to engage dad in shared parenting, mutual sharing, and communication will be fruitless because NPDs don’t want to parent; they want to punish their ex by harassing the kids and generating control issues and threatening to take the kids from mom in a custody fight,

So moms should make good decisions about the kids knowing that they are going to be criticized  by dad no matter what they do. Communications should be by text and limited to the details of the exchanges, or to respond to the infrequent and unreasonable requests about the kids. Remember this
is not a reasonable, rational, normal dad; don’t expect normal loving dad behavior.

5. Before you litigate a reduction in visitation (or a custody change), get a competent therapist who understands NPD and NPD traumatized spouses.

The US Constitution guarantees “due process” in any court proceeding and that means you are going to have to see your ex in public, and probably more than once, during your hearings, depositions, and trial. In order to be seen as a credible and truthful witness  in face of your former spouse, who is ana an accomplished liar and manipulator, you have to be calm, confident, and not intimidated by “the look”. That means you have to be far enough along in your recovery from NPD trauma to be cool and calm and focused in your testimony. Competent treatment will get you there in a year or so.

If your new therapist is not able to describe NPD in a way you recognize, and talk to you about the effects of that relationship on you (that matches your feelings and symptoms), then find another therapist. It would be best if they experience testifying, have treated other NPD victims, and understand the challenging task of getting judges and lawyers to understand the dangers of NPD to kids.

6. Hire a family lawyer who both understands NPD and is willing to aggressively pursue visitation for dad that is dramatically less than “standard visitation”.

Family lawyers are getting better informed about Narcissistic personality disorder (NPD), but even those who know what the diagnosis is don’t really understand the impact of an NDP parent on children. Before embarking on any change of custody litigation, have a lengthy interview of your lawyer and make sure they can not only explain NPD acccurately, but also articulate the dangers to your children, and explain the hurdles in the legal system to getting dad’s visitation (and therefore the risks of damage to your kids) reduced.

NPD is found in less than 1 or 2 people for every 100 people in the general population in the US. However, NPD is found in most of the high conflict family cases, which are about 1/3 of all divorces.  Your family lawyer must be willing to agressively pursue a non-standard visitation solution that is in the children’s best interest even though it does not fit into the “cookie cutter” mold for most visitation orders. If your lawyer is unwilling or unable to explain how that could work in your jurisdiction, then find another lawyer. NPDs respond to attacks and criticism by “doubling down” and increasing their threats and personal attacks through bigger lies, intimidation, and manipulation so the litigation will be long and costly and the case is unlikely to settle. You both have to be ready and willing to go to trial. If this lawyer is not comfortable in a trial, get a different lawyer.

7. In order to get the judge to order less than standard visitation for your ex to protect your children from an NPD dad, you will need compelling evidence of current and past harm to your kids and the testimony of a highly qualified expert to explain to the judge the current and future damage he’s doing to your children.

That means hiring a clinical or forensic psychologist (or maybe psychiatrist) who is willing to testify that NPDs inflict harm on both children (and spouses), and that no “dose” of exposure to an NPD parent is safe for children. This expert witness must clearly explain that greater exposure to this toxic parent means greater harm to children. Counselors rarely are trained to recognize NPDs; many of them naively assume that the NPDd will change or even can be coached or counseled to be more empathic parents (NPDs can’t and most won’t even try). There is NO known effective treatment for NPD.

8. Expect the fight to go to a trial.

As I explained earlier, NPDs response to criticism or disagreement, much less a public loss of “their time with MY children” does not lead to compromise or problem solving but to nasty, personal, emotional warfare.  You can expect to be intimidated, attacked, and accused of parental alienation. (Nearly half of all proven cases of parental alienation are non-custodial dads; a small fraction are mothers) .

In my experience, NPDs only give up the fight after they have been publicly humiliated in court as a chronic liar and emotionally/physically abusive parent (in a hearing or trial) or they have been “bought off” by getting something that assuages their egos and makes them look good in giving mom what she’s asked for in reduced (or even almost no visitation). Or in unusual cases, they are outgunned and out spent and run out of money, and they they fold.

It is hard for most judges, lawyers, and juries to grasp that a father really has absolutely no real interest in his children as people apart from what they can do for HIM. But a settlement offer of a sort that feeds the ego of the NPD dad (money, recognition, glory, admiration). NPDs can be bought but they are not cheap.

9. Because NPDs are so concerned about their public image, they are very vulnerable to having their family histories exposed. These family secrets can be leverage in negotiating a settlement right before trial.

NPDs create little NPD children, so most NPDs have one or both parents who are NPDs and siblings who have been damaged as a result. The NPD is likely the outwardly best functioning sibling, and the others are likely suffering from a variety of mental disorders including anxiety, depression, and substance abuse.  These family members represent an unacceptable narcissistic injury to their perception of their perfect selves and family, and are usually ignored or disavowed by the NPD. Careful discovery and thorough depositions can lead to useful leverage.

10. Don’t start this process if you can’t finish it. This process will be at least 2 years long and very costly. If you can’t afford the costs or are not emotionally equipped with person stamina and a good support system of friends and professionals who are NPD savvy, learn to live with the chaos and ongoing personal attacks.

On the other hand,  if litigation is not an option for you there is some good news. In my experience, when  left alone, NPDs eventually tire of parenting since there is nothing in it for them. NPD men do rapidly move on to the “next, younger, hotter model” and if they are not reminded of their children, most fade into the distance leaving their children not only emotionally but also physically fatherless.  Under the circumstances, perhaps the best of all the bad alternatives...

Why Narcissists are a Threat to Truth and Justice--And Not Just in Family Courts

The narcissistic paradox: Narcissists have the ability to inspire confidence in their grandiose assertions about themselves without a shred of evidence of their competence.

For those of us who must deal with narcissists (Narcissistic Personality Disorder or NPD) as a part of our personal or professional life, whether as clients, partners, spouses, employers or bosses, few relationships are more challenging and frustrating. Literally millions of dollars are spent each year on professional counseling by the hapless victims of these charming, successful, and intelligent but toxic people to try to figure out how to live with inevitable scars resulting from a relationship of any kind with a narcissist. 

The personal suffering of the millions of victims of NPDs has been well documented over the last 20 years or so by many talented and articulate writers. Both the DSM-V and Sam Vaknin (a self-admitted NPD himself) have clearly explained the characteristics of NPD, and I won't repeat that list here. Rather, I want to address the toxic and systemic impact of narcissism on the functioning of the courts, particularly the family court system, and the Courts' decisions about conservatorship of children.

As we all learned in law school, our system of justice is predicated on the principle that out of the conflict of two trained advocates zealously representing the differing interests of their clients before an objective trier of fact, the truth will rise like a Phoenix out of the fires of conflict. I contend that in too many family court cases where an NPD is a party, this fundamental assumption about how truth is uncovered and justice is administered is fatally flawed.

First, when a NPD divorces, their spouse is already at a significant disadvantage. Spouses of NPDs are inevitably grossly wounded by their relationship, and many are so wounded that they have symptoms similar to those of combat veterans and PTSD sufferers. Worse, the isolation that they have lived with as a normal feature of their marriage has prevented them from realizing that the criticism, threats, insults, and humiliations that they suffered in private were NOT their fault, and they are NOT worthless human beings. As a result, they are difficult clients to represent because they have such low expectations that anyone can help them, and have to learn to stand up for themselves again. 

This background of humiliation and intimidation makes meeting with a divorce attorney a surreal experience where they are asked about details of their married life they frequently know nothing about: money, property, investments, and other assets. Inquiries about the children are more comfortable, and these moms are frequently very engaged with their kids (sometimes overly so). As mom's attorney begins to prepare for negotiating the terms of temporary orders for visitation, conservatorship, and support, the spouse's unease grows as she realizes that the odds of an agreement without a fight are very low. Furthermore, she knows how persuasive her NPD husband can be and how fearful she is of facing him in court.

Second, increasingly crowded family court dockets mean that time allocated for temporary hearings is declining. This trend favors NPDs, who can make damaging and completely specious allegations about their wounded spouse in their hearing testimony with no fear of being successfully challenged by their spouse's attorney with contravening facts.  
Two more core characteristics of the NPD style only make the challenge of finding facts in a short hearing even more difficult. NPDs respond to challenges of their outrageous fictions in two predictable ways: first, they "double-down" on the allegations and make even more grandiose and fictitious claims about their own character, accomplishments, and parenting ability; second, they increase their personal attacks on their spouse, again with no regard to the actual facts or the effects of those attacks on the mother of their children.

One ironic NPD characteristic is actually helpful to the insightful attorney representing the spouse of a NPD. One of the primary ways that NPDs cope and protect their grandiose views of themselves as "all good" or perfect, is to blame their opponents for actions they themselves are doing. For example, in a recent case, an NPD dad accused his ex-wife of substance abuse, but when the court ordered drug tests, the results showed that HE was using cocaine and pot, while his ex had nothing but prescription drugs ordered by her doctor in therapeutic doses in her blood. [Multiple instances of this pattern are currently in evidence in the race for president of the US]. 

Bottom line: If you want to know what an NPD has done or is doing that they know to be wrong or "bad", listen to what they are accusing their opponent of doing!

The problem for family courts who do their best to find the truth and administer justice for children and families is this: While our legal process is the best in the world for catching witnesses in a lie, that process takes time in court for painstaking fact-checking in cross examination and the requisite pre-trial preparation to work. In a world where Twitter's 140 character limit now sets the standard for meaningful communication, NPDs have substantial advantage, and the same goes in Courts who only have time for a 45 minute hearing to make a decision. 

The abbreviated hearing system is tilted toward the charm, confidence, and baseless but alarming allegations of the NPD litigant whose lies are unlikely to be successfully challenged in 20 minutes. As I teach my coaching clients, confidence is a large component of how people (and Courts) evaluate witness credibility, and NPDs have the charm, intelligence, cunning, and confidence to be very credible sounding witnesses while they spout an ever changing string of outright lies.

The system is likewise tilted against the shell-shocked spouse of the NPD who knows the allegations are completely false but largely because of her toxic relationship with the NPD appears anxious, confused, uncertain, and is unable to defend herself agains the lies and be an effective witness for herself and her children. And she knows that after the hearing is over, regardless of the outcome or what the Court orders, the NPD is going to do exactly what he wants to do anyway because that is what he has always done.

Advanced Practice Tips and Tools for Attorneys Representing the Spouse of NPDs:

1. If your client looks unusually anxious, depressed, hopeless despite being married to a highly successful, professional, executive, or especially political, man suspect NPD in the man and get the wife to confirm the list (Google narcissistic personality to find everything you need).

2. Suspect hidden assets and extramarital relationships as well as substance abuse from the outset. NPDs will do or say anything to get what they want or think they deserve.

3. Remember, whatever the NPD is telling his attorney about your client is mostly self-serving lies, and the opposing attorney is most likely "under the spell" of the charming and persuasive NPD. Remember the old joke "Q: How can you tell when X is lying? A: His lips are moving" was written about NPDs.

4. Take the time to prepare your client to testify in the hearing by first, getting a good marital history that you also need to prepare for cross examination of the NPD spouse, and second, by coaching and practicing her direct testimony and the expected cross examination. (Some witnesses freeze when they hear the enormous lies and incomprehensible allegations about themselves for the first time in court; they just can't process it fast enough)

5. NPDs only back down when they are humiliated in public, in my experience. Their grandiose and perfect self image is the most important thing in life to them; if that's damaged or in danger, they lose interest in litigating and are more likely to be amenable to settlement.

Research update: What happens when you challenge a narcissist?

“Narcissus does not fall in love with his reflection because it is beautiful, but because it is his. ” WH Auden

As the dangers of narcissism (NPD) in the workplace (and the courtroom) become more obvious, the research into its manifestations becomes both more interesting and more useful. A recent study examined the behavior of normal and narcissistic job applicants in their initial interviews. Narcissists scored much higher in their initial interviews, primarily because their tendency to self-promote, their ability to engage the interviewers, and  to speak at length (about themselves, of course) conveyed confidence and expertise. At first glance, this style is quite successful, as these folks are really good at self promotion. None of this is news. What is news is what happened when the interviewers challenged the self promotional "puffing".

When challenged, the normal applicants tended to back down from their exaggerated claims of expertise. Not the narcissists. Rather than back down, the narcissists "doubled down"; they increased their efforts to look better! The narcissistic response to being challenged was "Oh yea, you want to challenge me? I am not just good, I am great!" My take on  this "unexpected" response is this: Any challenge to the expertise, knowledge, success, power, or brilliance of a NPD is perceived as a narcissistic insult, and must be defeated by a display of GREATER expertise, knowledge, success, power or brilliance. The response is to being "questioned" is both automatic and predictable.  NPDs protect their image at all costs. They have to.

In the context of family law litigation, this response to being challenged is evident every day in hearings and depositions. NPDs, who are usually but not always men, dramatically exaggerate their parenting skills, their career successes, their financial acumen, and their legal "expertise" in their self-serving testimony. When challenged by opposing counsel, they don't make admissions; they make even greater self-serving exaggerations. The reactions of their long-suffering spouses to these courtroom fabrications is equally predictable: they fear that once again everyone will be taken in by the NPDs gift of believable but factually distorted self promotion and that the case will be over before the lies can be uncovered.

The practice tip for family law attorneys is this: whether the NPD is your client or the other party, pay close attention when their self-promoting pitch is being challenged--if the response is "Oh yea, let me tell another story about how wonderful I am", an NPD is loose in your case, and truth will be hard to come by. Be very skeptical of ALL their testimony or you will get burned. Nothing is more important to an NPD than their image. Nothing.

Reference: University of Nebraska-Lincoln (2012, April 2). How do I love me? Let me count the ways, and also ace that interview. ScienceDaily. Retrieved April 9, 2012, from http://www.sciencedaily.com­/releases/2012/04/120402144738.htm

Narcissism Research Update: new fMRI research can distinguish narcissism from normal

Narcissism is over-represented among people involved in divorces, and in my experience with hundreds of litigated divorce cases, narcissists are involved in a high percentage of litigated divorces. New research has further refined both the public persona and the unique brain characteristics of narcissistic people (NPD).

First, the public persona. Researchers compared narcissists identified by their personality test scores and compared their Facebook pages with more normal people. The results were just what one would expect. Narcissistic people had a greater number of "friends' than those who were not, a confirmation of the NPD tendency to have more but shallower relationships. Their profile photos tended to be more stylized and "glamour shot"-like than less narcissistic people. Finally, their posts tended to be more self-promoting. For more information look here: http://www.science20.com/news_articles/narcissists_can_be_identified_their_facebook_accounts_psychologists-32720

This research is consistent with some other research which compared annual company reports  and other company PR of narcissistic CEOs with those of companies run by normal people. As expected, the text of reports of narcissistic CEOs had more references to "I" and fewer to "we", had larger photos of the CEO on covers and press releases, and were generally more self-promoting than company promoting. There are a notable gap in salary between the CEO and the second in command in these companies as well, unlike companies without narcissistic CEOs.

Both of these findings provide tools for divorce attorneys to do some free discovery on clients or spouses in these public records and get a "heads up" about the personality functioning of these people without a mental health professional evaluation or records (most narcissists NEVER see a shrink, so records are rare).

Now for the look inside the brain of a narcissist. Research investigating the function of the medial prefrontal cortex (MPC) in maintaining self-perception compared normal and narcissistic people on their ability to identify faces after a brief shock. The shock had scrambled the MPC for a fraction of a second and the participants were shown pictures of themselves, friends, and known strangers during the interval when their MPCs were scrambled. Normal people could identify friends and strangers but NOT themselves, confirming the function of the MPC in self recognition. However, even when the MPC was "off-line", narcissists could still identify their own photos. The researchers concluded that narcissists have larger portions of their brains devoted to "ME" (wonderful, glorious, fabulous me, I might add) than do normal people. This research may be another step toward developing an reliable imaging (fMRI) diagnostic tool for identifying NPD. It may also identify the neural underpinnings of this very destructive personality disorder.

For more information about this research and other fMRI research on narcissism, look here: http://www.science20.com/brain_trust_diy_science_today039s_top_minds/definitive_fmri_test_narcissism-87875

NPD is an aggravating factor in a large percentage of very malignant divorces, so better diagnosis, especially of the non-psychological test variety, will be increasingly helpful in future child custody evaluations.