Wendy T. Behary

Wendy T. Behary Speaking Topics

• Navigating Narcissism in the Treatment Room (Therapists)

  Peeking into the complexities of the narcissistic client can arouse our curiosity. Treating them individually or in the context of couple’s work can arouse our sense of inadequacy and sheer frustration.

  Maintaining a firm and flexible posture, understanding our own personal triggers along with the narcissist’s makeup – helps us to bypass obstacles when dealing with them, promoting a sturdy stance for (empathically) holding the narcissist accountable. In so doing, we can sustain the necessary leverage for healing, and for meaningful, sustainable, change.

  But how can we summon up the courage, maintain an empathically attuned state of mind, and effectively engage these clients when they’re more likely to defend, deny, demean, devalue, attack, distract, and charm us rather than cooperate with us and comply with treatment?

  Exploring the critical content related to early life experience and unmet needs is essential to the formulation of a robust conceptualization and the implementation of treatment but can be a triggering endeavor for many therapists when facing the belligerence, self-righteous entitlement, denial, neurotic victimization, and arrogance, of a narcissistic client.

  Treating the narcissistic client – overt and covert – involves meeting early unmet needs such as, unconditional love and acceptance, empathy, and tolerance for frustration and limits. This comes with the challenge of confronting bullying, critical, passive-aggressive, detached, martyr-like, and approval-seeking modes.

  These clients sometimes default into hyper-sexual activity such as pornography, cyber-sexual relationships, prostitutes, affairs, or other erotic preoccupation. Intimacy is fractured and the refurbishing of trust is challenging due to the “betrayal trauma” of offended partners and the entitled stance of the narcissist. Healing is possible when leverage is high enough and partners are willing to engage in the treatment process individually and together.

  At the heart of schema therapy, we have an approach capable of weakening narcissistic coping modes, and internal demanding critic modes. Adaptive responses replace unhelpful ones as schemas heal. Using effective strategies grounded in emotional engagement and the therapy relationship, therapists are poised to correct the biased early emotional experiences typically linked with high demands for extraordinary performance, confusing messages of over-indulgence alongside inferiority and insecure attachments, devalued emotional experiences, and poor limit setting.

• Let’s Face It! The Art of Confrontation with Challenging Clients (Business/Industry/Leaders)

  Narcissism and Other High Conflict Interactions

  Why are we, as humans, so fraught with the fear of confrontation? Is it the sensation of our throats tightening, the sweating, the flushed face, or the nervous twitch that informs our turning away rather than toward? Indeed, the idea of confronting someone can often feel like choosing to walk into a burning building. It can seem like a sure path to disengagement. The instinct to avoid confrontation appears to be the most logical route. Of course, we also know that confrontation is a necessary part of healthy human interaction—especially when the need to address the narcissistic, angry, avoidant, resentful, critical, and self-sacrificing “other” becomes a necessary event if we wish to achieve effective outcomes for our colleagues, our team, and our clients.

  Wendy Behary will walk us through several challenging vignettes with hands-on, practical applications of how to override our instincts to surrender to the narcissist, avoid the aggressor, collude with the avoider, defend ourselves (when we’ve done nothing wrong).

  Effective strategies include the use of Empathic Confrontation / Limit• Setting / Self-Disclosure / Benefit of the Doubt / Transparent Intention / The Narrator Voice / and Preemptive Measures.

Hyper-Sexual Narcissism, Shame, and Betrayal Trauma (Therapists)

Exploring sexual patterns and experiences can be incredibly important to conceptualization and treatment, but also an uncomfortable endeavor for many therapists. Add to that… the belligerence, self-righteous entitlement, denial, and arrogance of a narcissistic client with a hyper-sexual detached self-stimulating mode.

Treating the narcissistic client involves helping them to get their early unmet needs met; including the need for unconditional love and acceptance, empathy, and tolerance for frustration and limits. This comes with the challenge of confronting bullying, critical, and approval-seeking modes.

These clients may also default to detached self-stimulating modes where they become involved in excessive sexual preoccupation such as use of pornography, cyber-sexual relationships, prostitutes, affairs, sadomasochism, or other types of eroticism. Intimacy suffers as a result of the betrayal trauma experienced by an offended partner. The refurbishing of trust is a challenging but achievable goal when leverage is high enough and partners are willing to engage in the treatment process individually and together.

Through the use of emotion-focused strategies and the therapy relationship, therapists are poised to correct early emotional experiences typically linked with high demands for extraordinary performance, confusing messages of special entitlement and over-indulgence adjacent to messages of inadequacy, and insecurity, devalued emotional experiences, and poor limit setting.

Participants will learn how to:

• Conceptualize the primary mode responsible for seeking hyper-sexual stimulation, i.e., understanding motivational drivers behind schemas that may become sexualized over time.

• Identify early unmet needs and schema links to fantasy—nothing is “weird” when we understand the story behind the story.

• • Confront compensatory and detached modes responsible for rigid rationalizations and defiant denial of the harmful impact on self and partners.

• Attend to therapist’s own schemas and mode activation – how to remain a sturdy, curious, and empathically attuned caregiver.
• Apply effective experiential (schema/mode) strategies designed to meet the primary unmet needs related to shame, failure, and unconditional love/acceptance.
• Address the needs of the betrayed partner and install the use of empathic narratives to gradually desensitize and heal betrayal trauma.

Overcoming the Obstacles with Difficult People (Business)

This 60-90 minute “Battle School” will illuminate strategies for dealing with some of the most difficult and challenging interpersonal encounters in the workplace and in everyday life, including issues related to: narcissism, anger, dismissiveness, criticalness, aggression, avoidance, incompetence, power struggles, and more… The program is designed to provide insight for identifying our personal “hot buttons”, managing our triggered reactions, and harnessing a sturdy and effective posture when faced with important, albeit tough, interactions and necessary confrontations. Participants will learn how to better anticipate and navigate conditions that trigger self-defeating coping styles such as fighting back, giving up, or giving in. This awareness helps in determining when and how to successfully engage, to set limits, and to utilize a highly effective interpersonal strategy known as empathic confrontation. Participants will be invited to share their own specific vignettes for practice.

Quieting, Converting, and Evacuating the Inner Critic (Therapists and Business)

Let’s be honest – we all have people in our lives who can be dismissive, devaluing, and downright critical of us. But there is another critic that also has the power to provoke pain and distress – the internal one, devaluing, demanding, and sometimes, punishing.

Sound familiar? Well, here’s the thing – we all have that inner voice – inaudible by others, but sometimes too loud and unrelenting in our own head. This can be manageable in small doses, but left unchecked this inner critic can be downright destructive.

There are inevitable and predictable challenges when endeavoring to transform self-defeating patterns into healthy and adaptive ones. While giving up the burdens of longstanding distress might be cause for relief and celebration, it is also a time of grief, doubt, self-blame, and, for some, toxic shame. Internal questions may emerge, "Why did it take me so long?"... "Am I just a coward, a perpetual victim?"

As we begin to make sense out of the early emotional narratives, including lifelong coping patterns and reactions, humans can become hijacked by the messages of the inner critic, with a profound focus on resentment toward self and others. We can become hostages to their regret and resentment triggers, to activated feelings of foolishness, weakness, and the familiar sensations linked with shameful exposure to their early fractured lives and maladaptive coping styles. We may struggle to move forward, not trusting our capacity to accurately scrutinize healthy-unhealthy choices and personal performance, especially in the interpersonal world.

Using empathy, imagery re-scripting, and somatic exercises, along with the installation of strategies such as, confrontation rehearsal, the self-discovery mission, the narrator voice, transparent intention, and mode mindfulness, we are able to effectively bypass inner critics – and the consequential toxic shame – and move through necessary grief towards sturdier self-acceptance, present moment awareness, and healthy engagement.