Feminist queen or conversational narcissist?
Are you chatty, or are you a conversational narcissist? This familiar crisis is made all the more complicated when you consider what race and gender has to do with it.
The first time the word “narcissist” made it onto my radar, I was in high school. A friend who I was very close to at the time told me, as casually as you would tell someone their hair looks nice or that their shoelaces are undone, that she thought I was a narcissist.
I was caught totally off guard by this and instantly crushed, given “narcissist” was a term I’d probably associate with an abuser or someone cruel. So, she rushed to tell me that she didn’t mean it in a bad way — more observationally.
She’d noticed I liked to talk about myself and my life, and I did so freely and with the assumption that people cared or were interested. Obviously that still stung, so in a bid to further explain her comment, she told me that she genuinely did not mean it as a negative trait because it made it easy to talk to me. In hindsight, I don’t think she was trying to call me a narcissist in the traditional sense, but was specifically calling me a “conversational narcissist” — which I’ll expand on later.
I thought about this brief interaction with my high school friend for a long time. I felt deeply ashamed about it. I began to second guess myself when I would feel chatty with friends because I was scared I was a selfish beast. Just as I was getting past this complex in university — a world full of new friends and possibilities!— someone snapped at me to “shut up” mid-story because “no one cares”. And so, back to the pit of self-loathing and despair, where I remained for some time because I had another similar interaction a year later with someone I loved very much.
As I got older, though, my perspective changed. I learned who I am and what my voice represents in this patriarchal, white supremacist world, and this made me defiant. Being talkative, or simply taking up space, stopped being something to be ashamed of. I refused to be small, and this felt like an act of resistance — yes, I will speak my mind as the only brown, Muslim, hijab-wearing woman in this room, and no, you cannot stop me.
I became a professional yapper by trade, and I learned to see the strengths in being someone who doesn’t shy away from being loud. It made me brave — a trait necessary to survive Australian media as a visibly Muslim woman — and my efforts were seen by others, who would find me on social media and tell me that my writing made them feel seen and heard, sometimes for the first time.
It’s with this uplifting community that I stopped caring if people (particularly white men) found me annoying — I probably am a bit annoying. So is everyone. Is it really my job to be palatable and easy-going all the time? And what does it mean to never be difficult in a world that relies on our complacence for its horrors?
Like a pendulum, I swung from completely hating myself to being myself more unapologetically than ever.
What I initially feared was a deep selfishness in me was actually what made me a good communicator — I’m a great story-teller, I can articulate my feelings well and with minimal hesitation, and I’m not afraid of conflict. I happily fill in awkward silences (which is probably why all my people are introverts), and my willingness to share vulnerable stories about myself on the first meeting puts new friends at ease. I get along great with strangers because I’m generous with my conversation, and I love to pick up strays — in fact, I befriended my now-husband because he attended a party alone and I talked his ear off. So hey, it found me love!
But still, sometimes that niggling, intrusive thought in my brain returns, and I wonder if by being chatty to the point of being a little self-centred, I am an irredeemable demon who no one can stand to be around. Obviously, the evidence points to the contrary — my friends are loving, I write and speak for a living, and, well, you’re here, aren’t you?
Or maybe I’ve just tricked everyone.
This all hit me like a truck this week when I was assigned a story on conversational narcissists. (Talk about targeted content.) It was my job to find out what actually constitutes conversational narcissism, and how to tell if you’re guilty of it — in the day and age of the ‘yapper’, are we all conversational narcissists?
Tiktok failed to load.Enable 3rd party cookies or use another browser
I spoke to Principal Psychologist at Enriching Lives Psychology Carly Dober for the story, and boy was our chat a revelation. (The best part about interviewing psychologists for articles is that you’re essentially microdosing free therapy.)
Dober defined a conversational narcissist as someone who centres the conversation on themselves, to the point of dominance. They neglect the back-and-forth pattern of a conversation in favour of a monologue or rant. Uh oh.
As we dived into the signs and symptoms of conversational narcissism (you can read my full article at Mamamia when it goes live), I became increasingly uncomfortable. I felt a little guilty, a little attacked, because much to my dismay, I was recognising some of these signs in myself.
Yes, I do loop the conversation back to what I want to talk about, even when it’s moved on. Yes, sometimes I do feel impatience and other negative emotions when someone else is talking. Yes, I often forget to ask my husband how his day is after spending an hour talking about mine (he is always very forgiving about it, bless him), and while I don’t mean to, I can often make myself the subject of a conversation — not out of a sense of importance, but because it’s just safer than putting anyone else on the spot. I’m happy to be the entertainer, so to speak. Well-intentioned or not, though, the proof was there: I harbour the traits of a conversational narcissist.
This presented a conundrum. For starters, if I am a narcissist, then how am I also so unsure of myself? Have I made up these insecurities to trick myself and everyone else into thinking I am normal? Am I so lost in my own performance that I have forgotten I am actually Bad? (In hindsight, there is nothing normal about such an insane thought lol girl chill.)
But on the other hand, what about the politics of it all? If a woman is in a room full of men and she insists on talking about a topic of her choosing, I would be proud of her. Is she a feminist queen, or is she a conversational narcissist? What about when you’re a brown woman like me, in a white supremacist world? When I insist on making conversations about race, that feels like justice, not narcissism.
I sneakily expressed some concerns about being a conversational narcissist to Dober (like I said, free therapy), and her generous insights were illuminating in more ways than one.
She told me that you can be a conversational narcissist without actually being a proper, pathological narcissist. In fact, “conversational narcissist” is not a real psychological term and is more like a pop psychology buzzword, meaning we should approach it with nuance and give people the benefit of the doubt.
According to Dober, people often have no idea they’re doing it, and it can be a result of other factors in their life — maybe they’re talking so much out of nervousness or insecurity, or maybe they were raised in a full and chaotic household where they had to compete for their moment at the soap box (hello, eldest of five kids). Maybe they have a condition like ADHD or autism that makes social cues and active listening a little harder. There’s a million things that can lead us to talking more than others are comfortable with, and the irritation caused by our behaviour depends on a lot — is the person we’re talking to also a talkative type, or are they happy to listen to you yap? Are you dominating the conversation because you need to assert your lived experience on a topic, or are you just enjoying the attention? These are the difference between being narcissistic and, well, having to say your piece despite it all.
Despite delivering me the devastating blow that I am perhaps more annoying than initially thought, my chat with Dober was healing — I understand, 10 years later, what my friend was trying to tell me about myself. I see where it’s all coming from. I forgive her. And I forgive myself, too.