How Can Horney’s Personality Theory Help You in Narcissism Recovery?

do you wish you had a crystal ball so you could predict narcissistic behavior? keep reading!

If you’re in a relationship with a person with narcissistic traits, have you ever wondered why they do the things they do? Do you find it hard to predict what they’ll do next? For me, a week doesn’t go by without at least one client feeling confused and frustrated over how unpredictable the behavior of their person with narcissistic traits seems to be.  

If you want to recover from narcissistic abuse, it’s important to understand narcissistic behavior. Understanding behavior doesn’t justify or rationalize it. But understanding behavior matters, because when you understand behavior, it’s easier to stay in your thinking brain about it. That makes it easier to stay calm, which benefits you tremendously when you’re dealing with someone with narcissistic traits. And while it’s important to be angry about the abuse you’ve experienced, it’s hazardous for your health to stay angry indefinitely.

Understanding behavior also allows you to better predict it, too. My clients often tell me they think I have a crystal ball, because while I don’t necessarily guess correctly which narcissistic behavior a person will use, I can generally predict when a person with narcissistic traits will act like an emotional 4-year-old. And because there are only so many narcissistic behaviors, my odds are pretty good at guessing which ones, too.

So, if you’re in relationship with someone with narcissistic traits, whether it’s a parent, partner, friend, supervisor, or someone else, it makes sense to learn a little about the personality type typical of people with narcissistic traits. That’ll make it easier for you to have your own crystal ball!

That said, it also makes sense to learn about your own personality type. Each type has its strengths and challenges. If you’re in a relationship with someone with narcissistic traits, there’s a good chance that they’re taking advantage of your challenges, and they aren’t helping you capitalize on your strengths. (If you were raised by a parent with narcissistic traits, this probably happened throughout your childhood!) Knowing more about your strengths and challenges allows you to change up that dynamic.

Describing personality is challenging, though, because people are complex—far too complex to address in a single blog post. So, we’ll kick off our personality exploration today by briefly discussing personality, and then the three basic personality types. We’ll also explore how you can begin to use what you learn today about your own personality. In upcoming posts, we’ll do a deep dive into how you can work with your own personality, and better understand people with narcissistic traits. There’s much to discuss, so let’s jump right in!

What Is Personality?

Personality is defined as the sum of the various traits each of us possess, which then form consistent patterns of behavior. Depending on how you define them, you could have hundreds of different traits. Those individual traits can then be evinced in countless different ways.

When you think about how those individual traits intersect with day-to-day events, built on top of the experiences you have throughout your lifetime, it’s impossible to pigeon-hole people perfectly as one personality type or another, or to perfectly predict behavior.

 And it’s important to keep in mind that even if you find a personality typing system you think is accurate and helpful, you don’t want to get bogged down into believing that “Because I’m a [fill in the blank here], that’s just how I am.” The human brain is neuroplastic, meaning you can make changes in how you think, feel, and act. There’s always the opportunity for learning and growth!

Because of the myriad complications in understanding personality, it’s no surprise there are many ways to explain personality. The Big 5, DISC, the Meyers-Briggs Personality Inventory (MBTI), the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory (MMPI), the Enneagram, the four humors, the color personality test, even horoscopes, are just a few of the (literally) thousands of ways of describing and explaining personality.

I prefer to use Dr. Karen Horney’s (pronounced hor-NIGH, not HOR-nee) personality theory, which she explored in her book Our Inner Conflicts. Research studies have shown her theory to be an effective way to assess personality (read more here, here, and here).

But I use her theory because you don’t have to take a test to figure out what primary style you are. When I ask clients to choose between three options, they rarely have difficulty identifying their primary personality style.

And I like Horney’s theory because she gets to the heart of what motivates behavior, rather than simply describing it. When we understand why people (including ourselves) do what we do, it’s easier to decide what to do in response.

Finally, because personality is at the heart of narcissistic behavior, understanding the personality type of people with narcissistic traits make it easier to understand and deal effectively with their behavior, too.

Updating Horney’s Personality Theory

As much as I appreciate Horney’s work, I’ve updated it in two ways. In her work as a psychologist, Horney wasn’t focused on personality per se in her work with clients. In the preface, Horney makes it clear Our Inner Conflicts was written for her fellow psychologists. In contrast, I want to help clients understand their personality, so they can better understand themselves and others.

When I talk with clients about their own personality using Horney’s theory, most clients relate to aspects of at least two, if not all three, of the types. In fact, Horney believed that ideally, everyone should be able to access aspects of all three types.

To account for this, I use what’s called a triadic method of personality typing, which means you have a primary type, a secondary type, and a tertiary (third) type. I’ll explain more about this in an upcoming post, but because of the triadic method, you can be all moving away, but you cannot be all moving against or all moving toward.

In fact, most people are a combination of moving toward, moving away, and moving against. Or, you may be a mix of two of the types. Many of my clients are a mix of moving toward and moving against. Some are like me, a mix of moving toward and moving away.

Using a triadic method allows for more of the full complexity of personality. As you read through the three types, you will probably relate most strongly to one type, but you'll probably see yourself in one or both of the other types.

(…on a side note, to further complicate matters, there are three variations within each of the three types! Although Horney wrote about these variations, she didn’t categorize them. We’ll explore the differences and similarities among the types in upcoming posts.)

For now, understanding the basics of Horney’s thinking will help you be a caring parent to yourself, and help you navigate your relationship with someone with narcissistic traits, too. So, let’s explore Horney’s personality theory by taking a look at one of the three types Horney identified, the moving toward.

I’m beginning with this type, because it’s the primary personality type of most of my clients who seek me out for narcissism recovery. If that’s what brings you to my blog, it’s likely the description you’ll find most resonant. But keep in mind you may resonate with two, or all three, of the types.

Describing the Moving Toward Personality Type

Horney found that moving toward types care more about how other people think and feel than about how they themselves think and feel. In addition, they like to like other people, and they want other people to like them.

A key element of the moving toward is the way they handle relationship conflict. If you’re a moving toward in your primary type, your focus is to “make it right” when someone’s upset with you. If you were raised by a person with narcissistic traits, you may be entirely unaware of how deeply ingrained your tendency to try to smooth things over really is.

Describing the Moving Away Personality Type

In contrast to the moving toward type, with their focus on relational closeness, moving away types keep themselves safe in relationships by creating emotional distance between themselves and others.

Of course, there’s nothing wrong with alone time or personal space. But in contrast to the moving toward, instead of focusing on making it right, they focus on detachment.

This can be accomplished by avoiding commitment, avoiding their feelings and focusing on their thoughts, physically leaving, or dissociating. If you’re a moving away type and you were raised by a parent with narcissistic traits, you probably underestimate your ability to ignore your own feelings, your ability to focus on your thoughts, your ability to dissociate—or all three.

Describing the Moving Against Personality Type

Horney described the moving against type as more focused on how they think and feel, and less concerned with how others think and feel. It’s important to note that this characteristic is essential for healthy narcissism—the ability to take care of yourself. If you don’t say no to others sometimes, your wants and needs go unmet.

However, if your tendency to care about yourself more than others is unbalanced, your behavior can become unreasonably self-centered—one of the six traits of narcissistic personality disorder. You may tend to think of people in terms of how they can help you, or see the world as dog-eat-dog, and focus on getting your share. When there’s conflict in a relationship, your focus is you, and that makes it hard to work out differences and be in a healthy, loving relationship with others.

Now that you’ve identified which type or types you most resonate with, let’s see how you can minimize the challenges your type presents in relationships. If you’d like to experiment with making changes, I suggest focusing on the type that most resonates with you. Then, you can move on to the next type that poses the most challenge.

Working with Your Moving Toward Personality Type

If you strongly identify with the moving toward type, or think you have moving toward tendencies, you find it challenging to say or do things you think others won’t like. You care more about how others think and feel than about how you think and feel. Because you want others to like you, you’ll tend to say or do what you think others will like. And because you want to like others, you’re likely to minimize or ignore red flags in others’ behavior.

In short, you tend to do things to make other people happy, even if it makes you unhappy.

Sometimes sacrifice is necessary in relationships, but when it’s one-sided, relationships end up unbalanced and unhealthy.

The antidote is the definition of elegant—simple to understand, but challenging to implement. It’s something we’ve talked about before, and something I mention often: Stay in your circle of control, and be aware of your circle of influence. When you fully accept that you sometimes influence how others think and feel (including how they think and feel about you!), and you cannot control how others think and feel, it’s far easier to focus on how you think and feel, and take responsibility for your wants and needs.

Working with Your Moving Away Personality Type

If you identified most strongly with the moving away type, you also find it challenging to say or do things you think others won’t like. As with the moving toward type, you’ll want to stay in your circle of control, and be aware of your circle of influence.

Moving away types may also need to improve their ability to identify and regulate their own feelings. If you think you might be a moving away type, or have moving away tendencies, try checking in with your feelings at least once a day using a feelings wheel like this one. When you’re able to identify your own feelings, you use that information to help you decide how to get your needs met. You can put that together with your circle of control to create balanced, healthy relationships, in which you’re seen and heard for who you are.

Working with Your Moving Against Personality Type

If you strongly identify with the moving against type, your challenge is engaging in empathy—that is, caring more about how others think and feel, while setting aside your own thoughts and feelings.

There are two kinds of empathy, and they literally happen in different parts of your brain. Cognitive empathy is the ability to think about how someone else might think or feel. It happens in the neocortex, where you process thoughts.

That’s in contrast to emotional empathy, which is the ability to care about how someone else might think or feel. Emotional empathy happens in the limbic brain, which is (not surprisingly) where we process emotions. Both types are important for healthy, happy relationships, although you may find that improving cognitive empathy is enough to significantly change your relationships with others.

While personality influences your native ability for empathy, empathy is also a skill—something we learn and hone throughout our lives. If the people who raised you weren’t good at empathy, and you’re a moving against in your primary personality type, you didn’t see empathy modeled for your, or experience it in your childhood.

So, if empathy is your challenge, you can improve through practice. When I work with people who have narcissistic traits, we practice asking these questions during conflict with others:

• What do I know about this person?

• What are they telling me right now?

• Based on what I know, how do I think they might be thinking and feeling?

• Can I appreciate how they might be thinking and feeling?

• If they’re feeling sad, can I connect with how that makes sense, given what I know about them?

Clearly, personality type is a huge topic, and as mentioned, we’ll be exploring Horney’s theory and each type in more detail in upcoming posts. If you’re curious about how to personalize what we’ve discussed today, I encourage you to seek out a therapist who can help you explore your own personality type and maximize your strengths, while minimizing your challenges. You deserve to thrive!

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