Clarksville, TN – Chelsey Brooke Cole knew from an early age that she wanted to help people by becoming a therapist. She started college at the age of 16, and by the age of 22, she had earned Bachelor’s degrees in Psychology and Sociology, as well as a Master’s degree in Education with a specialty in counseling.
Cole is now a licensed psychotherapist and certified partner trauma therapist specializing in narcissistic abuse and relational trauma. She recently wrote a book inspired by her personal and professional experiences – If Only I’d Known: How to Outsmart Narcissists, Set Guilt-Free Boundaries, and Create Unshakable Self-Worth.
“You can only deal with narcissists so long before you have to figure out what is going on,” Cole Said. “My journey, that brought me to specializing in narcissistic abuse is really one that unfolded over my whole life, because I had dealt with narcissists in many ways, but didn’t realize it until much later.
“As a kid I knew I wanted to help people. I was always interested in understanding why people do what they do. I have always been drawn to relationships and helping people work through relationship struggles.
As I kept working with people, and also in my own relationship, I started to notice these patterns. People were constantly trying to make their relationships better, yet never feeling like they were enough, always ruminating about conversations that didn’t make any sense. These people were having a few good days a week, but then something would happen and the whole conflict would start again.”
Cole had learned to help people and was giving out the conventional relationship advice. “I would say, tell them how you feel. It’s just a communication issue. You have to try harder. Maybe you should go to couples therapy. But, I realized that advice never made my relationship better, so from my own desperation and trying to help my clients, I started looking into what could be going on.”
That’s when she dove into the subjects of narcissism and narcissistic abuse.
“From that framework, everything started to make sense,” Cole said. “Narcissism is a personality style. There is a difference between being a narcissist and having narcissistic personality disorder. Narcissism is a personality trait just like introversion, extroversion, agreeableness, and conscientiousness, and it exists on a spectrum.
“Narcissism is about patterns of behavior over time, and it becomes predictable patterns of behavior over time. There is a big difference between someone who is occasionally selfish, recognizes it, self-reflects, and goes, ‘I don’t want to be like that. I want to adjust my behavior’, versus a narcissist who is consistently selfish, high-conflict, rigid, emotionally dis-regulated, and chronically validation-seeking. Their makeup is different. They don’t care how they impact other people. They don’t self-reflect. That’s part of what makes narcissism so difficult. A healthy person will recognize they are doing something and want to adjust it. A narcissist always blames others for their problems.”
Cole says that entitlement and lack of empathy are hallmark traits of narcissism. Chronic validation-seeking, superficial relationships, grandiosity – believing that they are more special, unique, and/or deserving than other people – not because they have done anything, but simply because they exist.
“NPD has a lifetime prevalence rate of about 6%,” Cole said. “But, you don’t have to be diagnosed with NPD to do damage. A huge study looked at personality disorders, and based on the current U.S. Population, that would mean that as many as 20,000,000 people would meet the criteria. If each of them negatively impacts five other people throughout their life, which is a conservative estimate, that means there are 100,000,000 NPD abuse survivors in the U.S. alone.”
The book came out in August 2023. It’s doing well and has received many 4 – 5 star ratings. It has been an Amazon bestseller and continues to sell and to grow. Cole is fully in private practice, offering telehealth-only therapy to those in Tennessee and Kentucky. She offers coaching to people outside that area. In her practice, she deals with those who suffer from NPD and those who have been abused by those with NPD.
“As you can imagine, I work with more NPD abuse survivors than narcissists because narcissists rarely come to counseling. Remember, in their minds, they don’t have the problem. Everyone else does. They might come as part of couples therapy, after an ultimatum, or because they’ve hit rock bottom.
“I have some narcissistic clients, and the changes occur in degrees. They recognize what they are doing, but it’s hard for them to change. Recent research – a meta-analysis looked at tons of research and asked if it is malleable and if it can change. Sadly, the research says, nope – it stays the same. It’s very rigid. It might slightly drop as they get older, simply because they have less opportunity to gain supply, and they tend to struggle a lot with getting older. Their reach becomes smaller, they’re losing their looks, if they depended on that. A lot of times, by the end of their life, they are reaping the consequences of being so antagonistic throughout their life.”
Cole says a lot of them later in life become more sullen, more depressed, more ‘victimized’, especially if life didn’t go the way they wanted it to.
“Going back to the spectrum, Cole continued. “On the mild side, you might have someone who is great at a dinner party because they can be charming and charismatic, but they are entitled, superficial, vain. They’re not going to be there for you in a crisis. Or, if they are, they will make it about them and let you know how amazing they are to be there with you.
“At the high end of the scale we have malignant narcissists, basically a cousin to the psychopath. They are sadistic, vengeful, and vindictive. They are the ones who engage in a lot of coercive control, acts of threats, intimidation or humiliation used to instill fear and to control you. So, they can absolutely be dangerous.”
So, what are the signs?
“They are quite grandiose and entitled because they see themselves as exceptionally unique and special. They tend to have very superficial relationships, seeing people only as pawns to get what they want. They need constant attention, validation, and admiration. When you’re dealing with a narcissist, you feel this constant pull to please them, entertain them, and generally do what they want. You have to put in a lot of effort to keep the peace.
“You end up blaming yourself for any relationship difficulties, and you question your reality, a lot. Did I say that? Is that right? Am I going crazy? You’ll replay conversations over and over again in your head. You’ll try to make sense of things. You experience a lot of cognitive dissonance – meaning there’s a disconnect between your expectations and reality. You start justifying or rationalizing this person’s bad behavior, thinking, ‘oh, they’re probably just stressed. They didn’t really mean it We just need to work on things. I just need to be more patient.
“But, no matter what you do or how hard you try, you feel like it’s never enough, and ultimately you end up feeling like you’re never enough.”
Next month in part 2, Cole talks about the information you will find in her book, which includes 400 stories from her life and others’, who the book is for, why some people are susceptible to get stuck in these relationships, and more.
