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Emancipate Your Mind: 077: Spiritual Elitism and the Self Righteous Narcissist

If you were raised in a high demand religion that prized unquestioning obedience even if it harmed you or someone you cared about, believed that your faith was “the one truth”, and that taught you that your purpose was to convince or save others from the errors of their ways, you were likely groomed to embrace many self-righteous narcissistic traits. You were likely also surrounded by and even parented by others with these traits.

In this episode, we discuss how to recognize this subset of narcissism, how self-righteous narcissism develops, how fundamentalist religions encourage the development of these traits, why people with these traits might have seemed attractive to us at one point, and how we can begin to give ourselves space to heal.

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RESOURCES:

“Love Bombed By a Self-Righteous Narcissist”, Dr. Ramani Durvasula, January 16, 2022

“Religious Narcissists”, Dr. Les Carter, September 13, 2018

“Barack Obama Challenges ‘Woke’ Culture”– BBC World News, October 30, 2019

“Religious Fundamentalism Could be Associated With Increased Sensitivity to Errors”, PsyPost.org, Eric W. Dolan, April 30, 2018

“The Science of Spiritual Narcissism”, Scott Barry Kaufman, Scientific American, January 11, 2021

“9 Characteristics of Spiritual Elitism, Narcissism of a Different Variety”, Christine Hammond, MS, LMHC, PsychCentral, June 30, 2018

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