Understanding interpersonal narcissism and envy

A guest feature on the You Must Be Some Kind of Therapist podcast with Stephanie Winn LMFT

I recently joined Stephanie Winn for a conversation on shame, envy, and interpersonal narcissism on her podcast You Must Be Some Kind of Therapist.

I first came across Stephanie when

Josh Slocum

hosted her on his weekly Disaffected show and was so impressed with her wise and rational approach to working with families. Stephanie is a Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist in the US who works with families caught in the pressures of gender ideology. She combines clinical insight with practical coaching to help parents communicate more effectively with their children. Her program ROGD Repair provides a structured course and community for parents navigating these challenges. Stephanie also hosts her podcast where she brings depth and honesty to cultural and psychological debates.

In our conversation we examined shame and envy as two powerful regulators of human behaviour. Shame regulates morality by highlighting the incongruence between your own principles and the rules of a dominant culture. It’s felt when you betray your values to conform, when you uphold them and are punished for it, or when you carry the shame of others in a hierarchy. Envy regulates status within a hierarchy. It emerges in upward comparison when another person’s success unsettles your sense of adequacy, creating pressure to restore your standing, sometimes through subtle strategies that reassert position.

This description of shame and envy is different from the usual definitions that focus only on the awful feelings they provoke or the defensive behaviours we use to soothe ourselves when they arise. Instead, they’re described as relational signals that regulate morality and status, shaping our behaviour whether we recognise it or not.

We also examined the difference between narcissism as a diagnosis and what I talk about as interpersonal narcissism. Interpersonal narcissism is not a pathology but the everyday ways people unconsciously protect an ideal self-image by diminishing, controlling, or subtly outshining others. They’re the status games we play to manage our moments of insecurity and inadequacy to restore a sense of calm and control. This is not about pathology but about relational dynamics that anyone can enact. It matters because most conflicts don’t sit at the extreme ends of personality disorder. They occur in this middle ground where shame and envy operate together in subtle ways, quietly shaping how people jockey for moral standing and status.

One example we discussed is Australia’s Tall Poppy Syndrome, where individuals who gain visibility without official endorsement are quickly cut back down. The same can happen to those who are endorsed but later bring shame second-hand embarrassment to their anointer, who then withdraw support and cut them down just as quickly. Envy regulates status here by marking someone’s rise as a threat to the order of the hierarchy, while shame reinforces the boundary by condemning visible achievement as arrogance or liability. Together they create an invisible code that dictates who’s allowed to stand out and who must be contained.

This dynamic illustrates a key takeaway from our conversation which is that difficult interactions are best understood through a relational lens. Shame regulates moral behaviour and envy regulates status within hierarchy, and together they explain why hierarchies, workplaces, and friendships are so often turbulent when both acceptability and status are at stake.

You can watch the full conversation with timestamps on the You Must be Some Kind of Therapist YouTube channel or listen to the audio version on the podcast site, or subscribe to her feed and listen on your favourite platform. To learn more about her work and the ROGD Repair course, visit here.

We hope you enjoy this conversation!

Thank you to

Jake Wiskerchen

for connecting us!

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Hack narcissism and support my work

I believe that a common threat to our individual and collective thriving is an addiction to power and control. This addiction fuels and is fuelled by greed - the desire to accumulate and control resources in social, information (and attention), economic, ecological, geographical and political systems.

While activists focus on fighting macro issues, I believe that activism also needs to focus on the micro issues - the narcissistic traits that pollute relationships between you and I, and between each other, without contributing to existing injustice. It’s not as exciting as fighting the Big Baddies yet hacking, resisting and overriding our tendencies to control others that also manifest as our macro issues is my full-time job.

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