hi I’m Lisa Turkish I’m here today with Jim our counselor and therapist in our discussion Jim kress he is here in Charlotte North Carolina has an amazing practice and actually he’s the counselor I’ve worked with so much here in Charlotte and really really appreciate then I also have the resident theologian for our conversation today director of theology with proverbs 31 ministries Joel Moodle male who has I’ve also worked with but not in a therapeutic sense right just in studying all of these great principles in the Bible so
our last therapy and theology conversation was around narcissism what is it where does it come from what does it do when it presents itself and today I want to almost have part to that conversation and talk about what do we do if we are in a relationship with someone who is presenting some narcissistic tendencies but let’s back up first Jim and tell the story of where the term narcissism or narcissists even comes from be glad to it comes from really from Greek mythology and there’s this guy narcissus who was to give you
the shorter version looking into a reflecting pool and saw his image and fell in love with that image so much that he could not do anything but stare at his own self and then eventually died and and who could be around him would be an echo who could only echo what they heard narcissus say so a miserable lonely existence so it could sound exciting at first I get to look at myself in the mirror and the reflecting pool and fall in love with myself but the end is a tragic existentially alone death and in that story what was the echo
doing echoing only what he said which ties in to the feed the narcistic feed the empaths who are there often we use a word codependent that they are there to really be in the dance of or the relationship with a narcissist is you better be good at echoing what he is saying or she is saying about him or herself and echoing and feeding back it is a perpetual mirror different than the mirror we talked about in the previous podcast of what a mother and a baby or even a father and a baby needs to mirror back basically worship thou art worthy I
worship you at all costs they always seek an echo and Joel you know I’m a spiritual sense this brings up all kinds of things right because if you hear that that you know narcissus needs us to echo back worship our mind can instantly go well is God that right but I think we have a couple of spiritual things that we must remember about God that he is the only one able to handle worship no because he doesn’t do it he did he doesn’t receive it like a human receives it and he doesn’t do with it what a human would do with it right yeah I’ve
heard this quote before that the human heart is not created for fame and I would say you could almost say the human heart is not created for worship in that way so what are your thoughts around that a Gustin a south african Bishop of Hippo he has a famous quote one of my favorite quotes of his he says our hearts were restless until they find their rest in you and so God in His perfection the one of the first accidie does is create he creates creation you know so even the idea of glory and self-glorification it’s just an
