I’ve mentioned Daniel Kahneman in the context of behavioral economics, but he has a wonderful quote on the concept of dissent that I recently tweeted. I would be remiss if I did not mention it in relation to yesterday’s post:
If you weren’t convinced by my argument, maybe you’ll be convinced by the Nobel Prize-winning psychologist who has studied decision-making for a living. On to today’s piece.
Narcissism—the excessive interest in or admiration of oneself—is a concept I’m guessing most of you are familiar with. However, I’d venture a guess that many of you are less familiar with the concept of echoism, which I just learned about recently.
What exactly is echoism, you might ask?
Echoism is a lack of healthy narcissism. Moreover, the defining characteristic in echoists is a fear of seeming narcissistic in any way. People with echoism have difficulty expressing themselves. They don’t feel any sense of specialness. They may lack a clear voice and a clearly defined self-identity. People with high levels of echoism may:
fear praise
make every effort to avoid burdening others
focus on meeting the needs of others to avoid considering their own
believe going along with what others want will help safeguard their affection
have difficulty creating boundaries or asserting needs
believe expressing opinions or needs may lead to a loss of love
take on a lot of self-blame and criticize themselves regularly
have trouble recognizing likes and dislikes
avoid coming across as attention-seeking or selfish at all costs
If you think of narcissism as a spectrum, which is what research from numerous psychologists shows, you can place echoism on the far end of one side of the spectrum, and Narcissistic Personality Disorder (NPD) on the opposite end.
Unlike NPD, echoism is not a disorder. There are certainly positive attributes of echoists. Echoists tend to have high empathy. They also tend to be great listeners.
However, echoism is seen as a coping mechanism. It can also have a negative impact on your mental health, emotional well-being, and ability to have healthy relationships with friends, significant others, and other loved ones.
It may not be as readily talked about or as obvious as traditional narcissistic behavior, but echoist tendencies appear to be just as problematic and detrimental. While I am not an echoist, I skew closer towards that end of the spectrum, and at the lowest periods in my life, I lacked a “healthy amount of narcissism”. So I think I, and many others, may benefit from being more aware of how echoism shows up in life.
Part of the issue is that the term “narcissism” has a negative connotation in society. When you colloquially hear the word narcissism used, it’s often applied in a way that suggests there are only two options: you either are narcissistic or you aren’t. However this is a clear example of the black-or-white fallacy given that narcissism is a spectrum. Narcissism isn’t universally bad. There is healthy narcissism.
If you don’t know this—which I didn’t until recently—it leads those who struggle with self-doubt and self-blame issues to think they should be avoiding narcissistic type of behavior at all costs, even though they need to have some level of narcissism to succeed in getting what they want and be happy.
One way I have gotten better at this is by being more direct—something I have written about previously. Echoists have difficulty asserting their needs and the uncomfortable feeling accompanied with stating what you want is amplified for them. Directness and disagreeableness are good solutions for echoists in order to ask more of others and get what they want.
Echoists suffer greatly from avoidance coping, which suggests that rather than facing their fears of having to do difficult things, they can just avoid them instead. Echoists choose to avoid burdening others but then they don’t actually get what they desire. Echoists choose to avoid attention, but then they never get the successful outcomes that come from taking on risk. Echoists choose to avoid saying no, doing things that are agreeable to another person, but that they don’t really enjoy themselves for fear of believing expressing their true opinion will lead to a loss in friendship.
I can sympathize with this feeling, wholeheartedly. This is a work in progress for me, but developing The Courage to be Disliked helped me immensely (the mindset and the book of the same name). Rather than fearing being disliked or fearing being needy, echoists should aim to be more vulnerable with their friends and loved ones. This will connect them more closely with people, and people (including many of their friends and loved ones) will respect them more for taking initiative, for being vulnerable, and for having the courage to speak up. Yes, there will be people who don’t, but those are people they don’t need in order to develop their own identity and self-worth.
Vulnerability is a key ingredient in any meaningful relationship, but most importantly with significant others. An interesting finding from research shows that the old adage of opposites attract rings true:
Since people who tend more toward narcissism have a strong need for admiration and recognition, they can often end up in relationships with people with echoism. This offers the Echo in the relationship a (usually unhealthy) way to provide this attention without being put in the spotlight themselves
While it may be unhealthy, this comfort in avoidance means echoists are often attracted to narcissists as well. As Psychology Today points out, the mental and emotional impact can be hugely damaging to echoists:
Echoists are often drawn to narcissists precisely because they’re so afraid of burdening others or seeming “needy” that to have someone who relishes taking up all the room, as narcissists often do, comes as something of a relief; but it's a high price to pay for a respite from their anxieties. When narcissists become abusive, echoists sometimes blame themselves for their mistreatment (“I expect too much"; "I’m being overly sensitive"; "I shouldn't have gone back"; etc.). No one deserves to be abused, whether they stay in a relationship or not — abuse is 100 percent the responsibility of the abuser — but echoists can mire themselves in abusive relationships, because they feel responsible for their mistreatment.
Thus, echoists are often miserable in relationships. When they find themselves with narcissists, who we are often attracted to, they inevitably blame themselves for issues that are genuinely not their fault. When they find themselves with other echoists, they are miserable because they are unwilling to speak up and be clear about their needs, which makes both people unhappy.
Instead, echoists would be wise to be more selfish about their wants, and make those clear with their partner. Ultimately, both the echoist and their partner can then request what they need, and if they both can satisfy each others’ needs, they both will be happier. If they are an echoist, and their partner is not willing to satisfy their needs, that is not a fault of theirs.
Finally, echoists should use their current environment to push them to practice what they need to get better at. For me, writing is a key way I have been able to build a healthier amount of narcissism. It forces me to set boundaries on what I should include in a piece, what needs to be removed, and when I should publish, and how often. Publicly writing forces me to express opinions I may not have otherwise expressed. If forces me to better recognize what I like and don’t like. It’s certainly not easy, and I still struggle with elements of all of this, but I keep at it.
Ultimately, the first step is being aware of what echoism is and understanding that narcissism is a spectrum. If you do identify with being an echoist, you should forget what society has told you and be more narcissistic. We need more high empathy, active listeners to take charge in the world now more than ever.
I gotta say, this piece really echoes with me! Thanks for sharing your thoughts.