Vincent Barbieri, PhD

To Be or Not To Be…The Villain in a Narcissist’s Story?

Vincent Barbieri, PhD — Thu, 27 Aug 2026 16:49:17 GMT

Is it worth suffering the slings and arrows of a one-sided relationship, just to avoid being depicted as the villain in a narcissist’s story? That is the question. Nobody willingly exposes themselves to the pain of being intentionally misunderstood (if they can help it), and with a narcissistic person, early conflict in a relationship feels resolvable. But eventually and inevitably we come to the conclusion that trying to gain favor with a narcissist is an endless task…a perpetual game where disappointment is the lever they use to control you. The Tao Te Ching best sums up this futile pursuit:

Why Everything You Know About Self-Worth Is Wrong

Vincent Barbieri, PhD — Mon, 24 Aug 2026 17:26:20 GMT

“Comparison may be the thief of joy but what you will soon learn

is it’s also the thief of self worth.”

Low self worth essentially means not feeling enough. What does it mean to truly feel not enough? If feeling enough equates to having self worth, then what is it that some people just don’t have enough of?

Feeling not enough may sound like an abstract concept until one day it becomes a visceral gut punch to your psyche. Many of us are born with this vague, underlying sense of inadequacy, but it’s not until that sense of inadequacy is evoked in a specific setting does this feeling make itself known. Only then do we start to recognize there is a problem, and this happens usually at the worst possible times, like during a speech, or on a first date, or even during a sexual encounter.

How Your Attachment Style Keeps You from Feeling Worthy: A Step by Step Guide

Vincent Barbieri, PhD — Fri, 21 Aug 2026 17:54:08 GMT

The aligning belief system across all types of insecure attachment - anxious, avoidant, and fearful - is that relationships exist on shaky ground, and thus feel very unreliable. It feels as if every relationship exists on a tight-rope, and we are challenged to walk very carefully on that tight rope lest we plummet to our deaths. This sense of danger is so unnerving it even prevents us from ever developing a healthy relationship with ourselves - not because we don’t want to, but because it’s not a priority, we are trying to survive and stay regulated.

Because of this belief system, we conclude something must be done to navigate this uncertainty in relationships. To reduce that distressing feeling underneath everything, we unknowingly will either abandon the connection we have with ourselves or abandon the connection we have other people just to regulate that sense of discomfort. Which direction you take will be determined by your attachment style, but the aligning reality across all types of insecure attachment is that we will inevitably make the following bargain:

“I must either abandon my self or other people in order to feel safe.”

The Self Worth Trap: How Personalizing Keeps You Feeling “Not Good Enough”

Vincent Barbieri, PhD — Fri, 21 Aug 2026 17:31:50 GMT

Imagine you are in the final stages of a job interview for a dream job and you find out you did not get the job. The hiring manager tells you they are going in a different direction and you feel awful. You start to think about how you performed in the interviews and find reasons related to yourself about why you did not get the job. “I’m not likable enough, I didn’t say the right thing during this question.” In reality, this job was offered to an internal hire and the interview process was stacked against you from the beginning. This is a perfect example of the mechanism that feeds low self worth: personalizing.

Personalizing occurs as a way for us to explain when bad things happen. Specifically, when personalization happens we find a way to make a bad outcome a consequence of ourselves. Thus to personalize a bad experience means to blame ourselves for a situation. Not only do we blame ourselves, we often will specifically point toward our deepest insecurities when these bad things occur as a way to explain it.

Why would we personalize if it is so harmful to our self worth?

A Guide to Complex Trauma: How To Sit With Unpleasant Emotions

Vincent Barbieri, PhD — Fri, 21 Aug 2026 17:28:02 GMT

Unpleasant emotions are just like that finger trap toy we played with as children - the more you try to pull your fingers out of it, the harder it squeezes. The more you lean into it - the easier it is to get out. The problem is, if you practice “sitting with an emotion” for the sake of trying to get rid of it, you will guarantee not being successful. To put it in other words: you can’t have an agenda. Outcomes are always fantasies of the mind. We can’t control outcomes as much as we can’t control when we fall asleep. We can do many things to facilitate falling asleep, but the action itself happens involuntarily without our say so.

Sitting with an emotion simply means allowing it to exist, and doing nothing with it. You can attend to it (i.e., give it your attention), but you can’t fixate on it, because then your attention becomes an obsession. This is a nuanced concept because our mind wants concrete instruction. Our mind wants to know what to do in order to get rid of this thing that is so distressing.

If you have been working on your mental health, you are probably at the point where you have stopped avoiding feeling a bunch of unpleasant emotions - shame and guilt and anger are no longer sublimated into more digestible morsels of pain, but they are still there. You may be thinking - what do I actually do with these unpleasant emotions now that I am aware of how much they have unconsciously been controlling me and hurting my self worth?

“They Mean Well”: 3 Stories We Tell Ourselves to Stay in Harmful Relationships

Vincent Barbieri, PhD — Fri, 21 Aug 2026 17:19:08 GMT

Imagine every day on your walk to work there’s a dog on your route, sitting in a yard with a 5 ft leash. Each day you come up to pet him and each day he bites your hand. One day, your partner asks you why you keep petting the dog since your hand is all bitten up. You respond - “Well, I really do enjoy petting the dog…so if he is going to bite me there’s nothing I can do about it. Don’t worry, I can take it.”

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Sure you can take it but should you? Your self-worth is what’s at stake here, and your self worth doesn’t care what you tell yourself, it cares about how you treat yourself. And all it sees is someone who willingly and knowingly exposes themselves to harm.

Some relationships in your life right now are like the above example. If you get within 5 feet of them they will harm you. You may have your rationalizations for why you can’t distance yourself but the part of yourself that you can’t speak to directly (i.e., your self worth) does not really care, it is immune to rationalizations. Rationalizations are manufactured by the mind, and your deeper sense of self only cares about your behaviors - all it sees is someone consciously exposing their hands to getting bitten.

Here are three common rationalizations that keep us in relationships that don’t serve us:

“They mean well.”
“They are your [husband/wife/mother/father/sister/brother/best friend]”
“It’s not that bad.”

Let’s now go through each of these rationalizations one by one:

“They mean well.”

The central thesis of this statement is that you should not distance or remove yourself from relationships where the other person seemingly has positive intent. Here is the main problem with this rationalization: anyone can hide behind positive intent. Intent becomes the cover that allows people to avoid accountability and perpetually mistreat you.

Why Secure Attachment Matters

Vincent Barbieri, PhD — Wed, 19 Aug 2026 21:12:50 GMT

Why is understanding attachment so important in understanding self worth?

Attachment is all about developing a felt sense of security. When we do not develop that felt sense of security, fear replaces…