Simple Simon goes up to his local priest and asks:

“ Can you help me? I am involved with a narcissist who will not leave me alone, she takes her rage out on me at all hours of the day, makes impossible demands, and insults me to the point I do not know who I am anymore!.”

Seeing the grief on Simple Simon’s face the priest offers him these words of advice:

“You are being too empathetic, you need to access your rage, let yourself be petty, it is o.k., even let your hateful darkness come out. The more you embrace being royally engaged, the less the narcissist has power over you!.”

Feeling relieved with the profundity of this advice, Simple Simon thanked the priest by leaving a few coins in his coffers then returned home to put his new-found knowledge into action. The moment his 16-year-old daughter asked him for a glass of water, he replied, “Get it yourself!”, when she started crying, he refused to respond, then shouted into the hall “Suck it up! I only help those who can help themselves!”. After about a month of this treatment, Simple Simon was feeling great, but his daughter had grown despondent, refused to look at him in the face, and often cried in his presence. Never experiencing this before, Simple Simon decided to take his daughter to the priest for he would surely have some more words of wisdom to fix the situation.

On telling the story to the priest, the priest responded:

“Oh, no, no, no! This is not how you treat your own children! You must learn to become temperate in relating to the narcissism of your family and others. I will give you a list of fifteen steps any father should take to become a good parent and serve others. Memorize these,apply them to your life, then come back to see me in fifteen days”.

On the fifteenth day, Simple Simon returned, and the priest asked how things were going. Simon responded:

“Great! Our lives are so well organized now that we have learned to process our rage and work through our anger towards others. Once I realized knowledge is power, we were transformed! And I signed both my daughter and myself up to work as flight attendants at Amercian Airlines in the hope of spreading the joy that temperance and service to others can bring.”