Somewhere along the way, the performance became the person, and now you can’t tell where the effort to look faithful ends and actual faithfulness begins. You know the language of sin and repentance; you can name your type, and people call you disciplined, loyal, even authentic, yet underneath sits an exhaustion that trying harder has never touched. The mask you put on to stay approved and protected has been on so long that it now feels like your face. Chuck DeGroat returns with twenty-five years of sitting with pastors, leaders, and couples whose defenses have hardened into narcissism, which he insists runs on a spectrum that includes more of us than we’d admit.
We discuss the costumes it wears, from the helper who keeps score to the charming leader with an invisible line. We also talk about why fluent self-awareness, even vulnerability itself, can become one more way of managing an image. Then we go beneath behavior to the heart, where shame and fear have built a fortress, and ask what happens when character becomes a bullseye to hit rather than fruit the Holy Spirit grows in us.
If you’ve been white-knuckling your way toward a better version of yourself, you won’t find another strategy here, because no one behaves their way out of a heart that is still afraid. So clothe yourself with humility, let someone who is truly for you see what’s there, and stop mistaking pruning for rejection, because the Father prunes the fruitful branch so it can bear more.
About Chuck DeGroat
Chuck DeGroat is a professor of pastoral care and Christian spirituality at Western Theological Seminary in Holland, Michigan, where he also serves as founding executive director of the clinical mental health counseling program. A licensed therapist, spiritual director, and former pastor in Orlando and San Francisco, he has spent more than two decades counseling pastors and leaders on the narcissistic spectrum and those wounded by them, work he wrote about in When Narcissism Comes to Church. His newest book is Who You’re Becoming: The Slow and Courageous Work of Cultivating Character in a Narcissistic Age.
Subscribe to the Podcast
Connect with Chuck DeGroat
Website | Instagram | Facebook
Resources Mentioned This Week
- Who You’re Becoming: The Slow and Courageous Work of Cultivating Character in a Narcissistic Age
- Healing What You Can’t Erase: Transform Your Mental, Emotional, and Spiritual Health from the Inside Out
Show Partner
SafeSleeve designs a phone case that blocks up to 99% of harmful EMF radiation—so I’m not carrying that kind of exposure next to my body all day. It’s sleek, durable, and most importantly, lab-tested by third parties. The results aren’t hidden—they’re published right on their site. And that matters because many so-called EMF blockers on the market either don’t work or can’t prove they do. We protect our hearts and minds—why wouldn’t we protect our bodies too? Head to safesleevecases.com and use the code WINTODAY10 for 10% off your order.
Review the Podcast
Click here to read the ratings, or even better, please leave me a rating and review on Apple Podcasts. Your rating will help the podcast get noticed and positioned on Apple Podcasts.