therapy notes

Main Character Energy Has a Cost

Shayan Salar, LCSW, LCADC · Updated November 2026 · 10 min read

Somewhere in the last several years, main character energy became a compliment. It started as a playful idea: stop living as a background character in your own life, take up space, romanticize your morning coffee. Then it hardened into something closer to a philosophy. Put yourself first. Protect your peace. Cut off anyone who does not serve you. You do not owe anyone anything.

Some of that is genuinely healthy, and I will come back to which parts. But I see the other side of it in my office often enough that I want to write about it plainly. When the self becomes the main character, everyone else quietly becomes an extra. And a culture that celebrates that shift ends up admiring traits that look a lot like the ones psychologists call the dark triad, while treating care for other people as a kind of weakness.

What main character energy gets right

It is worth starting with what is real in it, because the idea would not have spread if it did not answer a genuine need. Many people, especially those raised to keep the peace, to manage a parent's moods, or to make themselves small, were never given permission to want anything. For them, learning to take up space is not selfishness. It is recovery. Noticing your own life as worth attention, having preferences, saying no, and leaving situations that harm you are all good things.

The trouble is that a correction meant for people who give too much has been sold to everyone, including people who already take too much. And it has been stripped of its other half. A healthy self includes the capacity to matter to yourself and the capacity to let other people matter as much. Main character culture tends to keep the first and drop the second.

In short, permission to take up space is medicine for some people. It turns into something else when it becomes permission to stop seeing anyone else.

Where the script comes from

None of this appeared out of nowhere. It is what you would expect a market economy to teach people about themselves after several decades of practice.

Late stage capitalism, as people now loosely call it, asks each person to think of themselves as a small business. You are a brand to be built, a portfolio to be optimized, a product to be marketed. The philosopher Byung-Chul Han describes this in The Burnout Society as the shift to an achievement society, where nobody needs to exploit you anymore because you have learned to exploit yourself, endlessly, in the name of freedom. Decades earlier the historian Christopher Lasch warned in The Culture of Narcissism that a consumer culture would produce people who were anxious, self-absorbed, and dependent on the admiration of others, while believing themselves independent.

Social media made the logic personal. Everyone now has an audience, metrics that rise and fall, and an incentive to present a curated, confident, enviable version of themselves. In that environment relationships begin to look like transactions. Friendship becomes a question of what someone brings to the table. Community becomes an audience. And the language of therapy gets borrowed for the purpose: boundaries, toxic, protect your peace, and doing what is best for me can all be healthy ideas, but they also make a very convenient vocabulary for walking away from anyone who needs something from you.

The message underneath is consistent. You are on your own, so look after yourself first, because nobody else will. When people absorb that deeply enough, self-prioritization stops being one value among others and becomes the value that overrides the rest, including obligations to family, friends, neighbors, and the wider community.

What the research shows, and what it does not

Because this topic invites big claims, I want to be careful about what the evidence actually supports.

Some cultural shifts are well documented. A 2017 study by Henri Santos, Michael Varnum, and Igor Grossmann, looking at 51 years of data across 78 countries, found that individualist practices and values have risen in most societies, driven mainly by economic development. A 2019 meta-analysis by Thomas Curran and Andrew Hill found that perfectionism among college students in the United States, Canada, and the United Kingdom rose steadily between 1989 and 2016, including the kind of perfectionism that comes from feeling that other people expect it of you. The authors connect that rise to neoliberalism, competitive individualism, and meritocracy, though that explanation is their interpretation rather than something the data tested directly. A 2011 meta-analysis led by Sara Konrath found that self-reported empathic concern among American college students declined over the decades leading up to 2009. And a large 2014 meta-analysis by Helga Dittmar, Tim Kasser, and colleagues found that people who hold more materialistic values tend to report lower well-being, more negative self-appraisals, and more risky behavior.

The part that is not settled is whether people themselves are becoming more narcissistic. A widely cited 2008 analysis by Jean Twenge and colleagues reported rising narcissism scores among college students, and it launched years of talk about a narcissism epidemic. But a 2017 study by Eunike Wetzel and colleagues, using data from roughly 60,000 students across three decades, found that narcissism scores had actually declined slightly since the 1990s. Researchers still disagree about the trend.

So the most honest version of the argument is not that capitalism is turning everyone into a narcissist. It is this: we live in a culture that increasingly rewards, displays, and admires dark triad traits, that has made individualism and performance pressure part of the air we breathe, and that offers fewer and fewer places where care for others is practiced and valued. You do not need everyone to become more narcissistic for that to change how people treat each other. You only need the culture to start treating those traits as the ideal.

In short, the data show rising individualism and performance pressure and falling empathy in some samples. Whether narcissism itself is rising is genuinely disputed. What is easy to see is which traits the culture now celebrates.

How it shows up in everyday life

Most of the time this does not look dramatic. It looks like ordinary behavior that has been relabeled as self-care.

Boundaries as an exit from accountability. A boundary protects you from harm. It is not a way to avoid hearing that you caused some. When I am setting a boundary becomes the response to any complaint, the word has stopped doing its job.

Protecting your peace from other people's needs. A friend in crisis, an aging parent, a partner who is struggling: each can be reframed as an energy drain to be managed rather than a person to be shown up for.

Relationships as transactions. What do they bring to the table. Are they adding value. Do they serve my growth. These are the questions of an investor, and they quietly turn people into assets.

Disappearing without explanation. Ghosting and unexplained cutoffs, framed as not owing anyone an explanation, leave the other person to absorb the full cost of the ending alone.

Curated vulnerability. Sharing struggles in a way that builds the personal brand rather than invites real reciprocity. Openness becomes content.

Contempt for need. Needing other people gets coded as weakness, codependency, or low vibration, while self-sufficiency gets coded as health. Nobody is actually self-sufficient. Some people are simply better at hiding what they take.

Why that kind of confidence is so attractive

Here is the part I find most important clinically. Main character confidence is not only something people perform. It is something other people are drawn to, and often the people most drawn to it are the ones who struggle most with their own sense of worth.

The research on first impressions is striking. In a 2010 study, Mitja Back, Stefan Schmukle, and Boris Egloff found that people high in narcissism were rated as more likable at first meeting, because of how they dressed, how confidently they spoke, and how charming they seemed. Most notably, the facet that made them popular early on was entitlement and exploitativeness, the same facet that tends to cause the most harm over time. In a 2008 study, Amy Brunell and colleagues found that people higher in narcissism were more likely to emerge as leaders in groups, even though they and their groups did not perform any better on the task. Confidence gets read as competence, and certainty gets read as health.

Now picture someone who has spent years doubting themselves. Someone who second-guesses every decision, who was taught that their needs were too much, who finds it hard to say what they want. To that person, someone who seems untroubled by doubt, who takes what they want without apology, and who never seems to worry about what others think can look like the person they wish they could be. The attraction is partly to the other person and partly to a quality they feel they lack.

This is my clinical observation rather than a finding from a controlled study. The research is clearer about who narcissistic people are drawn to, namely admirers, than about who is drawn to them. But it is a pattern I see often enough to name: people put on a pedestal the qualities they were never allowed to develop, and then mistake the absence of self-doubt for the presence of self-worth.

The cost of the pedestal

Pedestals are unstable for everyone involved. When you idealize someone for qualities you feel you lack, you tend to explain away the moments their confidence turns into indifference toward you. You work harder to earn their approval, because their approval feels like borrowed worth. Their certainty starts to overrule your perception, which is exactly the dynamic I describe in spiritual abuse in spiritual communities, and the same frame that lets dark triad traits flourish in the communities I write about in when freedom becomes pressure.

For people with a trauma history the pull can be stronger. If you grew up adapting yourself to someone else's moods, a partner who is the unquestioned center of their own story fits a role you already know how to play. It does not feel like danger. It feels like home.

The way out is not to stop admiring confidence. It is to learn the difference between confidence and self-centeredness, and to build the kind of worth in yourself that does not need to be borrowed from someone else.

Confidence and self-centeredness are not the same thing

They can look identical from across the room. Up close they behave very differently.

Secure confidence does not need an audience. It can be wrong without collapsing, apologize without feeling destroyed, and hear criticism without immediately going on the attack. It can make room for other people to shine, because someone else's success does not feel like a threat. And it shows up. It is reliable when it is inconvenient, which is the clearest test of all.

Self-centered confidence tends to need admiration, to struggle with being wrong, to treat other people's needs as impositions, and to be most generous when someone is watching. It is often brittle underneath. What looks like strength is sometimes a very effective defense against feeling small.

In short, real confidence makes room for other people. If someone's certainty consistently requires you to shrink, it is not confidence you are looking at.

Care is not weakness

Human beings did not survive as main characters. We survived as groups, through interdependence: people who fed each other's children, sat with each other's dying, and showed up when it was inconvenient. Needing other people is not a flaw in the design. It is the design.

I see this most clearly in addiction recovery, where some of the most effective communities ever built rest on the word we rather than I. People get well by being useful to each other, by being accountable to a group, and by learning that their wellbeing and someone else's are not in competition. That is the opposite of the main character script, and it works.

Choosing care does not mean giving up your own needs or going back to making yourself small. It means holding both: you matter, and so does everyone else in the story. A full life has a lot of main characters in it.

What therapy can help with

If you recognize yourself on either side of this, therapy can help. For people who keep being drawn to partners or friends who treat them as an extra in their story, the work is often building a sense of worth that does not depend on being chosen by someone who seems more certain than you, and understanding where the pull toward that certainty came from. Approaches like Internal Family Systems are useful for the part of you that admires that confidence and the part that keeps getting hurt by it.

For people who have absorbed the main character script themselves, and notice that relationships keep ending, that closeness feels like a burden, or that they feel strangely empty despite doing everything right, the work is often about what the self-sufficiency is protecting. Underneath a lot of confidence is a person who learned early that depending on anyone was not safe. That is worth understanding, and it can change.

Frequently Asked Questions

What does main character energy mean?

Main character energy is a social media phrase for living as the protagonist of your own life: taking up space, prioritizing yourself, and acting with confidence. In moderation it can be healthy, especially for people raised to make themselves small. It becomes a problem when everyone else in your life starts to function as an extra.

Is main character energy narcissistic?

Not necessarily. Having preferences, saying no, and valuing your own life are healthy. It shades toward narcissism when self-prioritization overrides every obligation to other people, when relationships are judged by what they provide, and when other people's needs are treated as impositions.

Is narcissism actually increasing?

The evidence is mixed. A 2008 analysis reported rising narcissism scores among college students, but a 2017 study of about 60,000 students found scores had declined slightly since the 1990s. What is better documented is rising individualism, rising perfectionism, and declining self-reported empathy in some samples.

Why are people with low self-esteem drawn to very confident partners?

Research shows that people high in narcissism tend to make strong first impressions and are often read as confident and competent. Clinically, people who doubt themselves often idealize qualities they feel they lack, and can mistake the absence of self-doubt in someone else for genuine self-worth.

How can I tell confidence from self-centeredness?

Secure confidence can be wrong without collapsing, apologize, hear criticism, celebrate other people, and show up when it is inconvenient. Self-centered confidence tends to need admiration, struggle with being wrong, and treat other people's needs as burdens. If someone's certainty consistently requires you to shrink, it is not confidence.

Can therapy help if I keep choosing people who put themselves first?

Yes. The work usually involves building a sense of worth that does not depend on being chosen by someone who seems more certain than you, understanding where the pull toward that kind of person came from, and learning to trust your own perception in relationships.

Research referenced

Back, M. D., Schmukle, S. C., & Egloff, B. (2010). Why are narcissists so charming at first sight? Decoding the narcissism-popularity link at zero acquaintance. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 98(1), 132–145. doi.org/10.1037/a0016338

Brunell, A. B., Gentry, W. A., Campbell, W. K., Hoffman, B. J., Kuhnert, K. W., & DeMarree, K. G. (2008). Leader emergence: The case of the narcissistic leader. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 34(12), 1663–1676.

Curran, T., & Hill, A. P. (2019). Perfectionism is increasing over time: A meta-analysis of birth cohort differences from 1989 to 2016. Psychological Bulletin, 145(4), 410–429.

Dittmar, H., Bond, R., Hurst, M., & Kasser, T. (2014). The relationship between materialism and personal well-being: A meta-analysis. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 107(5), 879–924. doi.org/10.1037/a0037409

Han, B.-C. (2015). The burnout society. Stanford University Press.

Konrath, S. H., O'Brien, E. H., & Hsing, C. (2011). Changes in dispositional empathy in American college students over time: A meta-analysis. Personality and Social Psychology Review, 15(2), 180–198. doi.org/10.1177/1088868310377395

Lasch, C. (1979). The culture of narcissism: American life in an age of diminishing expectations. W. W. Norton.

Santos, H. C., Varnum, M. E. W., & Grossmann, I. (2017). Global increases in individualism. Psychological Science, 28(9), 1228–1239. doi.org/10.1177/0956797617700622

Twenge, J. M., Konrath, S., Foster, J. D., Campbell, W. K., & Bushman, B. J. (2008). Egos inflating over time: A cross-temporal meta-analysis of the Narcissistic Personality Inventory. Journal of Personality, 76(4), 875–902.

Wetzel, E., Brown, A., Hill, P. L., Chung, J. M., Robins, R. W., & Roberts, B. W. (2017). The narcissism epidemic is dead; long live the narcissism epidemic. Psychological Science, 28(12), 1833–1847. doi.org/10.1177/0956797617724208