One aspect of narcissism is that their overall perception of themselves as superior. The covert narcissists are better at hiding this grandiosity, but inside they secretly believe they are better than you. It’s an essential component to the construct where they honestly feel like they are superior to anybody else, and often this belief is without merit.
The narcissist won’t have a large portfolio of work, or have any evidence which sustains this notion that they are above average in whatever field that is or whatever topic it is. There simply won’t be anything other than their words which would seem to back their claim up.
Where you can start to see this arrogance within their dialog when you start to view them interacting with yourself or other people. There will be this tone of condescension when they speak to anybody that they feel is below them.
Basically anybody that is a peer is considered below them as well as anybody that is got a lesser job or, seems to live a simpler life. The person they are talking to will be viewed as ‘lesser than’ in the narcissists’ mind. You will be able to see that attitude and in their interactions and you’ll be able to hear it in their tone.
One aspect of this grandiosity and arrogance can be seen in their verbal `sparring when they decide that it’s time to have a fight. You’ll notice with a narcissist that they have this perpetual boredom that often sets in which will cause them to decide to trigger a fight.
They’ll start picking at you or they will find some obtuse reason as to why you did something that wrong them or hurt their feelings in some way and they will start an attack on it.
This attack will literally just be because they were feeling bored, or their grandiosity was threatened in some way by somebody else or by a recent failure of theirs and they will need to offload that feeling of unworthiness onto you by starting a direct attack on you. They do this by fabricating reasons or digging into their repertoire of stored faults or issues that they have created and banked for such an occasion.
As the conversation turns into a fight and starts grinding away at you they will use a lot of circular arguments and a lot of distorted recounting of the past. This recollection will occur in such a way that it’s heavily redacted or there’s some significant alterations and details being left out.
Every time that they recount their story it’ll alter a little bit more until finally it’s a version of events that completely excludes any objectiveness as your side of the argument will be omitted and it will focus solely on the parts of the argument that make their point. their point will always be one that you’re in the wrong.
As the argument progresses you’ll start to naturally get irritated with them. After enough time goes by and after you’ve deflected enough of their BS, there is an inevitability of you losing your cool and snapping at them.
This very moment is the ‘treat’ that they have been waiting for. You’ll find that the entire argument from the boredom and all of that thirst they had suddenly gets quenched by this moment that you snap. Whatever you say, to them it won’t really matter it will officially put them into a victims role and make you officially the bad guy but for a brief second you will see the truth.
What you will see is a look of excitement and a look of joy flashes across their face. It’s at the moment that your emotion caused you to react. That second is the moment that they’ve been waiting for and what they have been building up for your outburst dying to get their reward.
The moment you make your reaction, then they receive what they wanted as your emotional reaction is like gold to them. That is, they got what they needed as they have their ‘fix’ and they also have their fall guy for whoever or whatever had gone wrong and cause them to need to offload some shame on to you.
You may not even be aware of whatever it was that the trigger was as it might totally have nothing to do with you at all, but that feeling that they get from being inadequate and not superior has to go away and the only way they can do that is to make somebody else feel inferior.
They have to exert their superiority over you by controlling you, which is exhibited by the micro-smile that they get when they trigger your emotions.
To them that smirk signals that they have control over you so therefore they are superior, but then as a bonus they also get to play the victim card when you snap at them as they now have current proof that you’re the bad guy.
This is the narcissistic smirk and once you see it will irritate you in a whole other way because you know that that person intentionally antagonized you specifically for that reaction just to boost their own fragile ego.
It’s quite sad when you think about it in those terms but in that moment it’s rage inducing in yourself because it’s like you feel so tricked and so victimized yourself, but yet they’re the one that’s playing the victim and you’re the one apologizing. It’s absolutely maddening.