The Dying of the Light

  The Wreckage of the Narcissist Photo by  Marek Piwnicki  on  Unsplash Narcissism is insidious. Here you are cruising through life on a highway and things are going pretty good. There is the odd curve every now and then but it’s no problem for you to navigate through them. You feel quite confident you have this life driving thing figured out. Then one day you meet someone who creates this whirlwind of a situation when you first get together. It’s exciting, it makes you feel alive and excited. Your car is now speeding on that highway, but boy does it feel good to throw caution to the wind and push down that gas pedal. After a while, they start growing complacent with their ‘be on best behavior so the little potholes in the road that were there when they were testing you in the beginning have now turned almost crater like from their random temper outbursts. Still, the potholes aren’t all that common and you can typically steer around them, so you aren’t bothered by those red flags too m

  Psychopaths vs Narcissists Photo by  Nicholas Kusuma  on  Unsplash Narcissists get a lot of bad press these days as they truly are the scapegoat of the Cluster B family. All of the other disorders seem to slide by without much noise unless there is something really high profile occurring in the news because of a particularly bad crime or public breakup. When I refer to narcissists in this article I’m talking about the regular run of the mill narcissists, not the malignant narcissists as those ones truly are a real menace. No, in the case of a regular narcissist they are pretty easy and pretty simple to deal with once you have them figured out. Narcissists need to protect their ego at all costs, and they need to avoid shame at all costs. So, when you’re dealing with one, just make sure that you're pumping up their ego as much as you can and avoid confrontations with them as much as you can, then you should be able to work with them just fine. In a relationship it’s a bit different

  Do narcissists feel happy inside when hurting someone? Photo by  Vince Fleming  on  Unsplash This happy phenomenon is not a narcissist trait per se, as not all narcissists feel happy inside when hurting someone else. This is more of a trait of a sadist than it is of narcissism. Narcissism is essentially an eternal quest to support a fragile ego and weak sense of self. Fundamentally, ego is the primary concern of a narcissist. Their concern is to avoid the pitfalls and landmines in life which will make them feel like failures or like they are inadequate. They must avoid that feeling at all costs because the dysregulation that it causes can create a feeling of dread that makes them feel like they are going to die. This death feeling isn’t something just dreamed up either. When narcissists have narcissistic collapses their ego defense gets stripped away and they fall into a deep depression. This depression can be bad enough that it will potentially lead them to suicide. Where this is in