Narcissism: A Complete Summary
A narcissist is someone who is grandiose and feels that they are larger than life. They have this feeling of being special or they need to affiliate with something that they find special or elite in order to feel like they have value.
The have an entitlement which makes them think they are above the law and above the rules but that the rules still need to apply to everyone else.
They view everything as a hierarchy and those that they view below them will be treated like total trash and they will believe that they can do as much damage to them as they want, as they see the person as a lower lifeform. Those that they view above themselves though, they will kiss their butt to remain in favor.
Narcissists act arrogant and haughty all of the time so when they speak about something they will have some angle as to how it makes them ‘the best’ and they will do so overtly if they are the grandiose style narcissist but more subtle and harder to notice, yet the covert will to do the same thing just more subtle and covert. At the same time narcissists are exploitative to the deepest degree which is the root of their biggest problems as a narcissist.
Narcissists lack of empathy in conjunction with their exploitative nature, and their feelings of being someone who is special, are what ends up forming the perfect combination of traits to cause them their biggest problems.
If they are able to see other people as below them and then their exploitative nature will make it so that they can do anything to anyone and not feel the slightest bit bad about doing so.
In fact, they will feel that it is their right to do so and they will mow over any boundary or law when triggered in order to avoid any feelings of shame or feelings of not being special.
So rooted in in shame is their base personality that they must avoid it at all times.
Anyone that makes them feel less than special, or anyone that inadvertently hurts their feelings in some way, will be perceived as if they had took a real life ending shot at the narcissist. It really feels like person tried to end their life and the person may not even be aware they insulted the narcissist.
Narcissists are prone to confabulation which is this process of selectively blocking out certain memories either on purpose or as the result of dysregulation from losing their temper.
When they feel the pressure of being ‘under the gun’ their anxiety will shoot through the roof and it’ll be almost as if they have ‘white outs’ as their brain gets so overwhelmed by the data flowing in that it’ll like short circuit their brain.
During these little periods of memory loss they will be forced to use their intuition and their creative processes to try to piece together the events within the fight or the incident one step at a time.
Any details that they do not know they will make up, or they will just assume what happened and it will always be the other person being the one at fault.
This is where it gets really mind blowing for significant other as often the spouse is left wondering how the narcissist could possibly have misunderstood the context so badly to have been thinking things were fact that had never happened at all.
To compound this issue even worse is that if they know that they are wrong and they know that they are caught; they will often use self deception tactic that will allow them to knowingly tell themselves a lie about what happened.
When they make this lie up, at the time they do know that it is false but as soon as the lie is decided upon it is recorded in their mind as the truth and they immediately start looking for proof of things to back that new story up.
Meanwhile with each new iteration of the story they lose more of the truth in their selective memory and if by some chance they didn’t record that memory with the lie, then their selective memory would allow them to not access that memory at all, therefore nearly 100% believing the lies to be true.
I should note however, that there is some seed of doubt that is left in their mind. On some level in the far back of their mind they will have this nagging feeling telling them that they at least on some level are responsible for what is wrong — but, they will refuse to access that memory to see what it was.
Due to their fear of shame, their curse is to never be able to grow as people by learning from the past. They’ll never learn from their mistakes and they’ll be stuck in these narcissistic loops indefinitely because you’ll rarely get one to go to counselling.
Many people get the reason why they refuse counselling wrong however, many believe that they won’t go to counselling because the narcissist thinks they are too good for counselling and that isn’t the case at all. The reason is that the narcissist views the way that they see the world as the ‘right way’ and that everyone else is wrong.
The narcissist can’t understand why everyone doesn’t strive for perfection and it often causes them some major problems in their relationships.
In fact, that is the fundamental hook for what narcissism is. Its a pattern of rigid behaviors that cause problems on an ongoing basis both in their private life as well as their professional life.
These rigid defenses are in place as a ‘defensive adaptation’ to project themselves from feeling that deep seeded shame that they have that they can never access in order to try to grow from.
Narcissists simply cannot explore that inner void where shame resides because for them to feel shame it literally feels like their life is in jeopardy and that death is imminent.
For that reason, they will never take the blame for anything and they will lash out with everything in their arsenal in order to ensure that you take the blame for it all.
Their cutting down other people is an artificial way of managing their self esteem.
They must constantly feed that machine that says they are special and if they don’t and they start feeling worthless from no positive input in a while then that is when they’ll pick up your phone and do a quick search through your text messages to find something arbitrary that they can complain about and start a fight with you over.
They’ll then claim how you’ve betrayed them and hurt them over and over again until you finally snap at them and at that point you just yelled at them and now they have you where they want you.
Now they have something right in hand that they can condemn and get angry at you for and by the end of the fight you’ll be apologizing to them and they will have officially unloaded their bad feelings onto you by starting that fight and picking at you until you reacted at which point they have you cold and can unload onto you all of their horrible feelings they can’t manage for themselves.
This is the curse of the narcissist. The inability to manage their dysregulation and the need to then find fault in the ones closest to them so that way they can get angry at their spouse, which has the side effect of boosting up their self esteem. Conversely, it shoves the spouses self esteem into the gutter.
To them its worth it because they don’t feel that shame that makes them feel like their life is in danger. I can’t emphasize this part enough, that shame truly does cause the panic of impending death. The reason is because out of all of the groups that commit planned suicide — narcissists are the most successful and the most vulnerable people for planned suicide. Depression and shame really does kill them.