It's Not You: Identifying and Healing from Narcissistic People

by Ramani Durvasula

Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented.

The person who holds the narrative holds the power.

Books about narcissism tend to talk about narcissists.

As much as we may not like narcissism, we glorify people with these personality styles—they are our leaders, heroes, entertainers, and celebrities. Unfortunately, they are also our parents, partners, friends, siblings, children, bosses, and neighbors.

Does it matter if their harmful behavior is intentional or not?

it is a basic human right to be seen and to have your own and separate identity, needs, wants, and aspirations expressed and recognized.

Narcissism is about a deep insecurity and fragility offset by maneuvers like domination, manipulation, and gaslighting, which allow the narcissistic person to stay in control.

Narcissistic people need validation and admiration, and this need motivates much of their behavior.

but despite their arrogant exteriors, it’s clear they need to be soothed and told that everything is going to be okay. Offering reassurance is a treacherous dance, however, because if your soothing is too transparent, they will lash out at you for reminding them of their weakness.

They might compliment you in a meeting in front of colleagues then verbally eviscerate you behind closed doors in their office. This two-faced mask-on-mask-off behavior is a trademark of the moderate narcissist.

Their grandiosity is related to their almost delusional belief that they know better than everyone, and they truly believe that their opinions, work, and lifestyle are superior to others’.

If I need you, you will know. Otherwise, I’m doing my own thing and really can’t be bothered with you.

the narcissistic person isn’t content to just believe they are better than everyone else—they generally also have to leave the other person feeling “less than” through contemptuous dismissal and criticism or snobbery and confused through manipulation and gaslighting.

In front of others, they were charming and charismatic, and you were surprised they didn’t react when a person tossed a playful jab at them.

ask in a sweet voice if she was alone, knowing she was on speaker. If she answered yes, the sister would let it rip and go off on her. That’s a choice.

It’s not easy to change a personality. Personality is generally viewed as stable and relatively unchanging.

they blame everyone else when something goes wrong and are firm in their self-righteous resolve that they are good.

if you are aware that the narcissistic person in your life has a history of trauma, you may have struggled with guilt and even the belief that it isn’t fair to hold that person accountable if their behavior is posttraumatic in nature.

Jordan was disgusted that he still wanted to please his father; he felt like a forty-five-year-old boy who was trying to get his father to throw a baseball with him. Childhood for him had been a roller coaster.

generating doubt about your experiences, memory, perception, judgment, and emotions. Sustained gaslighting causes you to question reality, and it qualifies as emotional abuse. Gaslighting can include denying events that occurred,

Gaslighting is a gradual process. It requires you to have some level of trust or belief in the expertise of the gaslighter, the way we may have with someone we are falling in love with, a family member, or an employer. The gaslighter capitalizes on this trust and uses it to dismantle you, which keeps them in power.[2] The gaslighter seeds doubt in you (“That never happened, you have no right to feel that”) and then doubles down by questioning your mental stability (“You must have a memory problem, are you sure you don’t have a mental illness?

Gaslighting isn’t a disagreement, nor is it lying. Anyone who has ever tried to show a gaslighter “evidence,” such as text messages or video footage, knows that it doesn’t lead the narcissistic person to take responsibility. Instead, they deflect the focus from the evidence to question your mental fitness, or they keep repeating the distorted narrative.

Narcissistic people may imply that you “owe” them something, with parents even implying you “owe” them because they fed and housed you.

Narcissistic people feel entitled to their volatile and reactive rage, which is often activated by shame. If you trigger their feelings of inadequacy, they will often target you with either overt aggression (yelling and screaming) or passive-aggression (stonewalling, giving you the silent treatment, showing resentment).[4]

Narcissistic abuse is about domination, which counterbalances the inadequacy and insecurity that are at the core of the narcissistic personality. Needing to control schedules, appearances, financial decisions, and the narrative is a classical part of narcissistic behavior.

The more isolated you become, the easier it is to control you.

Narcissistic abuse always entails blame shifting. Nothing is ever their responsibility or their fault because for a narcissistic person to take responsibility or accept blame

it’s your fault they cheated. With narcissistic parents, it’s your fault they didn’t get to achieve their dreams.

a narcissistic parent does not love bomb a child. However, the child will grasp onto idealized moments that will alternate with periods of devaluation and detachment, which the child will attempt to offset by being “better” so the parent will come back around.

True romance is respectful and empathic; love bombing is a tactic.

In the early days of a relationship, they may ask lots of probing questions to get to know you when what they’re really doing is getting information that will be useful for them down the line, like your assets, connections, vulnerabilities, and fears.

survivors of narcissistic parents is that some of them recall that once they were not as small, cute, portable, obedient, or photogenic as when they were younger, there was a shift toward devaluation in their relationship.

For example, if you say you want to end it after learning about infidelity, they might say, “I didn’t want this relationship to end and to break up our family, this was all you” and take no responsibility for how their betrayal was a factor.

And then the narcissistic person—with their sensitivity to abandonment, distaste of losing, and need for control and good optics—will make you the promise you have been asking for:

If they betrayed you, they might avoid you to avoid the shame.

If you’re dealing with a narcissistic family member, you may be having the same fights repeatedly

Even after years of invalidation, you still may be able to recall that one lovely dinner on a vacation long ago.

If you experienced childhood narcissistic abuse, self-blame was a survival strategy, a way to maintain an idealized image of the parent and meet essential attachment needs.

narcissistic folks actually believe they are nice people. They really do. It’s part of their system of delusional grandiosity, self-righteousness, and moral rectitude.

Constant apologizing. Appeasing the narcissistic person and walking on eggshells. Taking the blame for actions and occurrences that are clearly not your fault. Overpreparing or taking on responsibility for every detail in a household, workplace, or family. Creating and giving people multiple options (e.g., multiple meal choices).

For example, your narcissistic mother tells you that your sister said you are greedy.

The loss of trust you experience as a result of narcissistic abuse can also extend to a fear of relying on other people.

The good-bad shape-shifting means that the narcissistic person may happily drop you off at the airport on a good day and then rage at your selfishness when you ask for a ride the next time.

Growing up in a narcissistic family system is a form of indoctrination. These family systems leave you feeling deflated, self-blaming, self-devaluing, and as if you are not enough.

The message in these families is that you need to earn love

you are judged on the basis of what you can do for the narcissistic family member.

Sometimes the golden child receives more or better resources (their own room, a car, tuition) than their siblings. But the golden child lives on a conditional and perilous pedestal, knowing that if they no longer perform or deliver, their stock may drop.

Empathic golden children may feel a sense of guilt, grief, or even shame about being the “chosen one” instead of their siblings. Golden children who are not empathic may be bullies and may evolve into narcissistic adults.

you may also remain stuck in the vortex of the family and eternally try to win over the narcissistic parent.

In adulthood you may retain the role of the fixer, continuing to insert yourself into family dramas, acting as a referee, reassuring everyone on the dysfunctional family group text, and trying to make everything seem more functional than it is.