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

by Ramani Durvasula

chronic need for reassurance:

essence of narcissistic relationships: you can’t win.

they will issue a hollow apology and get frustrated if you try to hold them accountable.

Narcissistic folks are motivated by dominance, status, control, power, and the desire to be special.

they are always going to need to have the upper hand in any relationship.

Their empathy is hollow and variable. Narcissistic people have cognitive empathy—they may understand what empathy is and why someone feels a certain way, and they may use it to get what they want. Once they get what they want, or they can’t be bothered, the empathy fades.

Narcissistic empathy can also be performative—to look good to other people, to win someone over—and it can also be transactional, mustering it to get what they need from someone else. This can feel really galling because it shows you that they know that empathy is valued but they may only deploy it as a tactic.

Narcissistic people tend to be more “empathic” when they feel safe and supplied. For example, on a day when things went well for them, they may come home and hear about a bad day you had at work and reassure you everything is going to be okay. A week later, you may think, Well, they were so supportive last week when I raised this with them, let me talk it out with them again. But this time they may not have ha...

Needing people means other people have power, and they cannot tolerate thinking of themselves as dependent on anyone. This can drive the contempt that is often observed in narcissism—contempt for other people and their feelings, vulnerabilities, and needs.

The contempt can come out directly, but quite often it surfaces as passive-aggressive digs and jabs.

For example, a person who is lying accuses another person of lying, then the “projector” gets to continue to view themselves as honest after psychologically flinging their bad behavior onto someone else.

You may also be willing to excuse a lot of bad behavior if you believe someone is smart or successful.

Narcissistic people are skilled shape-shifters and chameleons.

at home he wants what he wants when he wants it, and the household runs around his schedule.

When Marcus feels content and satisfied with where things are in his life, he encourages family hikes, camping trips, and dinners out. Just when Melissa was about to consider seeing an attorney because she was tired of living in the “Marcus Show,” he suggested they go on a beach vacation and reconnect. She blamed herself for misreading the situation and not recognizing how lucky she is. Until they got home, when it all began again.

The moderate narcissist offers enough good days to keep you invested and enough bad days that hurt you and leave you utterly confused.

Moderate narcissistic people have cognitive empathy, so they sometimes seem to “get it.” They are entitled and seek validation and have a cocky, but not menacing, arrogance. They are hypocritical and believe that there is one set of rules for them and another for everyone else. They often feel that they are the victim in situations that do not go their way. They do not take responsibility for their behavior and will shift blame onto others for anything that makes them look bad.

Because they are aware enough to know that their behavior is inappropriate, they do it out of sight of others, which can leave you with no support.

People will see a relatively composed and charming person in public,

so much of the content on narcissism focuses on the grandiose narcissist,

They believe their hype to a seemingly delusional, albeit convincing, level, which can make it easy to get sucked in.

excited, exhausted, and riddled with confusion.

I am every bit as smart as all these start-up types, but I didn’t have the connections or Daddy’s money to get ahead. I’m not wasting my time in college or working some BS job for an incompetent; I would rather do nothing than work for Ivy League A-holes. I blame my parents for not giving me more money and setting me up better, because then I would have totally been the best in the business.

Vulnerable narcissists are the victimized, anxious, socially awkward, sullen, broodingly angry, irritable, sad, and resentful narcissists.

never get a fair chance,

People with vulnerable narcissistic styles will attribute your success to good luck and their own lack of success to life being unfair

They are also chronically malcontented.

They also struggle with abandonment and rejection sensitivity and may burn you out through their constantly victimized anger.

Vulnerable narcissists can be awkward in social situations and compensate for that anxiety and the insecurity it evokes by criticizing you or devaluing and mocking you when you are enjoying other people or experiences or you are succeeding at something. Because

most people, including therapists, will believe that they are struggling with self-esteem, anxiety, depression, or just bad luck. But even if these other issues are ...

Growing up with a communal narcissistic parent meant hearing that your parent was a pillar of the community while enduring their disinterest and anger behind closed doors.

Self-righteous narcissists are hypermoralistic, judgmental, coldly loyal, extremely rigid, and almost black-and-white in their worldview and belief systems. 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’.

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They mock everything from their food choices to lifestyle habits to partner choices to careers. They expect an almost robotic obedience to their beliefs and devalue emotion, human frailty, mistakes, and joy.

They may have an obsessive work ethic, and they will sneer at anyone who makes time for the “wrong” kind of leisure or who they think is not working hard enough.

the psychopath doesn’t experience the anxiety we observe in narcissism.

They have a heightened sense of suspiciousness bordering on paranoia, frequently believing that other people are “out to get them,” which also fuels their aggression.

Calling something by its proper name means that we know how to interact with it,

unempathetic, entitled, and disrespectful, then on a bad day is really nasty, doesn’t apologize, and blames you, that is more likely to be narcissism.

First, narcissism is a personality style, not a disorder.

how they would behave, cope, approach, and respond to life.

are being forced to go for good optics,

most narcissistic people are more likely to think the other person is the one with the issue, not them).

but 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.

You recognize that, in fact, they were bothered by what was said but were able to make the choice to not react so as to not look bad in front of others, just as they also made the choice to let loose on you when there were no witnesses. Narcissistic

She didn’t like the idea that people would hear her rageful behavior, so she knew rage was not a good look.

Narcissistic people know what looks good and bad, and how to choose their audience to maintain a public image while privately using those closest to them as punching bags and pacifiers.

It’s not easy to change a personality. Personality is generally viewed as stable and relatively unchanging. Some researchers believe that a significant experience like trauma could result in personality change,

People with this personality have little desire to change, especially since many narcissistic people are thriving financially and professionally, and because they have little self-awareness or self-reflective capacity, they don’t take notice of other people’s experience and their contribution to it.

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

social anxiety is commonly observed in vulnerable narcissism.