All perfectionists have vocal inner critics. Adaptive perfectionists learn how to respond to their inner critics with compassion, thereby disabling negative self-talk from having power over them—but the tape still plays. Narcissists don’t have inner critics as much as they have inner superfans telling them they’re geniuses, they’re the best, and that the rules shouldn’t apply to people as special as they are. Narcissism involves a sense of grandiosity that perfectionism doesn’t.
