Why are we attracted to Narcissists?
If you read enough articles about Narcissists… about how awful, how fake, how mean and nasty, how ugly, how evil, monstrous, and abusive they are… how they lie, cheat, steal, ignore, dismiss, invalidate, treat others like shit then dump them, discard them like a used hankerchief, or keep them around in a box full of broken people they’ve used and might still want to use because egos are hungry beasts… it makes you wonder how anyone could ever be attracted to them.
The way they are described sounds like a classic fictional villain of the worst kind.
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Yet going by the sheer volume of articles written about Narcissists, the popularity of such a trending hot topic, and all those jumping on the bandwagon to rip Narcissists a new one… while also getting traffic flowing to their blog, website, forum, support community, to buy their book, products, spiel, and cures for the damage done, an antitoxin for the Narc poison…
Well… we’re all rather obsessed with them. They’re the centre of our universal attention, the spotlight is on them, and even though we all have pitchforks and are screaming ‘Burn them!’… we’re still attracted to them, our hate for them keeps us transfixed, attached.
They’re the baddies we all love to hate, and can do so openly, in the company of friends, while eating popcorn and drinking champagne.
We can express all the darkness within us, project it all onto them, and justify our homicidal tendencies without worrying about how sociopathic or narcissistic we sound when we’re doing it… because we’re the good guy, the hero, the victim out for justice, so it’s okay if we say that the world would be a better place, where unicorns can roam free, the Sun always shines, and rainbows don’t need rain to decorate the sky, if they all died… we won’t sound like a dictator advocating genocide at all.
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But… it’s not okay, is it… you don’t like it at all, you don’t like this person you’re being. This person who hates, who wants someone else dead, or perhaps just slightly maimed, or just to feel pain a little bit… the pain they’ve caused you… you don’t like who you’ve become because of your relationship with a Narcissist.
You’re obsessed with them, you think, feel, eat, drink, breathe them. You want to stop, move on, let go, forgive and forget… especially forget, but you just can’t.
Your friends (if you have any left after the relationship with a Narcissist) are fed up with you as you are and keep encouraging you to return to who you were before, they just don’t understand… you don’t understand either…
How did this happen!?!
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Obligatory feel good about feeling bad message enabled…
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Before you met them you were probably all the things which a great person and human being should be. You were successful, independent, happy, positive, a good person, empathic, caring, with lots of friends, and everyone liked you… you liked you.
Now… you don’t like you. You try… you try to recapture who you were before, but… that’s like chasing a mirage, one which keeps getting away, and further away, you can remember who you were, but somehow who you are now makes who you once were someone that is out of reach.
You’re beginning to wonder if you were ever who you thought you were, worse still… since you went online to try and figure things out… and at first you did feel a rush of understanding, of clarity in all the fog… but then a shadow began to grow out of the research you were doing… a rather frightening chill got into your bones… What if… you know what’s coming next, don’t you?
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Some of those articles about Narcissists like to analyse what made us a ‘target’ for the Narcissist – What made us a magnet for them, what attracted them to us?
Occasionally they’ll tell us why we were attracted to a Narcissist, and the reviews aren’t particularly flattering. Terms like – codependent, enabler, start to become a part of your vocabulary. Then comes people-pleaser, too empathic, too nice, too caring, too idealistic, too sensitive… Are you a Hyper Sensitive Person?
Didn’t things like being a people-pleaser, empathic, nice, caring, idealistic, sensitive… used to be good, positive, encouraged!?! When did they become negative and bad!?! When did they become weaknesses rather than strengths!?!
Okay, everything has a flip side, but…
WTF is going on? Has the world gone topsy-turvy?
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Some articles about Narcissists… well, sometimes they sound as though they’re written by Narcissists. If you feel bad after reading them, and that kind of ‘feel bad’ is similar to how you feel after spending time with your Narcissist, then feel free to question what you’re reading and the source of it.
There was a conversation (in which I did not interfere) on my blog recently between commenters, where one mentioned that Narcissists like to be teachers. It’s a very good insight.
Some of the ‘experts’ on Narcissists may be Narcissists, embodying the teacher role which they like so much, or better still – the guru role… the guru whom you are not allowed to question or challenge even though they say they’re open-minded and welcoming to all because they want to help you be a better you (their idea of a better you which is based on… what or who exactly?).
Not all Narcissists are as obvious as articles about Narcissists make them sound like they are. In fact most Narcissists aren’t obvious Narcissists at all.
That’s why you were caught unawares and may have fallen for them.
If an article about Narcissists tells you that the reason you attracted and were attracted to a Narcissist is because… well, it’s all your fault for being a good person, being a good person makes you weak and so of course a Narcissist is going to target you… Doesn’t that sound like Narc-speak?
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Some of the fault is yours, you already know that, a relationship is made of two halves, two people and the responsibility is shared, you know this (the narcissist doesn’t), and you don’t need someone to rub that kind of salt into your wound – although sometimes it can be healing, it has to be carefully dosed.
Don’t let anyone make you feel worse than you already feel… that’s not helpful. But don’t feel pressured to feel better than you do, that’s not helpful either.
Just listen to yourself… even if you aren’t sure whether you can trust yourself anymore because you were attracted to a Narcissist and… you know… just listen to yourself tell your story, whatever it is, however it goes, and as you do, hear the subtext, the nuances, that small voice within that just wants someone to understand – be the one who understands.
Understand that you’re human… and need your own empathy, compassion, forgiveness… and love.
So, you were attracted to a Narcissist… and now you’re not sure if they’re the Narcissist or if you are… because that’s the kind of mess which Narcissists create… and it’s a kind of mess which goes with being human.
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…that’s also how the dark gets in.
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Why were you attracted to a Narcissist?
A million reasons could apply for the position to be the answer to the question… they could all be right and all be wrong…
Maybe they were sexy, beautiful, handsome, looked good to your eyes… but that only explains an initial lustful attraction, which in theory should pass after they’ve opened their mouths and garbage spews out.
But garbage doesn’t spew out of their mouths, diamonds and pearls do…
If you read enough stories about people’s relationships with Narcissists, you hear about how the Narcissists… love-bomb, manipulate you, get under your skin, into your head, tell you what you want to hear, show you what you want to see, they are your fantasy, your dream come true… and you buy into what they’re selling because you want it to be real.
They’re evil geniuses, Machiavellian, superhuman, and… everything an imagined villain should be… of course we were putty and puppets in their hands.
Are they truly that clever or are we really that stupid?
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No…
They are human and so are we… this is the rub, which rubs us all the wrong way and rubs us raw.
Narcissists – Are we really attracted to them… or to something which we see in them which is really within us? Perhaps our attraction to them is more about their attraction to us… to what they see in us which attracts them and which we can’t see until… we meet them and they reveal it to us for a moment.
If you dig through all the mess which comes later to find the starting point of the relationship… was it really about them, or was it about you?
For a moment, in their eyes… you saw your own reflection and it was beautiful, so much so that you wanted to see more of it, but unfortunately you ended up seeing more of them instead.
We got lost in them… and are still trying to find ourselves by searching through them, but… we’re not there.
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Apres-Narcissist… What type of people are you most attracted to now?
An Upturned Soul 
I like this post. It explains it precisely, but still makes you think. She got in through my compassion, preyed upon unhealed childhood wounds, and the need to defend my integrity. I learned that I don’t need to do this for anyone any more. A lot of this actually came from reading your posts. Thank you. I have to admit, I was told almost every line in “the narc’s favourite lines section” It’s like they’re given a freakn playbook at birth or something. I dunno about smart, but they’re definitely astute. The best thing that’s come from this hellish nightmare so far, is that I have finally connected to my ‘inner child.’ And I will abandon him, no more. Wishing we could get knocked together tonite. 😉 Thanks for sharing.
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Thank you 🙂
There is indeed a lot of deeply good stuff which comes from that kind of hellish nightmare. Cheers to you and your inner child, that is a beautiful relationship to have!
You’re an awesome person and I’m glad you’re seeing that more and more!
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If narcissists are humans and all humans need a bit if narcissistic tendency to survive, could it not be accurate to say that although you may have seen a reflection of yourself in their eyes, perhaps you also saw a half way decent person underneath the facade of bullshit? People are not always “fake” to gain an advantage over others, many times it’s just a defense mechanism. Some people just suck, but a narcissist is usually really good at their craft and it takes a long time before you realize what has happened, but what if you know what they’re doing the majority of the time and you like them anyway? What you see is not always what you get on either end of the spectrum.
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Yes, indeed 🙂
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Totally agree hippy7girl well said 👍
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Indeed. He’s an awesome guy! A little too awesome lol The best bf I’ve never had lol
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i thought about this a lot after i saw that episode of “dr. phil”. it stood out to me how similar the victim and her attacker were, in that they both had boundary issues. it made me wonder how each of them had come upon their issues with boundaries. i saw a lot of myself in the victim. as a young person, i was so starved for love that i was just entirely too open to anyone and anything. when i went away to college, and i was finally away from my parents, i was so wide-eyed and naive, and i wore that on my sleeve a little too much. i had a couple narc experiences there, as a result. as i imagined the victim wrestling with her attacker, i couldn’t help but feel as though i was seeing opposite sides of the same coin. at the risk of sounding really hokey, maybe this is the attraction between “empathic” people and narcissists. the similarities/differences in us. it was almost as if each of them had met their “double”. again, this is going to sound incredibly hokey, but, it was almost as though the universe was holding a mirror up to each of them and saying, “this could be you, had you taken a different path”. it was as though the victim was being shown what not to become, and, the attacker was being shown what she could be, were she not so illogically afraid of being vulnerable. when they had their “i love you”…”if you loved me, you’d let me do this” exchange, for a moment, it was as though they knew each other, or something. maybe the attraction between empathic people and narcissists comes from the fact that we recognize each other wounds. it’s just that one person takes one path to healing, while the other person takes another. the “healthier acon” is willing to go through the proper healing process, whereas, the acon who becomes a narcissist doesn’t want to take the long way around to healing. why should she, when she can just cut you open and take it from you? if narcissists and empaths are opposite sides of the same coin, maybe the attraction can’t even be helped. maybe all we can do is build up our boundaries to prevent future narcissistic intrusion. i have no idea whether or not this made any sense at all, and, i’m probably putting a lot of “spin” on this woman’s story, but, these were my thoughts as i was watching “dr. phil”.
i have no idea what kind of people i’m attracted to now. it’s still too early in my recovery to say. all i can say for sure is that it would be freakin’ sweet to meet some people who aren’t creepy.
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That’s a great analysis and perspective, thank you for sharing it! I love how you’ve taken your original interest in this story and delved into it in more depth, mining it for insight. This is brilliant!
We often put ‘spin’ on stories because in the stories of others we find pieces of our own story, so we colour it with our own experience which overlaps with theirs in some way. What we share of someone else’s story is a combination of lives intermingling, and wisdom emerging from that union.
What you said reminds me of a couple of articles I’ve read, I’ve probably already shared the links with you as I find them very insightful:
This is a comment which a narcissist made on a psychology blog – https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/stop-walking-eggshells/201311/the-lament-lonely-narcissist
This is from an excerpt from a book – https://www.psychologytoday.com/articles/201305/confessions-sociopath
And this is a story a woman shared through a letter about being a victim and becoming a victimiser – http://www.drirene.com/victim_is_abuser.htm
I’d be curious to know what you think of the video to which I linked in this old post – https://anupturnedsoul.wordpress.com/2013/07/03/psychic-impressions/ – link is at the very bottom, and the post is mostly my ‘spin’ on what I thought of the video.
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thank you! i was wondering how it would come across. i’ve always felt that there’s more to the attraction between narcissists and their victims than all the articles and experts would have us believe. wearing your heart on your sleeve, carrying yourself like a victim…these things can play a small part in it, but, it’s much more than just these things. there’s something the narcissist recognizes in their targets. have you ever experienced a narcissist peering into your eyes? not the narcissistic, predatory “stare”, but, it’s more of a “peering” kind of a thing. almost as though they’re attempting to literally spot what it is inside you that makes you tick. if they could just spot it, maybe they could reach into your eyes and take it. sometimes i feel that narcissists are also empaths. they’ve just gone to the “dark side” with it.
excellent links! i don’t know how you manage to recall the perfectly relevant link at just the right time. i’ve really been wanting to read confessions of a sociopath. i’ve read some interviews with the author, as well as some of her blog entries. the excerpt you linked to really reminds me of my mother. my mother thinks the same way. she believes people with emotions are inferior. she was always trying to rid me of mine. i could tell that she got off on screwing with my emotions. i’ve wondered if she might have some sociopathic tendencies. she and my father are different in that way. your post about “dangerous innocence” really reminded me of my father. he is no less exhausting, but, i’ve always had this “he’s just really f-ed up” sort of view of him. deep down, i’ve got this soft, pitying spot for my father. my mother, on the other hand…i’m afraid of my mother. when i’m around my mother, i want to completely shut myself down because i don’t want to be invaded by her. i don’t like to look at her. i don’t want her looking into my eyes. i ran into my parents the other day. i looked at my father. i wouldn’t look at my mother. my father walked up to me first. when my mother walked up, i experienced an instant, panicky, fear feeling. i just wanted her to go away. my spirit and hers do not like each other.
as for the video, i feel the same way you do about it. she looks nervous and uncomfortable. but, she’s trying not to look that way. there was an advertisement before the video began. while the ad played, there was a tiny picture of her down at the bottom of the display. i could see her nervousness just looking at that.
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i just read andy white’s oct. 2nd blog entry entitled, “sado-masochism and the self”. have you read it?
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Yes, I have, I used an extract from it in a recent post. He just has a way of capturing the essence of a dynamic and making it clear!
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My goodness, that’s a tough meeting to have! Both of them at the same time!
I always used to prepare myself for that kind of scenario (still do, just in case) – sort of like trying to prepare yourself in case of an emergency.
The panic and fear is natural when faced with a known predator, but also can be a by-product of adrenaline caused by anger which you’ve built up over a lifetime of dealing with a situation in which you have been trained to suppress your natural reactions and primal instincts.
One of the reasons I used to be afraid of my mother was because I was afraid of what I wanted to do to her. When I was a teenager I was terrified that I would sleepwalk and kill her while in that state. When someone invades you, your primal instincts react to the trespass, keeping them in check takes a huge amount of energy and creates great conflict within.
Narcissists make us afraid of ourselves.
How are you feeling now in retrospect. Have you been reviewing the meeting?
I’m going to go with ‘yes’… be careful not to pick on yourself about what you said and did, and don’t haunt yourself with what you wished you’d actually said and did.
Remember growing up with narcissists makes us second-guess (triple and quadruple doubt) everything we do, find ourselves wanting, feeling we’ve failed, that everything we said or did was wrong… when in actual fact the right thing to say and do is whatever you said and did in the moment, because that’s what being human, being ourselves as we are, living in the moment, is all about. Narcissists don’t get that so they infect us with their own horror of just being and doing spontaneously.
Take good care of yourself! ❤
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totally agree about andy white. i’ve had this sort of mental block when it comes to articles in which experts attempt to explain the attraction between narcissists and empaths because it all just smacks of “victim” blaming to me. the whole, “you feel like shit about yourself, and that’s why the narcissist targeted you. if you weren’t such a sorry shit, the narcissist wouldn’t have picked you.” thing. his use of the term “sado-masochism”, though, makes the whole dynamic make sense to me. the “experts” are not going far enough with their explanations. yes, the narcissist probably did pick up on my low self-esteem, but, there’s got to be more to it than just that. why do some people feel like “narcissist magnets”? that’s part of what i was attempting to say in my initial comment. our wounds are the same. we’ve both been “deprived of the mother” but we’re expressing it differently. the narcissist wounds, the empath feels they need to be wounded. there’s no need to “blame” the empath, or the victim, or whatever, it’s all just the f’ed up way it is. what’s more important is figuring out why the narcissistic intrusion happened, and preventing it from happening again. that’s my opinion, anyway. maybe i’m just being an overly-sensitive, former scapegoat.
“One of the reasons I used to be afraid of my mother was because I was afraid of what I wanted to do to her.” -wow. i never thought of it that way. i can see how easy it would be to confuse fear with anger. how, if i call it “fear”, it’s easier to deal with. or that fear seems more appropriate, since this is my mother we’re talking about. my dear, sainted mother. i’ll have to think about that. thanks for that. and thanks for sharing that you’ve felt that kind of anger toward your mother. that kind of honesty really helps. i’ve mentioned this book before, but, alison bechdel’s are you my mother deals a lot with that kind of socially-unacceptable anger, and how our minds will turn that kind of anger into just about anything (phobias, etc.) to protect us from having to deal with it.
i have been reviewing the meeting. i’m proud of myself, though, because i didn’t say anything to them beyond answering their stupid, little, trying-to-make-innocent-small-talk questions. they asked me how i was doing. i said, “fine”. what did i want to say? “HOW THE HELL DO YOU THINK I’M DOING???” but i didn’t. i always told myself that if i ran into them i wouldn’t be baited into any discussions with them because i don’t want to give them anything to use against me in their discussions with other family members. and i don’t want to be beating my head up against any more brick walls. why bother talking to them? there’s no point. there has never been, nor will there ever be, any point.
…and then, i went home and ate an entire bag of sour cream and onion potato chips. just kidding! i didn’t:)
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The articles which do that whole “you’re vulnerable that’s why the predator narcissist targeted you” thing remind me of the familiar lingo I grew up with in a narc family, especially if there is a promo at the end which says something like “Buy my book wherein I will reveal to you the special secret for turning yourself into someone you’re not so that you will be invulnerable (as I, the author of this book you need to buy, am) and never have to deal with a narcissist ever again”.
If they’re pushing the same buttons that the narcissist in your life pushed, then it’s just more of the same. They’re basically telling you that you’re the problem, rubbing salt in the wound while gaining from your pain, lifting themselves up by putting you down.
Telling us we’re a wounded rabbit surrounded by hungry hyenas isn’t helpful. And telling us to stop being a rabbit isn’t a solution.
We may be part of the problem, but we’re also the solution to our part of the problem.
I think people try to split things into simple black and white to make it more manageable, and therefore they go with an idea such as – narcissists are always the predator and never the prey – and that – those who have been in a relationship with a narcissist are always the prey and never the predator.
But narcissists would not be narcissists if they hadn’t experienced a trauma which made them develop a disorder. It’s the same trauma they inflict on others. The wound they give to us is their wound too.
It’s hard to imagine the narcissist as anything other than a predator once you’ve reached the point where all you can see is their predation of you, and because of the effect they have had on us, we may find it hard to snap out of our own victim mentality. They wore us down and we can’t remember who we are so we accept who others tell us we are in an attempt to grab hold of an identity. If someone who appears to be an authority tells us we’re the problem because we’re vulnerable due to being a victim of a narcissist, we’ll grab onto that because it goes with our present predicament even if it feels wrong, bad – we’re used to feeling wrong, bad, we’ve become conditioned to respond to people who talk to us the way that narcissists do – except the new ones doing it are new, and we’ve forgotten what it was like when our predatory narcissist was new to us and seemed like an authoritative person, a big lion, upon whom we could rely.
Why do we attract narcissists? Because everyone does. Narcissists are attracted to everyone, they knock on all doors waiting for someone to open up and let them in. Why do we let them in? Usually because they seem to be a representative of a fantasy, an ideal that we have.
My father was an artist, people let him in because they wanted him to immortalise them on a canvas. They wanted to be close to an artist, because the fantasy of an artist is… nothing like the reality, but no one wants the reality they want their fantasy to be embodied and come true for them.
My mother told me a story about traveling abroad when she was young and single, she used to wear a broach shaped like a crown, people thought that broach meant she was a member of the nobility. So they all let her in because they wanted such a glamorous friend in their lives. She didn’t bother telling them that it was just a broach because narcissists love the fantasy we project onto to them. They want to be our hero, our siren, our fantasy.
Even when things turn from dream into nightmare, we’re still projecting a fantasy onto them, letting them further in. In many ways our dark fantasies have more appeal to us than our light ones, because we can pour all of our darkness onto the narcissist and then we don’t ever have to own it – the price is that we have to be the victim forever. If we don’t want to be the victim, then we need to reclaim our darkness because it has our power.
The wounded rabbit needs to reclaim its inner hyena, and see the hyenas surrounding it as wounded rabbits.
It takes time though, and many people want a quick fix, they want a hero to swoop in and make it all better, defeat the villain, and save them from… themselves. And lots of people want to be the hero, they need a villain for that and a victim… who needs saving from themselves, therefore they must be made to fear themselves, and fear for themselves so they need a hero to save them from a villain.
You… you’re being your own hero, you’ve already dealt with being a villain, you’re done being a victim… your reaction to those articles is healthy, you’re done being told what’s wrong with you, you’re interested in what is right with you, and you’re done with someone else telling you who you are, what to think, what to feel… you’re in charge of you now!
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totally and completely agree. very well said.
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TY 🙂
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have you ever written a blog entry about your feelings toward your mother? would you be willing to talk more about it? have you ever felt bonded to her at all?
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I’ve written quite a lot of posts about my feelings towards my mother… so, I’m a bit perplexed by your question.
Are you looking for something in particular? Perhaps something of yours in me?
What about you, what are your feelings towards your mother, and would you like to share them? That might clarify things.
Overall…
The main feeling towards my mother which I have at this time swings from complete indifference to anger, exasperation, frustration, irritation, and variations on that theme, as that’s mostly what I feel about her, it’s pretty much how I’ve always felt about her even as a child. She is one of the most irritating people I have ever known, and I’m not the only one who found her irritating. One of my jobs as her child was to calm down people whom she had irritated into apoplexy.
I have also felt fear, anxiety, and other terrors towards her. She could fly off the handle for no logical reason, and predicting when she was liable to blow was a constant worry which made me hyper-vigilant and paranoid.
I wasn’t really allowed to have feelings as her child, unless she needed me to have them and told me what I was supposed to be feeling, I was there to be an empty vessel into which she poured her own ocean of feeling. That kind of contract can create a certain detachment from the feeling centre, as well as repression and suppression. I’ve let a lot of that out in my posts – most of my rants are dedicated to her even when I don’t mention her.
The main feeling in my family was rage. Then fear. It’s what bonded us all together in misery. It was often the fear which caused the rage.
Bonding in my family was bondage – which tends to be painful, although for some pain and pleasure are akin. My mother found pleasure in pain, especially in her role as long-suffering martyr.
But maybe you mean ‘bonding’ in a loving way, as in intimate connection which brings pleasure and soothes pain?
I can’t recall anything like that, not with my mother – with my father, yes, there were moments. With others, definitely.
My mother liked to tell me stories about myself as a baby, and herself as a mother.
She had been very ill during her pregnancy, and after my birth she almost died, therefore I was cared for by others until she got better. When she recovered the first thing she did was put me on a diet because I was fat (her words… no, actually she said something along the lines of – stupid boring blob). She then stopped my crying nonsense… one time she hilariously almost threw me out of a 15th story window because I was making too much baby noise. Luckily she regularly handed me over to other people to deal with boring baby stuff, and I did bond with them.
These are a few posts specifically about my mother:
https://anupturnedsoul.wordpress.com/2013/03/29/missing-teaspoons-and-other-very-important-issues/
https://anupturnedsoul.wordpress.com/2014/02/12/my-mother-once-told-me/
https://anupturnedsoul.wordpress.com/2014/07/25/mrs-fix-it-to-the-rescue/
https://anupturnedsoul.wordpress.com/2014/02/01/the-story-of-snow-doll/
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Yes! The guy version of me only not as me as me can be. In other words, I’m better at being me than the copy I met. But sometimes I’m confused. Why do I hear my words coming out of your mouth. You do not talk like that. Copying me in that way is the furthest thing from flattery I’ve ever had the misfortune to experience. And it used to happen alot.
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Wow. An ambitious essay. Well done. http://judydykstrabrown.com/2015/09/24/lost-the-ones-that-fortunately-got-away/
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Thank you very much 🙂
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Wow!!! I am in shock and awe! Tears are poring down my face. I am every point made here. Wow, I’m tired of not being able to let go gor fear that I’m the bad guy here and…wow. How did I get here lol All the reasons, you point out. Thank you for showing me this! I don’t know how it was this particular topic, but I knew immediately, I was being offered a gift. Not to continue down the road to his story rather than a closer version of rhe truth. He seems to be allergic to truth as much as I’m allergic to bs lol So rather than answer my calls he’ll text because his stories change while he’s telling them. I often wondered why he’d bother. Because it was a game. I can hear the lie but not where. It’s so close to the truth it feels real to him. He gets real pissed if I catch onto the lie. So mostly I just pretend to believe him. Gawd! 😍Thank you, you amazing being! I’m not letting my bad behavior off the hook, but I’m also not going to let him turn me into something I’m not in my own head. I love you siStar!
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Thank you very much 🙂
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I’ve read a lot of material on blogs about narcissism. The narcissist is the baddie that we love to hate. I’ve certainly done my share of hating on them, but that takes more energy than I want to give. We used to call willfully destructive people evil. Now we call them narcissists and confuse ourselves with questions about why we are so wrong that we let them into our lives. The fact is that a predator watches and picks the most likely to fall. When humans prey on each other it is a moral lapse because we have a choice and more than enough resources to satisfy our creature needs. There is no excuse for predation regardless of the thousands of excuses we let our leaders and our media throw our way. Life is not a game. Our civilization requires a certain amount of sacrifice from all of us, and those of us who take without giving back, or who steal from or who intentionally go out of their way to limit resources, reduce people to poverty and to fracture their ability to function are really just evil.
Perhaps the frustration that causes us to want to kill and maim and do violence to narcissists is the frustration of living in a culture that elevates them to positions of power and allows them to corrupt the institutions that would penalize them.
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I agree wholeheartedly. I’ve said all my life that life is not a game. I find myself wishing for the exit off this planet filled with such unaware meanness as their default setting. Crossing in front of, instead of behind, for example. I’d stopped coming to this site for a minute. But I see there’s a reason for staying connected. Not only to you get support, but you learn things you could not have otherwise. I feel directly responsible for the madness in everyone’s lives because I refused to get out of denial. I’m a prune. I was still such an idiot! I’m totally scared of him now. Tuff girl may be an idiot but I’m not stupid. Not anymore. How stupid of me to think this was love. Loving the guy in my head while heading the one in my face made me unbearable. I couldn’t be nice girl. I couldn’t get to her around all the constant bs. And omfg I did it again. I took a situation that I knew I did nothing wrong but be unable to continue a charade of happiness. I got attacked for it. And each and every time, I know I’m an idiot for going back but I’m stubborn and I really did tell myself that this time would be different. Every time. I don’t even bothersaying I’m done. I simply realize I’m done till the next fallout.
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I can’t fathom why you feel responsible for the madness of everyone else…but then I don’t have to…but it might be worth questioning whether that is a valid point of view that you can support with evidence.
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Plz forgive the typos. I’m 1 finger tapping and the keyboard is bigger than the comments box so I can’t really see the texts.
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Good topic and something I’ve thought about a lot. As much as it’s part of human nature to just blame the narcissist, we are responsible. It takes two, too. 🙂 In my case, it’s largely been my poor boundaries and the weird sense of familiarity I had as a result of my childhood. There was also other stuff – I bought into my ex-N’s victimhood, thought I could be the hero and help him, my love could save him … I knew something was very wrong but did not heed what I sensed was true. I had to really get whacked, and yes, I am different now.
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Thank you 🙂
I think all of us tend to look for someone for whom we can be a hero. It’s a popular archetype, and it is a theme of many stories, it’s part of the collective consciousness.
In some ways narcissists offer us the opportunity to live out an heroic quest for love. At first it can be everything we ever thought it would be, but then… well, most fairytales have a dark side to them, especially in their original version. That too is a part of the hero’s journey, the descent into hell… to face the dark side of love.
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i was looking for posts specifically pertaining to your feelings about your mother. or, specifically about your mother. i’m aware that, in a way, many of your posts about npd are about your mother, but, i was looking for posts that are specifically about her. posts such as the ones you linked to. remember, i just recently found your blog. the posts you linked to were written some time ago, so, i had not seen them.
my father and mother have been active lately in dispatching the flying monkeys. of course, in talking with them, the question, “how could you just stop talking to your parents” inevitably is asked. as a result, i’ve been thinking a lot about my feelings (or, lack thereof) about my parents, my mother in particular. while considering my feelings, i was reminded of what you so honestly shared about being afraid to go to sleep, because you didn’t want to sleepwalk, etc. that lead me to wondering if you had ever written, or, if you would be willing to write, specifically about your feelings toward your mother.
your feelings are very similar to mine, of course. i had a feeling they would be. i’ve never felt bonded to my mother at all. i care about her, but more in a brotherhood of man sort of way, than in a mother/daughter sort of way. i wish her no harm, but, i wish she’d just go the hell away. i empathize with her because of her past, but, this changes nothing. i sometimes hate her. probably more than sometimes. i am also deathly afraid of her. i am afraid of what i believe she is capable of. of course, explaining all of this to an fm would be impossible and pointless.
i asked about this because, just before i asked, i had an intense, triggering run-in with an fm. i talked with him because i know for a fact that he himself had a very mean mother. i thought maybe he’d understand. he didn’t, of course. it seems that, although he can admit to having had a mean mother, he is still very much enmeshed with her (or, her memory), and still very much in need of preserving the image (or, memory) of an intact family, or, whatever. he was also very much in need of convincing me to return to my own crazy-ass parents. i told him to back off. i think he got the message. i knew i would be okay, but, i was still a little shaken. in those moments just after a confrontation with an n, or an fm, or whomever, you feel shaken. you look for reassurance. i needed to find strength in seeing my story reflected in someone else’s.
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Sorry if I came across as expecting you to have read all of the posts on my blog. That made me chuckle. I still get surprised by people reading my posts at all, and when they read an old post I’m kind of in awe of the fact that they’ve managed to find it since my blog is such mess and I often have trouble finding things on here. Sometimes I forget what I’ve written and sometimes I know I’ve written about something and will try to find where it is, but I usually can’t recall the title or date, and trying to figure out what category I put it in or what tags I gave it is a knotty puzzle.
Your question gave me an interesting perspective because there are times when I think that all I do is write about the feelings my mother inspires or provokes, particularly as she resurfaced in my life around the time that I started blogging, and I get a bit exasperated with myself. There’s a voice inside of me which says – OMG, you’re not writing about your mother again, are you!
I recently came across an article which was tackling the subject of adult children who cut off their parents and the ensuing consequences of that, it comes at it from an interesting angle – https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/matter-personality/201411/parents-cut-adult-children-clueless
And this blog is worth exploring as it, as it is for people who have decided to sever ties with their parents – http://parentfreebychoice.blogspot.co.uk/p/story-of-this-blog.html
One of the challenging aspects of deciding to go NC or low contact with your parents is dealing with not just the people whom your parents recruit to help them pressure you into resuming contact, but with society in general because cutting off your parents is still very taboo not matter what your parents have done to you. Even if society knows and accepts that your parents are abusive, people still expect you to ‘love’ them, because one of the factoids which is known about children who have been abused by their parents is that they love their parents, are loyal to them, and that is why they often don’t speak up about being abused and may go out of their way to minimise the abuse and make excuses for their parents.
Everyone expects everyone to ‘love’ their parents regardless of logic, and they rarely accept rational explanations, because the issue of parents brings out the irrational and illogical in most of us. Even we have trouble sorting our own minds out about our parents, like with the man you thought might understand your position.
I’ve been dealing with other people’s judgment of my relationship with my parents since I was a child. Most children of narcissists face that situation early on because narcissist parents use other people to help them control their children.
There was an incident when I was about 6. I was at a restaurant with my parents, one which we regularly went to so the people who worked there knew us. There had been a fight brewing, as usual, between my parents and I was furious (my default mood as a child when with my parents) because once again I was being used as a piggy-in-the-middle for their issues with each other. My father said something horrible to me (to provoke my mother) and I kicked him in the shin under the table, so he slapped me. A man who worked in the restaurant witnessed the slap but not the shin kick, and came over to see if I was okay. Little me, whose face was stone (I’d learned not to cry by that time, or react emotionally), told the man that I was okay, my father had hit me because I had kicked him and therefore his slap was my fault.
I’ll never forget the look the man gave me, and then gave my parents. It was one of the first times I noticed someone not accepting the way my parents treated me. More than that this was someone who had come to my defense and had been willing to risk their own safety (confronting the customer who is always right, challenging authority and the system which could end up punishing him) to help me.
Afterwards I remember thinking – I missed an opportunity to have someone on my side. But I was used to going solo by then, and there were other aspects to consider. Unlike my parents I did not like to recruit people to wage my battles for me because it never worked out well for those people, especially not if they dared to side with me. Anyone who cared for me, particularly if my parents felt that I cared for them too (more than I cared for my parents), was invariably targeted for demolition. I knew how my parents did that because I’d seen it happen often whenever someone displeased them or was no longer of any use to them, and they did it to me too so I knew how it felt, and I tried to avoid dragging people into the slaughterhouse.
When I was older, and people (often complete strangers) came to me and asked me why I was not treating my parents the way a child was supposed to, I did attempt to explain my side of the story (hope’s a bitch), but I learned that no matter how logical you are, other people have an agenda of their own and it usually is not one that works in your favour. Mostly they’d been wound up by my parents, and were just following the course they had been set upon, and my parents had tapped into that person’s own issues which meant that listening and understanding was low on their list of priorities – mainly what they wanted to do was lecture me, because then they’d feel noble. They were a knight of the round table hired by my parents to pursue a quest to defeat a monster and earn a trophy in the process.
When I went NC from my parents, one of the parameters I set for myself was that should anyone decide to ask me about severing ties with my parents I would refuse to discuss it. They could draw their own conclusions, as people always do and they’ve usually drawn them beforehand so their mind is often set. I did not owe anyone an explanation, nor was my relationship with my parents any business of theirs. I did not pry into their relationship with their parents or ask for them to explain it to me. I knew why I was doing it, and the only other person who needed to know my reasons already knew them and supported my NC.
I was lucky that there were extenuating factors by the time I went NC which made cutting ties easier. I did not live in the same community as my parents, my parents were not united, their focus was mainly on each other, and I did not have social contact with people whom we had in common. I was also used to being the villain in many of their stories about our relationship, so I used that role I’d been given all my life as an asset – since they’d already set me up as the shit daughter, I might as well be the shit daughter.
I decided that if people asked me why I cut ties with my parents, I’d just tell them I suck and sucky people do sucky things. There is little people can say once you’ve told them you’re a bad seed, it tends to throw them off kilter because they’re expecting you to argue that you’re good and your parents are bad, whereas if you flip it around they often aren’t prepared for that. Chances are they had this lecture they were going to give you about how if you’re as good as you think you are then you should be putting up with your parents, they’re only human, they did their best, you have to forgive, forget, make amends, allow them to make amends, blah, blah, blah. But once you tell them you’re bad – they usually don’t have a speech prepared for that. They may even end up arguing with you on your behalf.
Bottom line is – Do whatever you have to do to not get sucked back into the narcissist’s story because once you’re in their story they run the show and you’re always going to lose.
‘Winning’ is gained by not participating. Besides narc games is a spectator sport, and most of the people who the narcs drag into the drama to ‘help’ them just want a distraction (or some other personally motivated benefit) from their own lives, and your life, the narc’s life, will do the job. And at the end of the day they’ll get screwed over by the narc, so don’t get in the way of that. I know that sounds ruthless, but you have to be ruthless because you’re dealing with ruthless people – the narcissists. If the people they’re recruiting to play with your heartstrings (and ego) have known you and your parents for awhile, then they should know the score, they should have observed the family dynamic, if they haven’t seen it they’re probably never going to see it because they don’t want to see it – they want to see what they want to see for whatever reason which is their personal agenda.
You don’t owe anyone, other than yourself, an explanation. It’s not anyone else’s business. It’s not even your parents’ business why you’ve cut off contact with them. Parents who are narcissists really don’t give a shit about why you’ve chosen to cut off contact, they’re not the least bit interested in your side of the story and it won’t make a blind bit of difference to them. They’re not going to have any epiphanies or be struck deeply by the situation. It’s a drama to them which they can ride like the crest of a tsunami, and use to make themselves the centre of important, special, extraordinary and urgent attention. It’s business as usual for them. Talk to them, don’t talk to them, they’ll use it all for their own profit, your pain is their gain.
My mother does this whole grieving, distressed, wounded and deeply concerned routine about her ‘missing’ daughter. She has no idea why I don’t talk to her, she’s so caring and wonderful, I must have been brainwashed against her! She is never going to ask herself – Is it because of me, something I did? – as she doesn’t do self-reflection, narcissists never do, she may ask that of others but it’s just a sympathy-getting tactic used to recruit people. They tend to do the – Poor me, help me, my child doesn’t love me and that is so terribly sad for me, please aid me in bullying my child into submission to my needs.
It can be unsettling dealing with people who have been recruited to pressure you. Feeling shaken is natural, especially when your adrenaline kicks in – there’s a physical response to it which is akin to a survival scenario. Add to that the PTSD triggers and you’re basically reliving the narcissistic abuse all over again, reverting to the powerless child who couldn’t get away, felt obliged to put up with things, while your adult self tries to figure out how to protect your child self. Takes awhile for personal power to work out the best tactic to keep your boundaries intact from the inevitable attempts and assaults to invade you again.
There will be times when you feel weak, defenseless, surrounded by people trying to get at you, and you may wonder if surrendering is an option, especially when your strength wavers due to how exhausting the process can be.
You’re strong, very strong, and it’s okay to feel vulnerable – that’s part of strength.
Take care of yourself, rely on yourself, be honest with yourself, and apply comfort foods and soothing balms where needed. Give yourself time to recover form your wounds, and don’t push yourself too hard to deal with everything all at once. You’ve got this, but sometimes you’ll feel like you don’t got this 🙂
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yeah. i pretty much figured out over the weekend that i’m going to have to just stop talking about it (with the FMs). there’s just no point. it was so easy to realize that my parents had gotten to him. the same words my parents have been using for years to FOG me were coming out of his mouth. it was as though they had tricked him, now he was going to use those same tactics to trick me. it was like, “come on, dude. i recognize my parents’ bs.” it just sucks because i can feel everything and everyone slipping away. it’s not enough narc parents withhold themselves from you all your life, they have to do their best to take everyone else away as well. but then, i guess i never really ‘had’ these people to begin with if they can be so easily turned against me.
in all fairness though, i had never considered the price an fm would have to pay for siding with me. that was a very good point you made. i also like the idea of just going with the whole ‘shit daughter’ thing. nc is quite difficult for me because so many of my family members (my parents included) live in close proximity to me. honestly, i don’t know how i’ll be able to keep it going forever (unless i just pick up and move, which i’ve thought about). issues could easily arise with their getting older. i’m just going to take it day by day, though. if i wake up tomorrow and don’t feel like communicating with my parents (and i know i won’t), i won’t. the same with the next day, and the next, etc. i will not communicate or stand in the same room with them again until i feel virtually impervious to their crazyness. not until i can be like neo at the end of “the matrix”, when agent smith tries to shoot him, and he raises his hand and says, “no”, and all the bullets fall to the ground:)
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I read a couple of interesting articles the other day, one is about getting to know the selves that we have, and the other is a guide for recovery for children of narcissists:
http://www.voicedialogue.com/self-awareness/
https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/the-legacy-distorted-love/201205/it-s-all-about-me-recovery-adult-children-narcissist
The most important thing to do at this time is to focus your attention on yourself, on taking care of your needs, getting to know who you are as you are, acknowledging your story within yourself. That’s where ‘impervious to their crazyness’ comes from, knowing yourself deeply, intimately, and with care.
One of the ‘traps’ we can fall into is wanting others to know our side of the story, especially if they come at us with the narcissist’s side of the story. Problem is you get sucked back into the drama games, and get caught in a he said/she said vicious cycle.
A tactic I used when having to deal with people who knew my parents and wanted in on the dramatic action was to stonewall them with polite silence on the matter, and shift the conversation to their lives.
Your family members and close friends of your family all have dramas in their own lives, and they may be using your drama to distract themselves from their problems, maybe your rift from your parents makes them feel better about themselves, so reminding them of their own stories will redirect them to where their focus should actually be. They really should be using the energy which they’re putting into interfering into your life into their own lives. Ideally if you can remind them of some achievement in their lives which they are more than happy to discuss, this will keep them focused on themselves and away from you, and when you part they will go away will a feel good – this is actually a powerful thing to do because people remember how you made them feel, not what you said.
If people feel good when they interact with you, that’ll tell your side of the story far better than words, and it will impact on their interactions with your parents, perhaps because your parents will make them feel guilty for liking you, they will notice the contrast between how they felt with you and how your parents make them feel.
I know you’re calling these people who your parents are using FM’s for your sake, just don’t forget that they’re human beings – that is a vital thing to remember. What do all human beings want – they want to feel good about themselves.
Narcissists are adept at making people feel good, but they excel at making people feel bad about themselves (and they always revert to this default setting because they can’t resist the impulse). Let them screw themselves over, while you keep your distance.
That distance is your lifeline to your new life. It’s that time when you stayed up late at night while everyone was sleeping, and luxuriated in yourself. Do things your way, in your own time, at your own pace, and discover yourself through it all.
Neo had to figure out who he was to become Neo. 🙂
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you’re right. really good advice, as always. good links, too. you, and all the other people who post here, have this way of putting things in proper perspective and showing me sides of things i hadn’t considered. i have a tendency to ruminate continuously about things until they loom so large, i feel i am being swallowed up by them. that is why i come here. especially after something happens with my parents, an fm (this is just a term i use because it’s easy. i haven’t forgotten that they’re humans), etc. i don’t have anyone at all in real time to talk to about my family, and npd, etc. when it comes to npd in my life, it’s an entire family affair. when i come here, i know you guys will help me put things back into proper proportions, so that it doesn’t all seem too big for me to handle. that’s why i came here after the incident with my cousin (i won’t call him ‘the fm’:) that’s why i asked about posts about your mother. he was making me feel so guilty and confused about my feelings toward my mother. i wanted to look at your posts and tell myself, “see. she feels the same way. it’s all right.” sort of a self-soothing thing just so i can keep from flipping out.
i got the feeling you were offended by my asking, so i just thought i’d explain. i know that when i’m unsettled by a question i’ll do just what you did. i’ll ask the person the same question they asked me, so that i can get a better perspective on why they asked, and, based on that perspective, i’ll decide whether or not i want to answer the question. usually, i’ll have this reaction to a question when i feel like the person asking is attempting to invade me. when i feel he or she is attempting to get at places in me that i feel are frankly none of his or her business. i felt like maybe that’s what the whole “something of yours in me” statement was about? anway, i just wanted to be clear about what my intention actually was.
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You don’t need to feel me out, in retrospect or otherwise, or worry about my feelings, etc. Everything is copacetic. I wasn’t offended by your question. I replied to your comment at 2 am and I tend to be more abrupt at that time as when I’m tired my dyslexia is more pronounced, so I cut to the chase to minimise confusion.
If you got the feeling that I was offended then it may be due to having spent so much time around narcissists, everything offends them, even breathing, and I know how that kind of thing can cause concern about everything you say and do creating snowballing consequences.
When I first got out of my parents’ influence I found it rather awkward and disconcerting to interact with people who were not narcissists because… basically they were very chilled and forgiving about the things narcissists get wound up about and punish you for. It’s like crossing the threshold of alternate realities.
When you’ve been caught up in Narcville for a long time you can get into this mode of worrying all the time about how others will react to you because of how their reactions affect you. You can become overly concerned about the sensitivity of others. The only people who get offended and upset at the slightest thing are narcissists (or others who are overly sensitive about themselves), the rest of the world isn’t as thin-skinned as they are, can look after themselves.
When I asked if you were looking for ‘something of yours in me’ it’s just another way of saying what you have just expressed in your comment – “i wanted to look at your posts and tell myself, “see. she feels the same way. it’s all right.” sort of a self-soothing thing just so i can keep from flipping out.”
The question you asked was vague and I figured that you were probably after a specific scenario which you are experiencing or have experienced with your mother and you were wondering if I’d experienced it too and had written about it.
I’ve written a lot about my parents and my feelings towards them in my posts, there are over a thousand posts on here, and searching through my archives is a bit like rummaging through a cluttered and messy trunk in the attic, so I simply needed more data from you about what you were looking for in particular so that I would know what to look for.
I understand why you’re using the term ‘Flying Monkey’, it can be helpful to see those caught up in the narcissist’s web that way, but it can also cause issues. So, remembering that they’re human can be helpful too. You’ve probably been used as an FM at some point against someone else when you were caught up in your N parents’ endless dramas, if you can recall how that felt, and the lessons you’ve learned from it then you can use that information to aid you in dealing with the FM’s sent your way (it enhances logical empathy). Most FM’s really don’t want to be used that way, but you know how hard it is to say ‘NO’ to a narcissist.
A good place for support and validation of personal experience through the stories of others is this forum – https://www.reddit.com/r/raisedbynarcissists
Be gentle with yourself and remember that you don’t need to be hyper-vigilant when interacting with non-narcissists. You can just be yourself, non-narcissists are a very different breed and usually know all too well what it’s like to be human and therefore it’s okay to be human around them 🙂
I’m away from my blog at the moment due to RL chaos of a good sort, so… no worries.
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I love my mom i just want to shared what i have been expiriencing about how my mom raised me and as i am a mother now i put everything on my mind what i think some of them wrong and think how i would raised myown kids on my own way aslikemy mom does raising us the different way i did from raising my own kid all parent have their own belief from raising their kids well like my Mom not letting me to play dirt or get wet draw on my body or play how i like i remember it so what i did to my own kid i let them play what they want how they want as long as it cant harmed them or get hurt i let them to play on no timer i want them to fully enjoyed their youth and say as they grow they will change on their willingness but i was wrong as they grow up they play much noise dirt a lot and forgettin they need to act normal way or proper way i have a difficulties stopping them so stressful now im explaining them that what i done was what i think the right thing to do and now people judgging me as a bad mom not teaching my son or daughter to use fork while eating be respectful and telling me to decipline my kids my kids age 12,8,7,5 do im a bad mom?
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Thank you for sharing 🙂
Being a mother is one of the most challenging experiences in life and it is a learning experience as much as it is a teaching one. People are always going to judge us no matter what we do, it’s easy to be critical of what others have done and it makes people feel superior, so don’t worry about what other people think, especially if their views are negative.
You did what you thought was right for your kids, you want them to be healthy and happy, you love them, that sounds like a good mom. Maybe they’re a bit wild, but they’re young, and still growing and learning. All kids are noisy and messy. Sounds natural to me.
Trust yourself!
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And i end up stop talking on my circle causing me unfriendly. I tried lot of time talking find amigo’s amiga’s neighbor but talking to them leaving me selfpittyful cause im not good like them teaching their kids so i decided not to go out for long or keep busy at home rather than talking to few mom exchanging thoughts about experiencing up to now im never give up i stopped making friends at school cause i know im not the only one getting hurt my kids also suffer dipper than how i am its hard i dont feel good forcing them to act how critism or other want them to act my kids are not a robot they can be crazy if they want no ruled for me im happy for my kids and im proud for them to be silly i dont need them who think im not good and cant reach their level were happy crazy family.
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[…] Narcissists – What’s the Attraction? […]
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I saw the list on Pinterest and at first I was offended. Then I realized that there just may be a chance that you are describing my problem. I must be a narcissist because I say those things during arguments. I’m not even sure I understand how not to say them. It’s part of my thought process when a situation comes up. Do other people think what I do? Is this an ongoing problem? Is this due to an imbalance in medication? Etc… I guess that makes me a narcissist. How do I stop? Reading your article it showed me what the victim and everyone else sees. What can I do to change? I never thought of myself as a narcissist because I think very poorly of myself. I definitely don’t gaze at myself in the mirror or revel in my own glory. So I see that I am seen in a very bad way. I’m serious. What can I do to change?
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Thank you for sharing 🙂
A list like that is not a good diagnostic tool for identifying a narcissist, if it were then we’d all be narcissists because some of those items listed are things which most people have said in arguments.
Context is very relevant when assessing yourself or anyone else.
Narcissists tend to use phrases like these out of context – for instance they’ll ask you if you’ve taken your medication even though you don’t take medication, don’t have a condition which requires medication, and they are fully aware of that – as the aim of the use of the phrases for them isn’t to have a discussion with another person but to ‘win a game’, to deflect any negative attention away from themselves, to attack the other as a form of self-defense, to confuse and confound, to make sure the blame, fault or responsibility gets shifted onto the other person, to dismiss the other person and make them the problem. A narcissist may use all of these phrases within one argument, peppering the other person with them until they either hit a nerve and derail the other person’s focus or the other person gives up, gives in, and the narcissist ‘wins’.
A narcissist can also start an argument where there isn’t cause for an argument at all.
Non-narcissists tend to use phrases like these within the context of an argument – for instance if the other person takes medication for a condition, asking them if they’ve taken their medication because they are behaving the way they do when they don’t take it is within context and makes sense. If they are not listening to you, then pointing out that things would go smoother if they actually were listening is a logical statement, even though if someone isn’t listening they won’t hear you when you say that or they’ll get aggressive because it’s true and they don’t want to be in the wrong so they make you the wrong one for being right about them.
It’s worth taking into account that all humans can be negatively narcissistic, particularly when we feel vulnerable, under attack, accused of something, when a button is pushed, a soft spot or wound is triggered, our ego gets dented, bruised, when someone or a scenario makes us feel bad, wrong, like we’ve failed, aren’t good enough, etc.
There is such a thing as ‘healthy narcissism’ which is briefly outlined in this article – https://www.psychologytoday.com/articles/201609/the-real-narcissists
You don’t come across as a narcissist – the fact that you’re asking the questions which you have asked, that you’re genuinely self-reflecting, self-questioning, that you see a problem and are actively seeking a solution, that you’re open to being the one at fault… is not something a real narcissist would do.
While it can be healthy to review yourself, your behaviour, your approach to arguments and interactions, and ask yourself if you’re perhaps a narcissist or being narcissistic, it is advisable to be aware that if you think poorly of yourself (something which tends to come with being human and living in a society which is constantly criticising us, reminding us of our flaws, and comparing us with some fantasy ideal of perfection…) then diagnosing yourself as a narcissist may me part of that tendency.
When looking at yourself as a possible narcissist, it’s also worth checking out ‘the mirror’ of other people – are your ‘victims’ really victims of you or is it vice versa. Certain types of narcissists (particularly the Covert Narcissist, also sometimes known as the passive-aggressive, sensitive, or vulnerable narcissist) cause those in relationships with them to see themselves as the narcissist while the real narcissist plays the victim of a narcissist.
‘Narcissist’ is a trendy accusation at this time, with non-narcissists accusing other non-narcissists of being one because relationships are complicated, communication is difficult, and frustrations bubble over, and real narcissists use it more often than non-narcissists because once they’ve accused someone of being a narcissist (also known as a smear campaign), that person is stuck in a bind, and while that person agonises over being a narcissist and trying to not be a narcissist, the real narcissist continues along their misery making merry way righteously certain that they are the only non-narcissist in the universe.
That being said if you feel that it is time for a change in yourself and your patterns of behaviour/thought, then I would trust that instinct.
What can you do to change?
Figure out what it is exactly that you want to change. This is a good article about that – https://appliedjung.com/the-grand-myth-of-transformation/ – as it discusses the many aspects of change and being true to who we truly are.
If what you’re looking for is ways to adjust how you react when an argument occurs, to change your thought processes and how things usually play out, then this is an article worth checking out – https://www.gottman.com/blog/r-is-for-repair/ – it is about method – https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Bo5xcn-CUAAnjRT.png:large – which offers a change in dialogue, both internal and external, just by making communicative tweaks.
Sometimes in the heat of the moment we fall into patterns, ruts, and those patterns and ruts make things worse, piling misunderstanding upon misunderstanding, and it isn’t always easy to take a time out, pause to breathe.
It’s not all on you, the other person in the scenario bears half of the responsibility – they too could call for a time out, but they, like you, are caught up in the moment and may be falling into a pattern and rut of their own (which may be similar to yours).
Others are often thinking what we are thinking – except they’re doing it from their side of things, and that can cause similarities to become polar opposites.
A small change in the pattern can have a big effect. If you’re gentler with yourself, it becomes easier to be gentler with others, and gentleness in arguments can have a powerful impact.
Hope this helps, best wishes!
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Thank you so much for your reply. I hadn’t seen this until another person replied to your post. So, I apologize for my late response.
I have been working on my communication skills and it is helping. Finding ways to make things not about me and understanding other people have needs just as strongly as I do. A silly example, but not a real one, could be seen that I don’t like country music but someone else in the car really does. Rather than overtly saying I won’t listen to it, I can ask to make a compromise to listen for a short time and then change to a station we can all tolerate. I have always had strong opinions and haven’t been one to be very flexible. Step one is under way.
I am finding that my partner does have similar traits to me and could use a little coaching, but I’m not sure how to open the conversation. So, for now I am working on myself and maybe they will learn from my example. I don’t know if this is passive aggressive, or if I am just trying to avoid confrontation. I will begin reading your articles and continue my transformation.
One more thing I wanted to mention: I find that my extremely low self esteem is probably the worst part of my problem. I am already very negative about myself so I don’t believe that someone could like me. My plan is to work on this in parallel because I think I would be less of a problem if I could find something about me that I do like and build on that. I bring this up because I’m curious if low self esteem is a typical trait of the narcissist. It seems like it could easily be an underlying cause of why the behavior begins. The narcissist is created by making others feel worse about themselves. Although, I don’t think I do this often, finding fault in others is not a way to resolve conflict nor a healthy way to live. I’m learning to find good in everything. It may seem sudden, but I don’t want to make excuses to change in any way I find that is an issue immediately.
Thanks again for your response and I am absolutely thrilled to begin my life in a happy and healthy way.
Scott
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Thank you 🙂
Best wishes!
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I said the exact same thing, but know I am not a full blown or covert narcissist.
In my case, my ex-wifeife shows all signs of covert narcissism and has done all of the diabolical deeds with no care for anyone but herself. She hurt many people and continues to hurt. I hope she gets her just due as soon as possible to stop her Terror spree.
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Thank you for sharing 🙂
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