The Truth Behind A Narcissist:

Run, don't walk away!

The term narcissist gets thrown around rather liberally these days, but the truth is there’s a very big difference between someone who has some narcissistic tendencies versus someone who meets the clinical criteria of Narcissistic Personality Disorder! 

Someone who has narcissistic tendencies will display certain attitudes that are narcissistic, however, they are still able to live reasonably normal and functional lives with minimal drama amongst their interpersonal relationships. They can also grow out of these traits with some self-development and emotional healing work. Traits can include:

• Feeling very entitled

• Feeling more important than others

• Having little to no empathy for the feelings of others

• Seeing situations as black and white

These traits can stem from a series of what is referred to as Small T traumas that can create an underlying insecurity(s) or feelings of inadequacy. Hence, the need to ‘talk’ themselves up around others. Small T traumas can be not winning a competition at school, or being told off in a way that made the individual feel less than. It’s something that was psychologically impactful, but not catastrophically as damaging as what a Big T trauma would be. Narcissistic tendencies can also stem from their parents allowing them to get their own way all the time as a child, or spoiling them too much – a lack of discipline has led them to an over inflated sense of self-importance. It can also just be that they haven’t had much life experience in the real world, and therefor lack socially acceptable behaviours and interpersonal skills. 

Someone with Narcissistic Personality Disorder on the other hand is a very different story. They are extremely abusive, whether psychologically, emotionally or physically. Which ever way(s), they fundamentally cause great harm to anyone who becomes close to them. They cause great chaos and drama wherever they go, and are extremely dangerous to anyone who becomes their prey! Even though they tend to be charming in the beginning, the façade fades once they know they have their next victim hooked in. 

There’s no set reason(s) as to what causes someone to have Narcissistic Personality Disorder. But, what seems evident to me is that it stems from either a single Big T trauma, or a series of Big T traumas. Often, the person with NPD had an emotionally devoid Mother that didn’t nurture them with love as an infant. They felt rejected and abandoned. Some kind of abuse is usually present as well – sexual, physical or emotional. 

As someone who was sexually abused as a child, I’ve often thought about why some victims become Narcissists, and others like me, don’t. My conclusion is this:

Some victims, whether consciously or subconsciously, decide that the pain they suffered was so horrific that they are going to prevent it from happening again by becoming the (powerful) abuser. They want to be the one in control, and they conclude the best way to do that is to inflict that pain on to someone else by becoming the abuser. The only problem is in order to do this they must dissociate from their own moral compass. Someone attached to the feelings of their own conscience could never inflict such pain onto others. Where as someone like myself decides that the pain they suffered was so great that we could never inflict it onto someone else, so we decide to inflict the pain onto ourselves through numerous self-destructive behaviours and coping mechanisms. But, in order to do this to ourselves, we have to dissociate from facing the pain we experienced. It is through the suppression of that pain that we can torture ourselves.

Someone with NPD will display the following qualities:

• Gaslighting – nothing is ever their fault

• Feeling self important in an extreme way

• Not showing empathy

• Wanting attention

• Playing the victim to get sympathy

• Judge others harshly and talk badly about others all the time

• Want to be admired by others and can often have Grandiose Delusional Disorder in conjunction to their NPD

• They lie, distort and overembellish the truth

• They are very controlling and stuck in their ways

• They don’t like to be told what to do or follow orders from people they believe are beneath them

• They can be very aggressive when they don’t get their own way

Honestly, there are many more traits that I could list, but these sum up what unpleasant people they are. People often ask me how to deal with someone who has NPD, and there are only two options. 1.) Shut up, tell them how wonderful they are and do EVERYTHING they say. Or, 2.) RUN! Run as far away from them as possible. Cut them out of your life and have absolutely no contact with them. This is obviously the superior option!

You see, you cannot change a true Narcissist with NPD. You cannot implement boundaries with them either. They will never respect a boundary that you try to implement. Because they don’t care about anyone else but themselves. The problem that their victims usually have with doing this, is that the Narcissist is very good at charming their victims with delightful behaviour when they feel they need to reel them back in. If they sense that the victim is getting ready to leave, they will do and say all the right things in order to lure the victim into staying. As their victims are always empathetic, they want to believe the best in them and fall for the lure. The victim is usually someone I described above: someone who has suffered their own Big T trauma, but has chosen to inflict the pain onto themselves instead of onto others like the Narcissist has. They make the perfect prey for the Narcissist! 

Although the Narcissist will never change, the victim certainly can. If they are brave enough to start working on their own trauma, they can heal enough to gain the courage and the self-worth required to be able to walk away. Healing this kind of long term trauma can be daunting and challenging, however, it’s certainly not worse than the option of remaining the victim of a Narcissist.

If you have a Narcissist with NPD in your life, please take note of what I am saying. Stop trying to convince yourself that the relationship will improve. It won’t! It can’t! It never will!

#narcissist #NPD #victim #abusive #rundontwalkaway