Most narcissists are all high-functioning -- that is,
they've maintained gainful employment, marriages and family life -- and there
may certainly be narcissistic traits that I haven't observed among the
narcissists I've known. You can go directly to my full
commentary on narcissists' traits or you can select what you're most
interested in from the Blue Word’s
below. Narcissicism is a personality disorder and that means that narcissists'
personalities aren't organized in a way that makes sense to most people, so the
notes below do not necessarily go in the order I've listed them or in any order
at all. Interaction with narcissists is confusing, even bewildering -- their
reasons for what they do are not the same as normal reasons. In fact, treating
them like normal people (e.g., appealing to their better nature, as in
"Please have a heart," or giving them the chance to apologize and
make amends) will make matters worse with a narcissist.
- Amoral/Conscienceless 2.Authoritarian 3.Care only about appearances 4. Contemptuous 5.Critical of others 6.Cruel 7.Disappointing gift-givers 8. Don’t recognize own feelings 9. Envious and competitive 10. feel entitled 11. Flirtatious or Seductive 12. Grandiose 13. Hard to have a good time with 14. Hate to live alone 15. Hyper-sensitive to criticism 16. Impulsive 17. Lack sense of humor 18. Naive 19. Passive 20. Pessimistic 21. Religious 22. Secretive 23. Self-Contradictory 24. Stingy 25. Strange work habits 26 Unusual eating habits 27. Weird
The most telling thing that narcissists do is contradict themselves. They will do this
virtually in the same sentence, without even stopping to take a breath. It can
be trivial (e.g., about what they want for lunch) or it can be serious (e.g.,
about whether or not they love you). When you ask them which one they mean,
they'll deny ever saying the first one, though it may literally have been only
seconds since they said it -- really, how could you think they'd ever have said
that? You need to have your head examined! They will contradict
FACTS. They will lie to you about things that you did together. They will
misquote you to yourself. If you disagree with them, they'll say you're lying,
making stuff up, or are crazy. [At this point, if you're like me, you sort of
panic and want to talk to anyone who will listen about what is going on: this
is a healthy reaction; it's a reality check ("who's the crazy one
here?"); that you're confused by the narcissist's contrariness, that you
turn to another person to help you keep your bearings, that you know something
is seriously wrong and worry that it might be you are all signs that you are
not a narcissist]. NOTE: Normal people can
behave irrationally under emotional stress -- be confused, deny things they know
get sort of paranoid, want to be babied when they're in pain. But normal people
recover pretty much within an hour or two or a day or two, and, with normal
people, your expressions of love and concern for their welfare will be taken to
heart. They will be stabilized by your emotional and moral support. Not so with
narcissists -- the surest way I know of to get a crushing blow to your heart is
to tell a narcissist you love her or him. They will respond with a nasty power
move, such as telling you to do things entirely their way or else be banished
from them for ever.
If you're like me, you get into disputes with narcissists
over their casual dishonesty and cruelty
to other people. Trying to reform narcissists by reasoning with them or by
appealing to their better nature is about as effective as spitting in the
ocean. What you see is what you get: they have no better nature. The
fundamental problem here is that narcissists lack empathy. Narcissists lack a mature conscience and seem to be
restrained only by fear of being punished or of damaging their reputations --
though, again, this can be obscure to casual observation if you don't know what
they think their reputations are, and what they believe others think of them
may be way out of touch with reality. Their moral intelligence is about at the
level of a bright five- or six-year-old; the only rules they recognize are
things that have been specifically required, permitted, prohibited, or
disapproved of by authority figures they know personally. Anyhow, narcissists
can't be counted on not to do something just because it's wrong,
illegal, or will hurt someone, as long as they think that they can get away
with it or that you can't stop them or punish them (i.e., they don't care what
you think unless they're afraid of you). Narcissists are envious and competitive in ways that are hard
to understand. For instance, one I knew once became incensed over an article
published in a national magazine -- not for its content exactly, but because she
could have written something just as good. Maybe she could have -- she hadn't,
but that little lapse on her part was beside the point to her. They are
constantly comparing themselves (and whatever they feel belongs to them, such
as their children and furniture) to other people. Narcissists feel that, unless
they are better than anyone else, they are worse than everybody in the whole
world.
Narcissists are (a) extremely
sensitive to personal criticism and (b) extremely
critical of other people. They think that they must be seen as
perfect or superior or infallible, next to god-like (if not actually divine,
then sitting on the right hand of God) -- or else they are worthless. There's
no middle ground of ordinary normal humanity for narcissists. They can't
tolerate the least disagreement. In fact, if you say, "Please don't do
that again -- it hurts," narcissists will turn around and do it again harder
to prove that they were right the first time; their reasoning seems to be
something like "I am a good person and can do no wrong; therefore, I didn't
hurt you and you are lying about it now..." -- sorry, folks, I get lost
after that. Anyhow, narcissists are habitually cruel in little ways, as well as
big ones, because they're paying attention to their fantasy and not to you, but
the bruises on you are REAL, not in your imagination. Thus, no matter how
gently you suggest that they might do better to change their ways or get some
help, they will react in one of two equally horrible ways: they will attack or
they will withdraw. Be wary of wandering into this dragon's cave -- narcissists
will say ANYTHING, they will trash anyone in their own self-justification, and
then they will expect the immediate restoration of the status quo. They will
attack you (sometimes physically) and spew a load of bile, insult, abuse,
contempt, threats, etc., and then -- well, it's kind of like they had
indigestion and the vicious tirade worked like a burp: "There. Now I feel
better. Where were we?" They feel better, so they expect you to feel
better, too. They will say you are nothing, worthless, and turn around
immediately and say that they love you. When you object to this kind of
treatment, they will say, "You just have to accept me the way I am. (God
made me this way, so God loves me even if you are too stupid to understand how
special I am.)" Accepting them as they are (and staying away from them
entirely) is excellent advice. The other "punishment" narcissists
mete out is banishing you from their glorious presence -- this can turn into a
farce, since by this point you are probably praying to be rescued, "Dear
God! How do I get out of this?" The narcissist expects that you will be
devastated by the withdrawal of her/his divine attention, so that after a while
-- a few weeks or months (i.e., the next time the narcissist needs to use you
for something) -- the narcissist will expect you to have learned your lesson
and be eager to return to the fold. If you have learned your lesson, you won't
answer that call. They can't see that they have a problem; it's always somebody
else who has the problem and needs to change. Therapies work at all only when
the individual wants to change and, though narcissists hate their real selves,
they don't want to change -- they want the world to change. And they criticize, gripe, and complain about almost
everything and almost everyone almost all the time. There are
usually a favored few whom narcissists regard as absolutely above reproach,
even for egregious misconduct or actual crime, and about whom they won't brook
the slightest criticism. These are people the narcissists are terrified of,
though they'll tell you that what they feel is love and respect; apparently
they don't know the difference between fear and love. Narcissists just get
worse and worse as they grow older; their parents and other authority figures
that they've feared die off, and there's less and less outside influence to
keep them in check.
Narcissists are hostile and ferocious in reaction, but they
are generally passive and lacking in
initiative. They don't start stuff -- they don't reach out. Remember this when
they turn and rend you! They will complain about the same things for years on
end, but only rarely do anything to change what dissatisfies them so badly. Narcissists have strange
work habits. Normal people work for a goal or a product, even if the
goal is only a paycheck. Normal people measure things by how much they have to
spend (in time, work, energy) to get the desired results. Normal people desire
idleness from time to time, usually wanting as much free time as they can get
to pursue their own thoughts and pleasures and interests. Narcissists work for
a goal, too, but it's a different goal: they want power, authority, adulation.
Lacking empathy, and lacking also context and affect, narcissists don't
understand how people achieve glory and high standing; they think it's all arbitrary,
it's all appearances, it's all who you know. So they try to attach themselves
to people who already have what they want, meanwhile making a great show of
working hard. Narcissists can put in a shocking amount of time to very little
effect. This is partly because they have so little empathy that they don't know
why some work is valued more highly than other work, why some people's opinions
carry more weight than others'. They do know that you're supposed to work and
not be lazy, so they keep themselves occupied. But they are not invested in the
work they do -- whatever they may produce is just something they have to do to
get the admiration and power they crave. Since this is so, they really don't
pay attention to what they're doing, preferring the easiest thing at every
turn, even though they may be constantly occupied, so that narcissists manage
to be workaholics and extremely lazy at the same time. Narcissists measure the
worth of their work only by how much time they spend on it, not by what
they produce. They want to get an A for Effort. Narcissists lack empathy, so
they don't know what others value or why. Narcissists tend to value things in
quantitative ways and in odd quantities at that -- they'll tell you how many
inches of letters they received, but not how many letters or from how many
correspondents; they know the price of everything and the value of nothing. A
narcissist may, in fact, hold himself to a grinding work schedule that gives him something like an addictive high so that, when wrought
up, he can be sort of dazed, giddy, and groggy, making you wonder if he's drunk
or otherwise intoxicated -- now, that's a real workaholic. Usually, this
excessive busyness appears to be -- and some will even tell you this -- an
attempt to distract themselves from unpleasant or inconvenient feelings (i.e.,
it's a manic defense against depression -- and, note, with narcissists it's
inaccurate to use "happy" or "unhappy" because their
feelings are just not that differentiated; "euphoria" or "dysphasia"
are as close as they get to ordinary pleasure or distress) or to make
themselves unavailable to others' emotional needs. Narcissists not only don't recognize the
feelings and autonomy of others, they don't
recognize their own feelings as their own. Their feelings are sort
of like the weather, atmospheric, acts of God. The narcissistic think that
everyone's having the same feeling as they are. This means that usually their
own pain means nothing to them beyond the physical discomfort -- it has no
affective component. When they do get some painful affect, they think that God
is punishing them -- they think that their trivial errors are worth God's
specific attention to their punishment. If you try to straighten them out, by
telling them that your feelings are different, beware: their idea of sharing
their feelings is to do or say something that makes you feel the way they're
feeling and, as they make a point of not sharing anything desirable, you can
expect something really nasty. The sad fact seems to be that narcissists feel
just as bad about themselves as they make others feel about them. Narcissists
are noted for their negative, pessimistic,
cynical, or gloomy outlook on life. Sarcasm seems to be a
narcissistic specialty, not to mention spite. Lacking love and pleasure, they don't
have a good reason for anything they do and they think everyone else is just
like them, except they're honest and the rest of us are hypocrites. Nothing
real is ever perfect enough to satisfy them, so are they are constantly
complaining and criticizing -- to the point of verbal abuse and insult. Narcissists
are impulsive. They undo themselves
by behavior that seems oddly stupid for people as intelligent as they are.
Somehow, they don't consider the probable consequences of their actions. It's
not clear to me whether they just expect to get away with doing anything they
feel like at the moment or whether this impulsiveness is essentially a
cognitive shortcoming deriving from the static psychic state with its distorted
perception of time. Narcissists hate to live
alone. Their inner resources are skimpy, static, and sterile,
nothing interesting or attractive going on in their hearts and minds, so they
don't want to be stuck with themselves. All they have inside is the image of
perfection that, being mere mortals like the rest of us, they will inevitably
fall short of attaining. So here’s the thing, to end this, only you know who
you are, and if this is you, then stop being such a creep, because no-one wants
you around to be honest, and you are someone that people are much happier to
see going then coming. If you happen to know someone like this, then give them
this blog, and hopefully they will get the hint, and go to work on them self,
and make a change for the better, so the rest of us can stand to be around them….
Merry Christmas ~ Donnie Bolena
