What is a narcissist? It is a pattern of grandiose self-importance and a lack of empathy, which typically begins in early adulthood. What are some of the behaviors that a person with narcissism exhibit? Brene Brown defines narcissism as the shame-based fear of being ordinary.

• Narcissism is a trait that is positively correlated with insecurity.
• Exaggerate their achievements and talents. Brag. Have arrogance. Better-than attitude. Center of attention.
• Believe that he or she is “special” and unique and can only be understood by, or should associate with, other special or high-status individuals.
• Have a need for praise or admiration. They need to feel validation from others to boost their egos. Do we see this in social media?
• Have a sense of entitlement or unreasonable expectations of overly favorable treatment or expect automatic compliance with his or her expectations. Rules that apply to other people don’t apply to them.
• They exhibit controlling, manipulative behavior, always having their own needs come first.
• They don’t want to see your successes, and will never tolerate your successes being greater than theirs. This is toxic.
• Narcissism is about dominance, power and control.

The points above are just a few to start with, but there is more. How are narcissists behaving in relationships? People with NPD can be abusive.

• The narcissist never admits fault or takes responsibility for anything. They never say “I’m sorry”.
• Use gaslighting to make a survivor believe that their memories of events are inaccurate or blown out of proportion. They deny doing anything bad and may say that you are taking it too personally or being too sensitive.
• Shame victims about anything from their accomplishments to the previous trauma they suffered, insinuating they deserved it somehow.
• Often stay cool, calm and collected, sometimes even amused, when their partner is visibly distraught, because they actually do not care and they are not listening to you; they don’t want your opinion.
• Change the subject in conversations in order to evade any accountability

There are different types of behavior of people exhibiting NPD? There is covert and overt narcissists. Taken to the next level, there are malignant narcissists. What would a malignant narcissist do? One thing is to use manipulation to silence you.

• Rather than acknowledge their own imperfections malignant narcissists and sociopaths opt to dump their own traits on their unsuspecting suspects in a way that is painful and excessively cruel.
• In a disagreement with you, rather than taking the time to carefully consider a different perspective, they generalize anything and everything you say, making blanket statements. They may put a label on you that dismisses your perspective altogether.
• In relationships, narcissists do not like to be left. If you leave them, they will fight back.

Black and White – Splitting

Narcissists take a “mental snapshot” of you soon after they meet you, and from then on out they are interacting with that snapshot of you, even if you grow and change with your growth mindset. Have you met someone who sees people either as geniuses that she put on pedestals or they were completely terrible. Perhaps she initially thought they were geniuses but then once they made any kind of mistake they were suddenly idiots. One mistake and you’re done! Very judgmental. Also, they read an article and immediately they think that this is gospel, but if it comes from my mouth it is questionable.

Splitting (also called binary thinking, black-and-white thinking, all-or-nothing thinking, or thinking in extremes) is the failure in a person’s thinking to bring together the dichotomy of both perceived positive and negative qualities of something into a cohesive, realistic whole. It’s black and white thinking. It’s throwing the “baby out with the bathwater”.

Coping Strategies

Coping strategies include setting personal boundaries and gently walking away. Remember, not to take it too personally. The person with NPD treats everyone the same. Keep calm.

A Short List of the Signs

Here is a short list by Ramani S. Durvasula, who is on YouTube and wrote a book called Should I Stay or Should I Go? Here are a few “pillars” of narcissism. The person lacks empathy, feels entitled (expect special treatment), very grandiose (elevate their self-image), very superficial (focused on appearance and not so much about what’s on the inside), lack self-control of their emotions (have emotional outbursts), cannot take criticism (but they can dole it out). In Dr. Ramani Durvasula’s book, there are 30 signs of a narcissist. Some other signs are a tendency to be jealous. They engage in gaslighting and they are not very loyal. have schadenfreude (pleasure from the misery of others)

Gaslighting

What is gaslighting? This happens when you say to someone that what you said hurt me. Then the gaslighter says that you have no right to feel that way, or they will deny that they said what they said to you. Gaslighting is denying your reality. Gaslighting does not prove that the person is a narcissist because it can be part of other things as well.

Narcissists are made, they are not born that way. It can be the fault of the parents, not that the parents are bad people. If a parent overindulges the child’s physical and superficial world (how they look, money, lifestyle) and underindulge their emotional world, you might be contributing to narcissism. You create a fixed mindset by constantly giving them credit for their achievements. What does underindulging their emotional world look like? As a parent you don’t really listen to your child. No empathy. No real conversation. Also, a child can learn narcissism by watching it in their parent or parents. Entitled behavior for example. These absent traits do not necessarily create narcissism in children.

Learn with YouTube

Signs You’re Dating A Narcissist. If you are in a relationship with a narcissist, you will always feel like you are not enough. Narcissists always want more to feed their low self-esteem and insecurity. Here’s a video on YouTube called You’re Not CRAZY – Your Mother is a Narcissist (10 Signs).