Unmask the psychology of a Narcissist and make yourself free

Photo by Max Bender on Unsplash

Unlike many other mental conditions like depression etc, it seems there is not much of scientific research on how a person becomes a narcissist. And this makes it difficult to unlock yourself if you are stuck in such a relationship. Some best guesses are that a person can be born narcissist because of genetics or something coming from past life. Or he might become narcissist because of being ignored a lot or on the other extreme, pampered a lot, during the early childhood.

Being a Narcissist is a mental disorder and such a person shows various symptoms in their day-to-day life. Both personal and professional environment.

• Continuous Self-centered attitude
• Feel superior from everyone else they meet
• Feel entitled to special treatment in all situations
• Feel a need to be praised always
• Feel good in pointing mistakes and shortcomings in everyone around
• Feel insulted easily
• Feel they are always right

I guess you got the gist broadly, but the key thing to notice here are words “always” and “everyone” which shows consistency in their behavior. Inspite of this, it is so difficult to know that someone is a narcissist because of few things they do quite well -

• Wearing a mask: This is trickiest part. Narcissist will do anything to show himself as a “good” person in front of society in general and with others to befriend with them. The problem is that he lacks connection with himself or his own inner qualities as his attention is always external. Because of this reason, he emulates other good behaviors with best of act possible. This mask is sometimes in the name of spirituality or being wise / know it all or even sounding like someone who cares about you. Lying and manipulating is their second nature and does not feel like doing anything wrong.
• Slowly takes control of others mind: As soon as a narcissist gets hold of a person, he starts to control her by making her feel small or less intelligent. The problem is a narcissist cannot respect anyone. Not even himself. This disrespect shows up in the form of gaslighting or bullying others or making unnecessary fun of others. Most times the life partner or immediate family members becomes the biggest victims. If the life partner is submissive, there are chances that they start living like a slave after a period of time and give up on any resilience to fight for themselves. For any resistance from the other person, they go to any extent of giving silent treatment, just to give a message they control the relationship.
• Showing themselves as victim: Have you heard of a story where when police catch the thief, thief scolds the policemen. Narcissists are expert in this and act like a victim when they are the culprit.
• Finding new targets: Inspite of all the games narcissist plays, most of the times people recognize that it is becoming a one-sided relationship and so abandon the narcissist. With no choice left, a narcissist has to learn to spy for his next target and become better at this skill.

There is a trick to still identify them and that is to notice carefully some of their inherent limitations because they lack the capability to do or understand few things -

• Reflect: Words like meditation or self-reflection looks alien to them. When they were young, they feel on top of the world and never realized any need to reflect on their actions or behaviors. As they become old, and many people abandon them, depression also creeps in because they start losing energy and slowly become hopeless to find new targets. With depression, it becomes even more vicious circle to break for them and know any need to reflect or take any feedback from anyone.
• Relate: They lack any connection even with themselves. And so have never understood the importance of relationships. Their entire focus is on self-gratification and feeling of grandeur by boosting their ego. With such selfish nature, they are not able to trust anyone, not even themselves. This ends up for them in meaninglessly chasing false appreciation or superiority over others (which is also called as narcissist feed)
• Reality: They create a fantasy world of sitting on highchair and so avoid reality at all costs. They do not want to face any challenge, as any defeat could turn their ego down which can be painful for them. Instead of looking at the context of the situation, they are experts in categorizing and generalizing situations so that they can continue to be “know all” person.

If you are a child of a narcissist parent, there are high chances that you have felt neglected in the childhood. This is because the narcissist parent would be so self-focused, and the other parent would be spending most of his or her energy in tackling the situation themselves. When a child is ignored, they lack self-worth, does not connect know themselves well and also do not have lot of memories of their childhood. There is high probability of picking either of the below behavior as a coping mechanism-

• Distract: The child can find solace in food, tv, video games etc to distract themselves from the situation. Or
• Isolate: The child can hide herself into some corner and create a world of their own in the head.

Chance are that narcissist will end up with a dysfunctional family where no one respect each other. He will never allow his grown-up kids to take charge as to him it means lowering his status. The grown-up kids may also end up with difficulties in relationship unless they decide to reflect and work on themselves.

If you are an empath, you are a better target for them as becomes a saucer and pan relationship. One is a giver and other is a taker. But if you are an empath and read so far, there are some things you can try to protect yourself -

• Don't suggest or try to help them: Interestingly, though finding a narcissist is not difficult, still there are not many doctors also who specialize in treating narcissists. The reason for this is that first of all a good narcissist will never be ready to seek help in first place because he/she does not see any problem with themselves. Second, even if they visit any doctor or therapist, they will quickly find out some shortcomings in the doctor herself or consider it as waste of time and money to escape the treatment. So, if you try to help a narcissist, they will in turn find something wrong with you and you will end up being their enemy instead of an ally.
• Don't try to complain about them: They think they are perfect and flawless. They cannot understand and agree of anything wrong with themselves and take even a small complain as an attack on their identity of perfectness. Never expect anything from them as they cannot give or do anything for anyone. On the other hand, they are only receivers. You may have done a lot for them but wonder why they don’t ever remember anything or acknowledge you for it. Because by nature they bottom-less pot and can never be grateful for anything in life. And remember they are the “good” guy instead and can never accept any shortcomings in themselves and feel entitled to only praise.
• Be boring with them: They strive on drama. Drama is food for them. Many psychologists suggest going no-contact with them to protect yourself. Sad but true that having no contact with them becomes the only feasible option. Sometimes complete no contact is not an option and little more tact is required. The best is to have only transactional contact with them for routine matters like checking for health, weather etc.
• Define your boundaries: Don’t think twice if if you have to create strong boundaries for your wellbeing. Since you cannot expect any improvement in their behavior, it is almost like asking how would you to care for a zombie? If you touch the zombie you will also become zombie, would you still touch him?
• Heal yourself: It is mental straining and many times kind of traumatic to deal with a narcissist person over a long period of time. As a soul he and you both are pure being and there is no healing required for the soul. It is only the mind which needs the healing and the cleaning of the non-pleasant experiences.
• Know it is not personal: Though it looks like that they are troubling you but they don’t have anything against you. This is who they are, that's it.
• Prioritize your peace of mind: This is last but not the least. As an empath, it is not easy to not help when anyone is suffering. But you have to remember that no one can be responsible for anyone’s happiness and what is the use of being caring if you are not able to take care of yourself in the equation. Sometimes as an empath or the caring child, you may find yourself feeling guilty of not doing enough for them, that time remember that this guilt is coming from their nature of bottomless pot. Similarly, you may think you are being judgmental or question if you are carrying a fixed mindset about someone’s faulty behavior, remember that it is not judgement but rather a matter of fact and they don't have any intention or capability to change themselves. Again, it is they and not you, my friend~

There is lot of content in social media these days about how to protect yourself from narcissist. Protection is important but not the final step if you are on yourself transformation journey. Coming in contact with a narcissist specially in a close relationship can be detrimental to mental health but if dealt properly it can be become a good source of personal development like nothing else.

First you should be able to convert the negative charge into neutral by following the above steps and ensure that you protect yourself at all costs. The next step and sometimes the missed step can be to accept a narcissist person as who they are, forgive them for all they did which made you suffer, apologize for troubling them with your advice in the past and be compassionate for them. There should not be hurried to get started on this last step until you have neutralized yourself first otherwise it can bounce back and take you again back into negativity. The key check here is to notice their behavior for few days with calmness and stillness, without getting triggered.

Sometimes we mistake a person with a high ego or someone difficult to talk to as a Narcissist. Having a narcissistic quality and being a narcissist are two different things. On a scale of 0–10, we all have some extent of narcissistic traits like high ego or self-centered attitude. You can still have a healthy argument with a person with high narcissistic behavior but not so with a narcissist. This distinction is important because former is curable vs later not curable. If this simple difference is not clear, you might end up spending lot of energy in vain.

if you can deal successfully with a narcissist, dealing with difficult people or someone having narcissist attributes would be a cake walk. This is because the principles remain same and foremost being that there is nothing personal grudge of anyone against you. It is just what they are because of their conditioning over the lifetime.

Wish you all the best.