A narcissist's need to "have it all" invests him or her with a spirit hostile to the needs and well being of others.
Recall the analogy in The Danger of Narcissism: If you feel a compelling need to have all the dollars in the world, no matter how many you get, you will compete with others for every single one; and if you see a dollar in someone else's hand, you will want to take it away. Just because he has it. That makes you an adversary of everyone else in the world. It makes you view the possessor of a dollar as a predator views prey.
Therein lays the "malignance" in malignant narcissism. So narcissists are desperate to keep its presence in them a secret. That is why they invest so much energy in the false image of themselves they carve out with everything they do and say.
Indeed, every predator must find some way to stalk its prey without arousing suspicion. The narcissist is a wolf in sheep's clothing.
Yet every narcissist has his or her own style.
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Echo and the Narcissist
What Makes Narcissists Tick
The Narcissist's Style
Every narcissist thinks he or she is unique. But it would be true to say that (a) they are all alike and (b) they are all different.
At bottom they are all alike. They all have the same goal. And they all achieve it by playing for the right reaction from their environment. But since they each inhabit a different environment, they each have their own personal playing style. One adapted to best exploit their environment.
So, beware of stereotypes based on outward appearances.
For example, most consider grandiosity the chief character trait of a narcissistic personality. All malignant narcissists are grandiose. They are vain, conceited, boastful, and haughty. Their haughtiness shows a block away in their imperious mien and posture. They are breathtakingly arrogant, presumptuous, and full of hubris. Yet I didn't list this as a red flag of NPD, because it often isn't evident to the casual observer.
In fact, I have known narcissists who would strike you as anything but grandiose, vain, and haughty. They kept their immodesty well hidden beneath a cloak of false modesty. As Joanna Ashmun writes:
Some narcissists are flamboyantly boastful and self-aggrandizing, but many are inconspicuous in public, saving their conceit and autocratic opinions for their nearest and dearest.
So, for example, grandiosity and haughtiness may show in the narcissistic college professor among his colleagues at the grand opening of a museum, but it will be hidden in the farmer among his neighbors at the local gas pump.
Similarly, haughtily flouncing down the street in New York City, or much better yet, Paris, is oo-la-la fashionable. But don't try that in Chicago: you'll get attention all right; you'll be a crowd stopper all right; you'll become public laughing stock on the spot.
In short, narcissists adapt to their environment, their milieu.
In certain milieu, such as a ladder or a pedestal of any sort, the shameless self-promotion of grandiosity is an asset, or at least certain aspects of it are. It creates the illusion of superiority and gets attention. When we see it in a public figure, we view it as different, interesting, not as silly and a pain in the neck.
In most milieu though, overt grandiosity would be viewed as a character flaw and reflect badly on the narcissist, so he or she camouflages and hides it beneath a veneer of false modesty.
A narcissist's overt grandiosity then is part of the Mr. Hyde act and comes out only behind closed doors.
You can still detect it though if you're observant, because covert and subtle grandiosity is there all the time. It shows in the inappropriate way narcissists relate to others, always from above as their judge. It shows in narcissists' presumptuous expectations, however subtly expressed and sugared over with feigned humility. It shows in narcissists' bragging, however subtle and left-handed.
So, narcissists aren't all snobby debutantes or Hollywood types, flashy dressers who act out. Narcissists adapt to their environment, and a Hollywood-type narcissist would be viewed as a silly weirdo in other environments. Some, both men and women, are fancy dressers and spend a great deal of time and money on their appearance. But others are not. Some portray themselves as a regular guy, a man's man, a common man, a simple dresser without the slightest trace of vanity, a man of few words, a regular Clint Eastwood.
Some are loud-mouthed show-offs or jabberboxes. Some are clergy, preachers, or portray themselves as devoutly religious and upright, self-sacrificing, overflowing with the milk of human kindness. Some are dictators. Some are successful CEO's and politicians, universally admired.
They all have the same goal, but each tailors their strategy to their particular battlefield. So, every snobby debutant you run into isn't a narcissist. And the guy who out Pope-John-Pauls Pope John Paul II as the picture of humility in church may be one. Beneath a cloak of false modesty he may be screaming for, and getting, tons of attention.
A narcissist identifies with his image. So, he is all image — for looks only. And he adapts his appearance to his environment as perfectly as a chameleon does. In some ways to stand out (for attention) and some ways to blend in (for approval).
The universal complaint of those who see a narcissist with his mask off is that he is Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. But he can have more than two faces. He is a different person at work than at home, a different person in church than in a tavern, a different person during the courtship than after the honeymoon is over.
Multiple personalities? I don't know. I have only seldom observed a narcissist in a setting other than the one in which I was commonly part of his or her environment there. But when I have, I have been stunned by the person I saw. A completely different person than the one I knew.
So, it seems that if a narcissist haunts a number of very different environments, Mr. Hyde might not be just Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde: he may be Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Green Jeans and Santa Claus and Juan Quixote and Mr. Hyde.
Seeing this is hardly believing it though, because you wonder how a narcissist could get so good at acting out so many characters to a "T" and switching from one to another instantaneously. But remember that narcissists are obsessed with this false-image-projecting game, that they actively practice every waking moment, and that they have been doing so nonstop since childhood. They are bound to become far better actors than any normal person could dream of being.
I have no idea whether these multiple characters constitute distinct personalities, but they sure are different personas.
The face a narcissist has on at any moment depends on whether the coast is clear and on whether the other party is someone he fears or someone defenseless who can't just get and stay away from him. The transfiguration can be instantaneous.
Just as a woman puts make-up on thickest over a zit, people put their act on thick to cover the blemishes in their character. The image narcissists paint of themselves is the very antithesis of the truth.
Every narcissist's style is tailored to his rank, the situation, and the setting. For example, he may be a man who barges into his haunts talking loudly to butt in on the conversation and make himself the center of attention.
Another may accomplish the same thing by putting on a certain terribilitas that accompanies him like an aura and upsets people's poise in his presence. A hush seems to surround him like a nimbus wherever he goes. It's as though people see him coming and think, "Here comes the judge." His entrances, then, fall upon those present like the grand entrances of the former tennis great, Bill Tilden. Here is a description of them by another tennis great, George Lott:
Immediately there was a feeling of awe, as though you were in the presence of royalty. The atmosphere became charged and there was almost a sensation of lightness when he left. You felt completely dominated and you heaved a sigh of relief for not having ventured an opinion of any sort.
Whether brilliant or stupid, narcissists are keen observers of human behavior and group dynamics. They notice that people divine what will win acceptance and readily supply it. So, astute narcissists exploit this behavior by being changeable, unpredictable, and arbitrary to keep everybody around them off-balance and unsure of themselves. In Tilden's presence, even other famous people felt insecure, fearing to commit some faux pas by saying the wrong thing. Which was liable to be anything they said about anything.
Nonetheless, no matter what their style, all narcissists behave peculiarly. That's because they have a peculiar need — the need for all available attention. Whatever attention they can't draw or hijack they block. And they avoid paying any.
Home is the last place people fuss over a narcissist's arrival. So there, if he can't get enough positive attention, he commands negative attention by annoying, shooting off his mouth, or picking fights.
Return to Table of Contents
At bottom they are all alike. They all have the same goal. And they all achieve it by playing for the right reaction from their environment. But since they each inhabit a different environment, they each have their own personal playing style. One adapted to best exploit their environment.
So, beware of stereotypes based on outward appearances.
For example, most consider grandiosity the chief character trait of a narcissistic personality. All malignant narcissists are grandiose. They are vain, conceited, boastful, and haughty. Their haughtiness shows a block away in their imperious mien and posture. They are breathtakingly arrogant, presumptuous, and full of hubris. Yet I didn't list this as a red flag of NPD, because it often isn't evident to the casual observer.
In fact, I have known narcissists who would strike you as anything but grandiose, vain, and haughty. They kept their immodesty well hidden beneath a cloak of false modesty. As Joanna Ashmun writes:
Some narcissists are flamboyantly boastful and self-aggrandizing, but many are inconspicuous in public, saving their conceit and autocratic opinions for their nearest and dearest.
So, for example, grandiosity and haughtiness may show in the narcissistic college professor among his colleagues at the grand opening of a museum, but it will be hidden in the farmer among his neighbors at the local gas pump.
Similarly, haughtily flouncing down the street in New York City, or much better yet, Paris, is oo-la-la fashionable. But don't try that in Chicago: you'll get attention all right; you'll be a crowd stopper all right; you'll become public laughing stock on the spot.
In short, narcissists adapt to their environment, their milieu.
In certain milieu, such as a ladder or a pedestal of any sort, the shameless self-promotion of grandiosity is an asset, or at least certain aspects of it are. It creates the illusion of superiority and gets attention. When we see it in a public figure, we view it as different, interesting, not as silly and a pain in the neck.
In most milieu though, overt grandiosity would be viewed as a character flaw and reflect badly on the narcissist, so he or she camouflages and hides it beneath a veneer of false modesty.
A narcissist's overt grandiosity then is part of the Mr. Hyde act and comes out only behind closed doors.
You can still detect it though if you're observant, because covert and subtle grandiosity is there all the time. It shows in the inappropriate way narcissists relate to others, always from above as their judge. It shows in narcissists' presumptuous expectations, however subtly expressed and sugared over with feigned humility. It shows in narcissists' bragging, however subtle and left-handed.
So, narcissists aren't all snobby debutantes or Hollywood types, flashy dressers who act out. Narcissists adapt to their environment, and a Hollywood-type narcissist would be viewed as a silly weirdo in other environments. Some, both men and women, are fancy dressers and spend a great deal of time and money on their appearance. But others are not. Some portray themselves as a regular guy, a man's man, a common man, a simple dresser without the slightest trace of vanity, a man of few words, a regular Clint Eastwood.
Some are loud-mouthed show-offs or jabberboxes. Some are clergy, preachers, or portray themselves as devoutly religious and upright, self-sacrificing, overflowing with the milk of human kindness. Some are dictators. Some are successful CEO's and politicians, universally admired.
They all have the same goal, but each tailors their strategy to their particular battlefield. So, every snobby debutant you run into isn't a narcissist. And the guy who out Pope-John-Pauls Pope John Paul II as the picture of humility in church may be one. Beneath a cloak of false modesty he may be screaming for, and getting, tons of attention.
A narcissist identifies with his image. So, he is all image — for looks only. And he adapts his appearance to his environment as perfectly as a chameleon does. In some ways to stand out (for attention) and some ways to blend in (for approval).
The universal complaint of those who see a narcissist with his mask off is that he is Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. But he can have more than two faces. He is a different person at work than at home, a different person in church than in a tavern, a different person during the courtship than after the honeymoon is over.
Multiple personalities? I don't know. I have only seldom observed a narcissist in a setting other than the one in which I was commonly part of his or her environment there. But when I have, I have been stunned by the person I saw. A completely different person than the one I knew.
So, it seems that if a narcissist haunts a number of very different environments, Mr. Hyde might not be just Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde: he may be Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Green Jeans and Santa Claus and Juan Quixote and Mr. Hyde.
Seeing this is hardly believing it though, because you wonder how a narcissist could get so good at acting out so many characters to a "T" and switching from one to another instantaneously. But remember that narcissists are obsessed with this false-image-projecting game, that they actively practice every waking moment, and that they have been doing so nonstop since childhood. They are bound to become far better actors than any normal person could dream of being.
I have no idea whether these multiple characters constitute distinct personalities, but they sure are different personas.
The face a narcissist has on at any moment depends on whether the coast is clear and on whether the other party is someone he fears or someone defenseless who can't just get and stay away from him. The transfiguration can be instantaneous.
Just as a woman puts make-up on thickest over a zit, people put their act on thick to cover the blemishes in their character. The image narcissists paint of themselves is the very antithesis of the truth.
Every narcissist's style is tailored to his rank, the situation, and the setting. For example, he may be a man who barges into his haunts talking loudly to butt in on the conversation and make himself the center of attention.
Another may accomplish the same thing by putting on a certain terribilitas that accompanies him like an aura and upsets people's poise in his presence. A hush seems to surround him like a nimbus wherever he goes. It's as though people see him coming and think, "Here comes the judge." His entrances, then, fall upon those present like the grand entrances of the former tennis great, Bill Tilden. Here is a description of them by another tennis great, George Lott:
Immediately there was a feeling of awe, as though you were in the presence of royalty. The atmosphere became charged and there was almost a sensation of lightness when he left. You felt completely dominated and you heaved a sigh of relief for not having ventured an opinion of any sort.
Whether brilliant or stupid, narcissists are keen observers of human behavior and group dynamics. They notice that people divine what will win acceptance and readily supply it. So, astute narcissists exploit this behavior by being changeable, unpredictable, and arbitrary to keep everybody around them off-balance and unsure of themselves. In Tilden's presence, even other famous people felt insecure, fearing to commit some faux pas by saying the wrong thing. Which was liable to be anything they said about anything.
Nonetheless, no matter what their style, all narcissists behave peculiarly. That's because they have a peculiar need — the need for all available attention. Whatever attention they can't draw or hijack they block. And they avoid paying any.
Home is the last place people fuss over a narcissist's arrival. So there, if he can't get enough positive attention, he commands negative attention by annoying, shooting off his mouth, or picking fights.
Return to Table of Contents
The Attention Game
Does any of following ring a bell? If you live with a narcissist it does.
Protocol
At all times, everyone must face the king. The foot servant is beneath the king's notice. So, the king never dignifies him with any attention at all, does not even look at or speak to him. Now, this might seem a bit inconvenient, for what good is a servant you can't speak to? But the foot servant's duty was to watch over the king and see to all his needs without the king having to suffer the indignity of having to ask him for anything. So, the most he got from the king was an offhanded grunt or a hand signal while the king was talking to someone else, which was to be interpreted as "Bring me my footstool." To obey the command, the foot servant approaches the king in a groveling manner to indicate that he asks for the favor of being allowed to approach the king and bring him his footstool. The foot servant takes care to avoid notice so that he distracts nobody's attention, even for a moment, from the king. The king is to tolerate the foot servant's vulgar presence no longer than necessary and, without looking at him, "spurns" him (kicks him aside) when the task is done. Then the foot servant shows his gratitude by humbly bowing-and-scraping away.
There you have it — a real-world example of relating between someone who deserves all attention and someone who deserves no attention.
The actions of both parties to that "relationship" speak louder than words. I scare-quoted the word relationship because this is an un-relationship. The king is dis-relating to his foot servant.
Nobody bothered to know that the king must have zero integrity if merely looking at another person would degrade him, but the farce in the myth of nobility is beside the point. Nobody noticed that they were treating the king like an infant, either. I mean, only an infant normally gets its needs taken care of without having to ask for anything.
Well, just like the king, I guess: he's such a big baby it would be an insufferable affront to his dignity if he ever had to ask for anything.
What about Please and Thank you? Though he is unworthy to be heard by the king, the foot servant is the one who must say "please" and "thank you," by literally groveling and then bowing-and-scraping away. How perverted can human behavior get?
So perverted that the foot servant was deemed so unworthy of attention that he deserved no acknowledgement of his service, let alone thanks. For, in acknowledging what someone has done for you, or in expressing gratitude for it, you're paying them attention, aren't you? Majestic beings mustn't degrade themselves by doing that. To emphasize this, the custom was for the foot servant to receive anti-gratitude with a gratuitous kick. That is why kings responded to whatever their foot servant did for them by "spurning" them, literally kicking them away. How perverted can human behavior get?
Answer: The foot servant had no right to even resent such treatment. Therefore, he was subjected to the extreme perversity of having to bend over for it (the Sin of Sodom). And with a smile. For, he then had to bow-and-scrape some more in gratitude for the minuscule attention of a kick. Can't get perverser than that.
There are only three places I know of where one person must be the focus of all attention: a theater, a church, and a royal court. The way-up-high-in-the-sky there thing — the so-called "star." Or God. Or the king.
Correction: there is one more place where that is the case, any place plagued by a the presence of a malignant narcissist. He or she must be the focus of all attention.
Being entitled to all attention and being entitled to no attention are appraisals of a person's value, or worth. In a society that regards all human beings as created equal, to give all attention to the narcissist is to worth-ship him as a false god, and to give no attention to others is to dehumanize people and treat them like dirt.
Which is exactly why the narcissist plays The Attention Game = to make himself God and all others dirt beneath his feet. This is how he supports his delusions of grandeur. He's just playing Pretend. He's making it so by acting as though it is.
Do you play along?
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Protocol
At all times, everyone must face the king. The foot servant is beneath the king's notice. So, the king never dignifies him with any attention at all, does not even look at or speak to him. Now, this might seem a bit inconvenient, for what good is a servant you can't speak to? But the foot servant's duty was to watch over the king and see to all his needs without the king having to suffer the indignity of having to ask him for anything. So, the most he got from the king was an offhanded grunt or a hand signal while the king was talking to someone else, which was to be interpreted as "Bring me my footstool." To obey the command, the foot servant approaches the king in a groveling manner to indicate that he asks for the favor of being allowed to approach the king and bring him his footstool. The foot servant takes care to avoid notice so that he distracts nobody's attention, even for a moment, from the king. The king is to tolerate the foot servant's vulgar presence no longer than necessary and, without looking at him, "spurns" him (kicks him aside) when the task is done. Then the foot servant shows his gratitude by humbly bowing-and-scraping away.
There you have it — a real-world example of relating between someone who deserves all attention and someone who deserves no attention.
The actions of both parties to that "relationship" speak louder than words. I scare-quoted the word relationship because this is an un-relationship. The king is dis-relating to his foot servant.
Nobody bothered to know that the king must have zero integrity if merely looking at another person would degrade him, but the farce in the myth of nobility is beside the point. Nobody noticed that they were treating the king like an infant, either. I mean, only an infant normally gets its needs taken care of without having to ask for anything.
Well, just like the king, I guess: he's such a big baby it would be an insufferable affront to his dignity if he ever had to ask for anything.
What about Please and Thank you? Though he is unworthy to be heard by the king, the foot servant is the one who must say "please" and "thank you," by literally groveling and then bowing-and-scraping away. How perverted can human behavior get?
So perverted that the foot servant was deemed so unworthy of attention that he deserved no acknowledgement of his service, let alone thanks. For, in acknowledging what someone has done for you, or in expressing gratitude for it, you're paying them attention, aren't you? Majestic beings mustn't degrade themselves by doing that. To emphasize this, the custom was for the foot servant to receive anti-gratitude with a gratuitous kick. That is why kings responded to whatever their foot servant did for them by "spurning" them, literally kicking them away. How perverted can human behavior get?
Answer: The foot servant had no right to even resent such treatment. Therefore, he was subjected to the extreme perversity of having to bend over for it (the Sin of Sodom). And with a smile. For, he then had to bow-and-scrape some more in gratitude for the minuscule attention of a kick. Can't get perverser than that.
There are only three places I know of where one person must be the focus of all attention: a theater, a church, and a royal court. The way-up-high-in-the-sky there thing — the so-called "star." Or God. Or the king.
Correction: there is one more place where that is the case, any place plagued by a the presence of a malignant narcissist. He or she must be the focus of all attention.
Being entitled to all attention and being entitled to no attention are appraisals of a person's value, or worth. In a society that regards all human beings as created equal, to give all attention to the narcissist is to worth-ship him as a false god, and to give no attention to others is to dehumanize people and treat them like dirt.
Which is exactly why the narcissist plays The Attention Game = to make himself God and all others dirt beneath his feet. This is how he supports his delusions of grandeur. He's just playing Pretend. He's making it so by acting as though it is.
Do you play along?
Return to Table of Contents
I Gotta Have It All
Almost everything narcissists do centers upon their all-consuming need for all available attention. Just as you can't get a heroin addict in withdrawal to know the difference between mine and thine with respect to any heroin in the house, you can't get a narcissist to let anyone else have any attention. He or she has gotta have all.
Nature has genetically programmed the offspring of all higher animals to clamor for attention at birth. This is how Nature pressures the parents to forget their own needs and run themselves ragged caring for their offspring. It's amazing how much noise a nest full a baby birdies can make. And it's amazing how much noise a human baby can make. No parent can stand it! The lungs and vocal chords are magnificent already at this stage!
Why do offspring clamor so for attention? Why do babies sometimes cry for no discernible reason? Because Nature has programmed into them a desperate need for attention. In fact, even if their physical needs are taken care of, human babies can die from never being otherwise held and coddled and played with.
This great need for attention that results in clamoring for it improves offspring's chances of survival, but it also creates a problem that later development must resolve. For, it's a good life — being the center of the universe and having others anticipate and cater to your every need, there to make you happy.
The decision whether to grow up and strike out on your own or not can be a close call. Hence, some of those baby birdies need to get unceremoniously shoved out of the nest. When human babies hit their "terrible twos," they too can be a pain. They must be gently weaned from "king" status, or they will start using temper tantrums to control you and become a spoiled brat.
Like a narcissist.
She is like a three-year-old who stamps her foot and yells, "I want Mamma's attention, and I want it NOW!"
"It's all mine. Because I am the one who matters."
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Nature has genetically programmed the offspring of all higher animals to clamor for attention at birth. This is how Nature pressures the parents to forget their own needs and run themselves ragged caring for their offspring. It's amazing how much noise a nest full a baby birdies can make. And it's amazing how much noise a human baby can make. No parent can stand it! The lungs and vocal chords are magnificent already at this stage!
Why do offspring clamor so for attention? Why do babies sometimes cry for no discernible reason? Because Nature has programmed into them a desperate need for attention. In fact, even if their physical needs are taken care of, human babies can die from never being otherwise held and coddled and played with.
This great need for attention that results in clamoring for it improves offspring's chances of survival, but it also creates a problem that later development must resolve. For, it's a good life — being the center of the universe and having others anticipate and cater to your every need, there to make you happy.
The decision whether to grow up and strike out on your own or not can be a close call. Hence, some of those baby birdies need to get unceremoniously shoved out of the nest. When human babies hit their "terrible twos," they too can be a pain. They must be gently weaned from "king" status, or they will start using temper tantrums to control you and become a spoiled brat.
Like a narcissist.
She is like a three-year-old who stamps her foot and yells, "I want Mamma's attention, and I want it NOW!"
"It's all mine. Because I am the one who matters."
Return to Table of Contents
Getting It All
Now let's look at some of the sneaky ways narcissists hijack attention.
Normal people politely face someone talking to them, to show attention. The narcissist finds ways to make the most of the ego gratification he gets from this. He makes others go out of their way to afford him this courtesy.
For example, he might avoid facing whomever he is talking at. In a pinch, he may stare intently at a wall or ceiling (as if studying it) to avoid looking at you. He may maneuver around the room like a sidewinder to speak to people from behind their back. Doing so actually kills two birds with one stone. It not only makes people turn way around to politely face him while he's speaking, it avoids showing them the polite attention of facing them. I think this behavior is also a bit Freudian, having to do with a narcissist's main mission in life: talking behind people's back.
One old narcissist I know of would arise right in the middle of something his visiting daughter was saying and leave the room. As if unaware that she was even talking to him, unaware that his guests were even there. Thus it wasn't enough that she and her children had come hundreds of miles to see him. He made them chase him from room to room to talk to him.
He also made his daughter "talk Cesky," which she hadn't heard or spoken in forty years. When she protested, he lied that he had forgotten English. Thus he (a) excluded his little grandchildren as though they were not present, (b) made it hard for his daughter to understand more than the gist of what he said, and (c) made it practically impossible for her to talk to him at all. Thus he sucked all attention to himself alone.
Though the tactics are different, the strategy is the same in the local "old man" of the community in a workplace. He ignores colleagues, looking right past them as though they are not there when he meets them.
Though the tactics are different, the strategy is the same in a person who can't shut up in a theater. He or she is upstaging the play.
Though the tactics are different, the strategy is the same in the woman who can't let anyone get a word in edgewise during a conversation. She is monopolizing the conversation to monopolize attention.
One slick technique I have observed is what I call the Drive-By. Here's how the stunt works.
The narcissist barges into a room loudly talking to drown out and stifle the extant conversation. Thus he butts in on it to take attention away from whoever is talking and suck it all to himself. That's the easy part, that's how he commands the attention of everyone present. But to do this he must get in the same room with them and say something to them. How can he pull that off without having to pay them any attention in return if anyone should try to say something back to him?
Ah, the ingenious Drive-By Technique. He is only passing through, you see, so he risks no return fire. That is, he needn't be there for a reply to his announcement or remark. Nobody can get him to pause long enough to hear one short sentence. He just accelerates to exit the other end of the room faster if someone draws a breath and opens their mouth to speak to him.
Narcissist wins again: he gets all attention without having to pay any in return.
We see variations of the Drive-By technique in administrators who find innumerable ways to always have their unanswered say.
The narcissist avoids situations he can't maneuver in and control with such devices. So, most of the time he's a ghost. At home, for example, he prefers seclusion in the basement, in bed, behind the wheel, or anywhere to presence in a room where anyone is getting any attention. There is no way, short of demanding it at gunpoint, to get him to pay one bit of attention to his wife or children.
Correction: He pays intense attention to anyone busy doing anything, literally breathing down their neck and telling them that every move they make is wrong. Negative attention, critical attention he is extravagantly generous with.
The lengths to which narcissists go to avoid paying attention to those near and dear is perhaps most telling, because it is most mysterious and weird. I knew one, for example, who would be with his family only in four places: in church, where it looked good, at the table while there was food on his plate, in an automobile, and in the living room while football was on TV.
Why was he able to stand being with them in these four places? In these four places he could be with them and still ignore them. By focusing on the altar, his food, the road, or the TV. It was a bit tricky in restaurants though, because he had to arrive before his food. So there he sat with his chair angled away from them and became fascinated with some fixture in a far corner of the ceiling.
Even more telling is what he did to prevent others present from paying attention to each other. Narcissists know that this is easy to do. You just stifle any conversation people try to have.
He brought a radio to the kitchen table. If anyone tried to talk, he kept turning up the volume. When that didn't suffice, he broke up conversation by hijacking it with some obnoxious statement he butted in with — something too obnoxious to pass over or ignore, something that sucked all attention to himself.
His favorite bombs were (a) something outrageously malignant, like reacting to the deaths and injuries cited in the radio's accident reports by saying that the victims "deserved it" for "going like hell," (b) something outrageously racist, or (c) something outrageously stupid, like incoherent bitching that always ended in boasting that he had told his boss off. The moment his food was gone, so was he. His family couldn't beg him to stay in the same room with them one minute longer.
All narcissists have their favorite conversation-busting bombs. One I know of liked to bomb a conversation by attacking the character of his younger son, whom he had disfigured by leaving a loaded shotgun buried among sacks of apples in a wagon where his seven-to-ten-year-old children played, and whom he had then targeted to take the brunt of his abuse. He constantly outraged his other son and daughters by changing the subject with the boldfaced lie that Emil had never paid him for the farm.
Old narcissists know that society gives the elderly a carte blanche to say and do anything they want.
As mentioned above, an automobile is one place a narcissist can abide those near and dear, because they can't come between him and the only thing he will pay attention to, the road. To keep his passengers from paying attention to each other, he can bust any conversation they try to have by flying into a road rage. He is so compelled to make them stop talking to each other that he can seldom tolerate their talking long enough to find some ostensible excuse. Hence, they usually can't even tell which other driver he is supposed to be mad at, though it probably goes without saying that it's for the usual offense of "cutting him off." To get their attention off each other, he yanks the vehicle around, making reckless moves. Naturally, his passengers fall silent and shift their attention to him and everything he could crash them into.
Of course, a person so stingy and avaricious about attention is going to play Keep Away with all forms of it. A narcissist cannot even give you an example of what would constitute praise for someone else. The closest he ever comes is a formal toast to a child for "making HIM proud."
Nobody can pry a compliment or thank-you out of him with a crowbar. He acts like that is sticking him with a hot poker or something. He doesn't touch his children except to hit them.
Unless he is a "doting" narcissist who inundates his children with critical attention to improve them, he pays none to them at all. He never plays with them. He is disinterested in their grades, activities, aspirations, social lives, majors, degrees, professions, and problems. As often as anyone tries to inform him about these things, he forgets them. He never sends anyone on this planet a card or a letter. He never gets anyone on this planet a gift. (When absolutely necessary, he has his wife, his sister, his daughter, or his secretary get it for him.) He never comforts a grieving person. He sheds no tear for any other human person, though he readily sheds tears for the flickers of light on a television or movie screen.
His children never see their parents kiss or embrace or even sit close to each other. His daughters see nothing really desirable in marriage and nothing in themselves that any man should love. Their dreams about marriage are not sweet. They arise from deep fear of a life like their mother's.
I know of one narcissist who went so far to withhold affection that, while his children were little and their mother made them kiss him good night, he wouldn't even lean forward. He leaned his head a little back to make it even harder to reach him. He wouldn't even pucker his lips.
One way to pay no attention to others is to be asleep.
One narcissist I know jabbers your ear off for hours talking about herself and every trivial thing she does. However, within fifteen seconds of the moment you start to tell her something about yourself, no matter how important or out-of-the-ordinary, she rudely acts bored. If that doesn't shut you up, she hits a brick wall of testy sleepiness, like a grumpy child past her bedtime. This example illustrates that boredom is a classic way people express aggression when they wish to maintain deniability.
Another narcissist I know of became nocturnal upon retirement. He slept most of the day and got up in the middle of the night. How's that for making sure you never have to pay any attention to anyone?
Actually, this weird behavior started before retirement. After an aneurysm left him unable to use her, his wife's getting into bed drove him out. Being thus treated as abhorrent was bad enough, but having to submit herself to him for this moral kick in the gut every night affected her like rape. It was moral rape. She couldn't fall asleep in her bed and seemed to have an irrational fear that she'd die in it.
Eventually, this narcissist was up and about the house only in the night, while everyone else slept. The normal waking hours he wasn't in bed, he spent in the dark, damp, unfinished basement, where he had made a nest for himself of a desk, an easy chair, a portable TV, and a stack of magazines. He had all sorts of diversions to keep his mind aimlessly occupied while awake in that nest.
Yet they were not enough. So, his dread of being alone with himself for a moment of self awareness gave him a compelling, even frantic, need for a drink and drive four or five times a day. A creature of his habits, he made the same rounds every time. To the same bar (until something mysterious would happen and he'd have to start haunting another), to the same place by the river to watch "his" geese. And to the same place in a park, where he watched "his" squirrels and gathered nuts to feed those back home.
He paid no end of attention to those geese and squirrels. He was fascinated by those geese and squirrels. Such a kind old man, he worried constantly about those geese and squirrels.
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Normal people politely face someone talking to them, to show attention. The narcissist finds ways to make the most of the ego gratification he gets from this. He makes others go out of their way to afford him this courtesy.
For example, he might avoid facing whomever he is talking at. In a pinch, he may stare intently at a wall or ceiling (as if studying it) to avoid looking at you. He may maneuver around the room like a sidewinder to speak to people from behind their back. Doing so actually kills two birds with one stone. It not only makes people turn way around to politely face him while he's speaking, it avoids showing them the polite attention of facing them. I think this behavior is also a bit Freudian, having to do with a narcissist's main mission in life: talking behind people's back.
One old narcissist I know of would arise right in the middle of something his visiting daughter was saying and leave the room. As if unaware that she was even talking to him, unaware that his guests were even there. Thus it wasn't enough that she and her children had come hundreds of miles to see him. He made them chase him from room to room to talk to him.
He also made his daughter "talk Cesky," which she hadn't heard or spoken in forty years. When she protested, he lied that he had forgotten English. Thus he (a) excluded his little grandchildren as though they were not present, (b) made it hard for his daughter to understand more than the gist of what he said, and (c) made it practically impossible for her to talk to him at all. Thus he sucked all attention to himself alone.
Though the tactics are different, the strategy is the same in the local "old man" of the community in a workplace. He ignores colleagues, looking right past them as though they are not there when he meets them.
Though the tactics are different, the strategy is the same in a person who can't shut up in a theater. He or she is upstaging the play.
Though the tactics are different, the strategy is the same in the woman who can't let anyone get a word in edgewise during a conversation. She is monopolizing the conversation to monopolize attention.
One slick technique I have observed is what I call the Drive-By. Here's how the stunt works.
The narcissist barges into a room loudly talking to drown out and stifle the extant conversation. Thus he butts in on it to take attention away from whoever is talking and suck it all to himself. That's the easy part, that's how he commands the attention of everyone present. But to do this he must get in the same room with them and say something to them. How can he pull that off without having to pay them any attention in return if anyone should try to say something back to him?
Ah, the ingenious Drive-By Technique. He is only passing through, you see, so he risks no return fire. That is, he needn't be there for a reply to his announcement or remark. Nobody can get him to pause long enough to hear one short sentence. He just accelerates to exit the other end of the room faster if someone draws a breath and opens their mouth to speak to him.
Narcissist wins again: he gets all attention without having to pay any in return.
We see variations of the Drive-By technique in administrators who find innumerable ways to always have their unanswered say.
The narcissist avoids situations he can't maneuver in and control with such devices. So, most of the time he's a ghost. At home, for example, he prefers seclusion in the basement, in bed, behind the wheel, or anywhere to presence in a room where anyone is getting any attention. There is no way, short of demanding it at gunpoint, to get him to pay one bit of attention to his wife or children.
Correction: He pays intense attention to anyone busy doing anything, literally breathing down their neck and telling them that every move they make is wrong. Negative attention, critical attention he is extravagantly generous with.
The lengths to which narcissists go to avoid paying attention to those near and dear is perhaps most telling, because it is most mysterious and weird. I knew one, for example, who would be with his family only in four places: in church, where it looked good, at the table while there was food on his plate, in an automobile, and in the living room while football was on TV.
Why was he able to stand being with them in these four places? In these four places he could be with them and still ignore them. By focusing on the altar, his food, the road, or the TV. It was a bit tricky in restaurants though, because he had to arrive before his food. So there he sat with his chair angled away from them and became fascinated with some fixture in a far corner of the ceiling.
Even more telling is what he did to prevent others present from paying attention to each other. Narcissists know that this is easy to do. You just stifle any conversation people try to have.
He brought a radio to the kitchen table. If anyone tried to talk, he kept turning up the volume. When that didn't suffice, he broke up conversation by hijacking it with some obnoxious statement he butted in with — something too obnoxious to pass over or ignore, something that sucked all attention to himself.
His favorite bombs were (a) something outrageously malignant, like reacting to the deaths and injuries cited in the radio's accident reports by saying that the victims "deserved it" for "going like hell," (b) something outrageously racist, or (c) something outrageously stupid, like incoherent bitching that always ended in boasting that he had told his boss off. The moment his food was gone, so was he. His family couldn't beg him to stay in the same room with them one minute longer.
All narcissists have their favorite conversation-busting bombs. One I know of liked to bomb a conversation by attacking the character of his younger son, whom he had disfigured by leaving a loaded shotgun buried among sacks of apples in a wagon where his seven-to-ten-year-old children played, and whom he had then targeted to take the brunt of his abuse. He constantly outraged his other son and daughters by changing the subject with the boldfaced lie that Emil had never paid him for the farm.
Old narcissists know that society gives the elderly a carte blanche to say and do anything they want.
As mentioned above, an automobile is one place a narcissist can abide those near and dear, because they can't come between him and the only thing he will pay attention to, the road. To keep his passengers from paying attention to each other, he can bust any conversation they try to have by flying into a road rage. He is so compelled to make them stop talking to each other that he can seldom tolerate their talking long enough to find some ostensible excuse. Hence, they usually can't even tell which other driver he is supposed to be mad at, though it probably goes without saying that it's for the usual offense of "cutting him off." To get their attention off each other, he yanks the vehicle around, making reckless moves. Naturally, his passengers fall silent and shift their attention to him and everything he could crash them into.
Of course, a person so stingy and avaricious about attention is going to play Keep Away with all forms of it. A narcissist cannot even give you an example of what would constitute praise for someone else. The closest he ever comes is a formal toast to a child for "making HIM proud."
Nobody can pry a compliment or thank-you out of him with a crowbar. He acts like that is sticking him with a hot poker or something. He doesn't touch his children except to hit them.
Unless he is a "doting" narcissist who inundates his children with critical attention to improve them, he pays none to them at all. He never plays with them. He is disinterested in their grades, activities, aspirations, social lives, majors, degrees, professions, and problems. As often as anyone tries to inform him about these things, he forgets them. He never sends anyone on this planet a card or a letter. He never gets anyone on this planet a gift. (When absolutely necessary, he has his wife, his sister, his daughter, or his secretary get it for him.) He never comforts a grieving person. He sheds no tear for any other human person, though he readily sheds tears for the flickers of light on a television or movie screen.
His children never see their parents kiss or embrace or even sit close to each other. His daughters see nothing really desirable in marriage and nothing in themselves that any man should love. Their dreams about marriage are not sweet. They arise from deep fear of a life like their mother's.
I know of one narcissist who went so far to withhold affection that, while his children were little and their mother made them kiss him good night, he wouldn't even lean forward. He leaned his head a little back to make it even harder to reach him. He wouldn't even pucker his lips.
One way to pay no attention to others is to be asleep.
One narcissist I know jabbers your ear off for hours talking about herself and every trivial thing she does. However, within fifteen seconds of the moment you start to tell her something about yourself, no matter how important or out-of-the-ordinary, she rudely acts bored. If that doesn't shut you up, she hits a brick wall of testy sleepiness, like a grumpy child past her bedtime. This example illustrates that boredom is a classic way people express aggression when they wish to maintain deniability.
Another narcissist I know of became nocturnal upon retirement. He slept most of the day and got up in the middle of the night. How's that for making sure you never have to pay any attention to anyone?
Actually, this weird behavior started before retirement. After an aneurysm left him unable to use her, his wife's getting into bed drove him out. Being thus treated as abhorrent was bad enough, but having to submit herself to him for this moral kick in the gut every night affected her like rape. It was moral rape. She couldn't fall asleep in her bed and seemed to have an irrational fear that she'd die in it.
Eventually, this narcissist was up and about the house only in the night, while everyone else slept. The normal waking hours he wasn't in bed, he spent in the dark, damp, unfinished basement, where he had made a nest for himself of a desk, an easy chair, a portable TV, and a stack of magazines. He had all sorts of diversions to keep his mind aimlessly occupied while awake in that nest.
Yet they were not enough. So, his dread of being alone with himself for a moment of self awareness gave him a compelling, even frantic, need for a drink and drive four or five times a day. A creature of his habits, he made the same rounds every time. To the same bar (until something mysterious would happen and he'd have to start haunting another), to the same place by the river to watch "his" geese. And to the same place in a park, where he watched "his" squirrels and gathered nuts to feed those back home.
He paid no end of attention to those geese and squirrels. He was fascinated by those geese and squirrels. Such a kind old man, he worried constantly about those geese and squirrels.
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Denying Any
It stands to reason that, to rationalize the belief that you must have it all, you must regard your needs as all-important. The needs of others are no consideration. This is the attitude little children have, which is why they must be taught to share. Narcissists never grow out of this childishness.
Implicit in that idea is the belief that you are all important and that others are of no account. You are noble, inherently superior to them, a superior being. To make (believe) it so, a narcissist just acts as though it is.
Simple, eh? Narcissism is nothing but an acting job. That's how narcissists delude themselves. Rather like children at play, pretending to be police officers or fire fighters or doctors.
But children check back into the real world when it's time to come home for lunch; narcissists never do. They are lost in the Land of Pretending that they are grand.
The flip-side of that coin is that you are vastly inferior to them, that you are nothing compared to them.
I'm convinced that this is why your narcissist treats you like dirt — that's just her upside-down way of pretending that she is majestic. She is acting as though her highness' merest wish is of infinitely more importance that your direst need. This maintains her delusion that she is such a god that you are an significant bug compared to her. So her merest wish is all-important, and your direst need doesn't matter at all.
And she mustn't ever fail to make it so by pretending that it is. For, delusions are ephemeral things, hard to maintain. Nothing but smoke and mirrors, they tend to melt away and disappear, constantly challenged by contradictory realities.
The narcissists I have known seem desperate to maintain their delusions, as though terrified of having them shattered by some repressed truth surfacing to consciousness on them. When anything happens that should remind them of the truth about something, they act like someone frantically shoveling more dirt on a corpse rising from its shallow grave.
So, to maintain their flimsy delusion of grandeur, they must act it out in every single encounter with you, no matter what. For, if they ever treat you as an equal worthy of respect and consideration — poof — there goes their illusion. The spell is broken as reality intrudes and the house lights come up on the playacting. When, as the poet T.S. Eliot wrote in the "love song" of a narcissist...
...human voices wake us and we down.
I think narcissists live in vague terror of this happening to them. Of all their delusions tumbling down. I think this is why they are so obsessed with maintaining and reinforcing them, to the exclusion of all else. Indeed, they would rather lose a million dollars or see their business go down. And to support their delusions they will do something disastrous for their business, because their delusions are all that really matter to them. They cling to their delusions for dear life, like the rest of us cling to life itself.
The narcissists I have known jump at chances to act out how insignificant you are compared to them. They do this by jumping at any chance to deny any form of attention to others with maximum impact by an extravagant display of its opposite instead.
I mean that exactly. A narcissist doesn't show just disregard; she acts out anti-regard. At every opportunity, whether great or small.
For example, let's say she's your sister and has known all her life that you cannot eat garden peas. They make you sick. To show off her (mediocre) cooking she gives a casserole she made — loaded with, guess what? Your look shows that you know she must have done this on purpose, and that's her chance to tell you that she never considered what you like when making it.
How's that for being anti-considerate? That let's you know that she didn't bake this for you. She baked it to show off.
It's just a game this emotional five-year-old plays.
Here's another example: Say that you're a brother of hers and are far from home on Thanksgiving. You naturally expect her to invite you dinner, but that invitation never comes. You're already deeply hurt when, late in the day, she calls and asks if you'd like some of her great turkey and dressing and pumpkin pie. Then she meets you at the back door and hands it to you in a brown paper bag.
How's that for affection? I'm not kidding: narcissists inflict mental cruelty like this every chance they get and as off-handedly as you'd swat a mosquito. They must do it because hurting you, treating you like a bum, makes them feel good. They must be drunk on the high they get by getting a step up on you. And, like any drunk, I suppose they feel miserable except when they're drinking.
When someone is down and out, she'll callously become Miss Bliss, laughing and chirping about this wonderful day like a male wren in May, jabbering excitedly about every tidbit of trivia she can think of — everything but the crucified or devastated friend or family member in the middle of the room. One can't get more brutal than that. It makes you go all black inside, because it strikes you as her dancing on that person's grave.
Warning: there's no bottom to how low narcissists will go in playing this game.
Here's how the same narcissist might play it in a big way: Let's say your husband just left you for another woman and you are devastated, can't stop crying, so you turn to her, thinking she's your friend. You just want someone to talk to. She doesn't respond to the usual signals that should call a friend to your side. In fact, she heads away from you so abruptly and fast that you'd think you had suddenly emitted a blast of antigravity. So, you come right out and say you desperately need someone to talk to and ask her to come spend a few hours with you today or tomorrow. She takes advantage of this opportunity to vaunt herself on you by lightly saying that she's too busy washing her Venetian blinds this week.
How's that for a kick in the gut?
That's her way of telling you how unimportant you are. Don't make the mistake of trying to tug at her heartstrings or asking her why she's treating you this way. If you do she'll fly into a rage at rage at you.
You're insulting her, you see. A bug like you insults God Almighty by acting like her equal, by acting like someone important enough for her to show regard for. You are attacking her grandiose image by acting as her equal instead of acting as though you're unworthy of her notice. So, look out: you have a tiger by the tail.
Yes, that's why narcissists are such perverts: their behavior is perverted because their thinking is perverted. Hence your asking for their compassion is viewed by them as (of all things) an attack.
And don't think that anything you've done for her in the past will make her feel obligated to pay you back in kind now. It's quite the other way around. A narcissist's middle name is Ingrate. In fact, she will punish every good deed you do for her, because helping her when she's in need challenges her delusion of being an omnipotent god who never needs anything from anyone. It challenges the flip-side too, that you are a bug who could never do anything of any value to almighty her. In other words, helping her is just another kind of attack in her eyes. So, look out: by helping her you attacked her image, which she identifies with, so you are going to get it. Yes, even though she asked you to help her, she will hate you for doing so. An example of this phenomenon is how France has never forgiven America for coming to its rescue twice.
Narcissists react to others' need this way like machines. What do you need? Affection? Then she'll respond with anti-affection = contempt and repulsion. Comfort? She'll respond with anti-comfort = the troublesome "comfort" of Job's "comforters" (= the anti-comfort of vultures faultfinding to blame the victim).
Exception: When there is something to be gained by showing regard, a narcissist will show it. For example, a narcissist wouldn't treat her boss or anyone with power over her this way. In fact, like men swoop down on a woman in distress, narcissists instantly swoop down as rescuer on someone they barely know, whom they thus win grateful friendship from, which they then exploit to parasitize that person. Also, when a narcissist can dissemble by flying to your rescue so as to be seen doing so, she'll put on a Mother Teresa Academy-Award act of selfless and tender loving kindness and concern. And she'll tell the whole world about it. That's how she carves out her saintly image. But, when there are no witnesses, and she has already defamed you so that nobody would believe you about it, look out. Your need is nothing but a trigger for Mr. Hyde to come out. See an example Case Study in Dissimulation.
There is but one possible reason for withholding affection, comfort, or regard. And it's malignant.
I have seen every narcissist I knew do it. In fact, the impression I got is that it's a knee-jerk reflex in narcissists to do it. When there is nothing to be gained by putting on a big show in which they play the part of someone's heroic rescuer, you can count on narcissists missing no opportunity to kick a person when they're down. They do it by acting out the most callous and outrageous disregard for that person in a time of time of need.
I think they really get off on it. I think that morally trampling someone like this makes narcissists feel like they're goose-stepping the mountaintops. Because it puts you here with respect to them . . .
And they aren't least likely to do it to those near and dear: they're most likely to do it to those near and dear. In a family, they target the most sensitive child to take the brunt of their abuse. Think what that means.
In general, they target those with every good reason to expect love and compassion from them, those close to them in daily life (especially if that person is someone who has been a friend in need). The narcissist will actually spurn such person with an extravagant display of haughty contempt.
In short, they're predators simply targeting the easiest and most vulnerable (deeply woundable) prey.
Narcissists treat people like dirt on the premise that treating others like dirt makes you God Almighty. That's the way a three-year-old thinks. The message is, "Get away from me, you scum. You are beneath my notice."
And when I said that narcissists do this for maximum impact, I meant exactly that. They obviously get so high on the pain they cause that they take pains to be as abusive as possible about it — forcing that child or woman to their knees and rubbing their face in filth or telling that person that for all the narcissist cares they can just go kill themselves or take a dive into the bottom of a bottle.
Now who would believe that? Who would believe that people who pass for as normal as you or I, people who go to church, coach Little League, give to charity, volunteer, and are viewed as pillars of their community — who would believe that this is how they behave to their loved ones in a time of need behind closed doors? It's the perfect crime — the one nobody would believe.
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Implicit in that idea is the belief that you are all important and that others are of no account. You are noble, inherently superior to them, a superior being. To make (believe) it so, a narcissist just acts as though it is.
Simple, eh? Narcissism is nothing but an acting job. That's how narcissists delude themselves. Rather like children at play, pretending to be police officers or fire fighters or doctors.
But children check back into the real world when it's time to come home for lunch; narcissists never do. They are lost in the Land of Pretending that they are grand.
The flip-side of that coin is that you are vastly inferior to them, that you are nothing compared to them.
I'm convinced that this is why your narcissist treats you like dirt — that's just her upside-down way of pretending that she is majestic. She is acting as though her highness' merest wish is of infinitely more importance that your direst need. This maintains her delusion that she is such a god that you are an significant bug compared to her. So her merest wish is all-important, and your direst need doesn't matter at all.
And she mustn't ever fail to make it so by pretending that it is. For, delusions are ephemeral things, hard to maintain. Nothing but smoke and mirrors, they tend to melt away and disappear, constantly challenged by contradictory realities.
The narcissists I have known seem desperate to maintain their delusions, as though terrified of having them shattered by some repressed truth surfacing to consciousness on them. When anything happens that should remind them of the truth about something, they act like someone frantically shoveling more dirt on a corpse rising from its shallow grave.
So, to maintain their flimsy delusion of grandeur, they must act it out in every single encounter with you, no matter what. For, if they ever treat you as an equal worthy of respect and consideration — poof — there goes their illusion. The spell is broken as reality intrudes and the house lights come up on the playacting. When, as the poet T.S. Eliot wrote in the "love song" of a narcissist...
...human voices wake us and we down.
I think narcissists live in vague terror of this happening to them. Of all their delusions tumbling down. I think this is why they are so obsessed with maintaining and reinforcing them, to the exclusion of all else. Indeed, they would rather lose a million dollars or see their business go down. And to support their delusions they will do something disastrous for their business, because their delusions are all that really matter to them. They cling to their delusions for dear life, like the rest of us cling to life itself.
The narcissists I have known jump at chances to act out how insignificant you are compared to them. They do this by jumping at any chance to deny any form of attention to others with maximum impact by an extravagant display of its opposite instead.
I mean that exactly. A narcissist doesn't show just disregard; she acts out anti-regard. At every opportunity, whether great or small.
For example, let's say she's your sister and has known all her life that you cannot eat garden peas. They make you sick. To show off her (mediocre) cooking she gives a casserole she made — loaded with, guess what? Your look shows that you know she must have done this on purpose, and that's her chance to tell you that she never considered what you like when making it.
How's that for being anti-considerate? That let's you know that she didn't bake this for you. She baked it to show off.
It's just a game this emotional five-year-old plays.
Here's another example: Say that you're a brother of hers and are far from home on Thanksgiving. You naturally expect her to invite you dinner, but that invitation never comes. You're already deeply hurt when, late in the day, she calls and asks if you'd like some of her great turkey and dressing and pumpkin pie. Then she meets you at the back door and hands it to you in a brown paper bag.
How's that for affection? I'm not kidding: narcissists inflict mental cruelty like this every chance they get and as off-handedly as you'd swat a mosquito. They must do it because hurting you, treating you like a bum, makes them feel good. They must be drunk on the high they get by getting a step up on you. And, like any drunk, I suppose they feel miserable except when they're drinking.
When someone is down and out, she'll callously become Miss Bliss, laughing and chirping about this wonderful day like a male wren in May, jabbering excitedly about every tidbit of trivia she can think of — everything but the crucified or devastated friend or family member in the middle of the room. One can't get more brutal than that. It makes you go all black inside, because it strikes you as her dancing on that person's grave.
Warning: there's no bottom to how low narcissists will go in playing this game.
Here's how the same narcissist might play it in a big way: Let's say your husband just left you for another woman and you are devastated, can't stop crying, so you turn to her, thinking she's your friend. You just want someone to talk to. She doesn't respond to the usual signals that should call a friend to your side. In fact, she heads away from you so abruptly and fast that you'd think you had suddenly emitted a blast of antigravity. So, you come right out and say you desperately need someone to talk to and ask her to come spend a few hours with you today or tomorrow. She takes advantage of this opportunity to vaunt herself on you by lightly saying that she's too busy washing her Venetian blinds this week.
How's that for a kick in the gut?
That's her way of telling you how unimportant you are. Don't make the mistake of trying to tug at her heartstrings or asking her why she's treating you this way. If you do she'll fly into a rage at rage at you.
You're insulting her, you see. A bug like you insults God Almighty by acting like her equal, by acting like someone important enough for her to show regard for. You are attacking her grandiose image by acting as her equal instead of acting as though you're unworthy of her notice. So, look out: you have a tiger by the tail.
Yes, that's why narcissists are such perverts: their behavior is perverted because their thinking is perverted. Hence your asking for their compassion is viewed by them as (of all things) an attack.
And don't think that anything you've done for her in the past will make her feel obligated to pay you back in kind now. It's quite the other way around. A narcissist's middle name is Ingrate. In fact, she will punish every good deed you do for her, because helping her when she's in need challenges her delusion of being an omnipotent god who never needs anything from anyone. It challenges the flip-side too, that you are a bug who could never do anything of any value to almighty her. In other words, helping her is just another kind of attack in her eyes. So, look out: by helping her you attacked her image, which she identifies with, so you are going to get it. Yes, even though she asked you to help her, she will hate you for doing so. An example of this phenomenon is how France has never forgiven America for coming to its rescue twice.
Narcissists react to others' need this way like machines. What do you need? Affection? Then she'll respond with anti-affection = contempt and repulsion. Comfort? She'll respond with anti-comfort = the troublesome "comfort" of Job's "comforters" (= the anti-comfort of vultures faultfinding to blame the victim).
Exception: When there is something to be gained by showing regard, a narcissist will show it. For example, a narcissist wouldn't treat her boss or anyone with power over her this way. In fact, like men swoop down on a woman in distress, narcissists instantly swoop down as rescuer on someone they barely know, whom they thus win grateful friendship from, which they then exploit to parasitize that person. Also, when a narcissist can dissemble by flying to your rescue so as to be seen doing so, she'll put on a Mother Teresa Academy-Award act of selfless and tender loving kindness and concern. And she'll tell the whole world about it. That's how she carves out her saintly image. But, when there are no witnesses, and she has already defamed you so that nobody would believe you about it, look out. Your need is nothing but a trigger for Mr. Hyde to come out. See an example Case Study in Dissimulation.
There is but one possible reason for withholding affection, comfort, or regard. And it's malignant.
I have seen every narcissist I knew do it. In fact, the impression I got is that it's a knee-jerk reflex in narcissists to do it. When there is nothing to be gained by putting on a big show in which they play the part of someone's heroic rescuer, you can count on narcissists missing no opportunity to kick a person when they're down. They do it by acting out the most callous and outrageous disregard for that person in a time of time of need.
I think they really get off on it. I think that morally trampling someone like this makes narcissists feel like they're goose-stepping the mountaintops. Because it puts you here with respect to them . . .
And they aren't least likely to do it to those near and dear: they're most likely to do it to those near and dear. In a family, they target the most sensitive child to take the brunt of their abuse. Think what that means.
In general, they target those with every good reason to expect love and compassion from them, those close to them in daily life (especially if that person is someone who has been a friend in need). The narcissist will actually spurn such person with an extravagant display of haughty contempt.
In short, they're predators simply targeting the easiest and most vulnerable (deeply woundable) prey.
Narcissists treat people like dirt on the premise that treating others like dirt makes you God Almighty. That's the way a three-year-old thinks. The message is, "Get away from me, you scum. You are beneath my notice."
And when I said that narcissists do this for maximum impact, I meant exactly that. They obviously get so high on the pain they cause that they take pains to be as abusive as possible about it — forcing that child or woman to their knees and rubbing their face in filth or telling that person that for all the narcissist cares they can just go kill themselves or take a dive into the bottom of a bottle.
Now who would believe that? Who would believe that people who pass for as normal as you or I, people who go to church, coach Little League, give to charity, volunteer, and are viewed as pillars of their community — who would believe that this is how they behave to their loved ones in a time of need behind closed doors? It's the perfect crime — the one nobody would believe.
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You Are An Object
An infant in a crib is unaware of the fundamental difference between people and the other objects that revolve around it in its world. Both its mother and the mobile overhead are just objects to it. It quickly learns that when it cries, the mother-object appears and fulfills all its needs. Ooh, power!
So, it uses its vocal chords as a remote control for the mother-object.
It assumes that the mother-object exists for its sake. It quickly learns how to operate the mother-object. It pushes the buttons on her control panel largely through big demonstrations of displeasure whenever she does not anticipate and fulfill its needs in advance. She is just one object in a world that revolves around it, for it. Mark Twain delightfully reminds us of what we are at this stage of human development:
I do not remember my first lie, it is too far back; but I remember my second one very well. I was nine days old at the time, and had noticed that if a pin was sticking in me and I advertised it in the usual fashion, I was lovingly petted and coddled and pitied in a most agreeable way and got a ration between meals besides. It was human nature to want to get these riches, and I fell. I lied about the pin — advertising one when there wasn't any. You would have done it; George Washington did it, anyone would have done it. During the first half of my life I never knew a child that was able to rise above that temptation and keep from telling that lie.
— Mark Twain
A narcissist remains forever such an infant. His world revolves around him. The people in it are but objects for him to use and control — existing for his sake, not their own. Like levers on a control panel or tools to be damaged through heavy use or livestock to be consumed. There to fulfill his needs and enhance his image. Beyond that, they have no importance. It never occurs to him that he owes them anything in return or that he should consider the effects of his actions on them.
An object has no feelings. It is not a person. It is not even a being in the usual sense of the word. You might grab an object like a screwdriver and abuse it by using it to pry something open, knowing that by using it this way you might break it. But you think nothing of breaking a screwdriver. Damaging that screwdriver is nothing. There are plenty more where that one came from.
The only thing that matters is what you want = getting open that thing you're trying to pry open with the screwdriver.
That screwdriver is of no account. It would be absurd to regard it as a having a right to better treatment. In fact, it has no right to be: it exists for your sake, for you to use and abuse as you please. It's basically just an extension of yourself, a tool, an executioner of your will, not its own.
That's what YOU are to a narcissist.
Narcissists (and psychopaths) just use other people, all other people. Any way they please. In other words, they don't relate to other people. Which is an abbreviated way of saying that they don't relate to other human beings as a human being.
To relate to other human beings as a human being (i.e., humanly), you have to be a human being. You must experience your own humanity and know it. Only then can you recognize the image and likeness of humanity in others and relate to it in them as our common humanity — something we share with all other human beings, even mortal enemies. We relate to it.
Relating to it IS humanity. Otherwise known as empathy. It's what prompts soldiers who were fighting ferociously a minute ago to kneel down and tenderly care for the enemy's wounds. In fact, because the extremity of battle often makes it hard to switch gears the moment the fighting stops, humanity toward the fallen foe was regarded as the Christian soldier's highest virtue. In Italian it is called pieta, which sublimely shows that piety and pity (empathy) are two sides of the same coin.
But ours isn't the only species that relates in a special manner to its own kind. Many species of higher animals do. And it's easy to see why: that's how Nature keeps them from preying on their own kind (as sometimes happens, especially among lower species of animals). Even when they do fight, once one contestant for what they're fighting over backs off, the fight is instantly over and all hostility vanishes.
So, though remembering our humanity in extreme and unnatural situations like combat may be a virtue, normally it's no virtue at all. It's just natural.
But it's a learned behavior.
To illustrate: You've certainly seen a toddler delighted with some chick or puppy or bunny or other cute little animal you place before her. Then, on a whim, she shocks you by grabbing a stick and pounding the poor thing. The look in her eyes is the most shocking part — nothing there but fascination with the effect she's having on it = fascination with its agony.
Picture an adult instead, and you are watching a psychopath or other narcissist.
The narcissist feels entitled, and when he is thwarted, he acts out, just as young children, who are supremely narcissistic, act out. "Think of a toddler raging against an object that won't do what he wants," says [forensic psychologist J. Reid] Meloy. "I have this image in my mind of a 2-year-old squeezing a puppy's feet. He's attempting to control the animal's behavior, and probably deriving some pleasure from that."
— Hollow Men by Stephen G. Michaud
A little child does this because her person-ality isn't fully developed. Her sense of person-hood isn't differentiated so that she distinguishes between your personhood and hers. Between that puppy's living soul and hers. She's so brutal because while pounding Puppy she feels no pain. All she feels is powerful. So Puppy might as well be a nail she's hitting with a hammer.
This is why parents must closely supervise that little child, especially when vulnerable animals or other small children are around, and teach her that other living beings have feelings of their own and feel like she would if someone did that to her. She must be taught to respect other living beings as beings in their own right and to empathize with them.
For whatever reason, psychopaths and narcissists never learn.
How could they? They identify with their image — a work of fiction — not their true selves. So, they don't relate to themselves as human beings. They don't know the human being within. They don't know human being. So, how can they recognize humanity in others? How can they relate humanly to human beings?
The narcissist doesn't conceive herself as of our kind: What god with nothing but contempt for mere mortals does? So, expect no more regard for your feelings from her alien mentality than you should expect from an extra-terrestrial who abducts you to use as a specimen for an experiment. No more than a lamb should expect from a wolf, a mouse from a cat, a baby seal from a killer whale, or a cockroach from you.
In other words, narcissists relate to us as predators do.
And so perhaps they are right: they are NOT of our kind, humankind. For, except in primitive species, predators don't prey on their own kind. Because they identify with their own kind. They like their own kind. That affinity makes predation unthinkable. What use of force we observe among the members of a species is limited to what's necessary to protect individual interests and goes not one step further.
True, narcissists and psychopaths are not the only people who can turn off their humanity. All people can turn it off like a light-switch, thus becoming guilty of inhumanity. In fact, Man's inhumanity to Man is an age-old theme of literature, and history is full of examples of people turning off their human sensibilities en-masse, as during the Holocaust or the Inquisition. What makes people with narcissistic personality disorder (and psychopathy) different is that they have theirs turned off permanently for everyone but themselves.
And everyone means even their own children. Narcissists are as unfeeling toward whomever they abuse as you or I are toward a spike we are pounding with a sledgehammer. This is a hard truth to accept.
The good thing about accepting it is that there is no hating such a person. You can't hate what you can't relate to. You can no more hate a narcissist for being a narcissist than you can hate a snake for being a snake. You don't take it personally when a snake bites you. Don't take it personally when a narcissist does, either. It wasn't you. It wasn't anything you did. You were just there, that's all. Handy.
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So, it uses its vocal chords as a remote control for the mother-object.
It assumes that the mother-object exists for its sake. It quickly learns how to operate the mother-object. It pushes the buttons on her control panel largely through big demonstrations of displeasure whenever she does not anticipate and fulfill its needs in advance. She is just one object in a world that revolves around it, for it. Mark Twain delightfully reminds us of what we are at this stage of human development:
I do not remember my first lie, it is too far back; but I remember my second one very well. I was nine days old at the time, and had noticed that if a pin was sticking in me and I advertised it in the usual fashion, I was lovingly petted and coddled and pitied in a most agreeable way and got a ration between meals besides. It was human nature to want to get these riches, and I fell. I lied about the pin — advertising one when there wasn't any. You would have done it; George Washington did it, anyone would have done it. During the first half of my life I never knew a child that was able to rise above that temptation and keep from telling that lie.
— Mark Twain
A narcissist remains forever such an infant. His world revolves around him. The people in it are but objects for him to use and control — existing for his sake, not their own. Like levers on a control panel or tools to be damaged through heavy use or livestock to be consumed. There to fulfill his needs and enhance his image. Beyond that, they have no importance. It never occurs to him that he owes them anything in return or that he should consider the effects of his actions on them.
An object has no feelings. It is not a person. It is not even a being in the usual sense of the word. You might grab an object like a screwdriver and abuse it by using it to pry something open, knowing that by using it this way you might break it. But you think nothing of breaking a screwdriver. Damaging that screwdriver is nothing. There are plenty more where that one came from.
The only thing that matters is what you want = getting open that thing you're trying to pry open with the screwdriver.
That screwdriver is of no account. It would be absurd to regard it as a having a right to better treatment. In fact, it has no right to be: it exists for your sake, for you to use and abuse as you please. It's basically just an extension of yourself, a tool, an executioner of your will, not its own.
That's what YOU are to a narcissist.
Narcissists (and psychopaths) just use other people, all other people. Any way they please. In other words, they don't relate to other people. Which is an abbreviated way of saying that they don't relate to other human beings as a human being.
To relate to other human beings as a human being (i.e., humanly), you have to be a human being. You must experience your own humanity and know it. Only then can you recognize the image and likeness of humanity in others and relate to it in them as our common humanity — something we share with all other human beings, even mortal enemies. We relate to it.
Relating to it IS humanity. Otherwise known as empathy. It's what prompts soldiers who were fighting ferociously a minute ago to kneel down and tenderly care for the enemy's wounds. In fact, because the extremity of battle often makes it hard to switch gears the moment the fighting stops, humanity toward the fallen foe was regarded as the Christian soldier's highest virtue. In Italian it is called pieta, which sublimely shows that piety and pity (empathy) are two sides of the same coin.
But ours isn't the only species that relates in a special manner to its own kind. Many species of higher animals do. And it's easy to see why: that's how Nature keeps them from preying on their own kind (as sometimes happens, especially among lower species of animals). Even when they do fight, once one contestant for what they're fighting over backs off, the fight is instantly over and all hostility vanishes.
So, though remembering our humanity in extreme and unnatural situations like combat may be a virtue, normally it's no virtue at all. It's just natural.
But it's a learned behavior.
To illustrate: You've certainly seen a toddler delighted with some chick or puppy or bunny or other cute little animal you place before her. Then, on a whim, she shocks you by grabbing a stick and pounding the poor thing. The look in her eyes is the most shocking part — nothing there but fascination with the effect she's having on it = fascination with its agony.
Picture an adult instead, and you are watching a psychopath or other narcissist.
The narcissist feels entitled, and when he is thwarted, he acts out, just as young children, who are supremely narcissistic, act out. "Think of a toddler raging against an object that won't do what he wants," says [forensic psychologist J. Reid] Meloy. "I have this image in my mind of a 2-year-old squeezing a puppy's feet. He's attempting to control the animal's behavior, and probably deriving some pleasure from that."
— Hollow Men by Stephen G. Michaud
A little child does this because her person-ality isn't fully developed. Her sense of person-hood isn't differentiated so that she distinguishes between your personhood and hers. Between that puppy's living soul and hers. She's so brutal because while pounding Puppy she feels no pain. All she feels is powerful. So Puppy might as well be a nail she's hitting with a hammer.
This is why parents must closely supervise that little child, especially when vulnerable animals or other small children are around, and teach her that other living beings have feelings of their own and feel like she would if someone did that to her. She must be taught to respect other living beings as beings in their own right and to empathize with them.
For whatever reason, psychopaths and narcissists never learn.
How could they? They identify with their image — a work of fiction — not their true selves. So, they don't relate to themselves as human beings. They don't know the human being within. They don't know human being. So, how can they recognize humanity in others? How can they relate humanly to human beings?
The narcissist doesn't conceive herself as of our kind: What god with nothing but contempt for mere mortals does? So, expect no more regard for your feelings from her alien mentality than you should expect from an extra-terrestrial who abducts you to use as a specimen for an experiment. No more than a lamb should expect from a wolf, a mouse from a cat, a baby seal from a killer whale, or a cockroach from you.
In other words, narcissists relate to us as predators do.
And so perhaps they are right: they are NOT of our kind, humankind. For, except in primitive species, predators don't prey on their own kind. Because they identify with their own kind. They like their own kind. That affinity makes predation unthinkable. What use of force we observe among the members of a species is limited to what's necessary to protect individual interests and goes not one step further.
True, narcissists and psychopaths are not the only people who can turn off their humanity. All people can turn it off like a light-switch, thus becoming guilty of inhumanity. In fact, Man's inhumanity to Man is an age-old theme of literature, and history is full of examples of people turning off their human sensibilities en-masse, as during the Holocaust or the Inquisition. What makes people with narcissistic personality disorder (and psychopathy) different is that they have theirs turned off permanently for everyone but themselves.
And everyone means even their own children. Narcissists are as unfeeling toward whomever they abuse as you or I are toward a spike we are pounding with a sledgehammer. This is a hard truth to accept.
The good thing about accepting it is that there is no hating such a person. You can't hate what you can't relate to. You can no more hate a narcissist for being a narcissist than you can hate a snake for being a snake. You don't take it personally when a snake bites you. Don't take it personally when a narcissist does, either. It wasn't you. It wasn't anything you did. You were just there, that's all. Handy.
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