If narcissists can’t see that they are the narcissist then how do, we know we are not the narcissist?
If narcissists can’t see that they are the narcissist then how do, we know we are not the narcissist?
Some people believe that if you ask that question then you are not a narcissist because narcissists can’t self-reflect, which I find to be misleading.
A narcissist can and will ask that question of themselves, but they won’t be able to be honest in assessing their behavior as it’s far too biased towards themselves to remotely reflect the truth.
Narcissists will always default to ‘no they are not’ because that is how they’ve trained their brain to think.
The reality is that everyone is narcissistic in the right circumstances, but it’s the level of narcissism that presents which causes damage that one needs to be concerned.
There are two reasons or phenomena that occur which prevent a narcissist from being able to see that they are a narcissist.
Often, victims will summarize these points to being ‘narcissists think they are too good and perfect to be narcissists’ but that is a misunderstanding of the truth.
Pathological Perfection
Narcissists desire to be perfect can be so pathological that the idea that the way they think is disordered creates such a crisis of dysregulation because of the black and white thinking patterns that have them believe you are either special and entitled or you are garbage.
Narcissists don’t actually believe that they are perfect, (even though they may delude themselves into believing it subconsciously their biggest fear is being found out to be a fraud), it’s that they believe they need to be perfect in order to stave off the unpleasant feelings and the dysregulated emotions that imperfection causes them.
Memory Gaps
The notion that they are garbage is the very thing they have been afraid of the most since their earliest memories.
To the narcissist, it feels like they are dying or in danger of dying — yes, it creates that much dysregulation in them.
This is what drives the pathological need to be seen as perfect.
It’s why they are so anal about things and why when they seem to come off as perfect, they are so full of themselves but at the same time when they look bad why they can rage or fall into such a deep depression.
The dysregulation they feel is so overwhelming that when under certain kinds of pressure, they have a trauma like response to the situation.
The response they have can feel like they are about to pass out and everything that is going on around them goes into a sort of tunnel vision where there is such an overload of stimuli their body shuts it all out. It’s essentially a freeze response that is triggered.
During this time, they feel this overwhelming bad feeling and as an event unfolds, they will have a big hole right in the middle of their memory because of this freeze response.
This gap may remember the event in general but at specific moments of being overwhelmed those memories will be distorted and incomplete.
They will be left with only the feelings that they had and without complete memories of the event so they will confuse the feelings with facts.
The narcissist will essentially fill in their gaps of memory with what seems to be true based off of their feelings and because the explanation removes those feelings.
What removes the bad feelings and makes sense to a narcissist? It’s your fault.
Self-Deception
Self-deception is a huge part of narcissism, and you’ll see it in kids that are likely to become narcissists or have some traits that are rather high in narcissism.
Something can happen at school where the kid is bullied or left out or something and when you ask the kid how their day went because you heard about it from some other kid — they will retell the story in a way that has them included.
They will have a fantasy version of events where they are not ostracized or bullied. If it’s really bad, you’ll hear these alternative stories in almost all aspects of their lives where they were the ‘hero’ of the situation somehow.
So, if you find yourself telling yourself stories that you know at the time are not true, but you say it is true anyway — then you might be a candidate.
If you find yourself justifying feelings by filling in the gaps with what the other person must have done in order to justify that dysregulation and offload responsibility, then it’s possible.
The easiest way for someone to tell is if you’ve got the capacity to put someone else before yourself.
So, someone’s needs before your wants when no one is looking.
If you can do that then chances are you’re not ASPD, histrionic, Narcissist, and even borderlines can be pretty selfish too but often times they sacrifice to get love so it’s situational.