“When a toxic person can no longer control you, they will try to control how others see you. The misinformation will feel unfair, but stay above it, trusting that other people will eventually see the truth just like you did.” ― Jill Blakeway
Introducing you to Narcissism and Narcissists
If you ask Google, “Narcissism is the excessive interest in or admiration of oneself and one’s physical admiration”. There are so many times we refer to people as narcissists when they appear to be obsessed with themselves. But narcissism is so much more than just self-obsession. Narcissism destroys people’s surrounding much more than the narcissist himself or herself, and that is the reason it becomes extremely important to understand such people, or why they behave the way they do.
Narcissists are individuals who lack empathy, are entitled, possess grandiosity in large amounts, are very superficial, throw tantrums when things don’t go their way, are hypersensitive, and believe that the world revolves around them. It is fair to think that such people are self-obsessed, but to define narcissism as self obsession would be very vague, and inaccurate since their repercussions extend beyond their obsession with themselves. That is because it also involves gaslighting which makes individuals doubt their own reality and manipulative behavior. They are the perfect individuals in their world, and everything that goes wrong in their lives is because of everyone else, but themselves.
It is also important to understand that narcissism is different from Narcissistic Personality Disorder (NPD). “Narcissism is a trait whereas people with NPD have an actual problem in their lives since it is a disorder.” It is fair to say that all people with NPD are narcissists, but all narcissists do not have NPD. Narcissists do not have anything bad or wrong going on in their lives, and one cannot diagnose such people just because they treat people in a wrong way, it’s just a trait whereas people with NPD have their lives messed up. Either way people cannot be helped since they don't think anything is really wrong with them.
Origins of Narcissism
While it may be easy to classify such people as ‘bad’ and ‘mean’ ones, it is important to understand what really causes people to grow as narcissists. Narcissism isn’t an inherited trait, so environmental and family upbringing play a major role in developing this trait. Overprotective or neglectful parenting plays a role in creating narcissistic children. Traumatic child events, insecure attachments meaning that these people were never given a safe and unconditional environment to grow up in leading to always feeling unsafe in all their relationships, modeling narcissistic parents which means imitating the behaviors of their narcissist parents, providing conditional love, lack of providing opportunities to deal with disappointment and failures, narcissistic parents treating the child’s emotions as a statement above their own emotions and many more conditions shape narcissism in children and stay with such children throughout their life. When you really think about it, narcissistic people are just extremely insecure and empty people who constantly need validation from the external and superficial world. They can never really be happy from within and will always end up believing that happiness is only achieved from the materialistic things.
Narcissism in parents
Like we discussed, narcissistic parents shape narcissistic children. Some red flags to look for are that they care a lot about how their child looks physically, they favour the child who makes them look good like a child who scores better or wins a contest will be their ideal child. The child who does not meet up to their expectations however, suffers and becomes the scapegoat to trauma, and abuse of being let down and humiliated. Such parents are childish, not available for the children, making children believe that their love is conditional to the number of medals they win, or only on the things they achieve. Since parents shape a major part of a child’s personality, it is no surprise that such children grow up being insecure and believing that they aren’t enough.
Narcissism in romantic relationships
Dating a narcissist is very stressful and exhausting because it sucks the energy out of you. Narcissistic people usually date people who are good looking and attractive since they make them look good. They attract people who are solid, loving empathetic people so that they can get exactly what they want from them. It must be interesting to think, how do such people attract the best people out there? The answer is love bombing. Basically, everything you would want to hear from a person, compliments, showering you with all their attention and treating you like the most important person out there before they start with their manipulative behavior. It is very difficult or almost impossible to resist their charm and confidence, and that is exactly how people fall in the trap. They aren’t very loyal, tend to cheat on their partners, throw temper tantrums very often, gaslight the other person thus making them feel like they are crazy for feeling bad for something they did and manipulate the other person to think that everything that goes in the relationship is their fault, literally everything. The person in the relationship with the narcissist suffers the most. They feel unheard, often blame themselves, exhaust themselves, experience confusion, loneliness, anxiety, low self-esteem, helpless, hopeless, powerless, regret and the only reason they stay is because they believe they can change them. Leaving the narcissist can be very traumatic and stressful since the person at this point has tried changing them and everything else, they fear that the moment they leave them, they will become a better person for someone else. A narcissist trades relationships very quickly, since it is a very superficial concept for them. However, they don’t like seeing the other person move on happily so they do something called hoovering which is sucking someone back into their life by love bombing once again. Everything you ever wanted to hear is told to you, and most people end up being back with the person. When a narcissist leaves someone else, which is unlikely, it is usually because they already have someone lined up for them. The person who has been left feels abandoned because they feel like they have done everything, and yet they were left even though in reality, it is actually the best thing that could happen to them.
Protecting and healing from the narcissist abuse
It is just very crucial to keep distance from such people as you wouldn’t even know when you have fallen into the trap, and thus the most important thing I would suggest is keeping a good distance from such toxic people because dealing with them is just like trading good apples for rotten ones. Setting boundaries and maintaining those boundaries no matter what is the key to handling narcissists. If you are in a situation where you cannot leave the person, stop having any expectations from them, or any expectations of them changing for you. If they wanted to change, they would have. It is extremely important to understand that it is okay to feel sorry for them and sympathize with them for the trauma they have been through. Narcissism stems from poor parenting, but understanding that their trauma doesn’t give them the right to make people go through the same is important. Whatever happened to them isn’t their fault, but it isn’t yours either, so you shouldn’t be suffering. Healing from narcissistic abuse can be extremely challenging and traumatic especially, in romantic relationships, and it generally takes time to move on in any relationship, but facing a situation with no closure, tons of disrespect, and lies tends to be daunting. Your worth isn’t determined by someone who doesn’t know the true value of happiness and thus one must keep going and practice self-love, build self-esteem by engaging in various hobbies and activities, and surround themselves with good company. Because at the end of the day, narcissists are just broken, empty people who would probably never find true happiness and the true meaning of life, and would always keep looking for the ‘I’ in narcissism.
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