Many narcissists show signs of narcissism early on in their lives.
However, many people fear if it’s possible to develop narcissism later on in life.
The first thing that needs to be understood is what narcissism actually is, who gets it, and why.
Then we can discover if someone can genuinely become a narcissist with actual narcissistic personality disorder or if they are just becoming a pain in the butt, to put it nicely.
So today we will figure out if someone can become a narcissist later in life.
First, let’s discuss what narcissistic personality disorder is.
NPD is an actual neurological disorder in which someone firmly believes they are better than other people.
It is a serious personality disorder that ranks on the top lists of personality disorders.
It is one of 10 personality disorders recognized in the fifth edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5).
People with this disorder can have a wide array of symptoms, ranging from severe to moderate.
This disorder can come from an inflated sense of ego, a chemical imbalance in the brain.
So, let’s take a look at the symptoms so that we can figure out how to look out for people with this personality disorder.
What are the symptoms of narcissistic personality disorder?
Symptoms of this disorder, as stated earlier, can range from many different things.
On the one hand, people with narcissistic personality disorder can have an inflated sense of self-importance, a lack of empathy for others, and a deep need for constant attention or admiration.
However, on the complete opposite side of the spectrum people with this disorder can actually have the exact opposite symptoms.
While someone with NPD’s self-esteem can be off the charts, ironically, it can also be super fragile, dependent on external validation, or self-deception.
They’ll believe grandiose fantasies about themselves.
For example, they might believe that they’re smarter, more attractive, and successful than everyone they know when in reality this can be far from the truth.
They easily put other people down in order to make themselves feel better, and generally hijack any conversation or situation to make themselves feel better or superior.
Then they can redirect the conversation back to their favorite subject: themselves.
Feeling less than perfect is very uncomfortable for a narcissist, and they’ll protect themselves from it at all costs. Someone with this disorder won’t do this rarely.
No, for them this would be a serious situation in which they repeat the same patterns and situations over and over again. Can someone develop these symptoms later in life? That is a good question.
Who gets this disorder?
Narcissistic personality disorder affects men more than women, and though the numbers are very small, it doesn’t mean that that's the real number behind it. Many people with NPD don’t report it.
This is because most of them really don’t believe that they have a problem to begin with, despite the fact that they obviously do.
As stated before, men tend to get it more than women, which could be a cultural and sociological issue, seeing that men have usually had more power than women in the past. However, regardless of the why, the facts are the facts.
Now, NPD can manifest differently in men versus women.
According to research, compared to males, a narcissistic female personality is more likely to include deep insecurity, martyrdom, jealousy, and competitiveness with other women, often seeing them as a threat.
Women with this disorder will become the overbearing mothers-in-law, the friend who can never be happy when their other girlfriends succeed, or the girlfriend who never lets her boyfriend do anything he wants without making him feel guilty.
Men on the other hand are more likely than women to exploit others and feel entitled to certain privileges.
These are the men who are more likely to use their narcissism to expose secrets of their competitors or try to coax their partners into doing whatever they want whenever they want.
This is because in their eyes, they are more capable than other people, so why wouldn’t they be in charge?
They’re also more apt to exhibit qualities of assertiveness or power-hunger. After all, why shouldn’t they be in charge? They’re the ones who are perfect of course!
However, this is not to say these traits are exclusive to either sex.
When it comes to vanity and self-absorption, both sexes rate the same.
Those traits aren’t exclusive to one gender or another, of course.
The traits listed above are more common to one gender than another, but that doesn’t mean it’s impossible for someone of another gender to have them.
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What causes this disorder?
The causes of NPD can be many things. However, there are common causes that tend to present themselves when someone with NPD steps forward.
The first is childhood abuse or neglect. Of course, childhood abuse is often a cause of a lot of different issues in adulthood, narcissism being one of them.
Children who are abused and develop this disorder see themselves as amazing heroes who can do no wrong because of what they have been through, instead of the polar opposite in cases where those children feel undeserving and unloved.
A second cause is excessive parental parenting. This can lead to a sense of entitlement strapped to the child’s sense of self-worth and who they are as a person, leading them to believe they deserve more than they do just based purely on their childhood.
A third leading cause is unrealistic expectations from parents. Funny how so many of these causes begin with parenting.
Children who grew up with parents who have unrealistic expectations of their children find themselves trying to give themselves a sense of worth where their parents failed to.
A fragile ego, built on validation from the outside, causes these children to develop narcissistic personality disorder.
The fourth cause is sexual promiscuity. This can also be associated with risk-taking and other insane behaviors that follow the narcissist along.
These kinds of narcissists feel that they are invincible, and that nothing can stop them in their journey to get what they want.
This will lead them to act out, and doing these crazy things will of course lead them to become prey to this disorder.
Finally, the last cause of this disease is cultural influences.
As stated above, sometimes this disorder affects men more than women because men held more power than women for a long time.
This could lead more men to believe in a sense of entitlement that women still have to fight for, causing them to demand more power and respect than they actually deserve.
On the flip side, a woman who is a victim of narcissistic personality disorder may feel very connected to her womanhood.
She may feel that as a woman, as a bearer of children, and a maker of the home, she deserves more respect than she actually garners.
Or, in the case of both genders, the cultural influences surrounding them could force them to believe that just because of the gender they chose will entitle them to more power than they actually earned or deserved.
So, now that we have these causes and what it is, we can tackle the question at heart: can someone become a narcissist when they become older?
Can you get narcissistic personality disorder later in life?
Judging from the research gathered earlier, there are two different arguments to be made here.
On the one hand, it seems that people can have narcissistic disorder from the minute they begin showing signs of personality and who they are as people.
On the other hand, some people only show these toxic traits when they become a mother-in-law or a partner or even a coworker.
In short, there are many arguments going around about this, but the general consensus is that while one cannot develop this disorder later in life, the symptoms can take a while to reveal themselves.
This means that someone can have the disorder for their whole lives and never show severe enough signs until a certain trigger point occurs.
This can cause their symptoms to become more severe over time and worsen, making it seem like they developed later in life when they didn’t.
What is a trigger point, exactly?
A trigger point is an event in someone’s life that one would call triggering.
This would be something that pushes the person who has the disorder to actually begin showing symptoms.
This is similar to someone with an anxiety disorder getting a panic attack when they are reminded of a scary event or someone with PTSD hearing fireworks.
For people with narcissistic personality disorder, it could easily mean that they have regressed and pushed a memory from their childhood back in their mind and ignored it until a lot later in life, such as when a mother’s son gets married and all the attention is on the bride and not the mother.
This could reflect on the mother with a hidden disorder and cause her to start showing symptoms.
NPD is a disorder which affects men more than women, isn’t reported much, and causes people to believe they are truly better than others.
While symptoms may appear later in life, one cannot develop this disorder later in life.