Narcissism is such a widespread phenomenon nowadays that its prevalence requires enough accessible knowledge that might help people deal with difficult and toxic people in their own lives.
Not only is this knowledge important when encountering people who meet the diagnostic criteria for a personality disorder called Narcissistic Personality Disorder (NPD), but also for dealing with people who have pronounced narcissistic tendencies in general.
Hey everybody, welcome to Psychology Element!
Today, we are going to be taking a look at 15 signs you’re dealing with a narcissist.
Make sure to watch until the end of the video, because being aware of these signs may prove to be critical in avoiding narcissistic people in your own life and saving your time, energy, and emotional resources for people who will be more likely to appreciate your investment in them.
Number 1.
A person craves attention and admiration all the time.
Attention and admiration-seeking behaviors are probably the most reliable indicator that a person is highly narcissistic.
The underlying cause of these behaviors is a narcissistic person’s lack of any internal sense of self-worth, defined value system, authentic worldview, and honest connections with other people.
This is the reason a narcissist constantly seeks external validation and confirmation of their own value by placing excessive focus on grandiose or vulnerable self-presentation as compensation for their hidden sense of their own unworthiness.
Number 2.
A person is entitled and arrogant.
One of the hallmarks of narcissistic behavior is an unearned sense of self-importance, which is a catalyst for their entitled and arrogant behaviors.
A narcissistic person is often convinced that they are deserving of everything they want in any given moment, which drives their arrogant behavior that is an expression of the false-self they carefully create and maintain as a defense mechanism against the realities of who and what they really are.
This makes narcissists constantly require other people to provide them with special treatment and cater to their whims.
Number 3.
A person lacks the capacity for true empathy.
This kind of person may be able to perfectly emulate empathy, or even possess cognitive empathy – the ability to intellectually observe emotional patterns in other people, but they are sorely lacking in the ability to become immersed in other people’s feelings and gaining a true sense of what those people may be going through.
Even these attempts at emulating empathy are, by definition, self-serving and are completely devoid of any desire to help anyone but themselves.
Number 4.
A constant self-referentiality.
Egocentricity inherent in a narcissistic personality structure prevents narcissistic people from comprehending that other people may be experiencing problems, difficulties, sufferings, or obstacles since their intense self-focus is preventing them from understanding the inner struggles of other people.
This is the reason why narcissists often exhibit something called constant self-referentiality – a tendency to make everything about themselves.
For example, if a person tries to voice their problems to a narcissist, the narcissistic person is likely to rudely interrupt them and start talking about how that problem is affecting them even more than the person who is really affected by that problem.
Number 5.
A person tends to pedestalize people who help them drive up their own sense of self-worth.
Narcissists are very prone to idealizing people who can help them regulate their unprocessed feelings of worthlessness and inadequacy, especially early on after they’ve met a new person.
This excessive idealization of the other person is not recognition of that person’s qualities, but a narcissist’s way to feel better about themselves by staying in proximity to such a great person – which often means, a person whose status they perceive as higher than their own.
Number 6.
A person has a very polarized view of themselves and other people.
A narcissistic person processes information about themselves and other people in black-and-white terms – they tend to view everyone as either good or bad, saintly or full of sin, perfect or worthless.
The cause of this is a primitive, infantile defense mechanism known as splitting, which refers to a person’s inability to reconcile other people’s both positive and negative qualities into a mostly functional, coherent whole.
Number 7.
A person’s emotionality is superficial, labile, and instrumental.
People high in narcissistic tendencies construct their emotional lives based on social cues that indicate what emotional lives should be like, instead of actually having rich emotional lives.
Their emotions are labile, meaning that they can almost instantly shift from one emotional state to another, since their emotions are skin-deep.
They are instrumental in that they use expressions of normal human emotions to obtain emotional control over someone or to achieve a specific goal.
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Number 8.
A person is obsessed with social status and recognition.
In a narcissist’s view, people are strictly hierarchically organized, so they tend to infiltrate themselves in social circles they perceive as being well-positioned inside a specific cultural context in which the narcissist lives.
This tactic is designed to provide them with the recognition and admiration they believe they deserve.
If they don’t manage to gain the social status they think they are entitled to, they tend to devalue the same social groups they wanted to associate with.
Number 9.
A person is always projecting and deflecting.
If a person engages in frequent projections, which refers to accusing other people of their own impulses that make them feel uncomfortable, they are likely to possess narcissistic traits.
Deflection is almost a tell-tale sign of narcissistic defenses, and it consists of ignoring their own problematic behavior and instead of trying to shift focus from themselves by focusing on other people’s flaws and deficiencies or other topics completely unrelated to the topic of discussion.
Number 10.
A person never takes responsibility for their actions.
Narcissists are notoriously known for their inability to take responsibility for their own, sometimes extremely manipulative, hurtful and irrational actions, and are more likely to shift the blame to innocent people or place that blame on external circumstances.
Number 11.
A person is dismissive toward and contemptuous of true intimacy and vulnerability.
This contempt for intimacy and vulnerability can be traced back to a narcissist’s biggest fear – that in truly intimate relationships, their inadequacies may be exposed, which they feel would prompt the need of the other person to reject or ridicule them, and by doing so, increase their already existing self-loathing and insecurity covered behind layers of grandiose defenses.
Number 12.
A person never considers other people’s perspectives and thinks they are always right.
If a self-centered person is faced with an opinion that contradicts their preexisting beliefs, that opinion is going to be automatically invalidated.
This leads narcissists to believe they are always right and that their arguments are infallible, which prevents them from realistically assessing reality.
Number 13.
A person is often reluctant to talk about emotions – including their own.
Narcissistic people tend to perceive other people’s emotions as weakness and/or fakery, but they also abhor being authentically emotional themselves.
According to the Harvard Medical School psychologist Craig Malkin, feeling an emotion “challenges their sense of perfect autonomy” and that for a narcissist, “to admit to a feeling of any kind suggests that they can be affected by someone or something outside of them”.
Number 14.
A person gets bored with people easily.
Since a narcissistic person is primarily driven by their dopamine production, they are constantly on the lookout for new sources of stimulation and entertainment, which leads them to easily replace people when those people become less effective at triggering their dopaminergic responses, or in other words – when those people become boring fairly quickly.
Number 15.
A person employs a wide variety of manipulation tactics.
Gaslighting, which we already explained in a video on our channel you should definitely check out, is one of their favorite tactics.
They also use tactics such as triangulation, where they use a third person to serve as a mediator for their manipulation, baiting, or provoking negative emotional responses in their victims, lying and cheating, among others.
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