“Often the narcissist believes that other people are ‘faking it’, leveraging emotional displays to achieve a goal. He is convinced that their ostensible ‘feelings’ are grounded in ulterior, non-emotional motives. Faced with other people’s genuine emotions, the narcissist becomes suspicious and embarrassed. He feels compelled to avoid emotion-tinged situations, or worse, experiences surges of almost uncontrollable aggression in the presence of expressed [genuine] sentiments.
Narcissists like being feared. It imbues them with an intoxicating sensation of omnipotence. Narcissists damage and hurt but they do so offhandedly and naturally, as an afterthought. They are aware of what they are doing to others — but they do not care.”
Sam Vaknin, Malignant Self-Love
If you want to talk narcissist, look to the grand orange one, he’s a doozy.
They often do not realize what they are doing to others because they think everyone behaves in a similar way. In my experience most narcissists are completely paranoid for this reason.
Also in my experience, narcissists are rarely perfect. I mean they are not perfectly narcissistic. Everyone of them seems to have moments of weakness where things (briefly) seem to sink in. Now once the moment is gone they will set those feeling aside as unnatural and resume their self-centered ways, but those chinks in the armor are certainly there.
They might think of them as moments of weakness, but I prefer to think of them as moments of clarity. For one brief moment, a somewhat monstrous individual was faced with their own mortality, and was found lacking.
Normally during those moments they will almost have a panic attack, or fly into a rage. Almost always they shed a tear or two.
Here are a couple of “tests” I’ve found pretty helpful in determining whether I’m dealing with a human being who’s just being a jerk at the moment, and a narcissist (who looks human but ain’t):
1) Check for a genuine sense of humor, especially self-deprecating humor. Not mockery and not sarcasm — a narcissist can and will “jokes” about people and situations, but in a detached way, they don’t “get” jokes. You can tell by their reaction, if you have an actual sense of humor.
2) My favorite test: If a human being is upset with you and you show any contrition or actual repentance for whatever happened (e.g. if you sincerely apologize), a human being will usually react by calming down, “de-escalating” the situation. A narcissist, on the other hand, will *esacalate* — the more you apologize, the more you show any “weakness” when they’re upset with you, will just make them berate you more and more until you feel really tired and confused. However, if they come at you and demand some kind of apology and you, in turn, respond right back at them in the same way — they’re angry with you, you come right back in their face at the same level — they’ll suddenly back down, even cower. It’s strange, but true.