Additional Considerations About the Children

I am not arguing a case here, but I am brainstorming things for the non-narcissistic parent to consider when deciding whether to divorce a narcissist.

There are many angles to consider. I laid out many of the practical considerations on the main website and in the book in the topic "Must I Leave Him?"

An additional one is for a male non-narcissistic parent. Traditionally the courts have been biased against the father in custody battles. In fact, narcissists are such cunning con artists that the courts VERY often buy into a narcissistic father's character assassination of the mother to win custody. So, if mothers lose custody battles with a narcissist, fathers have even less chance of seeing justice.

There are, however, attorneys now specializing in such cases. They know how to get the job done.

One thing I'd suggest is being very careful not to push a narcissist's battle-you-for-custody button. From what I've seen, they don't want the kids. I have seen them devastate their children by just walking away forever. Even when the narcissist is the mother.

This might not be true in all cases. But I suspect it's often just the narcissist's competitive impulses that make them battle for custody, because a narcissist MUST ALWAYS WIN. Everything is a game, and the narcissist must ALWAYS WIN. They MUST. They are compulsive about it. They just could not bear to have you "win."

I don't know - you might even try reverse psychology. But in any case, I wouldn't let anger slip and make any remarks about him or her having the children taken away. Then the narcissist will have to fight for them.

Another consideration: narcissists often sucker their children too (though kids seem to have better judgement than the courts). At least for awhile. Think, how will your children feel someday when they realize that their narcissistic parent's victim act made them feel sorry for him/her, view YOU as the bad guy, and turn against you, thus effectively HELPING him abuse you in what amounts to a ganging up?

Can you imagine their shame and guilt? When they see what they have done, they will want to just roll over and die. That will be a demon at their door, blocking a wholesome relationship with you.

Sure, they were just children who were suckered. But such betrayal of their one loving parent is something Oedipal for them to deal with.

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What About Your Children?

Parents ask whether they should leave a narcissist to get their children away from the predator.

Easy for me to say.

Don't assume that it all goes over your kids' heads. And though narcissists do treat everyone differently, it isn't because some persons appeal to their (dead) hearts. Narcissism EXPLOITS everyone as an object, even those they flatter, dote on, and suck up to. "If they're not at your feet, they're at your throat," but in either case they're just USING you, playing you for a fool.

Think how it makes anyone feel when it dawns on us that someone has just been using us.

This is a terrible decision to have to make in many cases. I'm glad I never had to make it.

I suggest that you talk to the grown children of narcissists. Ask them how the narcissistic parent made them feel. Ask them what they thought about him/her and themselves as a child. Ask them if any of their siblings acquired NPD. Ask them what they wish their non-narcissistic parent had done and why.

There are some online groups of adult children of narcissists that I think you can read even without being a member.

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Facing Facts

One reason why the victims don't face facts about a narcissist is because we don't want to face the fact that we mean nothing to them. The ego doesn't want to know that. For, being valued by another at absolute zero is a degrading value judgement.

When this is someone in your family, that fact is traumatic. We think about how much we have loved them, how often we have stuck up for them, how many times in the past we sacrificed for them. And here all along they cared NOTHING for us in return!

They just fed off us like a parasite, taking us for a sap.

This is why denial is so dangerous. Facing facts, no matter how unpleasant, is better. Because when you do address the issue in your mind, you see who is degraded by the narcissist's refusal to relate humanly to human beings.

Not the human beings, that's for sure.

Knowing that makes you able to accept the truth about them. And when you accept the truth about them, you break the cycle of abuse.

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The Narcissist: A Piece of Work

One thing that most people don't realize about narcissists is that their fits aren't the product of a short fuse and the inability to control themselves.

To the contrary, their fits are a device to manipulate you. And before you say, "Naw, they aren't smart enough to do that," consider the average three-year-old.

Uh-huh. See? If the average three-year-old is smart enough to notice that her bawling, screaming, and antics get on your nerves like a finger nail screeching on a blackboard, a grown narcissist is able to see when his actions have the same effect on you. That three-year-old has been learning since she was an infant that her screaming really bothers you and that you'll do anything to make it stop.

That's control power. And even a three-year-old knows how to use it.

She knows just how to make your whole world a living hell by doing nothing but being as obnoxious as she can be. She knows you'll do anything to get her to stop that uproar.

Many, if not most, children will try throwing temper tantrums to get their way. If you give in to this tactic, you soon have a little monster on your hands. The same is true with a narcissist. Every time you give in to it, you reward his bad behavior.

Think back and recall the first time you noticed that a spoiled brat isn't expressing true emotion but is just putting on an act to manipulate you. I often use the example of the kid in the grocery store. He points at a candy bar and looks at Mom, his sweet bright eyes gleaming. She is reaching for some other product and says, "No, you-"

She never gets the second word out before the whole store is filled with his screaming uproar. In other words, he was one step ahead of her and ready to do that.

Everyone in the store stops dead in their tracks, wondering who is killing that kid. In fact, some do probably think someone is beating that child.

Mid-"WAAAAAAAH!" the brat's mother has already taken a quick glance around to see who's staring at her and grabs that candy bar, handing it to him.

So, mid-"WAAAAH!" the brat has switched masks again, his sweet little bright eyes gleaming over his candy bar.

That's all your narcissist is doing when he gets obnoxious. He knows he's being obnoxious. He's trying to be as obnoxious as he can be.

Because he knows that, rather than fight with that obnoxious foghorn in his face, you'll just let the brat have his way.

He isn't above that. He isn't above acting crazy. He isn't above such extreme childishness. He is shameless.

He has no self respect. So, he can stoop to tactics that would make you or I disgust ourselves.

Because he is still a mental child. So, he has a one-track mind: he must have what he wants and right now.

He thinks like a child, simplistically, that power and grandeur consist in having your way with people.

Think of the irony. He he debases and disgraces himself in the very act of this grandiosity! Acting crazy is anti-grand. Acting-obnoxious and childish is anti-grand. And if you have no control over yourself, you are impotent, so how can you imagine that you control anyone else?

The narcissist is shameless and yet so proud!

Whew, what piece of work.

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Mixed Up Priorities

Much craziness is due to mixed up priorities.

Narcissists lead the pack in this. They still have the priorities of a three-year-old. In other words, they themselves and what they want are their ONLY priority.

They are the epitome of the "What's-it-to-me?" type. The narcissist says, "What's it to me if you are damaged by how I treat you or your name to make myself feel grand?"

They just don't care. They have one priority - to use everything and everyone in their environment to sort of masturbate their ego. They are so obsessed with this priority that it has put blinders on them. Nothing else matters.

You may not want to admit it, but you mean absolutely nothing to them. They'll pound you with a hammer as thoughtlessly as they'd pound a nail with one.

They don't care about the consequences to you. They don't care about the morality of what they're doing. But that isn't all. They don't care about many other things as well, things they would care about if they had any sense. For example, they don't care about the future consequences. And if, for example, the matter is involved in business dealings, they don't care how bad it is for business.

Stroking their ego is their one and only priority. It's crazy and leads them to do crazy, self-destructive things.

But narcissists aren't the only ones who get mixed up priorities.

Many people make what others think and say about them their top priority. The notorious bystander to abuse is a good example. Nothing else matters to them. They are so obsessed with looking and sounding and seeming good that actually BEING good means nothing to them at all.

So, what do such people do when bashing Jews, blacks, or Americans wins a person approval in their world? Bash away, that's what. That's "good" in their eyes, the "right thing to do." They should turn that Jew in to the Nazis and then move into his vacated home. That's what good little boys and girls do, you know.

Today.

In other words, their mixed up priorities confuse being good with having a good reputation. They, just like the narcissist, don't care about the damage to others. They are just as inhumanly unfeeling about that.

Even in minor matters, mixed up priorities cause a lot of harm. If you play tennis (especially if you ever read The Inner Game of Tennis by Timothy Gallwey) you know about the obsession with "proper form" in this sport. Way too many players care more about how they swing and move their feet than about where the ball goes!

Really. They forget that it's a game and is about the score. To them it becomes a mere exercise in executing forehands and backhands "the right way."

Pure folly.

Mixed up priorities. Perhaps the root of all human folly.

We touched on an example in the post mentioning George Orwell's essays taking on his fellow leftists before and during World War II. He was furious with the left, especially the intelligentsia, for its mixed up priorities.

They had only one priority in Britain (and North America), to promote the ascendancy of socialism over capitalism. It put blinders on them. They lost their moral compass and sunk to demonizing their political opponents, condemning EVERYTHING those opponents said and did.

Even when it meant sympathizing with a real demon - Adolph Hitler and the Nazi fascists. You know: "The enemy of my enemy is my friend" ... though he be the Devil himself.

And so we witnessed the bizarre phenomenon of British intellectuals opposing every security measure (claiming that it would be the end of civil rights) and the defense of their own country...just to condemn and oppose as evil everything their political opponents said and did.

Their poor opponents were in power and saddled with the responsibility of defending the country, so the reckless left could irresponsibly scream bloody murder at everything the government did.

Who did these clowns think the Nazis would have eliminated first? THEM, that's who. Yet, here were leftist intellectuals condemning and trying to stop the war effort that was FEEDING them at the cost of British sailors' lives!

So, narcissists aren't the only ones who go nuts and start playing Pretend because of their mixed up priorities. You needn't be crazy to get your priorities mixed up. But if you get them mixed up, you will soon be doing crazy things.

I have found that it is important to be really honest with yourself. To consciously ponder your priorities. To ask yourself why you are tempted to do this or that. Then you can see if you motives are vain folly or not and whether they will only bring you further grief. Then you can make sure that what you do always makes sense and acts in the right direction = toward a better life for yourself.

If you do this, what other people say and think about you will never become your top priority and control you like a puppet.

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What We CAN DO

The victims of narcissists always feel helpless, impotent.

For one thing, there is no getting through to a narcissist. I am sure of it. None. Zero. Never. No matter what. If a narcissist acts like you have gotten through to him, he is just conning you. The proof will be in what he does tomorrow.

The moment a narcissist sees that you are about to attempt to really communicate with him, his knee-jerk reflex kicks in to just start bellering a blowback that forms a solid wall of incoherent flak blocking communication till you just give up and shut up. I have seen narcissists with manifest terror in their eyes, desperate to prevent anything the victim is saying from getting through. That's how afraid of relating to you humanly, of a meeting of the minds between you, they are.

Then they might have to know you are a human being and have some feeling for you. They don't dare have any feeling for you, and they know it. No predator dares have any feeling for its prey. If it did, it would starve.

Not that I'm trying to persuade you to quit trying to get through to your narcissist. Decent people keep trying till they are convinced, through their own experience, that it's hopeless.

Another thing we can't do anything about is the abuse. Since narcissists only abuse those at their mercy and unable to get even with them or force them to stop, it goes without saying that your narcissist has power over you, because all narcissists are bullies who only pick on the defenseless. So, something about the situation makes you a sitting duck. Narcissists just do not refrain from whacking sitting ducks, unless there are witnesses on hand at the moment.

But in the posts and discussions here it has emerged that there are things we can do. Very important things we can do for ourselves. Crucial things, things that may prevent us from needing psychiatric treatment ourselves.

One of them is to think for ourselves. If you let yourself be manipulated by political correctness, with all its absurd commandments that force you to bend over for abuse and then blame yourself for it, you are headed for serious trouble in your own relationship with yourself.

The last post was an example. The United States doesn't dare let itself be morally bullied into not defending its people = not going after these bushwhackers wherever they hide.

Likewise, you can't let bystanding holier-than-thous tyrannize you by morally bullying you into staying married to someone who abuses you. That's what they're doing when they say that it would be wrong for you to leave him - morally bullying you. They are threatening you with "talk" that you are a bad person if you don't do what they say is right.

That tactic is the most potent manipulative stick in the world! The vast majority of people will do anything you want if you wave that stick at them. It makes you their master. Ask the KGB. Using it enabled them to brainwash and gain mind control over practically anyone without having to lay a hand on him or her.

But don't subject yourself to it. Own yourself. Don't let the bystanders own you. If people are going to gossip about how bad you are for divorcing your abuser, let them. Just hope there is a God to punish them for it, pinch your nostrils shut at their professionally pious prig act, and get away from them too.

No one has a claim on your life. You have an inalienable right to protect yourself and pursue happiness. Yes, even if he threatens to kill himself if you leave him.

That's called having a backbone, moral courage. The courage to do what's right, or is your right, when all the thoughtless cattle scream on cue that it's wrong.

If you don't, the self masochism you are forced into will haunt you. There's nothing worse than betrayal. And there's nothing worse than self betrayal. It will eat and eat and eat away at you making you feel like an abject worm so that you loathe yourself.

Don't let that happen. Think for yourself and know what you know. Make your own choices. Don't let the madding crowd make them for you.

In other words, don't you make the same mistake a narcissist does - thinking that appearances (things like your reputation) are what count and being driven to keep up appearances at any cost. They can change overnight. But reality doesn't.

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Same Old Ideas, Same Consequences

That's what Joe at No Pasaran says about the young South Korean who put 170 bullets into people last week. That was my first thought too.

A kid uprooted from a country where hatred of America is wild - and I mean raging wild. How wild is it? So wild there is widespread apartheid there against us filth - 'er Americans, I mean. Us filthy Americans are met with signs that deny us admittance to restaurants and other public places. That's how bad it is.

And he commits random mass murder here in a suicide attack.

AFTER sending his manifesto ranting about the religion, sexual permissiveness, and wealth of the people around him here to NBC.

I mean, if that doesn't spark an idea as to a possible motive, nothing will.

And what was that "Ishmael's AX" stuff that the media has buried? The play "McBeef" Cho wrote is about as flagrantly as anti-American as you can get right in the title.

Which just goes to show that obtuseness is invincible. This is supposed to be the fault of American culture - not anti-American culture. So, society's foghorns must obfuscate the inconvenient facts.

I mean, lets get as stupid as necessary to miss the obvious implications of all that. He was a terrorist, a lone wolf terrorist. He murdered people just for being American. What is so hard to understand about that?

Sure he was crazy and suicidal. All terrorists are.

Anti-Americanism is getting Americans murdered just for being Americans. If that ain't a kind of racist bigotry, nothing is. And those who spread it to advance their political objective have blood on their mouths.

No reason? I hate the media always trying to tell us that people do things like this "for no reason." People do things for reasons. Twisted reasons, perhaps, but reasons nonetheless.

Some psychiatrists and psychologists have have totally disregarded Cho's own words to speculate their heads off. (For attention?) "He must have been hearing voices."

Like they know better than him why he did it.

Well, give me ONE reason to think he was a schizophrenic hearing voices - other than him murdering people. Which isn't a symptom of schizophrenia by the way. So, it's a non sequitur to boot, duh. Try writing novels.

Or, "He must have had NPD." That may be true, because of the anti-empathy he showed. And not all narcissists are outgoing popular types, especially when they get uprooted as teenagers and brought to a foreign country.

One, by the way, their friends back home all hate.

But the deftness with which they swiftly fast-talk their way through to the conclusion that he fit all the DSM criteria is breathtaking.

On the other hand, look what they ignore.

Cho's own words in his manifesto, and what he did, show that he stayed to himself because he hated everyone around him here. That ain't shyness, that's contempt. He obviously couldn't stand to have anything to do with anyone. Here in America. He hated America.

Raging in his manifesto about his fellow students' Christian religion, sexual permissiveness, and prosperity, Cho plans for months a suicide attack of random mass murder of total strangers for no reason (except perhaps for being science types = robots according to the humanities crowd), killing as many Americans as possible. What? Just because he didn't use an airplane, it doesn't count?

Yeah, Cho heard voices, all right, voices like these that Joe quotes:

My anti-Americanism has become almost uncontrollable. It has possessed me, like a disease. It rises up in my throat like acid reflux, that fashionable American sickness.
- Margaret Drabble

I hate its bogus two-party system, its one-size-fits-all culture, and its income gap. I could go on for pages but I'll sum up with this: I hate America for being a hypocritical white supremacist capitalist patriarchy.
- Counterpunch writer ”Mickey Z.”

I have a suggestion for clarifying our consciousness: learn to hate the rich. Hate, yes. You can dress up the language and call it rage. But, hate is a concept underrated. Everyone does it, but no one wants to admit it, usually hating the wrong person. Hate is the opposite of love. Do you love the rich? Like the rich? If not, than maybe you can learn to hate the rich. I don't mean shame the rich in order to get money out of their guilt, as has been a long practice on the left and among non-profits. I mean NOT taking money from the rich, isolate the rich, make them build tall walls around their estates and corporate headquarters as the people force the rich to do in Latin America.
Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz, CounterPunch

Yes, Cho heard voices all right.

You had everything you wanted. Your Mercedes wasn't enough, you brats. Your golden necklaces weren't enough, you snobs. Your trust fund wasn't enough. Your vodka and Cognac weren't enough. All your debaucheries weren't enough. Those weren't enough to fulfill your hedonistic needs. You had everything.
- Mass murderer Cho Seung-Hui

How could he know all that rhetoric was mass-manipulative win-the-vote politics? It looks like he took it seriously.

If they outlaw violent computer games, they should also outlaw the violent political rhetoric of those who use their mouths like assault weapons and then act all innocent of something like this. They are more dangerous and inflammatory than any computer game.

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The Right to Pursue Happiness

Another way to view narcissists is as people who think they have a claim on the lives of others.

They have these feelings, you see, feelings that compel them to lash out, and their punching bags must just understand that.

You see this, for example, in the emotional terrorist who thinks her husband must stay married to her to keep her from committing suicide. In other words, he must continue to miserable under her abuse, for her sake.

In other other words, the quality of his life must be sacrificed to provide her with a punching bag.

I challenge anyone to argue that she is not therefore a predator, a vampire. He must bleed to feed her.

He's here to serve her needs, not his own, so he must submit to continued abuse from her rather than deprive her of a punching bag by getting away from her.

In other words, she views him as though he were livestock, existing for her sake, not his own. He's here for her to ride, train, display as a zoo animal, and feed on. His own well-being is of no concern except in ways that it affects her.

That's the most extreme degree of slavery, worse than existed in the South before the Civil War. It has only been seen in the penal servitude of the Middle Ages, where the victim had to knuckle under and offer himself for abuse.

I guess it was Ayn Rand who first debunked this idea that some people have a claim on the lives of others.

It is actually quite common, even politically correct in many circles. For example, there are many people who would say that husband does wrong by divorcing such a wife. They somehow twist THAT into the callous act of the affair. They somehow twist THAT into the act that's harming someone. Just because she bawls about it, they cry, "O how cruel!"

In fact, in any situation like this, the MAJORITY will be talking like that! How on earth can they think that getting away from abuse is hurting anyone? Do most people ever think? Or do they just blow in the wind? Do they ever think once even, let alone twice?

This is a serious problem for the victims of narcissists. They get morally condemned for anything they do to try to escape or discourage the abuse.

For those who doubt how common this ass-backwards thinking is, here's another example that shows just how far out it can go.

The government of Afghanistan married al-Qaeda, protecting and arming this militia in preparation for a sneak attack on the United States. So, on 9/11, we had an act of war - a belly-slithering act of war carried out by stealth like murder to avoid revealing whodunnit. An act of war that makes Pearl Harbor sound legitimate and honorable by comparison. Committed by Afghanistan in cahoots with al-Qaeda.

Could there be any greater justification for war? If the leaders of this country had decided NOT to go to war, THAT decision would have been immoral and unforgivable. They would have been failing to protect American citizens from mass murder. Going to war with Afghanistan was not only justified, it was morally imperative.

Indeed, if our government protected and was in bed with a bunch of terrorists training in Arizona, and then something in Iran blew up, do you think the world would find the United States innocent of the deed?

In fact, 9/11 was such a flagrant causus belli that when we produced the proof of whodunnit, even those verbal eggbeaters Monsiuer Chirac and Chancellor Schroeder couldn't make Afghanistan sound innocent of such a blatant act of war. Even THEY couldn't make our invasion of Afghanistan seem unjustified.

To show how twisted the world's view is, let's review the facts. No stated grievances. No declaration of war. No warning. This nation that we had helped resist Soviet invasion paid us back for that aid one day out of the blue by turning on us in an attack designed to kill as many people as possible just for being Americans in their own homeland going about their own daily lives.

Therefore, any sane person must admit that, if there was ever a causus belli, this was it.

So, when the NATO treaty was invoked in our defense (instead of Europe's for once), they had no choice but to cry, "But of course! Of course the relationship goes both ways and we're with our American friends!" (...and decided to just foot-drag and promise everything but deliver nothing except tokenism, rather than be honest and openly refuse to honor their treaty obligations.)

That shows how hard it is to even pretend to make sense while condemning our invasion of Afghanistan.

Yet there are billions of people in the world who insist that we had no right to enter Afghanistan and get the people who were doing this, replacing the government with one not run by the Devil Incarnate.

What is their irrationale? Here it is: we were morally obligated to stay our hand, thus letting our attackers continue to strike at us from behind the bushes without our striking back. Why? Because some Afghan civilians might accidentally get hurt or killed if we strike back.

How's that for asserting that some people have a claim on the lives of others?

Let's unscramble those scrambled eggs. American civilians must continue to be DELIBERATELY mass murdered so that no Afghan civilian might ACCIDENTALLY get hurt if we defend ourselves.

Like I said, this is just one example, a prominent one, of thinking that some people have a claim on the lives of others. In this specimen of that nonsense American lives don't count; Afghan lives do. So, Americans must die so that Afghans may live. Because Americans have no right to act in our own self interest. We must act against our own self interest and IN Afghans' self interest instead. We must sacrifice our own lives to insure that none of the people in the country that attacked us get hurt.

I'm sorry, but it is just crazy to assert that.

As if the people of Afghanistan are innocent third parties who had no responsibility to see to it that they had a decent government that didn't commit war crimes in their name against other peoples. They're just lucky it was us their leaders got them into war with.

You see the same twisted thinking in socialist countries like France, where over 20% of people don't work (or "work" at fake government jobs to fudge the statistics). They feel that they have a claim on the earnings of people who do work. They claim that the people who do work must do 40-60% of their work for those who don't work.

Narcissists likewise view themselves as having a claim on your life.

The sad part is that this absurdity often invades the victim's mind. The victim himself feels morally obligated to serve as host for the parasite.

Wrong.

You have every right to leave a narcissist, no matter how loudly she threatens to kill herself if you do. You have every right to defend yourself from from a narcissist. You have every right to get out from under oppression and to disable enemies who hurt you.

The truth is self evident that all are created equal and are endowed with inalienable rights, among which is the right to pursue happiness.

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Narcissism: Pathological Competitiveness

I often describe narcissists as essentially mental three-year-olds, and troubled ones at that. But, as with anything, you can view it from different angles to see more about it.

Another way to understand narcissists is as pathologically COMPETITIVE. They compete for every bit of ego gratification as if it were the last bit on earth. As if they were starved for it. They gotta have it all. All the attentions, all the respect, all the sympathy, all the credit, all of everything that makes life worth living, all that makes people feel good about themselves. They gotta have it all and would rather die than see you get any.

Of course, that is childish, isn't it? As everyone knows, one must teach three-year-olds to share, because they won't if we don't make them.

That's why life with a narcissist is a never-ending fight. The spoiled narcissist knows that if she grasps at and fights over what she wants (or wants to deny someone), the normal people will just let her have it rather than fight with the imbecile.

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Malignant Narcissism

If you are new to "What Makes Narcissists Tick," I urge you to see the Main Site, especially "The Essence of Narcissism" and "The Danger of NPD." otherwise it's easy to miss the forest for the trees.

The bottom line is that, to support their pain-killing delusions, malignant narcissists just pretend they are true. They also train everyone around them to play along. How? By simply making your world as obnoxious as a raging three-year-old throwing a temper tantrum makes it, if you say or do anything that reminds the narcissist that he isn't a god.

Narcissists play that part by pretending that THEY are all-important, just as a three-year-old does. This means that they must pretend they deserve all available attention.

Which means that you must get none. So, they pretend you should get none. No hearing. No affection. No consideration. No deference. No respect. No compassion. No praise. No thanks. No regard. - Let's just sum it up to say that you must get no form of ATTENTION.

Like a fly on the wall, compared to God Almighty.

Now, anyone who thinks it's no big deal to be treated like that deserves a daily dose of that treatment for awhile. Let's just say that it would be an "educational experience" for them.

This is where many people fail to think the next logical thought. What does it mean if you think no one else should get any of this stuff? that you must have it all?

It means that you fight to keep others from getting any and that you attack others to take it away from them.

That is malignance.

So, if a co-worker is getting praise for doing an excellent job, you must put a stop to that. You must bring him down.

That is malignance.

Or, if your child acts like she deserves your attention, you must give her the kind of attention she will never want again.

That is malignance.

That co-worker and that child have a right to what they have and want. They NEED the credit due them for their work and they NEED to be treated as worthy of attention. They NEED these things as much as people NEED the food they eat and the air they breathe.

But a narcissist doesn't want them to have these things they need. Is he any different then than someone who tries to keep another person from getting any food?

Why not be humane and use a gun? Why kill this cruel way?

Get it? NPD is just a thousand ways of doing this - a thousand ways of denying others their needs and due.

Because the narcissist is a pig who has just gotta have it all.

Hence NPD is inherently pathologically envious of others. It is inherently hostile to the needs, rights, feeling, and well being of others. It is fiercely competitive with others over every scrap of respect, credit, regard, sympathy, affection, and all other forms of ATTENTION.

Because NPD must have it all. Which is to say that NPD must deny or take away from others everything that makes people feel good about themselves.

That is malignance.

No, unless they happen to be President-for-Life, people with NPD don't dare treat everyone that way. They are like all predators: they target easy prey. So, ordinarilly, they don't go after their boss, for example. Like any predator they lay in the weeds watching the herd, looking for easy prey. Once a vulnerable prospect gets caught within range and in their sights, CHARGE!

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Imagine that you are a narcissist

Imagine that you are a narcissist. Remember, to do this, you must do everything you do solely for effect: to draw a reaction from others that gets what you want from them. No other consideration matters to you.

Remember also that you have this unbearable pain inside, the pain of unbearable shame. All your life you have felt like you're inferior, not up to standards, worthy of contempt. But you keep awareness of that at bay by playing pretend that the opposite is true = that you are god and that the rest of humanity (except for the very special people like you) are dirt beneath your feet.

So, 99% of the time, that's what you think you are - a god. It's self delusion.

But every time someone in your workplace or family treats you like an ordinary man or woman and as their equal, worthy of your consideration and respect, they are challenging your precious delusions of superiority.

You HATE that! Because every time they relate to you as a man, they inadvertently remind you that you are not a god. And that makes those true feelings you have repressed surface to consciousness on you.

You must stop that from happening! So, in terror, you instantly ATTACK anyone who inadvertently says or does something that reminds you that you are not God.

Like a three-year-old playing Pretend with her friends, you stamp your foot and yell (in so many words), "NO! You're not supposed to say THAT! You're supposed to say THIS!"

You thus train the people around you not to say or do anything that conflicts with your delusions of superiority, breaking the enjoyable spell those delusions have you under. That is, you train poeple to play along with your script in your game of Pretend.

But you cannot stop everything from happening that calls your true feelings to consciousness. And they are too painful.

So, you go berserk with the pain whenever they start to surface, wildly doing anything you can to instantly repress them to the subconscious again. I often liken this subconscious-burying behavior to someone frantically shoving dirt on a corpus delicti to keep it buried in one of those old horror movies.

You will do anything - ANYTHING - to prevent a moment of self awareness! Because you have this dark, unutterable terror that it would kill you. Really, you are that frantically afraid of seeing your true self in a mirror.

So, you are playing Pretend 100% of the time. 24-7-365.

You pretend that you are not lowdown by pretending the antidote = pretending that you are a god. And you pretend that you are a god by treating others like dirt.

That HURTS them,

You pretend that you are not amoral by pretending the antidote = pretending that you are a saint. And you pretend that you are saint by portraying others as sinners.

That HURTS them. The slander you spread about them ruins their lives and careers.

And so on and on and on and on.

It's just the Teeter Totter Game. There are a hundred such pretences in it, and this is your life = vaunting yourself on others whenever you can and get away with it.

Bottom Line: You kill your pain by causing others pain. (In other words, like a three-year-old, you pretend that you can transfer it to others.) You glorify your image by trashing others' image.

You don't give a damn how much you are hurting others.

In other words, you exploit people, brutally as unfeeling and inhuman as a psychopath about the pain and damage you are doing to them by this. You thus make others bleed just to maintain your delusions and keep you from knowing yourself as you are.

Others must bleed so that you can feel good, so that a moment of self awareness doesn't make you just kill yourself.

Is that not exactly what the predator thinks? The wolf thinks the lamb must bleed so that he can eat and live. The wolf thinks that this is what lambs exist for - to feed HIM.

And that's what predators, like sexual predators, child predators, pyschopaths, and other brands of narcissists think other people exist for = to FEED them.

To kill all human sympathy in themselves (which would make it impossible for them to do what they wanna do), they just pretend that others are inferior beings, like bugs. Hence they don't relate humanly to their human victims. They relate to them as but objects existing for the narcissist's sake, for the narcissist to use and abuse as thoughtlessly and unempathically as one would exploit and abuse a screwdriver.

I don't think anyone seriously doubts anymore that this is the kind of warped person that inspired the myth of the vampire. It's just a symbolic way of representing what people with NPD go through life doing to "survive" their malignant self hatred.

By projecting it onto others. Even their own children.

But what if you get into trouble for doing these things? What if you end up before a judge or in a psychiatrist's office? What if the neighbors find out and start looking at you askance?

Remember, you do everything solely for effect, to get the reaction you want out of these people.

It doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out what you will do. You will just switch masks. Now you put on your "victim" mask. Your "Who-poor-little-old-me?-I-wouldn't-hurt-a-fly" act. What better place for the devil to hide? Now you whine about what a wretched childhood you had. Now, so that people don't realize that you are just a predator who attacks any vulnerable prey in sight, you say that the victim hurt your poor, poor, tender feelings and that you were just lashing out in self defense.

What happened to your God-act?

You just put that away for the time being, because it won't get you what you want from people under the current circumstances.

Besides, it's funny. Your own private inside joke.

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Is there such a thing as non-compensatory NPD?

People are getting diagnosed as having NPD just because they have authority and won't cave in to angry demands or because they are haughty and inconsiderate and think they're God's gift to the world.

On the Main Website and in the eBook I carefully explain the difference between narcissism and malignant narcissism. The former is just a trait that exists to some extent in all and is healthy so long as people don't go delusional and get drunk on it.

The personality disordered are much different. They twist everything. They abuse any vulnerable prey because treating others like dirt makes them feel better about themselves. "Compensation," anyone? It's like they have to eat people (in the moral sense of the word). They have an alien mentality because they are predators. They fire people and calumniate them to boost themselves. They see someone down and have to kick them, for the same reason a drunk goes for the bottle in his desk drawer the moment his office is empty. These are twisted people with a need to hurt others, to feel their power over others that way. "Malignance," anyone? They get a you-know-what out of sticking to people. They do it to repress awareness of how inferior they feel inside. "Exploiting others," anyone? Like...uh...like a vampire maybe? Others must bleed for their sake.

Doesn't that say it in a nutshell? And it's all just a superiority act to kill a deep seated feeling of inferiority, duh.

How come I don't see the word "predaceous" on this list of names this theorist calls these people? The essence of these actions must have gone right over his head.

Malignant narcissists must make themselves pitiless to live by bleeding others to cause them suffering this way and they do. They are as pitiless as a psychopath, and the distinctions between psychopathy and NPD are disappearing in the literature. They are experts at mental cruelty because they do it all the time from childhood on. The harm NPD's do others to "feed" their egos means nothing to them - no more than squishing a bug means to you. They are so abnormal they prey thus even on their own children!

That's NPD. Which is why it's called "malignant." A far cry from a mere fat head, such as you might find in a royal, a movie star, or a sports star (though some may indeed have NPD).

It's there in the diagnostic criteria, bigger than life. No empathy. Exploiting others. Envy.

If a person doesn't abuse and destroy others on their way through life, they don't have NPD. If they have humanity (not just faking it) toward their fellow human beings, they don't have NPD. If they don't go around tearing others down off pedestals, they don't have NPD. NPD does have the mentality of the rapist, who usually does have NPD.

People with a TRULY high opinion of themselves may be stuffy, supercilious and just generally obnoxious but they aren't THAT bad. Indeed, BECAUSE they truly do have a high opinion of themselves, they don't NEED to cut others down to feel good about themselves. Hence they aren't predatory or perverse at all. Just a pain in the neck.

Their narcissism is benign, and I explained that here. Someone with NPD is A Wolf in Sheep's Clothing, not just someone with a fat head.

So, what's this? If this is "compensatory" NPD, what does he think NPD is?

Kelly thinks people with NPD really do have a high opinion of themselves deep down inside? OMG.

This theory makes NPD no more than thinking you're God's gift to the world. What? Does Kelly think any real malignant narcissist is going to admit the feelings of inferiority he tries to keep repressed deep down inside? He wouldn't be a malignant narcissist if he would admit that!

More errors resulting from believing the self reports of these pathological liars.

All with NPD fit that description...and more.

This is a serious misconception because it is responsible for the la-dee-da attitude in mental-health-care and the rest of society toward NPD. They have it confused with inflated self esteem. No big deal. Irritating, maybe offensive at times, but no big deal.

Wrong. NPD IS a big deal. A very big deal.

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Portrait of a Narcissist

Poring over my server logs, I came upon a referrer in Denmark and clicked back. Unfortunately, I know of no online translators for Nordic languages (though you'd surprised how much of it echos in Saxon English). But there is really no language barrier here. This portrait of a narcissist says it all to anyone in any language!

Enjoy :)

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The Ugly Bystander

I think the misplaced sympathy out there for narcissists comes from people wishing to push unpleasant stuff out of their minds so that they have but selective awareness of an event like narcissistic abuse.

When we say that narcissists lack empathy, we mean exactly that. In plainer language, they are brutal, treating those they abuse subhumanly. Their callousness is something one must see to believe. Often the victim cannot get his or her mind around it and goes into a state of shocked disbelief of their own eyes and ears.

When narcissists see that they are drawing blood, they get sadistic.

This behavior makes no sense till you remember why narcissists do this. They are stomping you down to elevate themselves. It's the Teeter Totter Game I give many examples of in the eBook.

In doing this, they are morally trampling you to have something to thump their chests about and give a Tarzan yell.

They get HIGH on treating others like dirt.

So, keep a tight grip on that fact: they don't do it because it's evil; they do it because it makes them feel good. They are sick in the head. They have unbearable pain/shame inside that keeps trying to surface to consciousness on them. This pretending to be grand by stomping you is just their way of killing that pain by keeping it repressed.

Abuse is an addiction with narcissists. The more they degrade you, the bigger dose of this high they get. Which is why they are sadistic.

So, here you have them abusing their victim in cold blood sadistically. Then, when the victim complains, they turn around with their little Wouldn't-Hurt-a-Fly mask on for the bystanders, whining about their need to "heal."

Yes, THEIR need to heal.

Some folks don't know a joke even when it slaps them in the face like that.

Right out of the bystander's mind goes what's on the other side of that coin - what that angel-faced narcissist just did to that victim. In other words, they take this "Poor-Little-Me" act out of context.

More important, the bystanders thus avoid having to know what they know about such phony face changes = that the narcissist is diabolical and laughing up his sleeve.

All they let themselves see is whiny angel-face before them right now. Because it's warm and cuddly and doesn't rattle their cage or require them to do anything about anything.

Or cross this guy they are suddenly afraid of.

Ah, that whiny little angel-face he has, upon whom they misplace their wretched sympathy.

Then they go off and correct the VICTIM for wrongdoing. Yes, that's right: some folks don't even know a joke when they tell it.

The victim has sinned by feeling angry or wanting a divorce or wanting to retaliate so as to make the abuser stop it. THAT'S the only sin the ugly bystander sees. Nothing the narcissist did gets a peep out of him or her about it.

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