Narcissist’s Pathological Grandiosity
Daydreaming and fantasizing are healthy activities that prepare individuals for eventualities and planning. However, pathological grandiosity is different and has four components: omnipotence, omniscience, omnipresence, and perfectionism and completeness. The narcissist believes in his own omnipotence and is convinced that he can do anything he chooses to do and excel in it. The narcissist is shattered when he discovers that the collection he possesses is incomplete, that his colleague’s wife is more glamorous, that his son is better than he is in math, that his neighbor has a new flashy car, that his roommate got promoted, or that the love of his life signed a recording contract.
Daughters of Narcissistic Mothers
Narcissistic mothers can have a significant impact on their adult daughters’ relationships, with children of narcissistic parents being ill-adapted and prone to deploying psychological defense mechanisms. They can become co-dependent, needy, demanding, and submissive, fearing abandonment and displaying immature behaviors. Some children of narcissistic parents become inverted narcissists, craving relationships with narcissists, while others become counterdependent or even narcissists themselves. Narcissistic mothers micromanage their child’s life and encourage dependent and infantile behaviors, emotionally blackmailing them and threatening to disinherit them if they do not comply with their wishes.
Narcissist Never Sorry
Narcissists sometimes feel bad and experience depressive episodes and dysphoric moods, but they have a diminished capacity to empathize and rarely feel sorry for what they have done or for their victims. They often project their own emotions and actions onto others and attribute to others what they hate in themselves. When confronted with major crises, the narcissist experiences real excruciating pain, but this is only a fleeting moment, and they recover their former self and embark on a new hunt for narcissistic supply. They are hunters, predators, and their victims are prey.
Narcissists Fear Therapy
Narcissists cannot cure themselves, and gaining insight into the disorder is not the same as healing. The best way for a narcissist to help themselves is by resorting to a mental health professional, but even then, the prognosis is dim. The therapeutic situation implies a superior/inferior relationship, which is difficult for the narcissist to accept. The narcissist must shed his false self and face the world naked, defenseless, and to his mind pitiful.
Narcissist: Re-Parent Yourself!
Narcissists can modify their behavior through a functional approach that involves self-acceptance, self-punishment, and self-reward. The process involves making a list of behaviors that are counterproductive and those that are constructive, suppressing the former, and promoting the latter. Narcissists should learn to trust their instincts, apply a set of immutable rules, and monitor themselves incessantly. The ultimate goal is to become one’s own parent and re-parent oneself.
Narcissist: Why Self-help?
Narcissists can take steps to cope with their disorder before deciding whether to attend therapy. The first step is self-awareness, which involves admitting that something is wrong and accepting responsibility for their role in their misfortune. The second step is confronting a more realistic view of themselves, which can be achieved by people who care about the narcissist confronting them with the truth about themselves and their life. The third step is committing to a regime of therapy, which involves adopting a humble frame of mind and being constructively and productively active in their own therapy. However, few narcissists see why they should embark on this massive quest.
Narcissist: Confabulations, Lies
Confabulation is a common human trait, but the distinction between reality and fantasy is never lost. However, the narcissist’s very self is a piece of fiction, concocted to fend off hurt and pain and to nurture the narcissist’s grandiosity. The narcissist fails in his reality test and is unable to distinguish the actual from the imagined, the real from the fantasized. The narcissist’s countenance, no disagreement, no alternative points of view, no criticism. To him, his confabulation is reality.
Narcissist Father: Save Your Child
Parents who are worried about their children becoming narcissists under the influence of a narcissistic parent should stop trying to insulate their children from the other parent’s influence. Instead, they should make themselves available to their children and present themselves as a non-narcissistic role model. Narcissistic parents regard their children as a source of narcissistic supply and try to control their lives through guilt-driven, dependence-driven, goal-driven, and explicit mechanisms. The child is the ultimate secondary source of narcissistic supply, and the narcissistic parent tries to perpetuate the child’s dependence using control mechanisms. The narcissistic parent tends to produce another narcissist in some of their children, but this outcome can be effectively countered by loving, empathic, predictable, just, and positive upbringing, which encourages a
Can Narcissist Truly Love?
Narcissists are incapable of true love, but they do experience some emotion which they insist is love. Narcissists love their significant others as long as they continue to provide them with attention, or narcissistic supply. There are two types of narcissistic love: one type loves others as one would get attached to objects, while the other type abhors monotony and constancy, seeking instability, chaos, upheaval, drama, and change. In the narcissist’s world, mature love is nowhere to be seen, and their so-called love is fear of losing control and hatred of the very people on whom their personality depends.
Narcissist’s Cognitive Deficits
Narcissists lack empathy and are unable to relate to others, instead withdrawing into a universe populated by avatars. They are incapable of holding an external dialogue and all their dialogues are completely internal. The narcissist attributes their failures and mistakes to circumstances and external causes, while regarding their successes and achievements as proofs of their own omnipotence and omniscience. The narcissist pays a dear price for these distortions of perception, developing paranoid ideation and fading the reality test.