tell me about the narcisstic people in your life

[ssd]

I'll start/ my boss...everything is about her, she wants to be told all day her great she is, what a great job she does, she'll walk over anyone to get her way, she can't take any criticism at all, she has no empathy towards anyone either.

is this classic narcissist behaviour?

I don't know but she sounds very irritating. I am afraid there is a lot of it about.

Hi ssd sounds very insecure aswell to me, I've known a lot of people like this and the thing that comes across like a claxon in a library is the insecurity. If people truly feel happy and confident about themselves they don't go around bleating on about themselves all day.

The pity is, a lot of personalities like this seem to be bosses

I know a few very self obsessed people, some right arseholes and some very self centred people but I don't think I know anyone who would meet the diagnostic criteria for the personality disorder NPD (used to be called Megalomania). I would imagine that out of 100 self centred arsewipes, only 1 would actually have NPD.

If I was to have a go at amateur diagnosis, I would nominate my mother who is self obsessed to a frightening degree. Everything is about her, about how something affects her - including anything happening to other people. It's all about her and attention for her. And she's got to have all the focus. And she will do anything to get the focus back on her if it is for whatever reason, on someone else.

Agree with pretty much everything HEC says - I too know self-obsessed people but they somehow don't fit the exact criteria for narcissism.

And I have an acquaintance who sounds very much like HEC's mother, including the tendency she has to somehow make other people's problems about her, to get attention for herself. How people can exploit others' suffering for attention is beyond me.

The thing I think that marks her out from a narcissist is that I do think she has genuine empathy for people - except for the fact that nobody - however ill they are, whatever they may be going through - is suffering as much as she is.

I have a selfish prick of an ex who thinks he is gods gift. He's intensely frustrating to deal with but probably not NPD, although many of the tactics of dealing with someone who has NPD serve me well (detach detach detach) when it gets desperate.

I have met one person however who I think may well actually meet the diagnostic criteria and she is completely weird. We no longer spend time together because she went absolutely off the scale in fury over me not dedicating 100% of my free time to socialising with her, told me everyone else I was friends with were 'the pits' so she couldn't be expected not to rant at them in public and put them down. She also said with total conviction that there was something wrong with me for not recognising her superiority over everyone else I know. Literally jaw on floor that someone could say that kind of thing, and not realise how bizarre and self centred it is. She also believed that her ex partners family should have called her and invited her to her XDP's dad's funeral, seven years after they split up, because she was 'special to him' and it was 'cruel' of them to exclude her from the occasion (she is not in contact with said XDP at all and hasn't been since they split up 7 years ago!). Mental. Back away slowly, I kid you not.

Ex-boyfriend.

Probably not the personality disorder, but a bucketload of traits.

The most hilarious, looking back, was when he told me he thought he was the best looking man ever. He subsequently tried to backpedal and say he was joking, but he wasn't.

Less funny was his astonishing self-centredness and pomposity. And his belief that the world owed him - he ended up in a ton of debt through being workshy and self-indulgent.

Last I heard he has children. I can't imagine that will turn out well.

I wouldn't piss on him if he was on fire,

Genetic mother. Too many traits to say but she could easily try to stab someone and then turn it around to make herself the victim - and did, relatively often. Or hit them, or kick them, or try to throttle them. Ditto, 5 mins later it had never happened (never mind the cut marks in the back of the chair you were in) and she was the victim of your cruelty.

She was the centre of the entire universe and everyone else existed only in as far as they could serve her. Literally. If you had a job and were out, and therefore couldn't get her a cup of tea, god help you. Everything was about her.

I have an aquaintance who again has narc traits. I often feel sorry for her because she is obviously very insecure but other times I'm afraid I experience fury at her behavior. She was initially friendly but our friendship never developed and I gradually realised she wasn't capable of a normal style friendship; because rather than a reciprocal give and take she needs to spend a lot of energy on appearing perfect at all times, so she cannot relax or let her guard down.

After the initial period when she arrived in our (ex-pat) community another very narc woman turned up and the pair of them began the strangest "friendship" I've ever witnessed. They were both extremely codependent with each other and went nowhere without the other if at all possible. They behaved as if they were suddenly the Queen Bees and were extremely patronizing, superior in attitude and self-centered in all their interactions with other people. They cherry-picked all the local population for those they regarded to have the most status and spent much time and energy on sucking up to them and fawning all over them.

Those not high enough on their self-constructed pecking order were completely ignored, icily frozen out and generally sneered at or pitied.

Naturally this was quite a relief for the vast majority of us who were not classified as anything special by the QBs and we have happily carried on a fantastic social life without them.

Unfortunately the newly arrived QB was suddenly transferred with her DH. The original narc looked around and realized that she had zero friends and we all had a life which did not include her - and worst - noone cared or noticed. That's when she went on the offensive suddenly sucking up to me (and others) emailing, trying to rush up to me and embrace me as if we were old mates. Urrrggh, gerroff.

She could never decide whether to suck up to me or freeze me out as my DH has a high-status job in her eyes and she loves to worship him whenever she sees him (while often ignoring me at the same time of course!!).

This has obviously turned into a rant but it is the utter fakeness and insincerity that drives me nuts. Wherever she goes (any group or organization) drama and relationship problems follow without fail. She cannot make real human connections. She doesn't understand how to. All her relationships come down to power relations.

My Dad was a classic narc, although I only really realised this in the last year or so. I always thought he was just very very difficult. I always used to say that he was totally self obsessed with no self awareness until I really understood the disorder.

He made my life a misery and drove my mother to an early grave. For various reasons I could not detach from him and the last 5 years were torture.

He died in July and I was glad.

Thats what a true narc makes you feel.

I have one in my life - a member of the family. We have the drama, the lies, the boasting, the lack of empathy, the need to blame someone else for any problem no matter how minor, the attention seeking. The veneer of normality and friendliness is so thin that if she feels it's being scratched she launches an offensive out of all proportion. She appears to get her pattern for her ideal life from a romcom and if there is any deviation the rest of us have hell to pay.

I agree with the fakeness and the insincerity - it makes me so cross.

What tobias said, about my sister.

And control. Once she makes her mind up about something, that is the correct way and no other option or opinion will be considered.
Or, by perchance she realizes she is pushing the envelope too far with that, she will make a great display of letting someone else decide/do it with expectations that everyone must acknowledge how nice she is and give alcolades to her for her magnaminous greatness (all the while micromanaging the surrendered action anyway).

If she does not get her way, she takes the highway and has a silent tissy fit, shoving her nose in a book and refuseing to engage (can't we see she is trying to read, as though no one else knows how).

Recently read a novel called 'Kind of cruel' which opened my eyes to the nature of one friendship.

My MIL, SIL and another close female relative of theirs all have narc tendencies but MIL is a true, ticks almost every box narcissist except for the fact that she doesn't take care of her appearance. Her reason for this?

'After dealing with my family who don't care enough about me and all the suffering you have all put me through, I don't care how I look and I hope people ask if I'm okay, at least then I will get some care'.

She is a martyr, accomplished liar, and manipulator. All family relationships have to go through her. Everyone is either on her 'side' and therefore do exactly as she asks, all the time, or they're not. Her needs are to come first in everyone's lives, even above the needs of their children, and yet she is happy to behave in private in the most disgusting and abusive manner. Her treatment of my DH is genuinely shocking and undeserved.

Thank god I don't see this horrible person any more. That felt good.

I know a few twats that's for sure but the worst was someone I lived with and was "best friends" with for a while. We would have dinner parties and she would serve me the smallest portion with NO GRAVY to show she was angry with me. I would get calls at all hours of the day and night summoning me home to do housework. We fell out over her crappy attention seeking behaviour and lies and we didn't see each other for years, occasionally I would hear how well she was doing (solicitor) . One day out of the blue I got an email saying "hey let's meet up" so we did, had a laugh, old times etc. we started getting close again, the nonsense started again. It culminated with her ringing to scream at me because an ex, ex, ex boyfriend of hers had asked me out for a coffee, my second child was being diagnosed with autism at the time and I had had to have an emergency OP for a life threatening condition, she knew all this but still rang me to rave at me about her ridiculous ex. I hung up and sent her message saying "that it was laughable how little she had changed in ten years and to never contact me again".

I found out later that her "glittering" and varied CV was because she kept screwing up at work and either being politely let go with a great reference to smooth her path or she was jumping before she was pushed. She was finally summarily sacked and last I heard was unemployable so had set up on her own.

Good luck sweetie but I think your "clients" need it more.