Does a narcissist know that they are a narcissist?

[YouPrettyThings]

Just that really, do they actually recognise and understand their own behaviour as being narcissistic? And what about gaslighters - do they really know they are deceitful and manipulative or maybe their mental health issues make them believe their own lies?

I've finally realised someone I know is both, yet I believe they have absolutely no idea and while they cause harm I don't think they mean any harm... if that makes sense.

@sassbott

For a narcissist to operate the way they do, the completely lack empathy or the ability to connect/ feel/ love in the ways they see others do. They absolutelt know they are ‘different’ because of this. The techniques the narcissists develop (mirroring/ love bombing) are very deliberate and conscious techniques. Their manipulation is honed and deliberate. It’s not chance and luck.

When a narcissist takes time to get to know you, know you’re inner secrets so they can use them against you. Again, that’s not some thing done by chance. It’s deliberate.

Of course if you confront a narc they will deny it. Doesn’t mean they aren’t fully aware deep down that they are deeply damaged human beings. They will know.

This is where it gets really difficult, because yes, the behaviours are very deliberate, but that also implies they are making a choice. I suppose they are in the sense that you and I would see it as a choice, however for the narcissist, the behaviour is innate, almost reflexive in nature with only one possible outcome, so is it really a choice if the outcome is predetermined?

@coodawoodashooda

How on earth did you manage to get your ex wife diagnosed?

Part of the child custody battle. It took over 9 months of multiple times a week meeting with a psychologist. The kicker was, it was my ex wife who insisted on going down that route because she believed me to be an unfit parent not to be allowed around the children at all.

Probably not. Most of the narcissists I know are vunerable narcissists, so they attack others when they feel shame. The need to attack others and the need to deny all responsibility is so great that they will live in denial for years and years. They attack others to protect themselves and believe that the ends justify their means.

I suspect grandiose narcissists may know that they are one but I've never had much dealing with them.

This. Nothing is ever, ever their fault.

@samyeagar

So sammy what is the difference between cruelty and lack of empathy.

Surely to be cruel you have to have empathy lacking?

Are you saying some people know they are cruel and a narccisist does not as they have no self awareness.

Could you elaborate on some of the actions etc that led you to take your ex to be diagnosed.

Very interested as you have experience.

That sounds horrific.

Machiavellianism is defined as a different trait from narcissism although I imagine anyone with dark traits has some crossover. I wouldn't be sure they are all the same at all. I suspect many people with a lot of N traits have very little self awareness. The internal narrator is continually letting them off the hook/rewriting history in a better light. There is as a pp said a difference between grandiose and vulnerable. Id take a grandiose personality type any day of the week over the vulnerable type. I suspect it takes a lot of chickens coming home to roost and a lot of 'secrets' getting out before they'll start to ask questions about their own behaviour. The man I was with still hasn't hit it and his life is unravelling so fast. Interestingly I read they become paranoid as they get older which has happened with this man.

@Itsallinthebook

I'm relatively new to this, but my counsellor is clear that my DH knows exactly what he is doing. She does think that a lot of his actions are just from habit or repetition though - he knows that stuff worked before, so he repeats the behaviour.

Although she tells me that the word narcissist is generally not used now, as it is used too generally, from what I have told her, he definitely is a narcissist. He ticks every single box.

And I am sure that he has no idea. He sees himself as sensitive. He sees himself as self critical. He has had hours of therapy where he just talked about himself and thinks that he is very aware of who he is. He also accuses other people of being narcissists, so he is absolutely aware that they exist.

But he has zero empathy, and every single thing he does is for himself. Even if he appears to be nice, it's because he has a motive. I can't imagine that he would ever have the true self insight to see it.

I'm in the exact same boat. My counsellor is also certain my exH is a narc just by me being totally honest with the way things are.

I don't think my ex knows what a narcissist is though. He slags everyone off but has never used that term to describe anyone.

Like yours, he's having therapy. He talks to anyone that will listen about himself. Used to keep the neighbour chatting for a good 15 mins on a morning when she was on her way to work. Never occurred to him she might be in a rush. He just cannot see other peoples needs. Lacks empathy for absolutely everyone.

I found my exH's counsellor but even though I spoke to him myself and told him exactly how things had been and how exH is, im not sure counselling will do exH any good. He will only chose what he wants to hear.

[quote Onthedunes]@samyeagar

So sammy what is the difference between cruelty and lack of empathy.

Surely to be cruel you have to have empathy lacking?

Are you saying some people know they are cruel and a narccisist does not as they have no self awareness.

Could you elaborate on some of the actions etc that led you to take your ex to be diagnosed.

Very interested as you have experience.[/quote]
One can be cruel without necessarily lacking empathy, especially situationally. However, lacking empathy makes cruelty an inevitability.

We all tend to perceive things slightly differently than others, but generally, our perceptions are close enough that we can agree on reality. I would liken it generally to gaslighting, yet very different. My ex wife for example, and why dealing with her was impossible is because it was as if she was in a completely different reality that FOR HER was just as real to her core as you and I's reality is to us. So when she would express her perception, it was completely real to her, even though it was vastly different what anyone else saw. That is why it is essentially impossible to ever have any real relationship with a narcissist, why there is no reasoning with them, why they can't change. At least with simple gaslighting, or any other chosen bad behaviour, there is the possibility of reasoning with the person and them recognizing that they did something wrong. With a narc, that is not possible.

I did not actually take my ex wife to be diagnosed. She insisted on getting me psychologically evaluated as she claimed I was a danger to our children. Of course, turnabout is fair play, and she had to go through the process as well, which is how she ended up being diagnosed.

I filed for divorce when I found out she was sleeping with our youngest sons teacher, which ended up being just one of a number of affairs.

@samyeagar wow thank you for that post. It makes perfect sense. It was like and still is like talking to a brick wall regarding my exH. He just doesn't see it from my point of view. I used to confide in people who I could trust and everyone would agree with me but he just could never get on board with certain situations. He would then fall out with me and I'd get the silent treatment for days.

So sorry about your wife - hope your life is happier now

I have so many examples. ExH wanted to lend his brother 4K once. His brother hadn't asked to borrow any money though he had in the past and we always did. Brother in law and mentioned he was struggling for money and needed a new van but hadn't asked us for help.

ExH then announces he wants to lend his brother 4K. I repeatedly said I wasn't comfortable with lending him that amount. We had lent him £200/£300 in the past and always had it back but always much later than agreed. 4K was too much of a gamble plus we were trying to save for a mortgage at that point. I kept saying no and hoping he would drop it but he didn't. I then ended up feeling like I was in the wrong - I asked other peoples thoughts, they all agreed with me. It was stupid the lend someone who is always struggling for money 4K - especially when we have young dcs and are trying to save for our future. Eventually he dropped the lending money thing - I now realise it was all to look good in front of his family. He enjoyed being the one they all came to for help. We weren't exactly loaded but we were more financially stable than the rest of his family.

Anyway all in the same day, he dropped the lending money thing but then announced we needed a new car. We didn't. He claimed he was thinking of me. Our car was too small for the dcs and he wanted me to have a bigger one. We were still paying our current loan off for the car. It made no sense to get a new one. So again I said no. And again this went on for days. He couldn't accept my opinion. How I felt. He was trying to make out he was thinking of me to het a bigger car. I kept saying I was fine with what we had. That's all he would talk about until one day he really snapped at me. He got so angry. I left the next day and moved out for a week.

I returned but he still never saw my point and we ended up getting a new car a few weeks later.

Sorry to project everything but Mumsnet really has helped at making sense of things at times.

Does this sound like narcissist behaviour?

No I don't believe so. My ex even believes his own lies

@samyeagar

Yes, thank you for that, I suppose your wife just had to win, it must have been hard for her to accept a professionals take on the situation.

As far as reality goes with narcs, this I agree with, my ex could not accept his wrongdoing and thought by silencing me he could prevent others from knowing his betrayal to me.
So strong was his fear of being ousted he fractured my cheekbone amoungst many other henious actions.

No one would have believed it of him had they not seen the evidence. If I had my time again, I would have rather never found out or just agreed that he was entitled to behave that way after many years together.

His rage at not being able to alter others reality was astonishing.
He was deluded and very dangerous.

@Itsallinthebook

I agree. They are living in a Reality where the only thing that matters to them is having power over others. This enables them to mask and bury their own huge insecurities.

We are living in a totally different reality, where we reason, consider other people's views, feelings and so forth.

No matter how much I try to reason with DH, he will never see it. Discussion is impossible because everything becomes an argument that he has to win.

Since I realised this, everything made sense to me.

I think for me, one of the most bizarre and difficult things to grasp was the idea that yes, she was incredibly cruel, abusive, that her behaviours in a non-narcissit would be a choice for them to behave that way, thus those things could actually be addressed, but for her, those things were her default state of being.

And that her malicious behaviours, in anyone else would be truly malicious, where malice implies a choice, a decision to do wrong over right, but in her, while the behaviours were malicious in presentation, was there actual malice involved when she lacked the capacity to choose differently? And that is in no way minimizing or making excuses, rather that is what makes them so absolutely insidious...
In a narcissists reality, they always choose correctly.

And some other things about narcissists, one of the hallmarks ofthe superficial relationships with friends who are unlikely to ever challenge them and such is that they always present as extremely self assured, but the root of that confidence is based in their personality disorder in that they are incapable of self reflection, they are incapable of questioning themselves, where their reality is based in the default state of them being correct, and as such, they lack the ability to be anything other than self confident.

Very interesting.

I do think there is a problem solving aspect to it.

My h thought any situation or scrape that came up could be solved by doing xyz anything rather than saying sorry or admitting fault.

He would never admit fault.

Maybe like you said Sammy, they always choose correctly.

Funilly enough after all that happened his only comment that comes
near to an apology after separating has been
"you made the wrong choice"

So no, no opology.

I don't know. My mother is a 'vulnerable narcissist' she positions herself as everyone's victim and believes people are put to get her and behave disrespectfully towards her.

An example of this is when, in her 50s, she stormed out of her niece's 21st birthday 0arty because not enough people made an effort to speak to her and she found them rude.

Shade no effort to speak to anyone else, she jut sat at a table and assumed people would come to her.

She set tests constantly to uncover how much respect people had for her and always found them lacking.

She knew she was doing it but believed she was right to do so and expose other people's inadequacies and lack of respect.

@Itsallinthebook

They know they're doing it, but they are in a different reality with different rules. And they don't realise that they are narcissists.

My DH knows that I am broken. He knows I am seeing a counsellor. So he is deliberately being nice. Telling me that he is being nice. As I type this, hhe has just snapped at me to disagree with me, then stopped himself to avoid an argument.

I am realising that he has full control over his actions. But they are ultimately all tactics to win. He has no empathy as to how I am feeling. All he wants is to be able to believe that he has put 100% effort into our marriage and, if it fails, to position himself as the victim.

He has never apologised for his behaviour. He either denies it or tells me that I either deserve it or imagined it.

So, yes, he absolutely knows what he is doing. But he believes that he is right.

My exH is similar to this. He is apologising a lot but it's all very much while he's feeling sorry for himself. I can't see it as genuine. He's also blaming it on a nervous breakdown and work stress so none of it is directly him. He has an explanation for his behaviour.

He is desperate for me to come back. Every day saying he's changed. Yet shows no interest in asking how to dcs are or even asks me how I am. It's all about him constantly.

@BlueSlate

I don't know. My mother is a 'vulnerable narcissist' she positions herself as everyone's victim and believes people are put to get her and behave disrespectfully towards her.

An example of this is when, in her 50s, she stormed out of her niece's 21st birthday 0arty because not enough people made an effort to speak to her and she found them rude.

Shade no effort to speak to anyone else, she jut sat at a table and assumed people would come to her.

She set tests constantly to uncover how much respect people had for her and always found them lacking.

She knew she was doing it but believed she was right to do so and expose other people's inadequacies and lack of respect.

Oh, they are aware that they are doing it, but the difference between them, and say, you and I, is that our awareness is based in a choice, is this right or wrong way to behave? For them, with their reality based on the foundation that they are correct, their awareness and our awareness are two completely different things. And that is what makes them so difficult to deal with, until you learn how. Most people approach it from the mindset of that person making an actual choice, that they are aware of their behaviour AND chose to behave badly, thus it being possible to correct them. They approach it with the assumption that the normal rules of human interaction and communication apply, and then are completely blindsided...

I’ve often wondered this.

The key thing with narcissists is that they lack empathy. So I’m not sure they understand the full implications of their actions.

They do, however, act knowingly. All they care about is protecting their own fragile ego.

@Catastrophejane

I’ve often wondered this.

The key thing with narcissists is that they lack empathy. So I’m not sure they understand the full implications of their actions.

They do, however, act knowingly. All they care about is protecting their own fragile ego.

They act knowingly but their correctness based reality does not allow for them to consider the ramifications beyond themselves. So while they act knowingly, they really only have one path of action as their reality won't allow for anything but what is the most self protective action at the time.

@Colourmeclear you've just explained my ex to me, I could never put myself in his shoes and understand his behaviour

@samyeagar

I agree with your last post.

For interest do you believe narcissism is a result of nature or nurture.

For instance one of our children has very high traits of narcissism but whether it's due to genes or envoiroment `I don't know, maybe both.

They are aware of their differences to others in how they feel, an aknowledgement, their views on how others are weak for having emotions that are of no use.

I know no lover of theirs could ever hurt them, they seem impenatrable.