Watching Trump, he seems oblivious to the attacks on his character or judgement, he always comes back to his idea that he is vastly superior at everything no matter what anyone says to or about him. So what happens if a narcissist experiences something that really pierces their ego? They get caught committing a sex crime or some other event that really harms their prestige? How do they cope? Do they lash out, withdraw, something else?
They find a way to convince themselves that someone else was at fault. You gave the example of a sex crime. The narcissist will insist that the victim initiated it, or that the victim was OK with it. If the victim was under age, they’ll insist that the victim looked or acted older, or was otherwise mature for his/her age. Or they’ll say that the law is unjust, and the encounter should have been legal. It’s never the narcissist’s fault.
The few I know…
Gas lighting
Denial
Spin
And when that fails, cry.
Fake tears, I know, because I saw her open her fingers and look to see if anybody was paying attention. Her eyes were dry.
I once read that criminals like this are put on suicide watch after they’re arrested. Dunno about politicians, maybe they just abruptly resign and go underground / drop out of public view.
They blame anyone and everyone else. It’s never their fault.
This. I remember watching an interview with a teacher who got caught fucking one of her students. She said something to the effect of: “Sure, he was only 14, but our souls were the same age.” :rolleyes:
If past experience is any indicator, then obviously he’ll blame Obama!
(He just recently blamed Obama for the attack in Orlando, and yesterday, for the Brexit!)
That’s it in a nutshell. Narcissists cannot be at fault.
When my younger sister had an accident in a borrowed car when her license had been suspended, she said the car was used (a 2013 Benz), the owner did not ask her if she had a valid license, and she didn’t hit a person, so so what?
ETA: If they clearly are at fault, they will attack the other person. I crashed your car? Well, weren’t you accused of dealing drugs and child abuse?
I just watched a brilliant documentary on this exact subject: Weiner.
He was caught in a sex scandal that destroyed his career, but the bottom line is that he just doesn’t get it. In his worldview, something bad happened to him. He is the victim in the situation, and it’s all just very unfortunate circumstances. He can (almost) mouth the appropriate words of apology and regret, but not only doesn’t he mean them, he literally doesn’t understand what he’s saying.
Weiner originally denied it was his wiener, saying his account was hacked.
I knew a narcissist who told a major lie in front of 20 witnesses. When questioned about it later, he denied it ever happened.
This is exactly right. It is always someone else’s fault, even if they were the only plausible culpable party. My mother wrecked her car at one point in a drunken stupor, but it was my fault because all the work I did to keep that piece of shit Triumph running made it “undriveable” and therefore I was responsible for her accident. That also justified her utterly irrational and abusive behavior as necessary to impose discipline.
Pathological narcissists–that is, people who meet the DSM criteria for Narcissistic Personality Disorder–do not control their responses and often don’t even recognize them whe confronted with clear evidence of their behavior, nor acknowledge the damage they do to everyone who has to interact with them. However, like some categories of sociopath, they can be very adept at seeming to be psychologically normal and emotionally mature. When my mother’s behavior was described to social workers and several judges, it was so at odds with her behavior in casual interaction that it was dismissed as hyperbole. A judge literally told me, “No mother would ever do the things you’ve just described (‘bump’ me with the car as I was opening the garage door or push me out of the car thirty miles from home), so I can only conclude that you are lying.”
There is pretty much nothing you can do to treat pathological narcissists because unlike people with, say, psychosis or socially disabling anti-social behaviors, they see aboslutely nothing wrong with their behavior and do not seek and will not accept help. Narcissists are terrible people to be around because you can never be good enough to match them (in their minds) but they are constantly demanding your undeserved approval for their aberrant behavior for the privilege of being their friend or family.
As far as Trump goes, he shows certain characteristics of narcissism, but quite frankly, that is pretty much true of the vast majority of politicians to the point that it is almost as requirement of the job. In order to run for high public office and endure all of the criticism and abuse you pretty much have to start out with a massively inflated opinion of yourself and a defense of deflecting all but the most pointed criticisms. Trump is more of a blowhard than many, but much of that is necessarily part of his image as a supposed successful businessman whose objective accomplishments do not match his claims. I’m not sure if he is actually pathological–only a trained diagnostician who had the opportunity to sit down with him and perform an assessment could make that determination–but frankly with his sensitivity to satire and insecurity about his hands he seems more like borderline personality disorder with some anti-social tendancies which he compensates for by trying to present himself as being prenaturally fiscally successful and painting his name on every flat surface like a logo-fetishized Jackson Pollack.
Stranger
The skilled narcissists/sociopaths I’ve had run-ins with, which are mercifully few, were hyper-aware of what they could say or do that would put me on the defensive and thus take control of the situation.
Ex: I went over a horrible boss’s head to her superior about some serious issues. Horrible boss found out and called me into her office and recited a litany of complaints co-workers and customers had made about me, including dates and details. This caused me months of agony and uncertainty, as I thought I was doing a really good job and my colleagues liked me.
After Horrible was eventually canned for embezzlement I found out that NONE of these complaints had ever been made.
Master manipulators have a gift for divining peoples’ sensitivities and exploiting them and are often charming and charismatic – until they’re not.
Looked it up. I learn a lot here. The Dope: 16 years to improve your word power.
Hold on. Let me see if I can get my mother to answer this.
OK. So here’s a question-what do they do when you fully stand up to their nonsense and declare that you will tolerate it no more? [Assume said personage is not in a position of power over you like Jennshark’s boss] Including just calmly cutting all ties and walking away if they persist in attacking you.
As soon as you physically and financially can. Narcissists won’t change and don’t care about how they are hurting others. Even if they understand what they do is wrong, they ratioanlize it to themselves and others. There is not fixing them, and accommodating them in any capacity just gives them justification and a sense of entitlement. Trying to reason with them is like trying to clean tar out of your hair; it is just painful and ultimately makes the situation worse.
My mother only stopped beating me when I yanked the belt she was using out of her hands and told her that this was the last time she would ever strike me with impunity, and she retalliated by laying to my father and (later) authorities about how I had ‘threatened’ her, which was technically true but only in the context of her own unacknowledged abuse. As a rational person trying to make reasonable judgments, there is no way you can win in that situation; you either respond in kind (which just sucks you into their crazy self-induced drama) or you separate yourself as much as possible and hold them off at arm’s length or further.
Stranger
Yes, that’s basically all you can do. They’re not going to engage in a normal two-sided relationship. I’ll leave it to the shrinks to decide whether they can’t or they won’t, but nothing you do is going to fix them. To quote Wikipedia “Those with NPD generally lack emotional awareness and insight into their own condition.”
So a normal person might think “I was mean to my sister. That made her angry, so she hit me.” Some people would apologize and some wouldn’t. Some hit back or escalate the conflict and some don’t. Normal people can be all kinds of jerks, but they understand what’s going on.
A narcissist thinks “My sister hit me for no reason, and then blamed me for it! She accused me of being mean, for no reason!” They are quite simply blind to the emotional aspect of what’s going on around them. When you talk with a narcissist about your feelings, they hear your words, but they do not understand the meaning. You’re talking about something they don’t experience. You might as well explain different shades of green to a blind person.
It depends on the person and how you stand up to them.
The worse thing you can do to a narcissist is threaten to show the world that their idealized self is a fraud. Lets take the example of an unemployed narcissist father who tells his son that he will buy him a play station. The mother hears this and calls him an asshole because she knows the family cannot afford it. The key here is that’s not the worse thing she can do to him - call him an asshole in front of his son. The worse things she can do is tell him in front of the child, “you know we cannot afford it.”
That is worse than insulting him. The father’s idealized self is someone who can afford to buy a play station for his son. His wife is threatening to expose his fraud in front of an audience - his child. The likely outcome is that he will defend his image at all costs. Depending on his predisposition to violence, he might beat his wife or threaten to beat his wife. If he is non-violent, he will respond with rage, either yelling and screaming at his wife, or silent rage and resentment.
My nasty run-in years ago gave me the tools to deal with another horrible person a few years ago. She was not my boss, but she basically had the department by the shorthairs through the dirty tricks pathological people pull. She tried her crap with me and I did something that I’m too ashamed to admit here (but it worked!)
That first experience was extremely scarring, but it taught me an invaluable lesson about not playing some of the games evil people play.
My dear fellow; you have obviously misunderstood my actions. I was certainly not fucking a goose! I was simply fluffing up a pillow.