One of the most discussed topics in the support forums for the victims of narcissistic abuse is "the new source of supply" and "if the narcissist can change". The victims can´t wrap their heads around why the narcissists treated them badly, used and abused them while they overnight changed into the saint perfect "hubby" and dream "wifey" for their new partners and they treat them good. Can a narcissists change (for the new source of supplies)? The answer is: no. Here is why:
1. reason why the narcissist did not change for the new source of supply:
The narcissists always jump from one relationship to another without being single for at least one minute. In most of the cases they run two or more relationships simultaneously cheating on multiple people at once. They often live double life. This is itself already a first sign they did not change. The new source of the supply is being disrespected already from the first day of their relationship as the narcissist is cheating on him/her with the old source of the supply (or supplies). Its never a good sign when the new relationship starts with a drama, triangulation and cheating. This is already a huge red flag. Its not a good sign when someone abandon and desert their previous partner in a disrespectful way without a goodbye, explanation and closure inflicting trauma and causing the problems and damage to the previous partner, including stealing, cheating and lying. What makes the new source of supply think that what was done to the old source of supply will not happen to him/her in the future? The best prediction of the future is always a past behavior. The history has a tendency to repeat itself. If someone show you their true color, believe them the first time. Treating people around them badly its not a mistake, its their choice. When you see someone treat people around them badly (and it does not matter if it is an ex or if it is a waiter), thats exactly how they will treat you one day. Its their character. A normal people might slightly change over few decades, but nobody can change overnight. The core of the personality always stays the same even after the change. The issue with the narcissists is that they disrespect everybody around them no matter if they are new or old source of supply. Because they do not consider other people´s feelings, its always only about them and securing the narcissistic supply so they can survive their addiction. They always have a back-up plan messing with multiple people at once, keeping tabs on all sources of supply and they always have a plan A, B, C, D. They keep all of the sources of supply as long as possible as they always triangulate people to extract positive narcissistic supply (positive attention, praise, admiration, etc.) from new people in their life and the negative narcissistic supply from the people from their past (negative attention, anger, hate, drama, jealousy, envy, etc.). The triangulation is the ultimate narcissistic supply to feed their fragile ego and they do it on purpose. They do not treat people correctly because this would cut off their narcissistic supply. They do not use only the old source of supply, but they use the new source of supply as a tool too to hurt the previous partner. The narcissists do not see people as humans, they see them as the narcissistic supply for their own selfish reasons, agendas and as a regulators of their emotions, their low self esteem, low self worth and lack of self love.
2. reason why the narcissist did not change for the new source of supply:
Once healthy people respectfully end the previous relationships, they stay single for some period of the time. They use this time to reflect back on why the previous relationships did not work out, what was the issue on their side and they do the inner work to make sure it will be corrected so they will not repeat the mistakes in the future relationships. The healthy people take responsibility and accountability for their own actions. The narcissists do not take any responsibility for their actions. This is why they trash their exes on the first dates with the new sources of supply claiming all of their exes are "jealous, unstable and crazy", and they introduce themselves as "flawless" having no contribution for the failed relationships. They always play the "poor me card" shifting the blame always on the other people. They never end their previous relationships correctly and respectfully (and in most of the cases they do not end it at all, they just ghost the old partners overnight) neither provide a closure to the previous partners, they just right away jump into the new relationships pretending that their exes never existed (while they existed few days ago or even minutes ago) and pretending they never did those horrible actions to their previous partners, they act like their wrong doings never existed. This is a very toxic sociopathic behavior and a red flag. Staying single after ending a relationship is a healthy way to find yourself, to learn, to grow, to mature and to heal. This is how normal people change and operate. As the narcissists have zero emotional strength and they avoid pain, they always run from themselves instead of running to themselves. Thats why they never change and they have the tendency to repeat the patterns. The time of singleness is very important also for healing. Its never a good sign when people running from one relationship to another like headless chickens unhealed, bleeding and wounded. Its spreading an emotional mess all over the place and they include everybody into their own chaos. They bleed on people who did not even cut them hurting everybody in the process and putting the responsibility of their emotional state onto everybody´s shoulders instead of taking the responsibility for themselves. The healing and finishing the grieving process is crucial to be able to close the relationships inside of us so we are able to move on. The narcissists never heal and never move on. The narcissists enter the new relationships always unhealed and unchanged. They might change the partners, but they did not change within themselves because they did not do the inner work.
3. reason why the narcissist did not change for the new source of supply:
Most of the narcissists claim they changed to get back with their exes or they pretend for a while that they changed to secure the new sources of supply. They often claim that they have "magically changed overnight". The narcissism is a serious personality disorder. Its not a flu. You did not "catch" the narcissism on Thursday and woke up on Friday morning magically cured. Yes, people can change, just not overnight. Even healthy people has a problem to change much smaller issues and most of them never change. Even healthy people rarely change. You can change only if you do the inner work long enough and work on yourself very hard, then you can change. But still, not overnight. Would you like to know if the narcissists really changed? Ask them this question: "What exactly did you do to change?" And you will see the answer. Did the narcissists went through the therapy, read self-help books, signed for the self development courses or read tons and tons of articles on internet? Or did the narcissists spend enough time being single and alone to be able to self-reflect on their behavior? Without an inner work, there is no real foundation and a real reason for the change. Around 80% (or more) actions, feelings, triggers and thoughts are coming from our subconsciousness. Humans basically run on the autopilot and most of the things they do is based on the subconscious programming. Its the same as when people breath - they breath, but they do not think about breathing, they just do it automatically. The deep rooted issues is something you can´t fix or control just like that. You have to bring your subconsciousness into your consciousness in order to heal it and fix it. Otherwise, those unhealed wounds of our fragmented souls will dictate our life and we will call it "a destiny". Its not the destiny, its the inner shadows that are lurking inside of ourselves, its the hurt inner child uncontrollably screaming inside of us and mess with our life. Without appropriate inner work, the change is not possible. In order to change, one must integrate the shadows and bring the light into the inner darkness. The narcissism belongs to the type B personality disorders, its the same category as psychopathy and sociopathy. Many professionals in the field claim that there is no chance for the narcissists to heal and change. Even with behavioral therapy they might slightly and temporary adjust their behavior, but they can´t start to feel the empathy and feel and act like normal people (lack of empathy is part of their disorder). Usually and most of them, in the time of distress or when some opportunity arise will slide back to the narcissism due to their very emotionally fragile nature and urgency to extract the narcissistic supply. The narcissism is a valid addiction. They are addicted to the narcissistic supply the same way as the heroin addicts are addicted to the heroin. There is still no enough study being done to say if the narcissists might or might not change, however, the experience of most of the coaches and therapists say otherwise - the only people who usually enter the therapy are the victims of narcissists, not the narcissists themselves. If the narcissists enter the therapy its usually due to the court order after they committed some crime, they want to extract the narcissistic supply from their therapists and learn new tricks how to more skillfully abuse people in the future or they follow some of their agenda (for example the family press them to enter the therapy otherwise they will be excluded from the inheritance). There is rarely the case when the narcissists enter the therapy because they really want to change. Occasionally, they enter the therapy because they suffer from the depression episode. The moment they feel slightly better, they abandon the therapy and never finish the treatment. They always look for the quick fix rather than fixing their deeply rooted issues long-term. The same as heroin addicts seek for quick fix for their deep rooted issues and they quickly fix themselves with heroin, the same way the narcissists seek for temporary and quick fix with the narcissistic supply. Does the heroin help the heroin addicts? Yes. For lets say one hour. Then their issues resurface again and they are stuck in the vicious cycle of hunting for the next quick fix. Do the heroin addicts feel good after the quick fix? Yes, sure. Temporary. But for the long run, the heroin is destroying their life, their health and all of their relationships. There is a proof of many healed victims of narcissistic abuse but there is no success stories of healed narcissists. The narcissism is a fixed disorder and it has tendency to get worst with the age, not better.
4. reason why the narcissist did not change for the new source of supply:
The parts of the narcissist´s disorder is a lack of empathy. Empathy is the reason why people are capable to love, to feel for other people and understand their own feelings. The narcissists lack of empathy, thats why they are not capable of true authentic love, they can´t put themselves into other´s people shoes, the lack of empathy is the reason why they feel no remorse hurting others, rob or even kill and they are not capable to self reflect on their behavior or their own emotions. The reason why the empaths are capable to heal no matter how damaged they have been (if they put the effort into the healing) is because they can nicely work with their own emotions. On the other hand, the narcissism is a personality disorder, they are traumatized and any personality disorder or trauma is an emotion (suppressed emotions, lack of emotions). You can´t think yourself out of it, you have to feel yourself out of it (aka, feel the feelings). No matter how smart you are, if you can´t feel and be vulnerable, you can´t heal. The only way out of trauma (which basically the narcissism is - its a type of trauma and they usually suffer from PTSD too) is to heal your emotional flashback through emotional literacy. The part of the narcissist´s disorder is also emotional immaturity, they have got frozen at the age of the trauma which means they are children trapped in the adult bodies. If they decide to heal, they would have to work hard to catch up with the maturing gap through the growing pain. Just like it hurts when you go to the gym (because your muscles grow) and it hurts when the children´s teeth are growing, it also hurts when we expand our consciousness and maturing our souls. The narcissists fear vulnerability, intimacy and emotional depth. They avoid emotional pain at all costs.
Sign up for NEWSLETTER and receive all my new free blog articles directly
to your e-mail.
If you found this article useful, share it with your dear ones who can benefit from this information. I appreciate it. If you wish to support my work, you might consider A DONATION. Thank you for your support. Ready to change your life? BUY MY BOOKS on narcissism and codependency.
