The thief comes only to steal, kill and destroy. (John 10:10 - 29)
Do
the narcissists know who they are? Do the narcissists know they are
hurting people? Do the narcissists care if they are hurting people?
Normal people with normally wired brains just can´t comprehend the evil
and crazy actions of the narcissists and they often wonder if the
narcissists just pretend to be dumb but in reality they exactly know
what they do or if they really lack of any self - reflection and self -
awareness. Are the narcissists robots, Satan´s children or aliens?
The answer is yes and no. The narcissism is a spectrum divided into three categories - the lesser narcissists, the mid-range narcissists and the greater
narcissists. Their self - awareness depends on where on the spectrum the particular narcissists are. Some of
them have absolutely no clue (known as "unaware narcissists"), some of them have at least some clue and
some of them are fully aware (known as "self-aware narcissists"). Although, the result for the victims is the same - the damage is done to them either way.
People
often want to put only one label on each narcissist but this is not
possible as many factors come into play and this topic is a bit more
complex. Let´s break this topic down now. To have an accurate result, we
must consider these three criteria to evaluate the narcissist:
2. where on the scale is the particular narcissist with his/her IQ (cognitive intelligence)
3. where on the scale is the particular narcissist with his/her consciousness / self - awareness
What
the EQ says to us? The adult - narcissists have stunted emotions, they
are stuck at the age when the trauma happened to them and when they have
dissociated from their true selves which mostly happened in their
childhood (in other words, their emotions stunted in the most crucial
time of development, they did not emotionally develop as they supposed
to). When we say the word "trauma, the first scenarios that people think
of is that the child had to go through physical violence or sexual
abuse when they have been little. This is a big misunderstanding. What
can cause very deep wounds in the children´s souls is also emotional and
psychological abuse such as extremely spoiling the child or over -
controlling the child or to be over - critical to the child or giving
the child the conditional love (the conditional love means: "I only love
you if you do this or that, if you behave this or that way, if you
become this or that, otherwise, I don´t love you"). The reason why the
cluster B personality disorders can´t be diagnosed in the very young age
is because all children and teenagers are narcissistic. That´s why
people can be diagnosed with narcissism when they are let´s say 18 years
old or 21 years old. From that age up, we can say that if people did
not developed the empathy till then, its very little chance they will
develop it after that age as the crucial development has been completed
by then. The older the narcissists are, the lesser the chance for them
to develop the empathy and catch up with the great "emotional age gap".
For example, if the narcissist´s chronological age is 50 years old but
he or she has been stunted in emotional age of 10 years old child, this
narcissist would have to catch up with the missed 40 years of his or her
emotional development. That´s a lot. To catch up with such a great gap,
the narcissists would need to tolerate and overcome a lot of growing
pain and healing pain which the narcissists are unfortunately avoiding.
Narcissism is a very strong defense mechanism and they use their
narcissism to avoid the emotional injury and shame. When we are
children, there is a certain crucial times of development when also our
brain is being wired. If you miss this crucial time of the development
that can be done only in the childhood, it would be impossible to change
how the brain functioning in the adulthood. Maybe its not impossible
but what is for sure, the person who is suffering from narcissism would
need to really really really want this change (because the
narcissists want it, not because someone else is pushing the
narcissists to change), he or she would need to commit to therapy for couple of
years and would need to tolerate a lot of pain until the narcissism will
be "cured". And by "cured" I mean they have to "over-grow" their old
self, heal their traumas and emotionally mature. The level of how much stunted they are
differs with each narcissists individually - the emotions of some of
them have got freeze at age 5, some of them at age 10, some of them at
age 15, etc. The adult narcissists are adults only in a definition of
chronological age but their "inner child" is very hurt, all narcissists
deep inside are only little children or teenagers.
The
development of the narcissist´s EQ depends on this factor: How
emotionally developed have been their narcissistic parents? Based on
where on the scale of EQ their parents were in the narcissist´s crucial
time of development, we can assume that the same level of EQ their
narcissistic children posses now in their adulthood as empathy is
something that we all learn from our parents (or other caregivers).
That´s why the narcissism is generational trauma. It is being passed
from one generation to another where one generation is not capable to
learn the next generation the empathy. There is very tiny little portion
of the narcissists (those who co-morbid with psychopathy) who have been
born as "natural born psychopaths" which means their brains were born
without the empathy and without the capacity to learn empathy. But the
vast majority of the narcissists have no chemical imbalance in their
brain and the narcissism is purely the disorder of the personality (in
other words, how they have been raised and what they have learnt from
their parents). The parents of some narcissists are scoring very high in
narcissism or even sociopathy and psychopathy so their children will
most probably develop and copy the same level of high scoring
narcissism, sociopathy and psychopathy just like their parents. The
narcissism is passed onto the narcissists from one parent (usually from
the most dysfunctional narcissistic parent) or from both parents (if
both of the parents are the narcissists). Some parents of the
narcissists are mild narcissists which means they might posses a little
empathy (but still not enough to consider them "normal") so the
narcissistic children of such parents will develop also narcissism in
its milder form.
The
IQ reveals to us how smart the narcissists are. Some narcissists score
with high IQ and some of them score with low IQ. The way how IQ works
with the narcissists is the same as the IQ works with the normal people.
Some normal people are highly intelligent and some of them don´t.
The
narcissists are very good at scheming and abusing because they are
manipulative and abusive just like all children (as we already
mentioned, all children are narcissists, all children are little
Hitlers). The narcissism in the adult individuals becomes dangerous when
their low EQ is combined with their average or high IQ. Nobody can be
more damaging and dangerous that a person who has narcissistic
uncontrollable moody unstable childish emotions absolved from any
empathy and consciousness
(just like children) mixed with the adult´s capacity to think smart with
their high IQ and being able to plot a real plan. Or the narcissists
might be even more dangerous when they do not posses neither the EQ nor
the IQ, then you have only the individuals who roll through the life
like a bulldozer being powered solely by the trauma triggers from their
subconsciousness and whatever irrational triggers them, they start to
chase it, bite it or kick it without even feel about it or think about
it. Nobody is also dangerous like the individuals who are raging and
giving temper tantrums just like all small children while they are in
the adults bodies. When the little child has a temper tantrum and hits
you, it does not hurt. But when a childish adult - narcissist loses his
or her temper and will act out the childish rage and anger outbursts, it
can end up even deadly or at least with the black eye and broken bones.
The lesser narcissists
might feel often confused because they do not
posses self - awareness. They do not know and do not realize they are
hurting other people because they are not aware of the fact that they
are different than the normal people. They do not understand why they
get often into the conflicts with other people. "Why are those people
mad at me"? - ask the lesser narcissists themselves inside of their
heads. The lesser narcissists are very
primitively impulsive and compulsively obsessive with no capacity to
acknowledge or control their
urges to extract the narcissistic supply
and they run on an automatic software built in them. They might hurt
you and they don´t even realize that they are hurting you due to their
lack of
empathy, consciousness and self-awareness. They would be even surprised
if you call them
out on the hurt, they would be sincerely clueless that they have hurt
you.
Although, if you call them out on the hurt and they at least acknowledge
you now, don´t expect them to feel sorry for what they have done to
you, they still don´t care. The pure fact that you inform them that they
have hurt you will not magically develop their
empathy. They will just get very irritated by you calling them out and
they
will attack and gaslight you, they will shift the blame on you (the
narcissism is a very strong defense mechanism) just to avoid their shame
and not lose their control. Also, you calling them out on their evil
actions and wrong doings is for them only an invitation to extract some
more negative narcissistic supply and narcissistic fuel from you. Great
opportunity to start an argument! They will either enjoy to irritate you
or they will try to silence you (the narcissists fear the most of being
uncovered). This
is why it is important for the victims of the narcissistic abuse (once
they have realized they are dealing with the narcissists) to immediately
go no contact, delete, block, never look back, start to moving on,
start to plan their exist strategy, start the healing process as soon as
possible and not trying to chase the narcissists in order to resolve
the unresolved issues, get the closure or apology. Simply, because the
victims will never get it from the narcissists. While the normal people
expect the narcissists to show remorse and mercy, the narcissists will
do the opposite. They will continue to feed of their victims as long as
the victims allow it because for the narcissists people are only the
objects, stepping stones and sources of narcissistic supply and nothing
more. And if the narcissists see they are allowed to continue to extract
the narcissistic supply from their victims and feed themselves, they
will not stop. The narcissists NEVER miss the opportunity to extract the
narcissistic supply no matter how damaging and hurtful are their
actions or words to their victims. The victims have to remove themselves
from the toxic situation themselves because the beast is always hungry,
the beast never stops.
The
lesser narcissists
are completely out of control. Most of the narcissists who are in
the prisons are the lesser narcissists. They are the aggressive ones.
They just bulldoze people without
acknowledging that it would be appropriate at least to try to blend
among normal people and play the chameleon game. They are like the wild
beast who ran out of the jungle into some village not knowing what to do
with itself and attack the village people, bite them and eat their
food. The beast just does not care. There is no awareness behind the
actions, they
primitively follow their instincts to get the narcissistic supply. Just like the predators in the animal kingdom (such as lions), they kill to satisfy their needs. The lions do not care if they hurt their preys. There is nothing personal for the lions to kill the gazelles. Simply, the lions are hungry. The lions do not think about their preys, the lions think about their hunger. People usually think that the narcissists targeted them because they are special and they are the only person on the planet who the narcissists abuse. This is not true. You only qualified as the prey in the eyes of the predators. If it was not you, it would be another prey. The narcissists abuse all of their victims. Nobody is special for the predators. It´s like saying that one gazelle is special for the lion and the other gazelle is not special for the lion. But in fact, no gazelle is special for the lion. All of the gazelles are qualified as the dinner. The lesser narcissists
often do not properly cover their crimes, they
often do not at least fake the empathy when they are dealing with
normal people like the greater narcissists do. The lesser narcissists do
not know they are the narcissists. They do not understand themselves
(not alone other people).
The lesser narcissists are the most primitive version of the narcissists
and that´s why their impulses are more visible and they are being
caught much more
often. We can call them "the clumsy dumb messy narcy-darcy" or
low-functioning narcissists. Those are usually the individuals who would
punch you in the face when they get even slightly irritated.
The greater narcissists
are aware about their condition and
actions. They know they are the narcissists, some of them maybe don´t
know exactly the term "narcissism" and that this is their diagnosis, but
at least on an intuitive level they acknowledge that there is something
different about them in comparison with normal people and some of them
even self-study narcissism and they are fully aware that something like
"narcissism" does exist. A good example of a greater narcissist is HG
Tudor, the diagnosed and
self proclaimed greater narcissist who is also a blogger, a podcaster
and a
writer, he is creating education materials on "his kind" and he was
the one who came up with the terms lesser, mid-range and greater
narcissists. (Please, notice: My intake on categorization of the
narcissists might slightly differ from HG Tudor´s theory, so, if you are
interested in his version, please, visit his Youtube channel or
website, he has many excellent insights on narcissism).
Its
not that when the
greater narcissists know who they are and they can control themselves
to some degree (or better to say slightly delay the gratification) that
now they suddenly have no need or want
to extract fuel and narcissistic supply from their victims. Its just
that they are much more sophisticated at pretending they are
normal, more sophisticated with blending among the normal people so they
can more effectively to extract the narcissistic supply from their
victims. Let´s call them "the smooth criminals" or high-functioning
narcissists. They are more capable to hide
their narcissism from others and that´s what makes them more dangerous
than their "messy brothers" and "messy sisters". They are more skillful
to scheme, premeditate, plot, plan,
execute and cover up their crimes and abuse. They will still do
everything to meet their narcissistic needs and wants just like any
other narcissists, they are just
much smarter in doing so than the lesser narcissists. With their
pretended
normalcy and by excelling at chameleon game, they reduce the chance to
be caught. They are very
good at "switching on and off" their fake empathy so they don´t come so
aggressively when interacting with people. They can pretend they have
empathy on the level like the best Hollywood actors act in the Oscar
winning movies.
The lesser narcissists manipulate people "on autopilot", without
calculation, without impulse control and without thinking about what
they do, who they are and why they do it. The greater narcissists
"consciously" and
calculatingly manipulate others, they plan very well on how, when and
who
to manipulate in order to smoothly get what they want, they know who
they are and what
they do, (but they make sure you don´t know who they are) and they do
their best to not to get caught. The politicians in elegant expensive
suits are a very good example of the high - functioning narcissistic
criminals.
All,
lesser, mid-range and greater narcissists are "narcing" (they
abuse, steal, kill, cheat, lie, etc.) but the lesser narcissists operate
more from the primitive impulses with no consideration of the
consequences at all while the greater narcissists are more slickly and
smart, they do not care about the consequences for other people but at
least they do care about the consequences for themselves (for example:
"I have to carefully plan the robbery, I can´t act impulsively. I don´t
care if I steal the
money from the poor victims, I don´t care about the victims at all but I
have
to plan the robbery carefully because I don´t want to get caught and
spend years in prison"). If you call out the greater narcissists on
their manipulations and lies, they might play dumb that they don´t know
what you´re talking about but they will be fully aware what they are
doing (they do what they do intentionally) or the ones with co-morbidity
with psychopathy will even smile at you acting cool like cucumber
replying back to you "I know" because the closer to psychopathy they
are, they just absolutely do not care what people think of them (the
psychopaths do not have the need to extract the narcissistic supply).
The
greater narcissists are usually much more "successful" in abusing people
or with the criminal activities. They usually get away with it. You can
rarely find them in the prisons. The greater narcissists are the
upgraded
version of the lesser narcissists. Although, the greater narcissists are
VERY RARE (like for example HG Tudor), most often people are being
abused by clumsy dumb messy lesser
narcissists.
What
all narcissists (no matter what type they are) have in common is that
they all have a very low to non existent EQ (emotional intelligence).
Some of them score with no EQ, some of them score with slightly higher
EQ, but in comparison with normal people, they all score with VERY low
EQ in general.
The
main difference between the narcissists is in how high IQ (cognitive
intelligence) each of them posses. Based on their IQ they are
categorized into three categories: the lesser narcissists with no to low
IQ, the mid-range narcissists with an average IQ and the greater
narcissists with higher or high IQ.
The narcissist´s self-awareness depends on two factors: First factor - the higher IQ the narcissists posses, the more capable they are to become self-aware. Second factor is defined by the access to the correct information on narcissism. The same as for normal people, the narcissists with high IQ and the right access to the correct information on narcissism have the greatest chance to become (self)aware. The victims of narcissistic abuse already realized that no matter how highly intelligent they were at the time of the abuse, without the knowledge on narcissism, they could not understand what they have been dealing with. For a simple reason that the high IQ itself without the right information on narcissism will not help you to understand what you are dealing with. The same goes for the highly intelligent narcissists. If they came across the right information (for example they have read a book on narcissism or they came across some articles on narcissism on internet), then they would be capable to recognize their narcissism in those materials.
Possibly
a great example of the lesser
narcissist is the case of the covert narcissistic killer Chris Watts who
murdered his pregnant wife and
his two little children. He seems to lack of both - EQ and IQ. He seems
to have no EQ because he was capable to murder his beloved ones. But he
seems to have also very low IQ because the police caught him literary
the next day. It seems like he does not posses IQ capacity to plan or
cover up a crime. His crime was done in a very messy and unintelligent
way.
Just
like the predators from the animal kingdom (such as sharks or lions),
the predatory cluster B individual´s actions are being run by the
primitive urges. The narcissists are self-centered, selfish and
preoccupied with getting their needs met to the point they do not have
any free space in their minds to be concerned about other people.
Narcissism is a VALID ADDICTION. The narcissists are addicted to a
narcissistic supply the same way as the heroin addicts are addicted to
heroin. And the same way as the heroin addicts are preoccupied only with
themselves when their addiction kicks in, the narcissists are
preoccupied only with meeting their own needs and wants when their
addiction kicks in. Everybody who suffers from any kind of addiction is
not capable to see other people´s needs and wants because they are so
deep inside of a survival mode. And people who are in a survival mode
will always use others the same way as the drowning people use those who
are trying to help them - they would drag those people under the water
to save themselves. When the addiction kicks in, they don´t care about
anything else than to get the quick fix. They are in a panic mode.
People who suffers from the addictions are depersonalizing other people,
they see them merely as the objects to be used to obtain their fix (the
narcissistic supply).
No
matter what category the narcissists belong to, the ultimate number one
goal of every narcissist is to have a power and control over their
victims (in any form and shape). Rapers do not rape their victims
because they want sex (as many people would incorrectly think). The
rapers rape their victims because they want the power and control over
their victims. A narcissistic husband does not beat his wife because it
is his hobby. The wife threatened his control because she did not submit
to him so to establish the control, he beats her. The same with
narcissistic woman, she emasculates her man with an emotional abuse and
psychological bullying to gain power and control over him. Once the
narcissistic female is done with her man, the man loose all his
masculinity. Killers kill for the same reason. Making someone death is
the ultimate power and control over their victims. You can´t go any
further with power and control than to kill someone. What makes the
narcissists crazy the most is to lose the control and power over their
victims. You can´t get a better version of a revenge against the
narcissists than to manage to gain your autonomy over yourself and your
life. To become independent and not needing them is the ultimate revenge
against the narcissistic control freaks. The narcissists hate your
freedom. The most dangerous people to the narcissists are those who they
can´t control.
I suggest you to see the 17 min. Youtube video "Inside the mind of Jeffrey Dahmer: Serial killer´s chilling Jailhouse interview"
by the Youtube channel "Inside Edition" which will give you a very
interesting perspective how individuals who suffer from cluster B type
of personality disorder see power, control and dominance. Also, the
video supports my theory that narcissism is a form of an addiction.
Addiction would be a topic for a whole book so we will not go deep into
this now but when we want to explain addiction in a few sentences, we
can think about any kind of addiction as a self-medication for the
trauma or very poor plaster for emotional injuries and unhealed traumas.
Every person who went through some sort of trauma deal with the trauma
differently. Some people over-eat and gain a lot of weight, some people
drown their pain in alcohol or drugs, some of them excessively shop
until they bring their families into the bankruptcy, some people are
addicted to porn and become sex addicts, some people become workaholics
and some people have to gain a narcissistic supply. What all of these
people with different types of addictions have in common is that they
can´t control their urge. The deeper they are in their addictions, the
less control over their urge they have. This applies also for the
narcissists and their urge to gain the narcissistic supply. They just
can´t help it and they do not have the capacity to control their urge.
If they have to choose between your need, want and safety and the
narcissistic supply, they will choose the narcissistic supply the same
way as the heroin addict would choose heroin over you. The heroin
addicts who only started with the heroin are still relatively healthy
and relative in touch with the reality so they still have the capacity
to feel guilty about hurting others with their addiction (for example,
they feel bad they are stealing from their parents), however, they will
use heroin anyway because they have to. Otherwise they would collapse
without the heroin. But as the addiction progress and they start to lose
the touch with the reality, they stop to feel guilty, they desensitize
towards their own selves and others, they start to depersonalize, they
start to objectify. The need to shot themselves with the heroin now
comes first as the only need and want. Except the heroin, nothing else
does exist for them. Their vision becomes "the tunnel vision". Do the
narcissists love the narcissistic supply? Ask heroin addicts if they
love heroin and there you have your answer.
Do the narcissists know they are hurting people? Do the narcissists care if they are hurting people?
Yes and no. The narcissism is a spectrum. Every narcissist is different in a term of where on the spectrum of empathy, consciousness,
IQ (cognitive intelligence) and EQ (emotional intelligence) he or she
appears. But does it really matter? Often times, people are desperately
trying to put "only one!!!" label on every narcissist but this is not
possible. Many factors come into the play. But one is for sure - it does
not matter if they are the narcissists, psychopaths or just crazy
aliens from Mars, it does not matter if they have this or that, the only
important here are these questions: Is this person hurting you? Are you
hurting? Is this person damaging you? Do you feel like your life is
being damaged? Is this person making you sick? Are you feeling sick? ARE
YOU HAPPY? People are often so obsessively curious to know if the
narcissists are sick but the correct questions here are: Are you sick?
Is this person making you sick? If you answered yes, then, it really
does not matter who they are, what they do, why they do it because it
should be about you, your life, your feelings and your health, it should
be about who you are, what you do and why you do what you do. Ask
yourself: Is this situation making me happy? Is this situation bringing
me peace? Is this situation maintaining my good physical and mental
health? Or is this person bringing me toxicity or stress into my life?
People are often too deep into the narcissistic phantasmagoria that they
are so focused on what is wrong with the other person (the narcissist)
to the point they are completely forgetting to focus on themselves. They
want to help the narcissists while they are not helping themselves and
neglecting themselves. They want to give the whole world to the
narcissists while they completely sacrificing themselves on their
expense. They give everything to the narcissists while they are being
left with nothing. Does it really matter if the narcissists pushed you
down the stares knowingly or unknowingly? If they did not realize they
are hurting you, pretty bad! It means they are not capable to self -
reflect and they are not even aware that they are pushing people down
the stairs. If they have been fully aware that they pushed you down the
stars, pretty bad too! They know what they are doing to you but they do
it anyway because they can´t care less if you are hurting and even they
repeat the action multiple times. Either way, they don´t care! The
result for you is the same - you have broken bones after they pushed you
down the stairs.
You
can recognize if someone cares for you or not the way you feel. If
someone abuse(d) you, then most probably you are on the internet
searching for the answers playing the detective. You are hurting very
much. You sit at the therapist´s office. On the other hand, if someone
is healthy for you and you are happy, you are most probably right now in
the kitchen baking some nice cake with pink acing on the top, listening
to happy songs and dancing through the kitchen while your healthy
partner/best friend/your parents/etc. is doing the same. You hug each
other and the world is wonderful! You are not on internet searching for
some crazy stuff, you do not google: "Why my partner acts crazy?" So, it
really does not matter if they know or don´t know, if they care or
don´t care, if they cheat on you 50 times and they continue doing it
even it is hurting you, if they pushed you down the stares three times
and you have to each time spend one month in a hospital because this
really starts to be only about you re-focusing on you. They don´t
matter! You matter! You matter to yourself! It matter how you feel. It
matter if you are happy. It matter if you are healthy. You matter! If
you find yourself with a nasty hurtful bad people, if you find yourself
in the nonsense crazy damaging situations, I hope you decide to leave
that person or that situation. They are responsible to fix themselves,
it is not your responsibility. You can do better. You deserve better 💖.
Tho, if you really want to know if the narcissists in your life are aware if they´re hurting you, ask yourself one question: "Do the narcissists treat me differently in public then they treat me behind the closed doors"? If the answer is "yes", then the narcissists in your life know they do what they should NOT be doing. Why do you think they act differently in public (as saints) and differently behind the closed doors (as devils)?
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