Even normal people have a mix of unhealthy and healthy narcissism in them to some degree. However, the true narcissists are taking the narcissism to the extreme and this is when the real issue arises. People often ask: How the narcissists developed their narcissism? The answer is that the narcissists did not develop the narcissism at all. Their narcissism was always in them from the first day they have been born, they have actually never grew up out of it.
The very first trait every single person on this planet exhibits is a narcissism. Once the baby is born, the baby does not care if its mother is tired and exhausted, the baby wants the mother to comfort him, now! When the baby is hungry, it does not care if the mother is hungry too, it will scream until its needs are met and the mother feeds him. The little children are all highly narcissistic. All kids are little Hitlers. The narcissism in babies insures that the babies´s need and wants will be met by its mother. Nobody is completely narcissism free. Otherwise, there would be no fashion industry, no art industry, no industry where people can show their talent or passion for their interest. We all want a healthy portion of attention from people. What is love? Love is healthy exchange of attention, affection and appreciation between people. The difference between normal people and the true narcissists is that while normal people are able to give and receive (they love to shine but they also love to see others to shine), the true narcissist are not capable to give, only to receive. They do not allow other people to be in the spotlight too, they want to be the only people in the room receiving the spotlight. In fact, they hate and envy people who are in the spotlight. In their mind, everybody should be miserable (and they will ensure that people around them are miserable by making them miserable) and they should be the only ones receiving all the attention. It´s not uncommon that the narcissists will start smear campaigns, overtly/covertly attack people who are in the spotlight or punish them with silent treatment and mistreatment out of envy. The narcissists usually suck all the air in the room (and suck the life out of people). The narcissists always compete with others. You might not be aware of this but while you don´t compete with the narcissists (you wish them well and support them), they are actually always in competition with you (and they have only bad intentions towards you). The narcissistic partners always compete with their spouses, girlfriends and boyfriends. The narcissistic mothers always compete with their daughters. The narcissistic fathers always compete with their sons. Your narcissistic best friend is always in competition with you. As we are growing up, our parents are responsible to teach us the empathy by leading us by an example. The things go wrong when the parents are not possessing the ability to have the empathy themselves and thus they are not able to show it and teach it to their children. This is the moment when the new narcissist or codependent is being formed in his or her childhood. Even some healthy normal people might posses the narcissistic traits, it does not necessary mean they have narcissistic personality disorder. Narcissistic traits and narcissistic personality disorder are two completely different things. We all have ego trips time to time when we forget to check our ego regularly. The difference between the normal people ego tripping and the narcissists "narc-ing" is that there are no victims behind the normal people while the cemetery is full of "dead bodies" behind every true narcissist.
You can easily recognize people who suffer from the negative pathological narcissism - the narcissists, sociopaths and psychopaths pushing people around them into the bankruptcies, homelessness, mental breakdowns and depressions. The narcissists mess you up and then they blame it on you. These individuals are like a kiss of dead, everywhere they appear, they spread pain, negativity, toxicity, drama and trauma. The PTSD trauma takes literary years from their victims because healing and recovering is a long and complicated process and its not uncommon that the victims of the narcissistic abuse even commit the suicides. Most of the people who were dealing with a pathological narcissists has to seek a therapy.
Many people feels very confused about how to recognize the toxic pathologically dangerous narcissists and how to know that someone is safe, healthy and normal. In the examples below, we will discuss very common scenarios where people feel the most confused about what is and what is not pathological narcissism.
Example 1: When someone is not a narcissists but has the narcissistic traits.
If you have been raised by narcissistic parents or in general toxic parents, you turned out to be either another narcissists or the codependent. The reason why are people often confused if they themselves are the narcissists or the codependents is that these two differ in many ways but they have also a lot of traits in common. It´s because they both have been raised in the same toxic environment with the same toxic narcissistic parents, although, their copying mechanism how they are processing and playing out the trauma is different. In some cases (for example when the children are naturally very strong personalities who know how to validate their own self and their reality or children who ran away from home in a very early age so the damage caused by their toxic surrounding is not that profound), they might turn into a pretty normal empathetic people, however (what is for sure), those people definitely developed some toxic traits and unhealthy copying mechanism in their childhood. Yes, good people can have issues and traumas too but it does not make them the narcissists or bad people. Good people has their issues too. They might be normal but they can have the codependent traits. They might be normal but they can have the narcissistic traits (even they did not develop full blown pathological narcissistic personality disorder). Being a full blown narcissist and being a normal person and have some narcissistic traits are two different things. There is actually a term for this - "the narcissistic fleas". Even when you are an empath, when you spend too much time around the narcissists, the narcissists are toxic and dysregulated individuals so they will pass some toxicity onto you and dysregulate you, you will get some narcissistic fleas inside of your fur. The people who has some toxic traits does not need to be necessary bad people but they are not healthy either. Nobody who was growing up with the narcissistic parents surrounded with such a high level of toxicity can turn completely healthy. There will be always some suppressed unprocessed negative and positive emotions, there will be always some level of not being able to recognize the difference between healthy and unhealthy boundaries, their emotions will be always stunted to some degree. If the parents are not emotionally and psychologically healthy (and they do not need to be necessary the narcissists), its really almost no chance to raise 100% healthy child. And most of the parents on this planet are not perfect. There is not one 100% perfect parent on this planet. That´s why it´s safe to say that most of the people on this planet will have and has some issue to some degree. Nobody on this planet is issue free. The parents do not need to be necessary narcissists, they can be also normal people who were going through some trauma themselves during the crucial time of development of their children such as divorce, alcoholism or simply they have been very busy with work so the wants and needs of their children were not met properly and the children have been not properly mirrored by their parents. These children, once they grow up, might face some difficulties in the relationships with other people or difficulties to cope with some areas in their lives. With the help of a behavioral therapy and a talk therapy the people with codependency and narcissistic traits can work through their toxicity and correct themselves. People who are normal but has some issues posses empathy. Just because they have some problems or issues do not cancel their empathy. They only need to work on themselves to correct their mistakes and heal their wounds. They can change. The only question here is: How badly they want to? The answer will determine the results. Getting rid off unhealthy copying mechanism, incorrect behavior and heal the wounds involves lot of time, determination and work. You can recognize the pathological narcissists easily - they never take accountability and responsibility for their mistakes and wounds. They never acknowledge their wrong doings. They are not willing to work on themselves and they never change. The real narcissists do not posses the empathy while no matter how the empaths are wounded or messes up, they still posses the empathy. Yes, the empaths can suffer from PTSD and be all over the place acting out their traumas and still be the empaths and good people.
Example 2: People with low self-esteem might see other people with healthy self-esteem as the narcissists.
If you are a codependent or in general a person with very low self-esteem, very low self-worth, if you have a negative self-image and you meet people who are healthy, who have healthy self-esteem, healthy self-worth and they have a positive self-image, you might misjudge them as the narcissists. People who loves themselves (they practice healthy self-love) have bold healthy boundaries and thus they might look in the eyes of the unhealthy people narcissistic. The healthy people does not have any issue to marketing themselves, stand up for themselves (and even for other people too), to boldly follow their goals and dreams, they say "No" often. If someone crosses their boundaries, they call them immediately out, healthy people does not take any BS from anybody. Even codependents (not only the narcissists) are pretty toxic and they are still in the childish energy and that´s why when people who are already in the mature adult´s energy will tell them "No", the codependents might see these healthy people as "arrogant" and they might even feel hurt or angry towards these healthy people for setting the boundaries. People who are toxic are always offended by healthy people who sets the boundaries. This only shows that the codependents still do not know how to either set or respect the healthy boundaries. People often speak about how it is horrible when others cross their boundaries. But not many people acknowledge that they are also crossing the boundaries of others. In general, if you did not develop healthy boundaries, you don´t understand the boundaries in general - you usually not only let other people walk all over you but you are crossing the boundaries of other people too and then you feel angry when those people don´t let you cross their boundaries. Just because someone told you "No" does not make them the narcissists.
Example 3: People often misjudge temperament loud people wearing eccentric clothes as the narcissists.
Not everybody who is temperament, rebellious, expressive, extroverted and loud wearing eccentric clothes and having
"a big mouth" and even cursing is a bad person and not everybody who sits in the church
wearing nice Sunday church outfit smiling at you like Mother Theresa is a good person. This way of thinking
actually brought the victims into the hands of the narcissists in the first place. Because the victims are looking for the red flags in the wrong way and in the wrong place. The
right way how to recognize the narcissists is not to judge people by
their appearance and how loud or quiet they are (or whatever traits they posses that you approve or not approve of - just because you don´t approve their personality or lifestyle do not make them automatically the bad people and just because people does not do exactly what you want from them because they have their own lives, opinions and way of how they want to live THEIR life does not make them bad people either) but rather to look after
the real red flags that are really connected to narcissism - which is lack of empathy. The number one red flag that someone is a narcissist is the lack of empathy, no matter if they are extroverts or introverts, if they wear elegant suit or rock and roll clothes, if they are cursing with bad words or visit church often. You always need to spend at least a certain amount of time around the
narcissists to be capable to uncover the narcissists, the truth usually comes out in the end or at
least later in the story when you know them closer and you already experienced some
situations with them so you can evaluate them based on those experiences. In the end of the story, you would be very surprised who is and who is not the narcissist in your surrounding. Usually the manipulators put a lot of work into masking and dressing their evilness into nice clothes and hiding their crimes behind the overly nice smiles. To uncover the narcissists, spend some time with them and observe their reactions and behavior especially in the certain situations where reacting with empathy should be natural, automatic and expected. If people does not help you when they see you struggling in pain with a broken hand or they will not make you at least a tea and not ask you "how are you?" when you are sick, then they are most probably the narcissists. The narcissists do not care about people because they lack of empathy. Again, the empathy is here the key word. The closer to psychopathy the narcissists are, the less emotions they feel, so you might notice that these individuals lack of anxiety in the most nerve wracking situations where most of the normal people would react with stress and anxiety and they lack of warm empathetic behavior where it is appropriate. Unfortunately and usually, you will uncover the narcissists only in a certain misfortune situations as life with the narcissists is pretty ok in the good times, it´s usually the bad times when they show their full true colors. It´s usually those key moments where you can see someone´s true face - how they react when you are hurting or you are on your knees or something bad happens to you. Usually, you most likely not uncover them in the middle of the fun in the club as some narcissists can be a funny good company (sometimes), especially in the good times.
Not everybody who is rebellious needs to be necessary the narcissist. Maybe they are just the scapegoats of the narcissistic families. The scapegoats of the narcissists have the tendency to be pretty rebellious. We have to understand what "rebelling" actually means and why people usually rebel. Rebelling is in an opposition to control. Most of the people when they rebel, they rebel against something and they fight for something. They usually rebel against people who controls them and for their freedom and the truth. They might also rebel when they are hurting because someone bad hurt them. The more someone tries to control you, the more you feel like you want to rebel. If someone is controlling you only a little bit, you rebel also only a little bit. But when someone is really hard core narcissistically oppressing you and full blown controlling you, your reaction would be an extreme level of rebelism. Its natural. Where people usually make the mistake in observing this kind of situations is that they pay too much attention to the "bad rebelling people" rather than paying the attention to the root cause of that rebelling (what, who and why made these people to rebel?). Nice example of such a situation is when the "bad child" is being punished for rebelling at school but the teachers do not even consider the option that the child is not bad at all, maybe the child is only hurting because the real bad people are in his or her home (the narcissistic parents) who are abusing this child and this child is only rebelling against that abuse and basically crying for the help.
You know how the elephants are being trained in circus? By abuse. They abuse the elephants till they break their spirits and then the elephants become obedient. Just like with the narcissists. They will keep breaking your spirit until you submit and have no more energy to fight back. But sometimes it does happen that the victims fight back. The anger was bottling up in the victims for months or years and once they blow up, it´s extreme. It´s a pendulum principle. When their pendulum was on the right side, they never fought for themselves at all, they have been utterly passive which is extreme because you have to stand up for yourself. But when your pendulum swings to the left side, you will become too aggressive which is extreme and toxic too. What is peace? What is balance? The peace and balance is "everything somewhere in the middle". Not too left, not too right. Not too much and not too little. Neutral. Being a pendulum too passive on the right is extreme but being too aggressive on the left is also extreme. You were not balanced when you were on the right and now you are not balanced either when you swinged to the left. Because you are not somewhere in the middle. For example, if you have emotionally unavailable parents or romantic partner (pendulum on the right), you will do everything in your power to win their affection so you will become overly needy (pendulum on the left). Neediness, clinginess and codependency is a trauma response. Or if you are being controlled and now you woke up, what you do? You go from one extreme do another - now you become super rebellious. Identify your extreme traits and extreme emotions and search for the root cause of them (from which extreme you switched to which another extreme). To balance yourself, you have center yourself. Usually people who has been codependents have the tendency to swing their pendulum to another extreme - now they become super independent. They have been super clingy, now they are super detached. The codependency is a trauma response. But the extreme independence is trauma response too. The only solution is being somewhere in the middle. Always and with everything. Did you notice that the pendulum is not moving at all only when it is in the middle? Because all energy was neutralized. Neutralized energy is peace. When you are moving too drastically, when you are with your pendulum too right or too left, it means tension, it means restless energy.
Example 4: Normal people who suffers from depression are less sensitive to others than usual and they might depersonalize or ignore other people´s needs and wants but it does not make them the narcissists.
Sometimes, it can happen that the good empathetic people go through a depression period so they are more inside of their heads than usual dealing with their own issues and they might be to a degree desensitized towards your suffering at that moment. You never know what people goes through in their own lives. What is for sure, there will be nothing malicious coming from normal people. Even they are not at their best to acknowledge or fulfill your needs and wants, they will not attack you, they will not take an advantage of your unfortunate situation, they will not have a narcissistic smirk on their face when you bleed, they will not laugh at your pain, they will not steal from you or turn everybody against you, they will not make a hell out of your life, they will not put you down and then jump on you and kick you some more while you are down. Normal people are not deceptive and cruel. Their empathy would stop them from doing something bad to others. People with empathy might be angry or have a bad day or they can suffer from depression, but they know when to stop and where are the limits. The empathy inside of them is setting those limits. So, just because someone suffers from the depression and they are not capable to show you the level of empathy they would usually have for you when they are being healthy, it does not make them the true narcissists. They are just preoccupied with their own suffering to the point that they can´t see your suffering. Sometimes even normal people suffers from something that is called "a compassion fatigue". The compassion fatigue develops in highly empathetic people when they are for too long in a toxic environment when too many energy vampires are sucking the life out of them, using them, abusing them and mistreating them. The empaths might develop exhaustion and they feel deprived of prana energy which might temporary decrease the level of empathy for other people. Exhausted empats have tendencies to isolate themselves from people and become more introverted until they replenish their prana energy. The exhausted empaths might act more irritable and avoidant when people will pressuring them as being around people feels for the empaths draining when they suffer from the compassion fatigue.
Example 5: Not every annoying "flexing" jerk is a narcissist.
Just because someone is normal does not make them saint or perfect. Normal people goes through various periods of their lives, various issues and emotions. Normal people do mistakes too. Even normal people can be jerks sometimes. Maybe they had a bad day and they are grumpy cats today. Or something happened to them and now they are angry or sad. Or maybe they have been also abused by the narcissists just like you and they are in the first stage of their healing process which is usually filled with lot of anger, negativity and toxicity. You don´t know what other people are going through in their lives. Sometimes, we think that we are the only people under the sun who suffer. But actually, most of the people suffers. Those people might be the empaths but maybe they are going through really dark times in their lives and people in pain can be toxic or even act like jerks. People who are in pain are more irritable. The word "narcissism" is thrown around way too often. Just because someone is a jerk sometimes does not make that person having a narcissistic personality disorder. We have to understand that the narcissistic personality disorder is a very serious disorder. It belongs to the cluster B type of the personality disorders, the same category as sociopaths and psychopaths. It´s safe to say that the narcissist is just another name for a mild version of psychopath. Individuals who suffer from cluster B type of the personality disorder lack of empathy and when you lack of empathy, you are capable of doing horrific actions such as abusing people, stealing, rap_ing and kill_ing. Just because someone is a jerk sometimes does not make that person automatically the pathological narcissists. Empathy is also just another name for "love". When you don´t posses empathy you are not capable to love yourself and others and you do not exhibit any remorse and guilt when you are projecting your inner aggression onto other people causing them pain, suffering and damage.
You can even meet normal people who likes to "flex" and show off and it does not make them automatically the narcissists. Unless they are harmless and don´t run around destroying other people´s lives, unless they don´t inflict pain and misery onto others, they don´t need to be necessary full blown narcissists. Some people have just very low self-esteem that they did not process and now their complexes and insecurities are playing out and they show off to feel better about themselves. Pathetic and annoying, but still does not make them automatically the serial killers of kittens. You recognize the narcissists, sociopaths and psychopaths when you look into their history - they had hurt lot of people in their past and everywhere they entered, they created havoc, misery, wrath, they made people commit suicides or pushed them into the depressions and therapies. The true narcissists are pushing others into the bankruptcies and homelessness. These are the true narcissists.
You can also meet an arrogant and reserved good people but once you know them closer, you actually discover that they are nice people and they will show the empathy in the certain situations where the empathy is required and expected. Some people are just not "rainbow types of personalities". Or maybe they are very introverted. Or maybe they lack of social skills, they would like to interact with you but they have no idea how. Or, maybe they like to keep a safe distance from others (probably they had some bad experiences with bad people in the past so they are not very hurry to open up quickly and immediately to everybody like the Christmas present). But if they are the real empaths and normal people, no matter what impression you have from them or what they wear, they are not going to hurt you like the true narcissists. The true narcissists are sadists. They sadistically hurting others and then sadistically taking the pleasure of watching the people hurting. This is giving them the feeling that they have a power and control over people. They seek to dominate people. Behind the true narcissists, there are lot of "dead bodies" and also real dead bodies. Normal people will never destroy your life. You have to understand that no matter what kind of lifestyle people lives, no matter what kind of clothes they wear or what kind of personalities they chose to become, just because they do not meet your expectations, it does not make them automatically bad people. Sometimes we don´t need to agree on how others live but it does not make them bad people. You have to learn to look at the world with a bigger perspective. Some people can have nice clothes but they might kill you. Some of them can wear rock and roll punk crazy clothes and you would be surprised if it would be them who will save you from the real killer. Some nice people are just "fake nice" narcissists. Some nice people are really super genuinely nice. Probably, the most important advice would be - never rush anything. Give people a chance to show their true face over time. Give them the space and the time. And once they show the red flags, then act accordingly. Till then, no judgment, no paranoia, no fast conclusions.
Example 6: Even normal people with empathy might surprise you with an extreme narcissism in the extreme situations:
Even healthy people are not completely narcissism free. Narcissism is a defense mechanism. Even healthy people when pushed over the edge might show you their narcissistic side. This scenario is often seen in the community of the survivors of narcissistic abuse. The victims who just freshly came out from the narcissistic abusive relationships and they are in the first stage of healing process, they are very defensive, they act almost like the narcissists. This is being called "the reactive abuse". Its when the victims want to abuse their own abusers the same way as the abusers abused them. Another interesting example might be a mother being in a war zone with her child. The mother can be a good person and an empath but the moment some aggressor would intent to hurt her child, you would see how this good empathetic woman will morph within a second into a beast. She will protect her child no matter what it takes, even if it takes harming others or stub them with the knife. Or, if a good empathetic father would find himself with his little son and with some random strangers in the middle of the desert and there would be only one tiny bottle of water to drink and nothing else, the father would put his empathy a side in order to save his child. If his only two options would be to help his son to survive or to help others to survive, he would let the other people die in order to save his son. Another great example might be a comparison of poor and rich countries. The more the country is in the poverty, the more narcissistically the people act there. Because narcissism is just another word for "a survival mode" and "the unmet needs". If you live in a lack, you will fight like a predator to get your needs met. When you live in an abundance, its very easy to be calm, nice, relaxed and generous. The narcissism is being developed in children because their narcissistic parents failed to meet their needs and wants in their childhoods. Once those children grow up, they are constantly in a panic mode being scared that they will be not able to survive so they either go and steal something from others to meet their needs or they are pathologically envious of other people who have more then them (and unfortunately, most of the people have more than the narcissists because the narcissistic parents deprived their children of everything - from true love, affection, attention, money, stuff, opportunities, etc.) If you visit the countries that are considered rich, you will notice that people act there very differently than the people in the countries where is poverty. People in rich countries are more generous, more empathetic in general. Because narcissism is about lack and that´s why the narcissists are selfish, self-serving and self-centered people because they operate from the position of lack. Narcissism is a defense mechanism. The narcissists learnt already in the childhood from their narcissistic parents that people will hurt them, people are vicious, they will never have enough of this or that, nobody will give them, if they have something, everybody will take it from them. All narcissists are paranoid because they have developed very toxic mind set, they consider this world to be a dangerous place and everything is bad and negative. They will rob you because they think you would rob them too so they have to rob you first.
So, after all we learnt about the healthy and unhealthy narcissism, what the empaths can actually learn from the healthy narcissism?
Healthy narcissism is nothing else than another word for self-love. What the true narcissists have in common with the codependents is the lack of self-love and low self-esteem. And this is usually the reason why they attract each other so often. Because like attracts like. They mirror each other´s wounds. They vibrate on the same level of energy. They both lack of self-love. Loving yourself will give you a healthy confidence and it will help you to establish healthy boundaries. Once you really love yourself, you will treat your self good. We always only accept what we think we deserve. We also let people treat us the same way as we treat our own selves. The moment you start to love yourself, you will never allow people treat you badly. Once you heal your wounds and replace the low vibration energy for the high vibration energy, you change your entire reality. The narcissists will not want to be in your new reality because they have no use for people with self-love, confidence and strong boundaries. Once you refuse to let people crossing your boundaries, you will notice that you have more space and room for your own self - without the toxic people in your life, you are more capable, you have more time, energy and money to actually meeting your own needs and wants instead of orbiting around toxic ungrateful users. Once you don´t let others to suck your prana energy, you will be energized. Toxic people are very exhausting. You give them all of your energy, resources, attention and emotions until there is nothing left for your own self. People who are surrounded with the toxic people are usually depressive and exhausted. They get sick often or suffer from chronic diseases. People who have a lot of energy, they have tendency to be also more productive and joyful which will always reflect in all areas of their lives. Once you remove all narcissists from your life, magically, the chronic diseases disappear just like that. Finally you have the right mood to start new projects and plans. Happy people are far more productive than people with depression. Self-love is the highest vibration. Once you tap into this kind of vibration, all areas of your life will start to miraculously changing - your positive energy will suddenly attract better people to your life, better opportunities, more money, better places. Once you get rid of the toxic people, you will start to elevate and glow. You will finally experience the peace. Until you experience the true peace, you actually never realize how much drama, manufactures crisis and craziness the narcissists are bringing to your life. You do nothing just orbiting about fixing someone else´s problems and meeting their needs and wants while you neglect your own needs and wants.
Unfortunately, there is nothing positive to be learn from the unhealthy narcissism:
There is not much what you can learn from unhealthy narcissists. The toxic narcissists actually suffer very much with their narcissism. The difference between the healthy and unhealthy narcissism is that with unhealthy narcissism you suffer and with healthy narcissism you feel joyful. The true narcissists are very miserable people. You can even assume the level of their misery by how miserably they treat other people. Do you think that happy people treat others this way? Happy people want to see you happy and they will help you to become happy. Happy people are all about happiness for everybody. Healthy strong people with confidence are the true leaders, they know how to elevate you and bring the best out of you. The narcissists are the opposite - they are extremely weak, they absolutely lack of confidence and self-esteem so they have to mask it with aggressiveness and arrogance. The narcissists are not inspiring, they get what they want only because they use deceptions, manipulations, illusions and lies because they know that without deceiving others they would not get anywhere. The narcissists only know how to put others down. They always bring the worst out of others and even bring the worst into other people´s lives. Don´t learn from them.
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