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Iʼm Scott Bassett, a writer and internet

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Disclaimer
I want you to enjoy this book and use it to its fullest extent. Copy and
distribute it to as many of your devices and digital readers as you like. I
only ask that you not share it with your friends, edit it, distribute it online
or put it up for sale.

You can quote it freely, and I would like it if you credited me as the
original author, although that isnʼt necessary.

This book is for informational purposes only. I am not liable for anything
that happens, good or bad, from information you learned from this book
and decided to act on.

Every situation is different and yours is unique. This information is

accurate in the right context, but I am not physically present to evaluate
your own circumstances and oversee your use of this information in
your own situation. I cannot be held responsible for how you decide to
utilize this information.

Iʼm not a psychiatrist or mental health professional. All of this

information is from my own personal experience, not formal education
or professional experience. None of this information is a viable
substitute for a formal diagnosis of mental illness. It is advice from a
friend, to a friend.

© Copyright 2014 SC Publishing Company, All Rights Reserved.

Contents (click where youʼd like to go)
Introduction ........................................................................................................................ 1

10 Traits of the Narcissist ................................................................................................... 2

The Narcissistʼs Psyche ..................................................................................................... 6

" Who They Are .............................................................................................................. 11

" What They Do .............................................................................................................. 15
" What They Need .......................................................................................................... 23
" How They Think ........................................................................................................... 24
" Why They Do It ............................................................................................................ 26
" What Theyʼre Like ........................................................................................................ 29
" How They Feel ............................................................................................................. 44
" How Youʼll Feel ............................................................................................................ 52

1. Are Obsessed With Themselves and Donʼt Feel Empathy for Other People ............... 62

2. Exaggerate and Fabricate Achievements. Are Obsessed With Appearances .............. 67

3. Exhibit Black and White Thinking About Everything and Everyone .............................. 77

4. Never Take Responsibility for Their Actions. If Something Goes Wrong

or Isnʼt Right, Itʼs Always Someone Elseʼs Fault, and Usually Yours ............................ 81

5. When Performing a Favor, They Expect Showering Praise and For You
to Repay Them Many Times Over ............................................................................... 85

6. Will Always Hide or Deny Malicious Intentions and Lie To Do So ................................ 87

7. Will Work to Disrupt and Destroy Your Close Friendships, Hobbies

and Any Other Interests ............................................................................................... 91

8. Are Dependent and Cannot Be Left Alone. They Must Get Attention
and Praise At All Times, Especially From Their Main Source ...................................... 94

9. Will Act Bizarre and Possibly Become Dangerous When Experiencing

or Sensing A Loss of Control and Will Do Anything To Get It Back .............................. 99

10. Usually Show Subtle to Severe Signs of Paranoia and Thematic

Presumptions About Other People ........................................................................... 102
11. Will Control Your Knowledge Through Isolation and Deliberate Misinformation ....... 104

12. Are Passive-Aggressive. Rarely Display Aggression Openly,

Unless In Incoherent Rage ........................................................................................ 109

13. Are Not Consciously Aware of Their Condition, Intentions and Actions .................... 116

14. Cannot Genuinely Give or Express Love. True Compassion Of Any Sort
Is Absent ................................................................................................................... 118

15. Believe Theyʼre Absolutely Perfect and Stand Alone In That Distinction .................. 119

16. Play The Selfless Card; Theyʼll Always Say They Did It For You
Or Someone Else and Never for Themselves .......................................................... 125

A Final Word… ............................................................................................................... 128

Thanks for Reading! ............................................................................................................ 133

Narcissists in Conversation ............................................................................................ 134

The 16 Signs of a Narcissist ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! 1

Introduction
Throughout this book I will refer to the person in question as narcissist(s). Every
time you see those words, I want you to imagine the person under your
consideration with a critical eye, and see if they display these signs.

Then I want you to re-imagine past conflicts and work through them, talking to
someone and writing it down on paper, how it made you feel. What was the source
of the conflict? What resolved it, if anything?

Even if youʼre convinced that you are being abused by a narcissist (and trust me,
they will only ever abuse you), I urge you to read through all of the 16 signs. Often,
coming to accept this reality is the hardest part for the abused, and it will be the
longest road towards your recovery.

As you read, I want to impart to you a working understanding of the principles

behind their behavior. Narcissists arenʼt just a collection of signs or traits as
described in many publications; theyʼre people, and as people they have
behavioral patterns they adhere to. Itʼs just that their behavior happens to be
harmful and dysfunctional to themselves and those around them.

I want you to have a healthy skepticism when reading while maintaining an open
mind to the possibilities of human behavior, and what people will do to get you to do
what they want.

Narcissists have tools to actively manipulate your perceptions of them. This is all
they do. Everything they say or do has a deliberate purpose, and that is to get you
to do something because you feel bad about it.

Theyʼre the most deceptive people Iʼve ever known. Theyʼre extremely hard to spot
because they can easily recognize your observations of them and make you doubt
yourself with false information. They are masters of lobbing bad feelings while
remaining hidden behind a curtain of good-intentions, their illusion.
The 16 Signs of a Narcissist ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! 2

10 Traits of the Narcissist

Before we get to the 16 signs, I want you to learn these general principles that will
lay the groundwork for your understanding.

Narcissists and narcissistic people:

1. Feel bad about themselves. They have low self-esteem. Given this, they must
feel that they are in control, in power, in the know and on the correct side of things
at all times.

I actually read in the Huffington Post that narcissists have high self-esteem. Donʼt
kid yourself! They donʼt! Their insufferable sense of entitlement and incessant
domineering do not come from a strong sense of self but a total lack of it.

Most (if not all) of the emotionally abusive and unstable people youʼll meet in your
life are insecure and live in fear every day. Bad behavior is a projection of the bad
feelings lying beneath, and emotional aggression is a defensive response to feeling
vulnerable and fearful of emotional abuse.

2. Are covert in their actions and transmission of bad feelings onto you. They hide
their malicious intentions and will ardently deny them when confronted. They will
exhibit the best good intentions while practicing the worst ones.

The theory is that they were raised in an environment that forbade having feelings
and expressing emotions that werenʼt allowed or deemed proper; basically anything
the parents didnʼt like or want to hear due to their own personal vices. If you want to
know how they got to be who they are today, you need look no further than their
family.

When you grow up in a household where you arenʼt allowed to be angry, you donʼt
stop being angry, you simply find other ways to express your anger. They then force
this emotional censorship onto you and deny having “bad” feelings themselves...
then express them in dysfunctional ways.

The covert nature of their abuse also makes them feel superior to other abusers
because they see it as more sophisticated and clever to control people without them
knowing or even suspecting it.
The 16 Signs of a Narcissist ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! 3

3. Use you to fix their problems. Fix isnʼt the right word; temporary high is more
accurate. You make them feel good about themselves by taking the fall and feeling
like an idiot. Oh, and did I forget to mention it only works temporarily?

4. Are very good at denying what they donʼt want to hear or believe, because it
is so costly to their inflated ego. So what they do is project their problems, vices and
bad feelings onto you, so that you have to deal with them.

5. Work slowly over long time frames in long-term relationships with a host (you).
People are big investments and a lot of work for narcissists. They typically donʼt hop
from person to person like other personality disorders.

6. Do not and cannot change, for the most part. Narcissistic personalities are
fundamentally broken people. Theyʼre very neurotic and have self-aggrandizing
fantasies that they have indulged in for most of their lives. This behavior is how they
cope with (and conceal) their deep emotional fragility.

With this distance from reality comes an inability to get or accept feedback about
their own behavior, so they canʼt change it.

7. Are not fully aware of their condition, and generally have to believe that they
are always good and right, despite what they do.

8. Will (attempt to) appear nice, good-natured, honest and very well-grounded, to
hide their true intentions. This includes affections for family, a circle of friends, and a
benevolent nature towards humanity. When observed closely, youʼll see that their
friendships and good-nature are paper thin.

Their lives are very superficial. They will do just enough to convince those around
them that they are good. Narcissists will never go to any great lengths except to
impress and manipulate people.

9. Will never allow you to feel adequate, because they donʼt. Narcissists do not
impart strength and self-esteem to others, they only drain it, and their highest goal is
to make their victim feel as miserable as possible and totally unaware it is
happening.

They will never make you feel good about yourself. They will only make you doubt
and question yourself, and at the very least feel awkward.
The 16 Signs of a Narcissist ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! 4

If you donʼt know what I mean by that, imagine that you are a child in grade school
again. In order to do anything, you must get the teacherʼs permission. Now imagine
that the nice homeroom teacher is out and the mean substitute teacher is in. So
when you have to do anything, not only do you have to go ask this spiteful person,
but you also get judged for everything you do.

Now imagine that the sub doesnʼt say anything mean outright, but implies that back
in her day, they didnʼt have everything you do and still did better because they were
better. To top it off, she shames you in front of the class for what you donʼt know and
what she does because sheʼs smarter and better than you are, and always will be.
She has been tasked with teaching you idiots and is kind enough to do so, but itʼs
really a waste of her time and talents.

This quirky analogy is no exaggeration of what itʼs like to be around a narcissist.

This is who they are and how they make you feel.

10. Lie left and right, up and down. Narcissists offload the responsibility of dealing
with the truth for you to bear. Itʼs also possible that they will have a difficult time
discerning what is true and what is false due to being in denial.

Narcissists are methodical liars rather than pathological, impulsive or chronic ones.
Their lying is not compulsive but planned and preconceived. Itʼs well thought-out
and always serves a purpose. They will have a particular end they are trying to
achieve with the lie.

However, in a panic-stricken frantic state where their identity is at stake and

intentions called into question, their default response when in trouble is to
spontaneously lie.

You canʼt do anything productive and grow as a human being or pursue any real
goals when you spend all of your time and energy running from what you donʼt want
to know, see or hear.

You may notice that “loving” and “amorous” are not on the list. I considered adding
them, but narcissists donʼt comprehend those terms well enough to consider using
them. They canʼt conceive of love and hence arenʼt really able to emulate it for their
own ends.
The 16 Signs of a Narcissist ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! 5

Many people display varying degrees of these traits, but only narcissists have all of
them. They may be somewhat hidden, but this will be the pattern of behavior in
every narcissist. They have the whole package.

Iʼve made a little classification system to delineate some of the differences among
people like this. Itʼs by no means official and you wonʼt find this in any psychology
textbook, but Iʼve found this classification system useful and you might too.

! Controlling people are anxious and insecure and behave in dysfunctional ways
to get people to do aimless and harmless things for them. This gives them a control
boost and eases their worry.
! Manipulative people use people to get back at other people. They want to
cause emotional harm but only do so with an impetus. They may enjoy it on that
occasion, but they donʼt desire to hurt people regularly.
! Narcissists and narcissistic people do both to bring emotional harm to
everyone involved except for themselves. They want to hurt people and make them
feel bad because it is the easiest and most effective way to make them feel
powerful.

All of them will attempt to alter your perception with things that are at least skewed if
not totally false. The point being is that they know itʼs false and anticipate
beforehand how you will react, to get you to do what they want. The lie is
engineered to get a reaction out of you, make you think something or get you to do
something.

Within narcissism itself, thereʼs a spectrum. There are narcissistic people with
narcissistic traits and there are narcissists. Narcissistic people will display patterns
of narcissistic behavior within limiting bounds. Narcissists are people with
narcissistic personality disorder, and are much worse.

There are also longtime victims of narcissists that have picked up their traits but go
about them half-heartedly and wonʼt carry them through.

All the little details arenʼt really relevant to this book because it mostly deals with
narcissists and very narcissistic people, but keep in mind that while there are a slew
of people that donʼt display these symptoms as strongly, the same principles still
apply to them.
The 16 Signs of a Narcissist ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! 6

The Narcissistʼs Psyche

It may seem strange that I now define the narcissist in general terms by describing
their perceptions of the world after just listing off their traits. This description is the
key to understanding them.

Once you know their inner thought process, you donʼt have to flip through this book
looking for a specific symptom. Youʼll understand their behavior from the principles
that govern them.

The main difference between narcissists and most people is that they view the
world only in relation to themselves. You may be thinking “everybody does that”,
but you have to understand that people with narcissistic tendencies view everything
only as itʼs worth to them.

To the controlling person, anything outside of themselves does not exist. Something
only exists if it serves a purpose or some personal function for how they feel about
themselves.

You may be asking yourself, “How does a narcissist differ from a psychopath?” The
answer is that narcissists are needy. They share a lack of empathy to a degree, but
they must have people to function and survive.

Psychopaths have pleasures, not needs. Some of those activities will probably
include manipulation, but they donʼt live off of it and depend on it. Their psyche
precludes having a total lack of empathy like narcissists. Some enjoy hurting
people, but they donʼt have to hurt people to function.

Narcissists will always have people propping them up, a source, and theyʼll always
have things that set them apart from everyone else. They engineer it, whether they
know it or not. It is by their actions that all of it comes to be the way it is, often again
and again because it is unsustainable.

Narcissists immediately recognize what and who will be useful for them. They know
who can and will meet their needs.

You know what Iʼm going to say next: they make it their highest priority to keep you
from thinking this. Itʼs the first layer of their personality, especially the rational,
understanding and humble one.
The 16 Signs of a Narcissist ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! 7

They fundamentally cannot empathize with other human beings nor their feelings
and circumstances. In their eyes, emotions are the key to manipulating people and
remaining “undercover”, so to speak.

The worst part is that they canʼt think any other way, they only fake empathy. Thatʼs
really the difference between narcissists and manipulative people in general, they
are insidious.

They view the world as dangerous, as only a place of malevolent people. They feel
itʼs a “me against the world” endeavor. This is not a worldview that regards empathy,
compassion and understanding as strengths.

So, they want you on guard, on defense, on the run because you canʼt think up a
workable defensible position for their methods. They donʼt want to give you time to
be able to think and respond, they want to throw you off, keep you on your toes and
worried about what may happen next. What theyʼll throw at you next.

Narcissists do have emotion, though. For one thing, how would they be able to
make you feel so bad if they didnʼt already feel bad for themselves in some fashion?

These are bad feelings from them being abused in the past. Unlike how most
people express their feelings and acknowledge them for what they are and mean,
narcissists were discouraged from doing so, and this is the result.

Bad people donʼt feel bad about being bad, they feel good. Narcissists are the exact
same way: itʼs not that they just donʼt care, they actually enjoy doing it. Your pain
comforts them.

Thatʼs why nothing is ever right, no matter what you do. They seemingly have
everything they could ever want as far as their needs go, yet theyʼre still unhappy,
and forever doomed to be. They donʼt deal with their problems even indirectly, and it
is always your fault.

Narcissists are broken people because they think theyʼre broken people. They may
indeed have psychological differences from us, but aside from that their behavior is
largely acquired.
The 16 Signs of a Narcissist ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! 8

They donʼt have any real crippling debilitation to speak of, they just feel so bad and
theyʼve adopted dysfunctional and self-destructive ways of coping. So theyʼve set
up arbitrary rules for their behavior that they can bend whenever they wish.

If it doesnʼt affect their control, they donʼt care because it is of no importance or

interest to them. Narcissists do what they want, when they want. I guarantee that
despite what they may say, they get what they want more often than not.

Now, thereʼs a tendency to pity people with narcissism. I fully understand that, and
itʼs something you should feel and express, even to retain your own compassion for
humanity.

That being said, thereʼs a tendency of many psychiatrists and clinical psychologists
to humanize narcissists, and interact with them in a way that treats them like human
beings without narcissism.

I donʼt like to dehumanize, but narcissists are malicious and dangerous people.
They seek to do real harm to you, and look forward to it. These are not people we
need to learn to understand to help, unless they want to be helped. No, we learn to
understand them to combat and protect ourselves from them.
" " " " "
Itʼs utterly fascinating and disturbing that almost all of what they say and ascribe to
you reflects onto them, their fears and their goals. They donʼt know you, they canʼt
even begin to understand what you feel and go through with them, much less what
you really want from your own life. They canʼt judge you because they donʼt have
the capacity to comprehend you fully.

So when theyʼre standing there talking about you, theyʼre really talking about
themselves. Their whimsical demands have to do with how they feel, not anything
you did or didnʼt do. Youʼre just an object, a brick wall to bounce things off of and
nod your head in agreement.

Put it back onto them. You donʼt have to remain passive and accept it, it isnʼt even
your problem to begin with.

Itʼs not just them. Itʼs also the dysfunctional people they find, the enablers, that
support and propagate the denial. By supporting their fantasy, you yourself are also
in denial because youʼre choosing to accept it and let it continue.
The 16 Signs of a Narcissist ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! 9

No matter how critical we believe ourselves to be, we will instinctively open up to

and trust someone who appears nice to us. This is the precise domain that
narcissists work in.

There is another issue I have found among narcissistic people, and this is
consistency of their hobbies and interests. Most will have just one or two things that
interest them that will be centered around a general theme or emotion they
associate with the pursuit. " " " " "

My dad loves to make knives. Heʼs a blade-smith and lives and breathes knives. He
also likes guns. He also likes martial arts. He also likes survival and backwoods
camping activities… which ties into his personal philosophy about surviving in a
harsh and dangerous world. Getting the picture?

My dad sees everything as a fight for survival. Every interaction with other human
beings is a battle to show who is superior, and of course he always comes out on
top. He works very hard to never convey that perception openly but he sure lives it
every day.

To profile a bit further, he idolizes backwoodsmen with very specific skills and little
social life. Old fashioned, no computer and little family. Itʼs an indirect way to talk
about oneself.

Heʼs not talking about the character archetype, heʼs talking about himself and how
he likes to think of himself: needs very little, pulls his own weight and provides for
himself, never leans on others and is totally independent, a harsh and practical
realist who knows what to do when disaster strikes.

Thatʼs fine, but itʼs not because he likes that kind of person. Itʼs how they make him
feel about himself. Itʼs not an interest, but a tool to improve self-esteem and image.
He feels tough because he differentiates himself from the mainstream and feels he
doesnʼt rely on others while that renewed self-confidence and harsh realism is
presented as a practical nature to people around him.

Heʼs just one example, but narcissists usually have a general theme or idea they
cling to. They also have to talk about it and show you thatʼs why they are superior,
that their logic for life is somehow better in the end.
The 16 Signs of a Narcissist ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! 10

But theyʼre very wishy-washy. They donʼt actually have any core principles or values
aside from their enormous ego, which they believe in wholeheartedly and hold onto
for dear life.

And they canʼt just allow you to live comfortably. They must destroy that, and the
next thing, and the next thing, whatever it may be. They have to have you to destroy
and break down over and over again, it never stops.

Theyʼre too scared to stop doing what they do, because itʼs all they know. They do
not grow and change to become someone else. Iʼm still not sure where the lines
blur; whether they canʼt grow because of the disorder or just choose a false sense
of security and stability because of the intimidations of the real world, where they
regrettably arenʼt masters of the universe. No matter the reason, they hurt
themselves.

I think the worst of them canʼt help it, and the ones who arenʼt so much at the mercy
of their fears just give in to those tendencies. But as much as I see mental health
professionals placing narcissism on a spectrum to relate them to people like us, I
really donʼt think you can understand them without being them.

Itʼs worth noting that theyʼll work to appear that they are the opposite of what they
are. Narcissists are a total contradiction. They accept only the good and deny the
rest of the bad. Theyʼll take a fantasy over reality if it makes them look better. The
problem is that the truth makes living in the world for them untenable.

Their children will often be in double-world; theyʼll act defiant in some way to protect
themselves from their parentʼs callous and distant behavior, but theyʼll also desire to
please them and impress them to make them think highly of them.

The narcissistic parent reads and understands fully the exact predicament their
child is in with them and will use it to full advantage in exploiting and controlling
them.

Again, I donʼt want to encourage you to disrespect them as people, that would only
serve to hurt you, but you donʼt have to be with narcissists or people whose sole
aim is to hurt you. You must respect them as people, despite who they are;
however, you must also respect the danger they pose to you and others.

So if it sounds like Iʼm getting personal, keep in mind that narcissists control you on
the most fundamental personal level, and I need to take that into account as I
The 16 Signs of a Narcissist ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! 11

explain it to you. Iʼm trying to be as objective as possible, even if it sounds like Iʼm
not. There are so many facets to their behavior and hence so much ground to cover.

Who They Are

Not all narcissistic people have to be your spouse or partner, though they mostly
are. The worst of them have to marry and live with a primary host to manipulate all
of the time.

Even when theyʼre just a friend, they might as well be a lover or roommate. In order
to manipulate, they must be in-touch and will contact you on a regular basis.
Regular visits, calls from work, get-togethers, etc., theyʼll always be your “closest
friend”.

I need to mention obsessive love and codependency because it is so prevalent in

these kinds of people. When narcissistic and other attachment disordered people
feel “love”, what they feel is an obsessive need to control another for attention and
love and to satisfy their sexual needs.

This means that in an intimate relationship, there is no “going steady”. Theyʼre going
to be looking for opportunities to get you into a vulnerable position, and that almost
always means getting the relationship physical as soon as possible.

All this will be presented under the guise of chemistry and connection, but thatʼs a
weeding out process to find vulnerable people and enablers. Every narcissist has
their own process of weeding out candidates for control to find the people who will
tolerate their abuse.

Those who accept the narcissistsʼ perception of themselves are who theyʼll
accordingly choose as friends, lovers, i.e., people they can manipulate. The
qualifying factors are complacency, timidity and servitude. They cast a wide net and
rely on volume, getting as many people as they can to choose from.

They donʼt change or revise their techniques if they donʼt work, theyʼll simply
present the illusion differently to different people. They donʼt develop their methods,
they simply find as many people as they can that it works on. Itʼs more quantity than
quality in the weeding out process. They may be able to adapt to some extent, but
even this is limited.
The 16 Signs of a Narcissist ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! 12

Only certain folks will fit the bill. Those predisposed to any kind of abuse are
potential candidates, and the weeding out process consists of placing these
individuals in many different situations and subjecting them to many different
personal abuses to see how they react and how they would fit into their role as an
emotional slave.

Letʼs take a look at the basic methods for them to discern who has real potential:

1. Direction of conversation. Narcissists have to direct the conversation at all

times. If they want to talk about something, they should be able to do so without the
candidate questioning or suspecting a thing. If itʼs not something they want to talk
about or be in the conversation, it doesnʼt exist. This includes excluding you from
the conversation as well.
2. You remain around even when the narcissist doesnʼt. Dependency is what fits
here. Narcissists are flaky and donʼt want to have to commit to other people in the
slightest, but they demand other people be and remain fiercely loyal to them despite
their own lack of investment.
3. How you react to narcissistic meltdowns. Do you attempt to confront the
narcissist on their reckless behavior and absurdities or do you attempt to alleviate
them by enabling their behavior and giving in and submitting to their demands?

Showing up late to a date, abruptly changing plans or canceling entirely are all used
in testing the weakness or strength of a person and their self-confidence, the
narcissistʼs enemy. If the person behaves the way that allows them to continue the
behavior, or in other words, enables them, these are signs they are easily controlled
and abused.

Using this method, they go through a lot of people searching for a potential partner.
If someone takes the abuse, or even facilitates it, they might be a good source of
narcissistic supply. Once theyʼve got you, everything changes. After youʼve already
agreed, youʼre in it for the long haul. You are forever committed, indebted to them.

Let me elaborate on potential partner. Anyone can be a potential partner, so both

intimate and platonic relationships apply. All narcissists need a partner to satisfy
their sexual needs and to act as their primary source of support, but they will take
on and control as many people as they can possibly manage. No amount is ever
enough or too much to handle.
The 16 Signs of a Narcissist ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! 13

The amount of victims required will change depending on the individual narcissistʼs
needs, but there is always a primary source and ancillary sources that follow in a
hierarchy of priority. This is the structure; it provides a safety net in case something
goes wrong with the primary source and they can fall back onto their “friends” as
narcissistic supply until they find a new primary source or woo the old one back.

They attach high priorities to the ones whoʼre most satisfying to control, usually the
more timid potential victims who are predisposed to being abused and are
comforted by it.

The primary source will be most familiar with the narcissist given the nature of the
relationship and their role in the narcissistʼs life. They get more attention and abuse
from them, while the ancillary sources get a dialed-back, more cautious, subverted
version of the abuse to test their tolerance level and willingness to participate in it.

Either way, all of their victims are subject to the same tricks and tests, regardless of
what role the narcissist is planning for them.

Itʼs startling how good they are at control despite being so emotionally immature.
They donʼt actually understand people on an emotional level, but they are still able
to exploit them to their advantage. Narcissists consciously understand basic
psychology on an intuitive level.

Speaking from personal experience, I have found that all narcissists are very similar,
and share much in common with each other. Their goals and modus operandi are
mostly identical to each other. Their need is the same, but how they satisfy that
need will be different.

When there isnʼt anything for the narcissist to directly benefit from by saying
something nice, they simply try to build trust and “get in” so to speak. They will
usually do it at the outset or after you have fallen out with them.

They wonʼt mention your falling out. This is plan B after theyʼve misstepped. They
will do so at some point, itʼs a question of whether or not you catch them on it. They
almost want you to because it gives them something new to do, a new game to play.
If you donʼt, they will worsen their behavior.
The 16 Signs of a Narcissist ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! 14

What this means is that they are trying to get inside your defenses to hurt you later.
Theyʼre holding their tongue to make a good investment at controlling you in the
future rather than now.

In a society where people can say “no thanks” to people they donʼt like, the people
who can do the most harm are the ones we donʼt suspect of being bad. The worst
people are the ones who can operate unseen and look like good people.

If these were rational people we were dealing with, that might work in getting them
to behave themselves. Alas, narcissists cannot stop because they arenʼt just mad or
stubborn, they have a personality disorder.

Can I let you in on a little secret? They donʼt care. They just want to boss you
around and tell you what to do. They need to retain a feeling of control at all times.

They would like to be in the position of advising and having you do things that you
donʼt want to do. They know they are bad for you, but being bad is good in this
case.

Ask yourself, for someone who cares so much about you, how much do they really
talk about you? What do they even like about you? How often do they ask you
about what you want, or even what they can do for you?

We all know hard-edged people with strong opinions that are difficult to be around,
but they donʼt leave you feeling horrible about yourself. Why is that? Itʼs because,
unlike narcissists, they arenʼt attacking you personally.

But with narcissists they canʼt refute true statements unless they attack you
personally, leading others to question your credibility.

We should be thankful that narcissists arenʼt perfect in their deception, and to a

great extent work against themselves. If there are any great weaknesses of
narcissists, it would be these three things:

1. Fundamentally donʼt know how scared and fragile they are, so they donʼt
know when it will sneak up on them after experiencing a trigger point and paralyze
them with fear and self-doubt, rendering them defenseless. They overestimate their
abilities.
The 16 Signs of a Narcissist ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! 15

2. Impulsive with control. They try too hard, and canʼt stop trying too hard. They
will push control on you even when it is to their detriment and hurts their agenda,
working against their own self-interests.
3. Just too darn conceited. Conceited at how smart and clever they are and how
they elevate themselves above everyone else. Cannot see their crippling disorder
and desires as such, but as a golden character trait no one else possesses. So
when someone actually knows something incriminating that the narcissist has done
and can verify it, itʼs devastating to the narcissist.

Theyʼll never say it outright, but everything is always bad. Their life is difficult, work
is hard and theyʼre burned out right now with all sorts of personal problems. The
trouble is that their “problems” are not their real problems; they are just excuses to
avoid dealing with their real problems."

I can tell you from personal experience that it does get easier to stand up for
yourself, however hard it is at the beginning, but your sympathy for them never
stops. In fact, the more you learn about them and understand the eternal
predicament theyʼre always in, you feel even worse for them. There is no stopping
what they do and there is no resting for them. They must always be this way for as
long as they live.

What They Do
It may first sound like Iʼm some sort of a zealot when explaining The 16 Signs of a
narcissist. Thatʼs because narcissistic people are indirect, or covert. They donʼt go
around spouting these things, throwing them in your face for you to see; they donʼt
see it themselves.

So while it may sound like Iʼm a zealot, itʼs probably because youʼre used to giving
them a free pass when they should be subject to scrutiny and be held accountable
for their behavior just like other people. That is something they work very hard to
avoid their whole entire lives.

The biggest obstacle in learning about narcissists is accepting what they do. Itʼs just
too hard to believe that there are people like this, living amongst us and doing these
things ever day.
The 16 Signs of a Narcissist ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! 16

Keep in mind, all the while theyʼre attempting to control you, they will also be a great
deal of fun at the outset, because they have to be. Thatʼs the only way they can
succeed and have people bear to be around them.

Abusers always have a reason as to why they abuse, including denying that they do
abuse or that what they do is abuse because of how much they care about you.
Abusers profess the most concern for you than anyone else.

So you see the narcissistic predicament theyʼre always in, each and every day of
their lives. They must:

1. Gain the favor and win the praise of those around them, feeding their
dependency on other human beings.
2. All the while do this in a way that does not give away their true intentions and
feelings of inadequacy about themselves. They must control you while having you
believe that they are not doing so, and even to believe it themselves.

Your daily behavior is catalogued in their head and analyzed. They keep tabs on
what youʼre thinking (what you tell them) and what youʼre doing. They find ways of
controlling you given your own personal habits.

That is why they must be around or in contact with you all of the time. They prefer
personal and intimate contact, because it allows for control. Donʼt misunderstand
my use of the word intimate, there is no intimacy to speak of, itʼs simply a tool.

Controlling people are talkers. Narcissists listen to talk and talk is easy; it makes
them feel in control. They connive and scheme, trying to find the best way to
present a certain issue so that others will react to it in the exact way they want.

Communication is quite simple: talk-talk-talk, then me-me-me and finally problems-

problems-problems. No, I didnʼt simplify, it really is like that. There may be fancy
tricks or turn of phrases and sudden topic changing, but thatʼs really what they do.

They live to talk and give false impressions, having people assume those
impressions are true. Having you listen to them is a vicious cycle that fuels itself. If
people believe it, it must be true.

There will be reasons to talk to you that are really excuses to bother and interrupt
you. It often comes in the form of, “Not to bother to you, but Iʼm…” Itʼll require you to
The 16 Signs of a Narcissist ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! 17

perform some activity thatʼll achieve its intended purpose: distracting you and
keeping you away from whatever you were doing.

As an authority figure in your life, they seek to control you with any challenge,
correction or problem they find with your life and what you should do with it. They
like to be able to drop just the slightest little hint and make you change your activity
immediately.

Part of being an authority also means telling you how to do things they have no
business telling you. For instance, advising you on your expertise or profession
when they have zero experience.

Passive ways of dampening your enthusiasm is common. One way of doing this is
by passively taking an authoritative tone with you. You arenʼt participating with them
in some activity; theyʼre being kind enough to instruct you with their expertise. You
may be showered with faint praise to push you towards performing that activity for
the reward stimulus.

Narcissists canʼt hide their emotions. If theyʼre happy, even when it is a time not to
be happy (such as you being miserable or something bad has happened), youʼll
know. If theyʼre feeling bad, youʼll also know.

On the other hand, youʼll never hear a narcissistʼs true feelings! They keep them
hidden from you for fear that youʼll take advantage and counteract their true
intentions.

The atmosphere and opinions are always theirs, not yours. If they feel bad, then the
environment is bad. If theyʼre happy, you should be too. Keep in mind that doesnʼt
mean you should be happy, but that you should be happy for them. Everything
depends on how they happen to feel about themselves.

Theyʼre either in a foul mood or incessantly talk-talk-talking at you. There are no

back-and-forth conversations; youʼre a brick wall to deflect back at them what
theyʼre telling you for self-confirmation and validation. You donʼt talk to them, they
talk at you and itʼs your job to listen, believe, and hang on their every word. A
thoughtful response isnʼt necessary or desired.

They may like things that others might dislike but that places them in a desired
social position. For instance, associating with groups that they feel are inferior to
The 16 Signs of a Narcissist ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! 18

them so that they can feel and act superior and talk about how itʼs not what they
want to do. They continue doing it though.

They may also dislike something because you like it. Narcissists are your
opposition, they supposedly care about you but their actions say they really donʼt
like you at all. Because they rely on you for their identity, most of the time in contrast
and opposition, they can control you by disliking something you like.

In another way, they will like something you like, and because it makes you look
good, they have to like it even more! This confers those positive perceptions from
that thing onto them.

They carefully mold an artificial environment especially for you, to craft your
perceptions. Your education, job and friends are all sub-par and pale in comparison
to theirs, and so your life is also judged accordingly.

Your personal space and boundaries are insults to them. How could you possibly
want space from them? They will routinely violate your requests for privacy and
personal space just to show that they can, and that youʼll take it from them.

This includes intruding on you during alone time, while getting dressed, using the
bathroom and bathing (as gross as that sounds).

Itʼs easy to understand why, personal space means they must respect you and your
presence, which their need for control entails they canʼt. How are they supposed to
talk you into a wall, and onto their side, if they canʼt talk to you? What do they do if
youʼre allowed to think without them?

They cater their methods to you on a personal level. Everything they say seems
perfectly reasonable because they personally craft it to your circumstances and
thinking. They have a way of wedging and implanting a little idea that grows into a
big idea from the fake impressions they feed you.

Whatever their concerns, remember itʼs always because they donʼt feel like they
have enough control over a situation, and need more. Theyʼre insecure in their
ability to command everyone to do what they want. They want you to be the
problem so they can be the solution. They must have it this way."
The 16 Signs of a Narcissist ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! 19

You may even get them to admit to less than perfect behavior or traits (although it
still is perfect), because being annoying or a pest is easier for them to accept than
blatant dependency and control over others. "

Theyʼll profess that you should change, stop being such a screw-up. But let me ask
you something. When all is said and done, what is the common factor in the
relationship? Whoʼs the one that never changes? In reality, they donʼt want
anything, especially you, to change at all. This is exactly how they want it; itʼs “as
good as it gets” for them.

Even their concerns come across as accusations that youʼre not meeting your
obligations and demanding that you do. Itʼs amazing how they can turn “Is []
alright?” or “How are you feeling?” into “Why arenʼt you doing []?”

Apparently they enjoy blissful ignorance though, because when push comes to
shove as to why they acted the way they did, “they didnʼt know”. Itʼs usually
because “no one told me”, relegating the blame onto you.

They:

! Never say “good job” or “Iʼm really happy with the job you did”; they say “almost”.
Theyʼll never genuinely compliment you, say you look good or thank you.
! Will let everyone know whatʼs wrong with you and why youʼre so flawed. Theyʼre
such good people for staying and putting up with you.
! Are never there. They never commit. They expect and demand that you be the
one to take all of the risk and fulfill all of the commitment.
! Are always competing with you. They want you in a position of always trying to
impress them.

Finding weakness is their key. They seek out the people who have already been
dealt a bad hand in life. People who already have a chip on their shoulder or had
crippling blows dealt to them. Itʼs all about perceived weaknesses and personal
information that they can sink their teeth into and use against you.

They make mean statements as probes to see how you respond. If you take it, they
can crank it up a notch and act meaner. Accepting unacceptable behavior is you
saying that youʼll accept unacceptable behavior.
The 16 Signs of a Narcissist ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! 20

You can never tell them anything personal because theyʼll turn right around and use
it against you. If you try to guard your feelings, they will guilt trip you into revealing
yourself. This can only work if you arenʼt a deceptive person yourself, and
narcissists identify and avoid deceptive people like themselves, because they know
thereʼs nothing to be gotten from them.

They make their presence known by being loud and forceful to intimidate you. Loud
walking, sighing, smashing and banging of things… sounds a lot like an angry child.

They have to be able to complain. They need guises to take issue with whatever it is
youʼre doing, or not doing. This includes making things up and lying about things
you donʼt know or canʼt find out for yourself, to create a complaining situation.

They always hit you when youʼre down and focused on something else thatʼs not
them. They will never face you when you act strong and confident. When youʼre
serious, theyʼre scared. They only have the illusion of strength by convincing others
they are strong.

They might use fake revelations and divulgence of feelings, such as guilt. This does
not violate the rule that narcissists never accept blame. Itʼs clearly a manipulative
tool because they never make an effort to change their behavior.

They may even go so far as to depict themselves as victims with a disease they just
canʼt help, but never take initiative to stop what theyʼre doing.

Watch out for physical indicators of their mental state and what they want you to do
about it. Body language and unspoken signals let you know what you should be
doing right now. With it comes a subtle emotional threat of what will happen if you
donʼt obey them. Shrugging their shoulders, hanging their head, sighing loudly,
coughing and even limping where there is no injury are all ways of saying “do
something about it.”

Theyʼre trying to get your attention so that you will ask, “What can I do for you?” To
which they can reply, “Well, you could [DO THIS] for me.” They love for people to
feel sorry for them, but not to pity them, because pitying them is not their aim and is
seen as you looking down upon them. Itʼs just a tool of control, because they know
themselves to be way beyond you, and they hold all of the power when you feel
sorry for them. They are in control.
The 16 Signs of a Narcissist ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! 21

Controlling behavior they donʼt usually use may be attributed to the nice effect. This
is when they act genuinely interested and concerned for your well-being for a short
time to get you back into playing the illusion game. Of course for them to be
illusions, they have to be untrue.

The real kicker is when you do something nice for them. Then they are unable to
undermine you except in very subtle ways, like being unimpressed and suggesting
youʼre not good enough.

They might also become anxious when youʼre going to leave because of
appointments and obligations and not on a whim they can question. If itʼs a good
thing, they have a hard time questioning it and challenging you, because they look
bad if they do.

Another trait theyʼll try to portray is what I call humble realism. Theyʼll be strong in
their resolve and very down-to-earth (I hate that phrase, but itʼs the only way to
describe it). What theyʼre saying in effect is they are more real than other people.

My Dad was very mean to my older brother, especially during his teenage years. He
would pick on him constantly to the point where he would just shut himself in his
room to get away from the abuse.

When my brother went off to college, he kept saying how “concerned” he was that
my brother wouldnʼt be able to make friends because of how difficult and isolated he
was. He was a contributing factor if not the cause of my brotherʼs lifestyle, but he
portrayed it as a problem of my brotherʼs.

Thatʼs a real flesh and blood example. Theyʼre the cause of the problem folks,
not the solution as they claim to be.

Narcissists also rely on negative comparison and contrast. They cannot genuinely
improve themselves to impress other people, so they do it by making others out to
be bad people. They cannot demonstrate to others their supposed greatness
without lying so they exaggerate their accomplishments by tearing others down in
the process.

They will often talk about how “things have changed” you or the situation between
you and them. Let me tell you something, narcissists never change and they never
learn. They never stop, because they cannot stop what they do. They can talk about
The 16 Signs of a Narcissist ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! 22

changing, but it never happens and their plans never really materialize. All they can
do is manipulate people.

Itʼs surprising how, whatever impression they give you, they are generally the exact
opposite. Their behavior is inconsistent with the impression. I call this the opposites
rule. It means that they project their undesirable intentions, actions and interests
onto you. Itʼs generally the direct opposite of what they say or do.

As it turns out, when they make you feel stupid and incompetent, it comes from a
deep fear within themselves that theyʼre truly the stupid and incompetent ones. By
abusing you and making you accept that feeling implicitly, they feel better. Thatʼs an
opposites rule reaction.

This extreme polar opposite intention is the result of a socially immature and
emotionally stunted individual. Itʼs all carefully designed to relieve them of their pain
by hurting you with it.

Itʼs as simple as it sounds. I hate to shake the ground beneath your feet, but “I love
you” may really mean “I hold you in utter contempt.” That doesnʼt mean you should
assume everything they say means they feel the opposite, but just be aware of it
and on the lookout for it, by holding up what they say or claim with what they
actually do.

Just in case you were wondering, narcissists will work together to achieve a
common goal, to the detriment of another as usual. The partnership is tenuous at
best because narcissists canʼt trust other people, and especially not narcissists.
(Interestingly, they wonʼt work with you, probably because you wouldnʼt conspire to
hurt someone else.)

Itʼs a very instinctual relationship because they both understand the otherʼs nature.
The closer they are, the more smoothly and seamless this process goes without
them ever talking about it directly.

Itʼs startling how bizarre they really are if youʼre able to get away from them and
experience the real world. When you get out and start talking to healthier people,
you realize how false their illusions are. " "
The 16 Signs of a Narcissist ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! 23

What They Need

Narcissists need constant engagement, personal attention and tending to. They fear
being alone and must have human contact at all times in some form, and in
personal contact most of the time. When theyʼre alone they feel unstable because
they donʼt have a continuous stream of support and reassurance from someone
else.

This is how fragile they really are. When there are no other human beings to knock
around, they feel powerless and incapable. People are their capital, so to speak.
People must be around to manipulate or control as a way to delude themselves and
others in creating their false picture of themselves.

They have to be superior in their own eyes and everyone elseʼs eyes. Compassion
and generosity do not give them this surge of superiority, control does. They find
and use any aggression they can get away with, to belittle others.

This is something I call the inverse principle. It means that the amount of control that
a narcissist feels is inversely related to your own self-worth. That is, as your self-
worth goes down, they feel more in control. As it goes up, they recognize your
strength and feel worse. It is always in their self-interest to make you feel bad about
yourself.

There are always things they talk about doing but never actually do. There is the
illusion that they have some kind of ambitious drive and goals they work towards.

When narcissists marry, the kind of person they choose is one who always
accommodates the narcissistʼs needs before their own. Itʼs the only type of person
they can live with.

You must always be on their side. They cannot stand debate or argument when
their control is in question. For this reason, they demand your loyalty and sole
support with all of their decisions.

There are times to be loyal but it shouldnʼt be from your guilt or when they behave
angrily and irrationally. Guilt is a tool that manipulative people try to instill in you to
influence you.
The 16 Signs of a Narcissist ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! 24

Narcissists donʼt have an end goal, only a behavioral response they want to
instill in you and keep going forever. They need to get a reaction and maintain
this dynamic to feel good. Without it, they succumb to mood cycles, ups and
downs and behavioral volatility.

How They Think

Letʼs look at how narcissists work internally by splitting up their psyche. These are
the three layers of their entire persona, and you will always interact with one of
these:

1st: Humble, modest, hardworking, kind, virtuous, selfless, unflappable,

unassuming, strong in character and moral integrity, compassionate (“concerned”)
about other peoplesʼ situations and well-being.
This is the person that everyone meets and knows on the outside. This is the default
position they will assume without thinking. The values are listed in the order youʼll
usually encounter them. That last one is particularly important, because it is a
vehicle (an excuse) for narcissists to do whatever they want out of their concern for
you.

2nd: Perfect, incredible, stunning, brilliant, unmatched, unparalleled.

This is how they really feel about themselves most of the time. This is how they
actually regard themselves. It is very grandiose, and with a good eye you will find
that they have grandiose fantasies about themselves based on certain traits they
feel that they exclusively possess. As Iʼll be explaining later, their fantasies will
contain certain themes.

3rd: Broken, vulnerable, totally incompetent, stupid, useless, worthless, a total

screw-up incapable of functioning as a human being in society.

This is what happens when someone or something hits one or more of their triggers.
They will either revert to a child where you must aid and assist them as their parent,
or they may fly into a rage and become physically dangerous, make threats, etc.

The reason it works is because theyʼre good at selecting the right people to bear
their problems and theyʼre very discreet about covering up their tracks. They
conceal themselves behind a convincing façade by believing it themselves.
The 16 Signs of a Narcissist ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! 25

This wholehearted belief works in personal and social contexts, since people will
buy into it. Thatʼs why they can do it, because it works.

These are the three states, and consequently how they will feel, at any one time.
They will always reside in one of these 3 states.

The first layer is the one youʼll see most often and the one everyone “on the
outside” knows them as. This is how they see what society values most in people
and desires them to be: someone who never gets mad, only cares about other
peoplesʼ welfare and well-being, is entirely selfless and only lives to serve others.

The second layer is how they feel most of the time. Notice how it isnʼt virtuous in the
slightest as the first is? In fact itʼs the complete opposite. This is their compensation
for the third layer; itʼs what they must feel like to function as human beings.

The third layer is how they really feel. This is the layer they occasionally fall to from
the second layer, and when they hit it hard, itʼs bad. You can see this in a
dysfunctional couple when the enabler is doing everything they can to prevent the
abuser from reaching this level. Itʼs bad for everyone.

Just like how narcissists have layers to their psyche, theyʼll also take on different
personas, just like in their psyche, to get people to behave in the way that makes
them feel comfortable.

The hard-sell, bold, daunting, taunting and aggressive personality is the one that
youʼll encounter first. Seemingly totally self-confident in their abilities, theyʼll act as
your superior and begin advising you on what you should do. They are the parent
and you are the child. This persona throws most people off and gets the narcissist
what they want.

When someone confronts them about it and stands up for themselves, this strategy
fails and they move on to the next one.

The next is “Poʼ me”, the endangered little child that has withdrawn and needs to be
protected. Everyone should behave so that they can feel okay. Youʼre hurting them,
so you should look like a blasted fool to make them look good. Tone it down a bit,
wonʼt you?
The 16 Signs of a Narcissist ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! 26

Narcissists have to believe they have only the best intentions for you because they
have to be good people. They arenʼt good, because they assume that what is good
for them is good for everyone else. They donʼt question themselves; it is granted
that theyʼre right.

They donʼt manipulate you into thinking their problems are your fault, they actually
believe it themselves. They do not produce the problems, you do.

This self-delusion runs rampant in their heads. They need other people around to
funnel problems to, because they canʼt deal with it by themselves.

They donʼt want to work through problems, they want you to be wrapped up and lost
in them. Problems are yours, even though they arenʼt. Hey, if you decide to be
around them, they are your problem.

They will never admit faults, because they are faultless. They will never question
themselves or their own intentions; they cannot imagine doing anything else. They
have no introspection. Their only regrets are what they didnʼt manage to get away
with.

Everything is an excuse to do what they want, to get what they want.

This is why I recommend, hard as it may sound, to think of them more as machines
and less as people. They are processes in and of themselves, they do not change.
When something fails, they have mechanisms that simply change course to the
same objective.

Have you ever seen a dysfunctional couple where the enabler is working too hard to
make sure everyone does what the abuser wants? This is what they want you to do.
Itʼs the same whether youʼre a couple or not. There is no growth, there is no you, itʼs
just them. Itʼs always about them.

Why They Do It
Abusers will always have excuses as to why they abuse, and how their abuses are
different from “real abuse”. Theyʼll draw a bold line as to what qualifies as “real
abuse” and how they arenʼt “really” abusive.
The 16 Signs of a Narcissist ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! 27

Keep that word “real” in mind for a second. Itʼs one youʼll find they use a lot, defining
whatʼs “real” for you. Defining whatʼs real to someone is a little like deciding what
food they like to eat or what shows they should enjoy.

Empirical evidence abounds as to defining abuse in absolute (non-relative) terms.

Narcissists just distort your perceptions and present facts in murky ways you canʼt
see, and conceal or warp the facts so you doubt yourself. As a good person, you
feel bad for making them out to be bad, so you prefer not to. They capitalize on this.

They suggest things to you that sound good on the outside but they know will make
you feel uncomfortable.

The best way to think of narcissists is as children or babies. When you donʼt give a
child the love, nurturing care and support they need to develop into healthy adults,
they remain babies in how they relate to others, and in demand for love, for the rest
of their lives.

However, because the demand for love wasnʼt received, they had to behave in other
ways to get attention. This is the situation they were brought up in and have had to
cope with their entire lives. Even when they arenʼt in that environment anymore, it is
so deeply engrained into their behavior they continue to do it.

You can understand how they feel and act when you look at them as children.
Children have a right to be mad for not being taken care of properly. They have a
right to be taken care of. That is their entitlement, and it is why narcissists are angry.

Babies canʼt go to adults and ask for love, so they put on displays to communicate.
Thatʼs what the narcissistʼs behavior is: displays and signals telling you to do
something for them, to make them feel safe. The problem is that narcissists never
grow up, and nothing is ever enough.

No amount of doing what they want will change them. They will never be happy,
satisfied or secure in themselves. Instead of growing into healthy adults, theyʼre
doomed to stay forever as dysfunctional children while indulging in their behavior.

Since weʼre on the topic of children, how do narcissists regard their own? As
competition, only theyʼre needier than their children. They have to compete with
their partner for parental attention over their children, and they despise it.
The 16 Signs of a Narcissist ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! 28

So why donʼt narcissists feel good permanently? Why donʼt their methods leave
them feeling forever satisfied? Why canʼt they change? Internally they have a
constant barrage of bad feelings that undermine everything they do. Something
youʼll keep reading in this book is that when you feel bad, sometimes you feel too
bad to do anything about it, so you donʼt.

Theyʼre scared. Iʼve found that narcissists tend towards the opposite of what they
pretend to be. They arenʼt strong willed, ambitious, brave, unconventional,
compassionate or fearless, but terrified that people will find out they arenʼt.

Narcissists are created within the family, and only the family. They will only talk
about their family in a positive light, because they are in denial of the abuse
themselves. However, it will probably be apparent to you at the very least that
something is wrong with their family.

The reserved, withdrawn, non-communicative family is the emotionally abusive

household. The abuser-enabler codependency originates in the parents, and the
children assume the roles given to them by the parents. Then the children compete
to win the attention of their parents through dysfunctional behaviors.

Another way to understand them is to start thinking of them the way they think of
themselves. How does everything relate to their identity? How does it make them
look to other people and feel about themselves?

The highest priority of the narcissist is getting support. Their highest goal is getting
you to inflate their egos without them having to force you… to have you on
automatic, ready, willing and able to do whatever they need whenever they want.

Now you are the parent and they are the child. This is the real dynamic in a
dependent relationship with a narcissist, because their problems (like all of us)
originated with their parents.

Two things drive their need for control. First, they are very scared because they feel
a lack of control over their environment and their own lives, much like children. They
need someone to protect them, and controlling you feels like they have some kind
of control over the world because of their sapped self-esteem.
The 16 Signs of a Narcissist ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! 29

Second, theyʼre envious of the self-control and independence you express but they
canʼt. They see you as having some kind of a divine privilege they canʼt indulge in,
so they envy you for it. Theyʼre really too scared to do what healthy people do.

Thereʼs also the “They do care, they just donʼt know how to express it any other way
and so thatʼs what they do” excuse. If they did care, they would learn to express it.
People donʼt just hurt others for no reason, by accident on a regular basis. They do
it because they enjoy it.

It isnʼt hard to care, you just have to be genuinely interested in a personʼs wellbeing
and their own personal flourishing, however they may see it and achieve it for
themselves. You also have to possess the capacity to care.
" " " " "
What Theyʼre Like
The most prominent and prevailing feature of narcissists is that theyʼre right, and
they are always right. Practically speaking, they are usually wrong because of their
deluded perceptions of the reality around them. But from a social relations
standpoint, and how they demand that people treat them, they will always be right.

They are greatly conceited. On the one hand, they see themselves as very
humble and modest. Yet, narcissistic personalities think they are the greatest thing
around. They yearn to be looked up to in an ideal manner by the people around
them, always being told how great they are. It may be their looks, smarts,
accomplishments, people they know, places theyʼve visited or what have you. They
have to feel like they possess something that no one else could ever dream of
having.

Youʼll find that they use every opportunity to mention their shining traits. This is your
function for them. You must provide that for them, this is your sole duty.

Anyone successful, potentially productive or especially impressive upstages them.

Narcissists believe themselves to be better than everyone else, using whatever they
can to justify it. Their superiority gives them certain exclusive privileges and rights
that others donʼt have. One of these is treating people poorly.

In this way, theyʼre also deluded. Most of what they believe about themselves is not
only false, but itʼs just an easy-fix button that makes them feel better about
The 16 Signs of a Narcissist ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! 30

themselves. Thatʼs why when you pop their bubble they can become physically
threatening and dangerous.

Narcissists donʼt believe abuse exists when they are the abusers. They are never
wrongdoers, they can only be victims. Itʼs a double standard. When you donʼt go
along with them, youʼre being abusive and doing wrong by them.

The reason narcissists work so hard to be in control is because they often feel they
arenʼt. For one thing, they likely were victims of abuse somewhere in their past, and
will do anything to ensure they arenʼt ever again, even if that includes being an
abuser themselves.

They create situations and circumstances that grant them potential control. Youʼll
always feel like youʼre tied to them, with promises to keep, obligations to fulfill and
activities to participate in with them, things you donʼt like and never committed to in
the first place. They wonʼt force you to do it; theyʼll guilt you into doing it, so itʼs your
choice, only not really.

Narcissists arenʼt aimless; they have goals with a purpose they want to see through.
They will try to convince you otherwise, but they are not isolated incidents and
accidents… they are well conceived, planned and executed goals to control you.
But theyʼre very unproductive in terms of doing something worthwhile thatʼs mutually
beneficial for everyone.

Notice how they never talk to you straight? Thatʼs because they canʼt. They donʼt
have your best intentions at heart, only theirs. They must lie to make their case, and
they will try flimsy arguments and personal attacks to get you to a point of
submission.

Narcissists really only perceive and appreciate the darker things in life. Theyʼre a
constant reminder of the darker side of life, fear and death.

Your financial dependence to them makes them feel more powerful. The setup is
such that you have to go through them to make every little purchase, transaction or
financial decision.

When theyʼre mean, they think itʼs justified and for a different reason than control.
When youʼre mean, they enjoy it, because it means theyʼre getting to you and
forcing you into an aggravated emotional state at their choosing. It also reinforces
The 16 Signs of a Narcissist ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! 31

the illusion that youʼre bad, even though you wouldnʼt have to be defensive if they
werenʼt bad.

They like chaos, upheaval and disorder and actively work to instigate it. When
youʼre in pain or emotional discomfort, guess what? They arenʼt. Conflicts with
family members, problems with your other friends, conflict at work with bosses or
coworkers are all openings for them to get their hooks into you.

They donʼt want you to defend yourself and possibly become strong and get away.
So getting you to an emotional state, whether it be sadness or anger, strengthens
their potential control and feelings of personal security.

Itʼs important for you to realize that argument and conflict is the end in itself. Itʼs
what they want, itʼs the goal. They donʼt want you to assert yourself and achieve
positive results or do what makes you happy. Thatʼs the opposite of what they want,
but their cover is that is what they want. In order to maintain that position, their
shtick if you like, you canʼt know that.

The arguments themselves arenʼt important, only the results are. There is no
personal attachment to an argument, thatʼs why itʼs so easy for them to abandon
issues once theyʼve gotten their emotional release.

Occasionally when confronted theyʼll get trapped in their own lie. This is a very
amusing thing to witness. They will totally abandon the argument and move on to
the next potentially fruitful tactic, which should show you what they really care
about: controlling you by whatever means possible in whatever way they can.

Narcissists are also very cowardly. When you step up and sternly declare your own
individuality, it terrifies them. Truly expressing oneself is something they cannot do,
much less conceive of.

They all have a “story” or theme they sell to you and everyone else. It wonʼt be
explicitly mentioned, just planted in your brain through stories, but it will be
consistent with how they view themselves and how they want others to view them.

Itʼs always something that “sets them apart” from the rest. They went to a great
school or graduated early, they received accolades from a trusted authority; they
cleverly got their way out of a mess.
The 16 Signs of a Narcissist ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! 32

At the same time, their story will have a “poor me” element that will make you feel
bad for them, as if somehow everything has always been against them but they still
triumph. Theyʼre outcasts from the main society, but theyʼve just somehow managed
to pull through anyway.

Watch for sob stories and big melodramatic episodes, they signify the narcissist
feeling a loss of control. As usual, the topic of their grief will be as reasonable as
they can make it, but it wonʼt actually be the problem. The problem is that people
arenʼt making them feel as they would like. Someone has stepped out of line and
you have got to fix it.

Watch also for unspoken rules and body language to communicate that youʼre
supposed to do something for them. These are the hallmarks of dysfunctional
relationships and families. Youʼd be surprised how much we communicate through
body language and facial expressions and not spoken language.

Youʼll find these subtle signals when you pay attention to how you feel and act
around the narcissist. Ask yourself why you did what you just did. Was it for some
purpose or to please them? Was it to remove yourself from their presence to avoid
being hurt or harmed? Are you fearful, content or even happy around them?

A big theme among narcissists is itʼs me against the world. From the narcissistʼs
viewpoint, everything and everyone not supporting their beliefs about themselves is
a threat, and has it out for them.

They see themselves as the only burdened ones at a disadvantage.

The me against the world bit is not a controlling tactic in and of itself, it actually
accurately depicts how they feel. The world is dangerous, and youʼre a fool not to
believe it and do the things they do to survive in it.

In their minds, everyone behaves and feels the way they do. So theyʼre not only
paranoid, they assume it as fact that everyone is as manipulative as they are, only
not as good at it. Everyone has the same intentions, but not their cunning.

And so youʼre either with me or against me is a common controlling tactic that

youʼre bound to come across. While narcissists donʼt lend you any of their loyalty,
The 16 Signs of a Narcissist ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! 33

they demand it from you. You are required to support them in everything that they
do and every decision that they make, no matter how irrational or poorly founded.

If you donʼt support and prop-up their worldview and all of their actions and beliefs,
youʼre being a bad person.

They can really only act as your superior, thatʼs going to be their position in every
interaction you have with them. Theyʼll be humble insofar as it makes them look real
and comforting, opening you up to taking their judgment of you seriously.

Then youʼre in the position of trying to please them. You cannot please them or
make them happy, trust me. Theyʼll feel pleased in their ability to get you to try to
please them, but they will never give you any sense of self-worth or satisfaction
from what you do for them. Itʼs never good enough and never will be.

They will always have reasons for why they do or donʼt do something. Again, this
seems like one of those “everyone does that” traits, but a narcissistʼs reasons for
doing something (or not) are so pervasive as to be pathological. They simply donʼt
want to do something, but they send signals out like they have specific reasons for
it, however they donʼt hold up or even make sense under closer scrutiny.

The illusion will be that they are being nice, thatʼs just the way they are in how they
express themselves, and you are going to have to live with it. Appearances are
good enough for them: theyʼre the only thing that matters.

They define the term “comfort zone” for you, and grant you whatever rights they
think you should have, when you should have them. Your rights wonʼt include the
right to your own space and personal privacy from them. Respecting your privacy is
a violation of their control.

Telling you what youʼre comfortable doing is their comfort zone, not yours.

They try to appear tempered and reasonable, but everything is personal to them.
Taking every minor or perceived offense personally is why they have to get you
back personally.

Theyʼll like something because you donʼt, and dislike something because you do.
They wonʼt like something just to squelch your joy. They canʼt enjoy something with
The 16 Signs of a Narcissist ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! 34

you so you have to try to enjoy things with them. Unfortunately, they have every
incentive to make you miserable because thatʼs what they enjoy.

Sometimes a question of “respect” will come up. Naturally, theyʼll question you
about your respect for them. What theyʼre forgetting is the “mutual” part from
“mutual respect”. We get respect by being respectful and expecting it from others in
return. If you want respect, conduct yourself as someone to be respected. They
decidedly fail to do that.

We all know professional complainers; people who can find fault and complain
about anything. Well narcissists qualify for that position, but they also take it a step
further by maximizing their complaint capital. They seek out and utilize everything
they can complain about.

They find things they can complain about and store them for later use.

Complaining how busy and overworked they feel is a way of bragging about how
hard they work. Narcissists equate any inconvenience with work, and always feel
they are worked to the bone. Despite all of the rhetoric and suggestion of how much
they sacrifice, they work only for themselves and do what they want to do. Itʼs such
an imposition to do anything for someone else.

At the very least theyʼre apathetic and indifferent, and youʼre lucky if they are. More
often than not, theyʼre malicious. When theyʼre in control, it may serve them to be
indifferent to you, but when theyʼre frantic and vulnerable, they must hurt you to feel
better.

They will always feel insecure at some point during the day and need an outlet. So
yours is a parasitic relationship that must be maintained regularly. They cannot do
without control for very long.

Control can mean ordering others around and having them doing things for you at
all times, obeying your wishes and carrying out your commands to the letter. It can
also mean occupying your time involuntarily and insulting you.
The 16 Signs of a Narcissist ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! 35

Narcissists do “good” to you even when you donʼt ask for it or want it… especially
when you donʼt ask for it or want it. Doing “good” is a powerful tool for doing what
they want to people even though they donʼt want it, all in the name of helping.

Itʼs a crime to not want what they want, to not want to be with them, be around them
and put up with them. Again, when you donʼt conform to their vision of who you are
as a person and how you should behave, you are being a bad person.

Narcissists are extremely competitive and must prove their superiority to others and
make them feel inferior, convince them of it.

Narcissists are vengeful and must “get you back” for things youʼve done to them,
such as not meet their needs. Theyʼre paranoid; so much of it is imagined. When
you take responsibility for yourself or refuse to play into their game for example, this
is an encroachment on their rights.

While big moves will be needed every once in a while to make the narcissists feel
better, they need little moves happening all of the time as a regular outlet. In
conversation for instance, cutting you off mid-sentence or walking out mid-
conversation. This applies to both in-person and by phone.

Once theyʼve got what they want and are no longer in a position to impress, the
good times suddenly disappear. Nothing you do with them is satisfying. Finding time
for yourself is almost impossible, and so peace also comes at premium price.

They appear jovial and contented, but must keep their emotional distance from you
and have many ways of doing so. One is to hurt you and keep you on your toes.
They fear love and compassion because it requires vulnerability.

Iʼve found that narcissists are generally very scared. Theyʼre scared of failing,
scared of looking stupid or bad in front of other people, but know that revealing so
would be a death warrant. They channel this angst into the impulsivity you see.

As you probably know, they carry around negative thoughts and themes in their
heads. This isnʼt uncommon. They have disturbing things floating around in their
heads that sometimes slip out in conversation.

When theyʼre really bent out of shape but canʼt talk about it, they start conversations
on a topic thatʼs really about another topic which serves as emotional release.
The 16 Signs of a Narcissist ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! 36

For example, they may start a conflict with you about something else because they
arenʼt able to complain about whatʼs really bothering them. By being difficult, it gives
them some of the release, and the reaction from you, they need.

Their philosophy doesnʼt allow the possibility for other people to succeed, thatʻs why
they have such a hard time when people do succeed. So they spite otherʼs success
and become threatened because it makes them feel and look bad.

They donʼt deal with their negative feelings, so they are forced to carry them around
all the time. Rather than acknowledge and sort their feelings out, they cope with
them indirectly, expressing it by seeping it into every interaction you have with them.

Narcissists like dependent people that donʼt expect commitment. Now that sounds
strange, but dependent people are intimate and need others around to feel safe, like
the narcissists.

They need you to be their parent. They are children and it is your responsibility to
care for them. However, dysfunctional children want you to do everything for them.

They become aggressive even to their own small children when they accuse them
of wrongdoing or deception and donʼt want to be around them. They compete with
their own children for the other parentʼs love, affection and validation.

Kids know feelings best, they havenʼt learned how to conceal or deny them yet, and
their survival depends on not doubting their own feelings. Narcissists donʼt like that
because children are harder to fool and control with manipulative methods. They
can detect the bad feelings.

Narcissists donʼt respond directly to accusations or questioning, they react with

hostility. They donʼt actually have a real identity they can value, believe in and
support so they donʼt say, “Well, I donʼt think Iʼm mean for reasons x and y.” They
just get you back later for your accusation.

Theyʼre aware of what theyʼre doing and so itʼs just a chore to reason with you
about whether or not itʼs true. Theyʼd rather hurt you covertly than do so in an outlet
theyʼre not very good in and doesnʼt provide them with the release theyʼre looking
for.
The 16 Signs of a Narcissist ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! 37

Narcissists donʼt reason, they attack your feelings and personal sense of self and
deny they are doing just that. Saying and doing mean things is as much to hurt you
as to bolster them, since the efficacy of their attacks are in inverse proportion to how
bad they make you feel.

Theyʼd much rather talk about whatʼs wrong with you than look at what they did.

They bring up things and mention threats that show their propensity for violence.
The only reason they donʼt threaten you with violence consistently is because itʼs
much harder to deny and cover up than emotional abuse. It has the potential to ruin
them and their illusion of themselves. Violence wonʼt get them what they want by
itself: itʼs a last resort when they feel desperate.

Unless they explode into incoherent rage narcissists donʼt really get mad. They just
destroy your things and hurt you later to get you back.

If they can act aggressively and transform you into someone who responds
aggressively as well, this will also benefit them. Youʼre responding in a desirable
way to their aggression, and assuring more aggression from them in the future.

Giving you things as gifts that entail doing something, or force gifting, is another
way they guilt you into action. They want you to feel grateful for everything they ever
give you, especially their sage advice. Regardless, I have never seen a narcissist to
not equate “help” with attention, manipulation and control.

Narcissists wonʼt ask how youʼre doing unless it is to control. Theyʼll use it as a way
of guilting you out for suspecting they donʼt care about you.

They break the rules of common etiquette and decency, sometimes without realizing
it. One of these is giving out unsolicited advice – free throwing advice when it is
neither requested nor wanted. They simply cannot help but to tell others what they
think of what theyʼre doing. They use it as a tool to diminish and control people.

Narcissists do something with apparent proficiency and competence, not to

encourage you to do it because you can and itʼs easy, but to discourage you from
doing it because itʼs too difficult for you.
The 16 Signs of a Narcissist ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! 38

They insist on you doing things you really donʼt want to do, for your own good.
These things are never terribly productive, in fact theyʼre usually very unproductive
and will never lead to anything fruitful or get you anywhere in life.

Aggressive suggestion is when they bother you to do something they know you
donʼt want to do. Itʼll sound like itʼs just one thing they want from you, but itʼs really
an agenda theyʼre trying to further.

At first it will be direct, “I think you should really ________”, then “hey, why donʼt you
think about ________?” They bring it up in different contexts with different reasons
for doing it, but itʼs always the same story: do what I want.

When they really need to get you to do something, it becomes a high-priority

agenda for them. This wave comes in two, and possibly three, parts:

1. The hard-sell, harassing you and making this thing a high priority you need to do
right now. Itʼs right now because that attaches urgency and limited-time to it. With
that sense of urgency comes stress and with stress comes less reasoning through
your decisions. Theyʼre putting you in a position where you donʼt think and canʼt
resist them with a logical argument, because youʼre too scared. You canʼt defend
yourself and are helpless to their control, and they know it.
2. The understanding, compassionate side of them comes through and they start
supporting whatever youʼre doing, and pretend to understand your reasoning for not
doing what they want you to do. They set you up to ask, “Hey, why donʼt you just do
this instead?” This phase is integration.
3. When all else fails, and it will at some point or another, theyʼll try to terrorize,
muscle and/or scare you into doing what they want. At this phase, they can either
be the enemy or act as your refuge from the enemy. In life or death, donʼt you want
to do what theyʼre suggesting and live? That is, theyʼll make something out to be
dangerous, and their solution becomes the solution to that danger. I call this
repositioning.

Narcissists canʼt stand other narcissists, and for good reason: they know
themselves too well.

They laugh at you, talk down to you and treat you as less than human. You feeling
and acting sub-human is also necessary for them to ferment a long term relationship
with you, entirely of this nature.
The 16 Signs of a Narcissist ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! 39

They love not giving you what you want, like withdrawing love, attention and
affection. It appears conditional, but they canʼt give you those things in the first
place.

They will adapt their methods to the situation for flexible control. They match the tool
with the goal at hand. The situation includes what state of mind youʼre in and the
people around you who shape opinions. The people they must impress.

A narcissistʼs relationship to everyone else around them is dysfunctional and

involuntary. They are incompatible, obstructive, obtuse and difficult to communicate
with. They donʼt have time, there are scheduling conflicts, they run you around, they
want more, it wasnʼt what they wanted or asked for… the list goes on, but they are
never satisfied. Rule #1 in the narcissistʼs toolkit is always ask for more and never
appear happy or satisfied, keep the pressure on.

Theyʼre always pressing harder to further their control. There is no break, pause or
downtime; everything is just another way to get what they need from you. They
never stop chasing, calling, talking and trying to get you to do something for them.
Itʼs the state theyʼre always in, itʼs who they are as human beings relating to other
human beings. They never stop trying. They never learn.

Narcissists will never listen or learn from you unless, you guessed it, theyʼre trying
to manipulate you. You will never be given the light of day, to do so would impart
respect and strength to you. You being the teacher requires them to be the student,
which they regard as subordination. They cannot be subordinate to anyone unless
theyʼre passively aggressive in return.

Thereʼs no conception of your personal boundaries or respect for them. Personal

boundaries communicate personal strength. If they respected your emotional and
physical boundaries, their control would totally evaporate.

They are always there, always present. Control necessitates contact with the
controlled as much as humanly possible. You may be surprised at how much
narcissists donʼt just value but need other human beings to say and propagate nice
things about them. Thatʼs the only way they can feel good instead of bad.

Your time is their time. When youʼre not fulfilling your obligations to them as
emotional slave, youʼre failing. But youʼre also failing when you are because as an
The 16 Signs of a Narcissist ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! 40

emotional slave you can never be good enough. Thatʼs how they get and keep you
in line, by getting you to be always trying to improve and please them.

They use every interaction you have with them as a vehicle to express, reassure or
expand their dominance over you.

They absolutely hate it when you do a good thing and they canʼt find a way to
criticize it. If they canʼt get you away from doing it, theyʼll try and dissuade you by
implying youʼre bad at it. When they canʼt find a reason for you to not do that thing,
they must have an “upset” to guilt you back under their thumb.

An upset is “identify a problem and take it to you” to an extreme. Itʼs a really big
deal. There may be screaming and yelling, crying, physical pushing and shoving or
just throwing things around. The problem will be absurd, of course, but their reaction
to it will be much more intense. The intent is for you to get the message: “stop what
youʼre doing and do what I want you to do.”

Youʼre probably noticing how parasitic and vampiric this whole process is. Youʼd be
right. There is no reciprocation in this setup; you take their problems onto you, or
rather, they offload them onto you.

When it comes to what youʼre doing, theyʼre thinking against rather than for; noticing
all of the things that are wrong and could go wrong rather than whatʼs right and the
good that comes from it.

Hereʼs the best way to do something that people donʼt want you to do or is widely
thought of as bad and has negative connotations with it: claim itʼs for the best and
present an interpretation that it is not bad but in fact something good. When you
make it morally just, people are more willing to do something from out of their good
nature.

The best self-rationalization is moral justness. That somehow whatever someone

does is right because they have good intentions and aim to do right by you.
Narcissists however, also add the caveat, “whatʼs good for me is good for everyone
else.” I say “everyone else” just to illustrate the concept to you, but the fact is
narcissists donʼt get far enough to think about “everyone else”, they only think about
themselves and what they want right now.
The 16 Signs of a Narcissist ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! 41

Theyʼre afraid of looking stupid to others and being regarded as inadequate by

them, so they make you feel and think you should feel that way when you do things
theyʼre too afraid to do, think about or even attempt.

They work by incessant creeping in small steps. Thereʼs no efficient quality to their
work, theyʼre actually very inefficient in their control, but they never stop doing it.
This incessant and repetitive nature is what gets to you. They are just a natural
force and not a person, it is their very nature to do this, and it becomes natural to
you.

The creeping principle is when they point out problems, make big demands and
then have it out with you when you take issue or donʼt give in to their demands.

This is how they do it: they make a big deal over a minor thing, and at some point
you will point out how irrational it is for them to be upset. A passive-aggressive
argument ensues where they poke and stab you covertly to get what they want. The
argument will become emotionally heated and very personal. You point out how
aggressive theyʼre being for such a minor issue, and how the aggression is targeted
at you and has seemingly nothing to do with the problem and isnʼt helping to solve
it. Theyʼll deny this, and continue hammering away at you until you get upset. Then
theyʼll say or do something totally unrelated to the discussion to really upset you,
and back off, abruptly ending the battle.

Youʼll have won the argument from being victimized, but will have lost the battle.
They wanted you to confront them so they could stick you with their pins and grab
you with their hooks; the minor complaint thatʼs your responsibility to fix had nothing
to do with it and was a façade.

It wasnʼt the problem, it was an internal and innate need in them for conflict and
pouring of their bad feelings onto you.

Narcissistʼs work in long time spans, and itʼs these “little” things they use to weaken
you over time. Itʼs how they slowly encroach upon your personal space and drain
your livelihood.

They take on fake initiatives and impart fake beliefs. Narcissists have a thing I like to
call cyclic instability. It presents itself as the narcissists taking on an initiative that
forces you to participate, but never really materializes or happens. What follows is a
The 16 Signs of a Narcissist ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! 42

meltdown because of its failure that you have to take upon your shoulders to
alleviate.

They can get you to do something for them, fooling you that they believe something
they donʼt, and that you should believe it too. Theyʼll lie about their beliefs to get you
to you to do something you wouldnʼt do otherwise.

Another common tactic they use is to abscond from a responsibility or duty by doing
a poor job so that you take it upon yourself to correct it.

An example would be travel arrangements or career goals that they never get
around to. When it comes down to it, they donʼt really want to do any of those things
in the first place, only talk about them like they do. Everything they do in that
direction will grant them bragging rights about their results in that area.

Healthy people become stronger by self-empowerment and doing things for

themselves. Narcissists do it by weakening others relative to them so that they feel
and appear stronger, but really arenʼt. For this reason, they are obsessed with
others and canʼt introspect and hence cannot change. They donʼt think about
themselves except in terms of the illusion and self-aggrandizement.

Theyʼre always so cold and distant, especially when they are working you with their
“perfect” personality. Itʼs such a visible contrast youʼll feel it for yourself. How they
just donʼt see other human beings as human beings in and of themselves; theyʼre
only there to meet the needs of the narcissist.

They arenʼt attached to anything, only things that represent their level of control
over people. They donʼt care about their childhood town or their house. They donʼt
have a home.

They donʼt have interests, they only have interests insofar as they make them look
good to others and feel good about themselves. Everything is about and for them.

Manipulative people donʼt take kindly to accusations of their controlling behavior, but
they dislike it even more when you reduce or take away their ability to control you.

When you run they chase. When you turn around and face them with what theyʼre
doing, they run.
The 16 Signs of a Narcissist ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! 43

Hereʼs a list for you to recap:

1) Theyʼre obstructive, obstinate and take trivial things and draw them out to be
long, convoluted and difficult to do.
2) They must be talking at you, and youʼd better not have much to say in way of
response. That would take the attention off of them.
3) They are relentless in getting you to meet their needs. They never stop. If they
donʼt have it, itʼs their top priority.
4) Theyʼre sweet, friendly and charitable when itʼs not a problem anymore.
5) They love to have you at their beck and call, have you jump when they sigh in
dissatisfaction with what youʼre doing.
6) Narcissists donʼt function. They only look like they can function by convincing
others that they do.
7) Narcissists attempt to hide their emotions so that you canʼt read them. This is a
futile task, because their intentions come through in their actions regardless.
8) Take up as much time of yours as they can, waiting around, failing to act,
speaking very slowly but aimlessly.
9) Despite their productive image, they waste a lot of time doing absolutely nothing.
Standing or wandering around trying to intimidate you.
10) They always have their finger on a list of things that bother you, touchy subjects
they can integrate into the conversation anytime they want to hurt you.
11) They love attention and for people to talk, desire and praise them.
12) Some of them use sexuality and nudity to seduce you or make you
uncomfortable in private settings.
13) They claw, bite and scratch to get the final “right” word in. They are the judges of
your life and the gatekeepers to what you want to do with it.
14) Discount your abilities and become angered by them. Grow to despise your
strengths, especially when you are complimented for them and steal the show and
their spotlight.
15) Regardless of how unproductive their initiatives and goals, they demand your
full support to encourage them in their fake efforts.
The 16 Signs of a Narcissist ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! 44

16) They need you to fail so they donʼt feel bad about having failed. They do this by
making sure you suffer the consequences of their bad actions. If they canʼt escape
the consequences themselves, it helps to have you suffer along with them.
17) They like to not tell you things you donʼt know and make you feel stupid for not
knowing them.
18) They act like they have a very tight schedule they must adhere to. This is part of
their hard work ethic, something their ego is tied very close to.
19) Theyʼre thinkers and schemers. Narcissists have a whole other side to them that
no one ever sees, the side that plots and schemes of ways to manipulate you.
20) They bring up topics to interest you in things and start you talking, bring you out
of your abused shell to abuse you some more. Bring up your favorite topics to then
ignore you to show you arenʼt important and they donʼt care.
21) They think theyʼre exceptional and theyʼre right; theyʼre exceptionally deluded
about their self-image.
22) They must retain financial control and legal ownership of things so that you canʼt
tell them what to do; so that you canʼt be in control of your own life.
23) They only live in their world and want you to be in their world, and cannot
possibly imagine living in your world.

Every narcissist has their own version of the perfect personality and the perfect
front, but they all have their own weaknesses that cause them to reveal themselves
and their true nature.

How They Feel

As youʼre probably aware by now, narcissists are extraordinarily conflicted
people; making you feel allegiance and loyalty to them through pity and their
position in society as outcasts but also feeling superior and just. They feel this to be
their right to control, they demand your loyalty to be abused and believe that youʼre
not worthy of their loyalty.

If there is an ultimate goal of the narcissist it is to install and fortify self-defeat within
you. When they can make your own inner voice and sub-conscious control you
within your own mind, they feel theyʼve won.
The 16 Signs of a Narcissist ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! 45

This is a comprehensive list of the narcissistʼs exclusive, self-proclaimed rights. Your

violation of any of these rights grants them the power of retribution over you.
i. The right to feel good when you feel bad.
ii. The right to instigate you feeling bad.
iii. The right to own and control everything and be the sole decision-maker. They
may humor you and have you believe that your choice actually matters and that
your voice is heard if they so choose. This also means they have a right to your
stuff, where it goes and whether you need it anymore.
iv. The right to spontaneously intervene and assume control over your life out of
their concern for you whenever they want.
v. The right to interrupt you no matter what youʼre doing and make requests. You
then have a duty to bear responsibility for and carry out that request. Youʼre
obligated to meet any condition, fulfill all requests and complete any task they
assign to you.
vi. The right to be apathetic or even sadistic, and treat people however they want.
This one actually is their right, but the least they could do is admit it to all of us and
not continue to subject us to it.

With the right to treat people however they want, they also expect to be able to do
that without incurring any social penalties, such as dislike or someone reacting to
them the same way. They should be relinquished of having to bear social
responsibility for their rudeness.

Notice how all those rights include what they can do to you and not what they canʼt
do to you or what you canʼt do to them? They are the privileged, supreme
aggressors. You have a responsibility to be abused by them. It is your sole duty in
life, and it is their right to do so. Their problems are your problems.

Narcissists displace their problems onto you. They then present you as having
those problems to other people. You will then begin to accept these problems as
your own.

Many nice people are also gullible and can easily be led into thinking all people are
well-meaning like them. This is one of the curses of being a good person; that youʼll
work to help bad people -- thinking itʼs the right thing to do.
The 16 Signs of a Narcissist ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! 46

Thatʼs why narcissists frame themselves this way, because it works and happens to
be the only way they can live in the world. If being abusive outright worked, they
would do that. So while they are a product of abuse themselves, they operate in the
“nice people” world.

The truth is that they donʼt feel or mean what they say, but recognize how it makes
you feel, say and do. You take to heart both the bad and good things they say about
you, little as though the latter may be.

Itʼs very coincidental that no matter where they are, what they do or who they
choose to associate with, they always have the same problems no matter the
situation. Circumstances may change, but theyʼre always in the same situation.

Disagreement means disbelief and they view that as being unsupportive of them.
You must prop them up whenever they demand it.

Narcissists canʼt disprove you, but they can discredit you by fake counterexample. I
call this the negation technique. Narcissists only manipulate perceptions by
comparing themselves to others, contrasting them in a negative light and
denigrating them. They can also give the impression that someone has bad
intentions.

Narcissists can make others look good as well, but only using this technique. Theyʼll
usually do so towards someone else if itʼs within their interests to do so, that is,
when it makes them look good to interested parties.

False talk conceals true intentions and distracts you from figuring out whatʼs going
on. Most of what they say isnʼt how they really feel, itʼs a cover.

Narcissists fluctuate in emotional cycles and experience vast ups and downs.
Having to feel superior to everyone else to feel good is a cyclic game; it cannot be
maintained all of the time, because no one is better than everyone else all of the
time, not even some of the time. It is unsustainable and so must be tended to by
you.

Narcissistic people are, quite bluntly, mean. But mean isnʼt always saying “you suck”
to your face. It can also mean suggesting your incompetency to others, throwing
away your stuff “accidentally” when youʼre out of town because they donʼt like it or
forcing a situation upon you because they “thought” youʼd like it.
The 16 Signs of a Narcissist ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! 47

They tried. They will have always given it their best effort and put their best foot
forward. It didnʼt work, and it must be because it is someone elseʼs fault, because it
canʼt be theirs.

Adversarial and manipulative relationships are the name of the game, and whoever
does it best wins. If you refuse to participate, you arenʼt acknowledging the natural
state of things and will get eaten alive.

They learn to be mean in different ways so they can be mean without having to be
mean. When youʼre a deluded person you can really only be around other deluded
people.

Self-rationalization isnʼt an excuse but their right.

And as soon as one weak-point disappears and becomes useless for them to
manipulate you with, they drop it entirely and move right on to finding the next thing
to hurt you with.

There are a number of dominance gestures they will employ. Most of them involve
some form of physical intimidation or even aggression. Theyʼre pretty unique to the
narcissist, but hereʼs a few youʼre likely to see:

! Moving your stuff or getting rid of it when you arenʼt around

! Invading your personal space and physically obstructing you from doing things,
may include subtle threats of force
! Cornering you in an area they control and pressing you to tell them something or
do something
! Acting as the barrier or gatekeeper between you and other people. They like to
be your only contact with society and choose when you see people

Theyʻre masters of the universe and know it all when it comes to your life and
everyone elseʼs. They know what you should be doing at any one time. Yet
everything is a personal judgment, not a reasonable or logical one, but it will be
disguised as reasonable and logical.

Narcissists make judgments and decisions about people before the fact. They just
donʼt like things that donʼt have to do with them and make up convoluted excuses to
justify it.
The 16 Signs of a Narcissist ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! 48

Victims who arenʼt strong enough to defend themselves make them become angry.
This is because they displace their anger and blame others for not helping them;
they do not blame their own weakness and they donʼt blame their abusers. They
internalize it and redirect it to other outlets, and they become emotional problems as
well.

A narcissistʼs “perfection” and justification for their self-love is theyʼre just so great,
their smarts, good looks, organizational ability, coordination, some accomplishment
that no one else has or can ever match, a trait or habit or activity. Problems occur
when that perfect ideal little identity is threatened.

There is a great deal of hierarchy to their needs as well as the victims that they prey
upon. There will be a primary victim they need to interact with most of the time, and
other ancillary contacts that give their ego a boost in the absence of their primary
source.

Narcissists lay the groundwork for future abuse with potential victims with minor
complaints and concerns that grow into major ones. Little exercises that test if
youʼre a viable person to be controlled.

Potential control comforts them. Thatʼs why theyʼll have others they control “on the
side”, so to speak. This also includes infidelity and sexual relationships, since for
most narcissists that is a wealthy source of control.

All they need is that feeling that they can get what they want whenever they want,
they donʼt care what you believe. They donʼt care if you think itʼs stupid if you do it, if
you go right along with their fantasy. They may even like it if you proclaim you
despise or hate them, knowing that even so, they still have control over you and that
you have no choice but to accept it as the natural and undeniable state of things.

Nothing is good or right but them. They always have their finger on ways of
reverting back to the negative. The bad part of something, or why, no matter how
seemingly good, something is still bad.

I think this is because they canʼt believe good things on the one hand, because it
would demolish their beliefs. Good things mean that they could be doing better for
themselves, and they donʼt want or think they could be.
The 16 Signs of a Narcissist ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! 49

Something good for you is bad for them. That opens up too many possibilities for
you and sheds light on their own severe self-imposed limitations and views.

Try talking about yourself and see what they do. Are they interested, do they respect
you? How does their response make you feel?

Theyʼre very limited. They have one angle, one personality, one skill they all work to
great effect, but when it doesnʼt work, it fails miserably, no matter how clever. It may
work most of the time, but nothing works all of the time.

You always feel like youʼre on the run from them. They know where you are so they
can sneak up on you, bother and harass you whenever they feel like.

A normal person would never behave the way they do. Itʼs always me-me-me. They
donʼt “hope you succeed” or that “it works out for you.” They canʼt enjoy themselves
if it does. They see your success as you trying to defy or hurt them in some way.

The thing that makes narcissists bad is that being caught and exposed for their bad
nature (and usually because of their bad behavior) doesnʼt make them want to be
good, only do more bad things to conceal bad. They lie their way out of lies, but
create more lies in the process that will catch up with them later.

Topic obsession falls into the same category. Itʼs similar in that they bother you
incessantly, but they are focused directly on the topic instead of you. Youʼre really
just a sounding board to listen to them and playback what they already want to do.
Youʼre supposed to validate and reinforce their decision, whatever it may be. Youʼre
not supposed to give your opinion or challenge them.

When they really need a release, they like to get you to break down and emotionally
fall apart. Crying, screaming and ranting at them in your sensitive state while they
look on as if they are the abused ones. It cements the concept that you are bad and
mean to them while letting you bear the bad emotions and express it for them. They
resolve to stay with you because theyʼre so good and care about you so much.

Narcissists donʼt work very hard at anything but control. Even with control, often
times they take the easy, messy way because they donʼt really like to have to work
for anything but looking like they work.
The 16 Signs of a Narcissist ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! 50

They do own you, but theyʼll support others abusing you if it works in their favor. If
you think about it, this makes perfect sense. Itʼs covert abuse they instigate but itʼs
better for them because theyʼre not the ones directly abusing you and canʼt be
blamed for it.

For this reason, they instill values in you to allow others to abuse and control you,
so you donʼt question it. They feel strong around their fantasy, sort of like that kid at
school that couldnʼt pick on you by himself but needed his friends to be around him
to impress and feel powerful. " " "

This also furthers their illusion that it is normal to be abused, because other people
are treating you that way too.

It feels that way because youʼre doing just that, feeling. In order to remain functional
in the world, ordinary people learn to just shut it out and pretend it doesnʼt exist.
This isnʼt coping; this is avoidance and eventually denial.

Now sometimes this is a good thing to be able to do, in the short-term. But in the
long-term, you irrevocably harm yourself until you can turn around and face up to
the abuse. Otherwise youʼll take on all kinds of different problems as a different way
of coping.

They want you to take care of them without having to acknowledge their
dependence on you. You end up paying for their mistakes and carrying their
consequences on your shoulders.

Theyʼve chosen you to externalize the cost of their mistakes. It comes at your
expense, but it also allows them to continue with their problem and make more
mistakes. Theyʼve chosen, whether they know it or not, to make both of your lives
much more difficult by not accepting their problems.

Narcissists always appear to remain in an agitated state, or are always at least

mildly irritated. This is the curse of carrying around bad feelings and feeling the daily
wear-and-tear of their dysfunction.

Their greatest skill is conditioning you to respond to their signals. These are little
blips of communication they give you to signify something is wrong and you must do
something about it.
The 16 Signs of a Narcissist ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! 51

Words, phrases, gestures, inflection, sighing, even little motions that make you jump
when you hear them, because you know youʼre about to be on the receiving end of
abuse and itʼs going to leave you feeling really bad for a long time to come.

If someone doesnʼt like them, itʼs that personʼs fault. There is something wrong with
that person that makes them unable to see how great they are.

In general, narcissist or not, being a strong person threatens weak malicious people
and makes them feel bad for being mean.

Narcissists are never “doing well”, theyʼre either feeling bad or just good enough to
be okay, but the bad feelings always return.

Youʼll notice that theyʼre either down or up. When theyʼre down theyʼre just anxious
and needing to control. When theyʼre in control theyʼre happy, everything is perfect.
Itʼs a never-ending process, but they act like if you fix this one little thing, theyʼll be
fine.

By searching for conflict instead of resolution, they can demand you find a
resolution. Without both people accepting individual responsibility, every relationship
is doomed from the start before it even begins.

They think theyʼre the rational, forgiving, reasonable ones. Itʼs important for them
that you understand that they have a right to your life; they own you. You have an
obligation to do what they say, that is the stated purpose that you must fulfill. The
sad thing is that it can never be achieved because itʼs judged by them, and theyʼre
never satisfied with what you do.

They have a right to tell you what to do, and you have an obligation to listen to them
and do as they tell you to do. You are the vehicle to carry out their wishes.

Narcissists donʼt really believe in emotional abuse or trauma. This is very

convenient, because it falsifies any claims that what they say or do is abusive.

When you set them straight on what theyʼve done to you, they act like youʼre the
one stepping on them and impinging on their rights. They have a right to exclude
you, diminish your worth and talk over you.
The 16 Signs of a Narcissist ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! 52

What happens when you get away from a narcissist? First they must present a story
to everyone around you. You will be a villain who has used, exploited and betrayed
them for your own ends and left them in a bad way.

Theyʼll have tried as a valiant hero their best to bring about good for everyone. Youʼll
have been the person that not only turned them away and didnʼt care, but did wrong
by them just because. Even though youʼre the devil, theyʼll act forgiving and
reasonable, just to show their good nature and how victimized they are.

That last point is very important: narcissists are victims. This is true in the sense that
they were abused by someone when they were young, but itʼs also true in that they
feel everyone has an obligation to make them feel good about themselves. They
donʼt like people who donʼt and will depict them like there is something wrong with
them. It will be for some other reason than “they donʼt support me every minute of
every day” and very nitpicky or trivial.

In casting the opposite light technique, you look bad and therefore are the one with
the problem. It works when you donʼt suspect thatʼs what theyʼre doing and you start
to believe it too. Itʼs a circular reinforcement that starts with them.

They put up with your behavior, which in turn makes them look good, when it is
exactly the other way around. They run from their problems by throwing them onto
you.

How Youʼll Feel

If youʼre living with a narcissist, it is very likely that you are an enabler. What this
means is that you are an integral part of the abuse, the narcissist abuses you and
you facilitate it by encouraging their delusions and staying with them.

This is probably because a parent or caretaker abused you in the past. Iʼm willing to
bet that it is very likely that you propped someone else up in your life, and probably
when you were very young.

Too often we are taught that if we are uncomfortable, something is wrong with us. If
we donʼt like a new school or workplace, or the people around, it must mean that we
have some kind of a problem. Narcissists capitalize on this trend: if anything is
wrong, it must be you. Then all they have to overcome is your confidence in
yourself.
The 16 Signs of a Narcissist ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! 53

They make your only choice to start conforming. When you start taking on their
opinions, preferences, concerns, thoughts and mannerisms as your own, it comes
at the expense of yourself.

I donʼt want to offend you, but you should take it personally when I say you facilitate
the abuse. As a fundamental part of the cycle, youʼre enabling reactions to
narcissistic transgressions. But the difference is that youʼre the only one who can do
something to stop it.

When youʼre already an abused person and predisposed to being around abusive
people, narcissists fit the bill perfectly. Theyʼll feel like the nicest people youʼve ever
come across and fit so easily into your life.

For one, they make fantastic first impressions. Theyʼre so funny, smart, sexy and
empathetic to your situation. They will get you talking to probe and pry to find what
your hot buttons are.

For two, if youʼve been abused before, this sort of relationship dynamic will feel
natural to you. Youʼre diving face-first into a situation with someone (romantic or
platonic) that looks and feels so great on the outside but is really you about to serve
as their punching bag and prop.

When you begin to interact with them, it feels like a wearing conflict. Any energy you
had begins to dissipate, and you start to feel bad about what youʼre doing, to the
point where you ask yourself why youʼre doing it at all. Thatʼs because narcissists
instill self-doubt and self-loathing.

The best indicator of this is how you feel. If you feel bad whenever you interact with
this person and you actively try to avoid their presence, there is no question
something is wrong.

This is the skill I want to impart to you. Knowing how someone really makes you
feel. Youʼre probably very used to being kicked around by abusive people. It feels
natural to be treated like a used tissue.

Around a narcissist, there will always be an atmosphere of bad feelings and

negativity. They will never support you, they will never like what youʼre doing and
The 16 Signs of a Narcissist ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! 54

will work their very hardest to instill that doubt in you. Youʼll never leave feeling good
in any interaction, only relieved that you werenʼt more abused.

Can you imagine it any other way? Imagine how different they would have to be to
make you feel good about yourself. If they worked to support you rather than tear
you down it would look and feel very different. If theyʼre trying to bolster you, why
canʼt they ever help you in any way? Why do they always fail miserably? Because
they donʼt fail miserably, they succeed in flying colors at doing what they want.

People choose to support you or they donʼt, period. End of story.

Youʼll always feel inadequate. Youʼll feel as though youʼre failing them and not
upholding your end. You arenʼt letting them down; they do it to themselves by
behaving the way they do. They cannot accept or reward your success, they must
deny it and destroy it. The doubt they impart and instill in you is actually their fear
that youʼll succeed.

You can only feel good and express your joy if they allow it… and they will
never allow it. It goes unspoken that youʼre inherently flawed, and the atmosphere is
like walking on eggshells. How they feel is the law of the land, and everyone must
feel exactly the same. If they feel bad, then you should have to suffer. If they feel
good, then you should be happy that they feel good.

You get the basic idea here: there is no room to be a human being around them.
You have to become something less than human. At first it will feel strange, but
theyʼll help you to quickly become accustomed to it.

They will condition you to cherish the very little and superficial praise you do get
from them. When you find yourself clinging to every last little bit of “positive”
reinforcement they give you, youʼll know that youʼre in a dysfunctional relationship.

Ask yourself, how do you feel when youʼre around them? How do you feel when
theyʼre away? Are you relieved or overjoyed?

As a victim of emotional abuse and deprivation, you become good at anticipating

and avoiding pain – sometimes without even knowing it. Thatʼs why it feels like a gift
from the heavens when for whatever reason, they arenʼt berating you with their bad
feelings. They warp your perceptions until a reprieve feels like theyʼre not so bad
The 16 Signs of a Narcissist ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! 55

after all, even though for that reprieve to feel so good they have to be abusing you
the rest of the time.

The level of depravity we'll live with, especially when it's our only choice and weʼre
conditioned to it, is frightening. It is fundamentally unhealthy to have someone else
dictate your life and make what should be your own choices for you. When you
accept it, it transforms you forever.

You will always feel in their debt. Some event, whether of your own doing or
theirs will have put them in a position to “save” you. This will never be explicitly
stated, but it will be a prevailing theme throughout your time with them.

Itʼs the other way around. They can function in society because of you, not because
of their own sense of self-reliance.

Through these tricks, they will make you feel that you have an allegiance and loyalty
to them. Theyʼll make you feel special in some way because youʼre associated with
them. So when it becomes a problem of unity, theyʼre serious. Youʼd better do what
they want or theyʼre going to do a lot of bad things to get you back in line.

The best way to make someone stop doing something you donʼt like is to make
them feel bad for doing it. This is what theyʼre doing to you all of the time. You may
not see it happening, but a negative impression of how you look to other people
when youʼre doing this thing or that will be implanted in your mind.

Sometimes they try to make you feel bad for doing things for them when they canʼt.
Thatʼs because it makes them feel vulnerable, needy and useless. They canʼt have
that, so they try to make you feel bad. They need to have the control.

Another technique is instilling in you a “pain and difficulty is good because youʼre
sacrificing for someone else” mentality, yet another mantra they donʼt live by. This
mentality naturally leads to you feeling bad when you arenʼt doing what they want
you to do.

What theyʼre really doing is creating a moral atmosphere where youʼre only good if
youʼre sacrificing and suffering for someone elseʼs gain, in other words, doing things
for them that you donʼt want to do. This leads, in effect, to you feeling bad doing
anything but serving them, all of the time.
The 16 Signs of a Narcissist ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! 56

Think about this for just a moment: when youʼre happy, are they? Do they enjoy it
when youʼre feeling self-empowered and assured?

Why should they, when they arenʼt self-assured? Youʼre there to make them feel
good about being inadequate.

I recommend that you not divulge how you feel to them. Iʼm not saying that you
should lie, just not talk about it. Open communication will harm you in this case,
because they do not communicate honestly, they just use your honest
communication as a tool against you.

While it may feel wrong to hide your true feelings, theyʼve been dishonest with you
from the very beginning. Youʼre simply finding common ground and reacting to their
behavior.

It pays to cover your tracks in an emotionally unstable environment. For instance,

youʼll learn how to throw them off of your intentions instinctually because they make
a game of figuring out how to get to you and abuse you. I call this passive
deception. This is one of the many negative attributes youʼll pick up from them to
survive.

You can never talk about yourself to them anyway; they donʼt want to hear it. They
wonʼt let you be yourself.

If you think all of this pre-judgment is bad, it gets worse. You will pick up many of
their prejudices without realizing it. Their views, opinions, preferences and the like
will all become ingrained in you over time. You canʼt voluntarily rid yourself of them;
it takes years.

When narcissists drain your own self-credibility, problems arise in you being able to
recognize and combat them and their behaviors. Belief in yourself and your ability to
discern when others are trying to help or hurt you is the greatest threat to the
narcissist.

How we feel is a totally relevant and concrete thing. It shouldnʼt be decided by

anyone but you. If someone wants to talk to you about your feelings, it has to be
voluntary on your part. You have a right to your own feelings, and to feel whatever
you feel. You arenʼt obligated to share them with anyone else unless you want to.
The 16 Signs of a Narcissist ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! 57

They create an extremely stressful environment, personally crafted with the things
that stress you out the most. They keep the pressure on you to perform at all times
and never let up. Itʼs never okay to be calm and relaxed with yourself. Everything
always feels uncomfortable, uneasy and fearful.

Youʼll be passively depressed and in shock. Dissociation is a term to describe when

someone emotionally detaches from their environment. That is, because it is so
stressful and painful to feel the bad feelings, they stop feeling almost entirely.

In such a desperate situation, you feel your only hope is to survive the abuse and
take as little of it as you can, not get out of it. They make you too weak to
contemplate getting away from them, and so you resign yourself to playing their
own game to get some relief, however you can.

Youʼll adopt dysfunctional habits just to avoid problems. One of these habits will be
idleness and not doing anything to avoid their backlash when youʼre being
productive. To be around them, you canʼt be stellar at things or do much of anything
at all.

The more you allow yourself to be exposed to the long dark road of abuse, the
further in you go and the harder it is to get out. When you stand up for yourself, you
step back from it.

Standing up for good doesnʼt come easily to the abused. It is strange, more
intimidating and less comfortable than the bad. We shouldnʼt be surprised that
unless they are encouraged to do so, the abused will continue their dysfunctional
behavior in supporting the bad.

Freedom and responsibility come with each other, and theyʼre hard. Theyʼre much
more intimidating and uncomfortable for the abused just as someone who is
healthier and used to making their own decisions feels awful in abusive situations.

Being truthful doesnʼt help the situation, but it does help you. Narcissists donʼt deal
in the truth; they actively avoid and deny it. That is their problem, but it doesnʼt have
to be yours.

Theyʼll try to make you feel special as a ploy to make you feel special for taking their
abuse, thatʼs how they value you. They donʼt care about you and if at some point
The 16 Signs of a Narcissist ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! 58

you arenʼt around for them, theyʼll just pick up and find someone else and treat them
exactly the same way.

Watch how they steer you towards things they want you to do and away from the
things that you really want to be doing in your life. Making you believe that you donʼt
like something you really like to do.

Theyʼll start you questioning yourself, to the point where you start doing their work
for them. You hurt yourself by carrying out their wishes, which include tearing you
down and beating yourself up.

You gradually become accustomed to this environment of deceit, distant coldness,

invasions of personal space, emotional abuse by utter diminution and disregard of
your person, total lack of cooperation and mutual support and antagonism.

Youʼll be conditioned to not listen to your own feelings and steered away from
pursuing your own goals. There is never any situation or set of circumstances where
you shouldnʼt listen to your own feelings. The narcissist may try to invalidate your
feelings with “reason”, but theyʼre just plain wrong.

This is not “reason” we are discussing here, but your own feelings, and you can feel
however you want in any situation. You canʼt help what your feelings are, and there
will be situations where you should go against your feelings but this is for you, not
them, to decide.

Abuser and enabler are complementary to each other. If you think about it, theyʼre
coping too, by abusing you. You take it upon yourself to deal with their problems,
but you canʼt because they arenʼt your problems, so you begin coping as well. Only
you cope differently because youʼre not a narcissist.

Abusers and enablers must live compartmentalized lives. When there is denial of
things happening, you have to act in different ways to pretend the abuse isnʼt
happening.

Coping strategies like self-medication are common, but drugs arenʼt the only way of
coping. Another is dysfunctional behavior, self-neglect and not taking care of
yourself, anxiety and habitual behaviors that make you feel better (I can speak
personally that OCD worsens from emotional abuse).
The 16 Signs of a Narcissist ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! 59

You will be less active and interested in doing the things that you love because you
associate with the bad stimulus they gave you when you did it. You become tired
and sick more often. You devote less time to activities and loved ones and more
time running away, attempting to find relief from the abuse.

Itʼs how they get their kicks, they play their little games in their little worlds and force
you to feel obligated to participate.

You wonʼt be yourself anymore, maybe for years.

Youʼll feel scatterbrained, incompetent, subordinate and all-around worthless as a

human being.

What you need to learn is that it is okay to be you. Itʼs okay to do what you want to
do. Narcissists make the argument that itʼs only okay to be them, and that you are
forever sentenced to be their inferior. This is an absurd argument, so they make it in
subtle and indirect ways.

Trying to beat them by impressing them means youʼve already lost. You always lose
when you play their game. So you need to play your game to your strengths. They
always lose when playing your game, being forced to play by your own rules.

You canʼt tell what theyʼre thinking. Theyʼre always maneuvering around and
concealing their true intentions. Baiting you with false leads keeps you on edge and
guessing at what theyʼre really thinking.

Emotional abuse is unlike physical abuse in that:

1) You donʼt know itʼs happening unless youʼre educated on it and preferably
experienced with it.
2) It can cause more long-term harm through depression and other mental disorders
than physical abuse alone.

Health professionals are good at bringing it out of you and allowing you to
communicate what you already feel.

Itʼs also my opinion that while health professionals are great, abused people already
know theyʼre being abused, they can already tell from how they feel. They need help
developing and getting out of it.
The 16 Signs of a Narcissist ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! 60

The “maybe if I just work hard, then one day it will all change” argument doesnʼt
work here either. The problem originates from them and not you, so a solution must
start with them. Thereʼs nothing you can do to solve it by yourself, that effort must
include their cooperation.

Itʼs an absurd explanation. They hurt you because they want to hurt you, it isnʼt by
accident, thatʼs why youʼre hurt and always feel bad around them. They like it this
way. To suppose that somehow their great overabundance of compassion somehow
results in you being hindered and hurt every time you interact with them is utter
nonsense. "

When people care, they work to prove to you that they care. Theyʼre willing to
change provided they understand what the problem is and what they can do about
it. Itʼs not the other way around; you shouldnʼt have to work to convince yourself that
they care.

Weʼre almost to the 16 signs, and I have one more principle you need to know
before we get to them. Itʼs that despite whatever situation or circumstances youʼre in
with someone, when they make you feel bad, there doesnʼt have to be a logical
explanation for it.
Abusive people simply make you feel bad. I mean, you should never have to
justify why you feel bad around another person. You can feel bad around someone
and not want to ever be around that person ever again, and thatʼs okay.

Narcissists canʼt disprove why you feel bad, but theyʼll try. Itʼs just them refusing to
take responsibility for them being bad people. Thatʼs how far these people go with
their denial.

Communicating your feelings is important, with people who listen to them and care.
Narcissists donʼt care and will use it against you. Theyʼll make you feel bad for
feeling bad around them, because you shouldnʼt.

They do it because one: they take it very personally and it assaults their illusion.
Two, they need to feel like they can invalidate your feelings to others and yourself,
because thatʼs something they just have to do. Youʼre bad for feeling bad about
being around such great people, so youʼre at fault here. If you donʼt like them, itʼs
your problem.
The 16 Signs of a Narcissist ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! 61

No matter how fancy their tricks, theyʼre just bullies, albeit somewhat sophisticated
ones, but bullies nonetheless. No matter how clever they are, when you are honest
with yourself and adhere to the truth, all of their controlling tactics fizzle and fall to
the floor.

Now Iʼm not saying as soon as youʼre uncomfortable in an interaction with someone
that you need to bolt right away because theyʼre bad people, but when someone
repeatedly makes you feel bad, especially in such a well-executed and repetitive
fashion as what Iʼm describing, and it doesnʼt stop when you communicate your
feelings, something is very wrong. Itʼs dysfunctional.

Youʼre being duped, and you feel like it too. No matter what you do, youʼre not good
enough for them, they never let you be and you never feel good or get anything
from them. Itʼs all a ruse that you get caught up in.

You always know when theyʼre around because you feel so uncomfortable and must
behave in a certain way to please them. They love it when youʼre forced to work to
make them happy, trying to act like youʼre a good person, because then they know
you accept their illusion that you arenʼt. You are in the cyclical trap.

Narcissists donʼt make you feel really bad because they donʼt know that theyʼre
doing it, they do it because they do know. Everything lines up too well to just be a
coincidence.

It really is a narcissistic fog: a set of assumptions, beliefs and dependent behavior

that they pull you into. Itʼs a little bubble that sits atop the real world but it isnʼt based
in the real world.

We naturally like and open ourselves up to nice, smiling and friendly folk. But there
comes a point when you realize that they want you to be a blank-faced mannequin
that stands motionless and listens to and believes wholeheartedly all of the bunk
they spew at you. They talk at you rather than talk with you.

We all have our own definition of happiness, and knowing that frees us from having
to conform to anotherʼs standards, but it also means that we have to find it for
ourselves.
The 16 Signs of a Narcissist ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! 62

Donʼt let them define your identity and sense of self to other people, then they own
and define who you are as a human being. You need to understand that they arenʼt
your friend, parent, lover or spouse, they are your owner.

Whew… now that weʼve got the basics out of the way, letʼs find out how their traits
make themselves apparent through their behavior. Whip out your pen and grab your
nearest highlighter. Narcissists:

1. Are Obsessed With Themselves and Donʼt Feel

Empathy for Other People
Narcissistic people will only ever talk about themselves. Listen closely, when youʼre
in conversation, the topic will always revolve around them; their interests and their
concerns. Even when they do involve you or other people, they have a difficult time
imagining other peoplesʼ situations.

The reason: they only direct their attention towards things that affect how they feel
about themselves. They donʼt do this on purpose; itʼs the only thing they know how
to do. Everything that isnʼt them is a tool designed for the purpose to make them
feel good about themselves.

They do not understand or relate to other people, because they canʼt. There are no
other people. People are quite literally cardboard-cutouts to surround themselves
with and create a certain appearance.

They do make one exception to this lack of empathy: narcissists do feel for and care
about themselves. The only time youʼll ever see real empathy from them is when
they fear for their own comfort or safety.

Given that they are the polar opposite of most people, theyʼve realized that to get
along in society they must show some compassion, so they fake it when they need
to and even use it to their advantage where they can.

Yet, why do they care? Why do they work so hard to win favorable impressions from
other people?

Itʼs because they have favorable impressions of themselves, and are self-obsessed
at all times. They must also have others think highly of them to continue to fuel their
The 16 Signs of a Narcissist ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! 63

self-obsession. You canʼt do this in the real world without looking snotty and driving
people off, so theyʼve found a better way.

The first impression is the most important. They make extremely good first
impressions so that people will always refer back to what they first perceived when
meeting them.

But that begs the question: why must they have people think that way about them if
theyʼre so strong? Why do they want it that badly if they already feel so sure about
themselves?

Thatʼs because they arenʼt strong and they arenʼt sure, thatʼs the problem. Theyʼre
very unsure and insecure. They carry around an aura of greatness precisely
because they feel so bad about themselves. They need to be told how great they
are by other people in order to function.

This makes itself apparent through something called entitlement. Think for a
moment about your own value system and morals you follow for yourself. Morals
and values are an interesting thing; theyʼre very universal in their conception but
individual in practice.

Their value system is “if I want to do it, if it feels good, itʼs okay because Iʼm me”. If
they get away with it, it will give them a surge of control and power that continues to
stir and inflate their ego even further.

They cannot allow themselves to believe anything is wrong with them. If something
is wrong with them and you confront them about it, even in the most inert way,
theyʼll turn it onto you in any way they can. It wonʼt be something they did wrong; itʼll
be something you did wrong that you went after them about.

There will be times when they do ask about you, but itʼs always fake and just an
attempt to control your perception of them. Theyʼll be far more empathetic and
attentive than theyʼve ever been, and after theyʼve gotten what they wanted theyʼll
promptly pop your balloon.

I need to make something clear: controlling people can fake empathy, some can do
it really well when the need arises. Even so, you can still figure out if itʼs genuine by
the following rule: there will always be something in it for them, a goal or mission to
accomplish, and they will push you however they can to achieve that goal.
The 16 Signs of a Narcissist ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! 64

Now whatever the goal is, it will be more personal than external and will involve you.
For instance, consider something really trivial like getting something from out of the
attic. One, they want the item but two, donʼt want to get it themselves because the
attic is overcrowded with stuff. Theyʼll be unable to do it for whatever reason and
you have to help them. Then you realize youʼre not helping them but doing it for
them because now theyʼre at the bottom of the ladder telling you where to look.

Whether you find it or not doesnʼt matter; the problem is now yours and youʼve
taken responsibility for it. This is actually a very relevant example in that many
narcissists are messy and donʼt like to organize. Yet, they like things to be
organized and itʼs your fault when they arenʼt, even though they generate the mess
in the first place and are very uncooperative when fixing it.

Since they only feel for themselves, finding whatʼs in it for them is really easy. If you
know this person, you know what they care about, and what they actually like to do.

Narcissists like to work covertly, but they canʼt keep it up all of the time. There will
be continual behavior patterns towards some objective they have. Whether that be
getting attention or getting you to quit/lose your job, try finding (but never asking)
what it is theyʼre really searching for in every interaction with you.

What you need to note is how counter-intuitive their responses are to situations or
news. Because they will have agendas that run against your own (they want to hurt
you but say they want to help you), itʼll become apparent what their true intentions
are.

I need to mention fake confessions. Theyʼre exactly what they sound like, pleas at
emotional feeling when there isnʼt any whatsoever. This helps to humanize them,
which they are very good at doing by the way.

Watch how children respond to them and turn away. Animals too, they know danger
when they see it. They know callousness and lack of empathy.

Bonding for the narcissist is the enabler submitting and giving into their control as
they partake in codependent behaviors to cement their bond. This includes daily
rituals like incessant phone calling and physical or intimate contact, often
uncomfortable and disconcerting for you.
The 16 Signs of a Narcissist ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! 65

In the same way, “love” means an enabler who meets their needs and readily
submits to (or even facilitates) their control. The people narcissists “love” are the
people who are on automatic at being controlled. They donʼt even need to be told
theyʼre doing something wrong and need to improve immediately, they just do it.
And when the narcissist throws a fit, they stand idly by ready and waiting to be
abused by them and take on their bad feelings.

Narcissists not only donʼt care, they donʼt try to care. They like caring about
themselves and nothing else. Itʼs all they really know, and they must fit this criterion
to be a narcissist. They can fake it, hide it, mimic it and emulate it, but they cannot
feel or experience empathy for others.

So what they say will be one thing, but how they really feel and respond will be
another entirely. If you didnʼt see them today, it was because youʼre avoiding them.
If something you did happens to bother them, theyʼll say it didnʼt but feel you did it to
“get” them. They respond accordingly: what they say isnʼt true, but what they feel is.
They respond with their feelings, which will be hostility.

Though I run the risk of sounding like a quirky shrink, they also have no emotions
and no feelings whatsoever. They may try using the word on occasion, but only as a
tool for control. A good feeling to them means power and prestige, a bad feeling
means loss of control, and nothing more. Dramatic, emotional talks are to get the
spotlight back on them and people believing their lies.

There is no happy, sad, angry or regretful. There is no remorse, pity, empathy or

compassion. Those emotions are not felt but emulated. There is no life-changing
experience, problem solving or personal growth. Thereʼs only a grasp of gain or loss
of control over other human beings. Their sole concern is what they can do to you
that will make them feel good. That is the only thing they know how to do.

The natural conclusion to draw from this is that they are always emotionally
unavailable. Emotional unavailability, deliberate or not, is by definition abuse and itʼs
called neglect.

They will never talk about you, except in the way “Iʼm talking about you, so Iʼm nice.”

If you complain they donʼt do something, they will make short-term offers and
arrangement depicting that they do those things for you. They will wait for an
inopportune time for you to be in an awkward position and offer it, youʼll kindly say
The 16 Signs of a Narcissist ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! 66

no, and theyʼll say something along the lines of “Okay, then donʼt say that I donʼt
ever [whatever it was] for you.”

While narcissists are aware of their outer appearance as it is perceived by people

immediately around them, they donʼt put a great deal of thought into it. Itʼs just a
reaction at how people respond. So while they are extraordinary at reading people,
they canʼt feel for them, or put themselves in their shoes.

Theyʼre also extraordinary at being rude, especially when it suits them to give a bad
impression of you to someone else. This is just the other side of the coin to their
politeness.

This would seem to indicate that they are aware of everything they do, but they
arenʼt. Full self-awareness and disclosure would require that they realize their
shortcomings, something they just canʼt do.

What I mean to say is that they cannot self-contemplate. They are not actually able
to look at themselves and their cumulative actions, the affects they have on their
own lives.

See how they look smart by acting and professing that they arenʼt smart? It also
makes them look humble, though they arenʼt. They understand the perceptions
game. They donʼt understand how people feel, but when it comes to thinking without
such feelings, they get it.

Another way you know they just donʼt care about you is that they will never listen to
you and passively encourage you to not pursue your dreams. That threatens them.

So when you get that nagging feeling around them, “Whatʼs different about this
person? It seems like they donʼt care about anyone.” Itʼs because they donʼt, and
worse than that, they want you to stop caring about yourself too, so that you can
start caring about them.

Remember that it doesnʼt matter how “sorry” they supposedly are because as soon
as the next opportunity presents itself, they turn around and do the exact same
thing again and again. They always do and always will.
The 16 Signs of a Narcissist ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! 67

2. Exaggerate and Fabricate Achievements. Are

Obsessed With Appearances
Whatʼs the most crucial part of controlling another human being? Itʼs having them
believe in an illusion. Get someone to believe something that isnʼt true is the
bread-and-butter way of altering their perceptions and getting them to do things they
would not otherwise do.

First, this makes them feel more powerful than if they just did it by brute force. They
get a real kick out of it. They think that way because they donʼt even have to
physically force you under their control. Theyʼre better than that because they can
force you into it without you even knowing it.

Second, using brute force is usually risky and short-lived. How can they expect you
to stick around and take their physical abuse without anyone knowing for 10, 20, 30
years or longer by using physical means? Narcissistʼs cannot and will not risk losing
their image to sloppy overt abuse, but they must still abuse.

Thereʼs a chance that someone could figure it out. But when itʼs not physical but
emotional, itʼs invisible to all but the most trained eyes. When itʼs emotional, they
can always use denial and get you to question whether thatʼs really whatʼs
happening.

Iʼve been throwing around this word denial without properly defining it. Denial is a
refusal to accept what is indisputably true. Denial isnʼt just to you, they deny it to
themselves as well. They deny you the right to your own feelings. They deny
accusations and judgments of their behavior they donʼt want to hear, in the face of
overwhelming evidence to the contrary.

Denial may accompany some reason, but itʼs mostly “I donʼt want to hear it and
youʼre bad for not agreeing with me.” If it hurts others, narcissists are in such a state
of denial they donʼt notice. Itʼs foolish to expect more from them.

A narcissist has to concede when you have direct, physical proof of something
(which theyʼll work to counteract to make sure you never do), but denial deals with
their feelings and they can always deny or lie about their true negative feelings.
The 16 Signs of a Narcissist ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! 68

Theyʼre not reactive and spontaneous, theyʼre schemers. They think about this stuff
all of the time. If you know a narcissist, theyʼre thinking about how to control
someone, maybe you, right at this very same moment as youʼre reading.

To the controlling person, illusions are the only thing that matter. They affect the
perceptions of others and therefore allow control, whether theyʼre true or not. They
put great effort into maintaining a status, appearance and outward demeanor that
shows them only in a positive light.

A fascinating observation is that they themselves need so desperately to believe in

the illusion, this is why they impart it to others in the first place, so they may believe
it themselves. They have to believe they are something they really arenʼt. It isnʼt just
a trick on other people; theyʼre tricking themselves.

Narcissists operate on the principle that the perception of the truth is far more
important than the truth. Whether you happen to believe that or not doesnʼt matter,
because it works for them.

Controlling people will exaggerate their accomplishments in work, relationships and

other activities. This is their true purpose and where they put all of their effort. In
order to appear great, they feel they must exaggerate their achievement and belittle
others. Thatʼs where the malicious behavior comes in.

Thereʼs something to remember here: there are the controlled and there are
observing parties, and their perceptions arenʼt always the same. Observing parties
can inform you as to what they see.

However, the outside observer will usually accept whatʼs given without question, so
long as it isnʼt too farfetched and there arenʼt any apparent conflicts in the illusion.
This doesnʼt have to do with intelligence, but human nature.

An experienced or clever observer will put 2-and-2 together on occasion, but it

doesnʼt really matter. After all, a healthy person that is able to see through the
narcissist knows to immediately remove themselves from the narcissistʼs presence.
Itʼs all a part of the weeding out process.

Itʼs also worth noting that narcissists can recognize each other and their intentions.
They know what the other is doing, and if it is against their interest, will combat them
The 16 Signs of a Narcissist ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! 69

using the same method. The narcissist must keep people separated and isolated
from each other to prevent them from organizing against their control.

You being distant, withdrawn, inattentive, passive, non-interactive and in the

background is all a part of the illusion they want to perpetrate. If you were suddenly
gregarious, friendly and interesting you would outshine them. When youʼre really
friendly theyʼll spin it to make you feel like people regard you as mean-spirited, self-
absorbed and bad to trash your good-spirits. Theyʼll throw you to the wolves and act
superior to make you feel inferior.

Narcissists are only responsible where it makes them look good, where itʼs
convenient for them and in their self-interest for the illusion or both.

They canʼt be around actual disadvantaged people because they steal their thunder.
Their game doesnʼt work in the presence of people who really need help. (Though
quite frankly, narcissists need psychiatric help as much as anyone.)

They always have the last word. My mom always says itʼs the squeaky wheel that
gets the grease, a concept narcissists are very familiar with. It means that they get
noticed because they make themselves noticeable, mostly by forcing their message
down our throats. They not only present themselves well, theyʼre aggressive in how
they differentiate themselves from everyone else.

The bizarre opposing side of the coin is that they can make themselves look bad
and make you look bad by association. They do embarrassing or inappropriate
things to people that you know arenʼt right, but they may not.

I say that because it isnʼt always on purpose. Despite narcissists being incredible
manipulators, they can only emulate sane people. Some of their craziness is bound
to come out in slip ups and it does.

The way you can tell is how they react to your reaction. Narcissists donʼt like doing
something by accident, even if it works to their advantage, because they feel that
loss of control.

To the controlling person there is no visible truth, just what people can be convinced
of. But itʼs such a one way street. They diminish you so you can strengthen them.
They invalidate you so that you validate them. You support the illusion to avoid pain
since you canʼt afford the luxury of doing much else, and they enforce it.
The 16 Signs of a Narcissist ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! 70

Their aggression to enforce the illusion is not a sign of strength, itʼs a weakness.
Theyʼre not strong, theyʼre fragile and frail. Their ego is a wine glass. Itʼs also very
insulated and limiting.

You can never know what their intentions are because you canʼt know what theyʼre
really thinking. Only they know, and even when they tell you, they can lie.
Pathologically deceptive people like narcissists know that you will believe what they
tell you, oblivious to what their real intentions are.

But when you compare what they say with what they actually do, you get a really
good idea of their true intentions because their actions reflect the results they want,
which they can deny but canʼt hide. They act in their self-interest, and their actions
tell you what they really want to happen.

When they do step out of line, and they will, theyʼll attempt to remedy the damage to
their image by being “nice”. Of course, this involves more control and may be as big
as doing something you actually like or as little as saying something almost nice.
There never is a “sorry” to speak of.

The only one who can really hurt their fabricated appearance is them. They really
shoot themselves in the foot by making it up in the first place. You can witness them
crafting perceptions of the people they talk to, and the glow in their eyes as they
present themselves. This is where they feel most comfortable and in the least pain.

Itʼs a lot like those people who work really, really hard to make a social statement
about themselves, but a lot worse. Those people are wrapped up in their ego and
identity, but these are people who canʼt get away from a need to control and
aggressively refuse to.

A fundamental principle you must get into your head is that narcissists are talkers.
Theyʼll say anything and everything, so long as itʼs in accordance with their fantasy.
If it helps them achieve their controlling agenda, theyʼll use it, or rather, say it.

If that means having to blank out a mistake of theirs or something they donʼt wish to
remember, voila, theyʼll forget all about it and deny it. Youʼll notice that this will
mostly take place just between you and them and without a third-party observer
around to note the fact. If thereʼs no one else to hold them to their word, the more
The 16 Signs of a Narcissist ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! 71

abrupt and sudden their change of opinion will be. They are non-committal in the
truest sense of the word.

Talk is also very cheap and easy for them to use. Narcissists donʼt like having to
work hard to get what they want, theyʼd much rather have you just lay down your
existence for them and their needs.

If everyone around them is bad, they are good. Whatever relative standard they use
will affect how they appear to others. So theyʼre great, but when everyone around
them appears worse and in dire need of their help and input, theyʼre even better.

Narcissists latch onto the most powerful things most societies idolize. Virtues like
selflessness, personal improvement, strength of character and an iron will are
strong attributes that they attempt to emulate and project so that people will think
highly of them.

They will manipulate appearances, in whatever way they can, so that they are the
ones suffering, caring or whatever, at all times. Make no mistake, their highest
priority is to have everyoneʼs attention on them at all times.

Hereʼs a great example of an illusion that I bet youʼve seen before. Itʼs the perfect
family. This is a natural domain of the narcissist, I think itʼs because itʼs similar to the
environment and illusion that they were raised in. Many narcissists want to be the
acting head of the perfect family.

The perfect family outperforms and stands above the rest, even though they wonʼt
say it, itʼs true. The success of the family represents the narcissistʼs positive
commitment to them.

The perfect family is just one example, not all narcissists create this illusion. What is
true is that if the narcissist starts a family, that family is there solely for meeting their
own needs, and to make them look good to other people.

Children are used to bolster their self-image. Family albums, hanging frames and
Facebook profiles with pictures of their baby doll are there to make them look good,
but they donʼt really care for or like taking care of their children and relegate that
responsibility to the other parent, whether theyʼre together or not.
The 16 Signs of a Narcissist ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! 72

Children are powerful tools for controlling peoplesʼ perceptions, and theyʼre just
about the only thing that will override someoneʼs instincts.

Their spouse and children serve as vessels to live through. Their successes are the
narcissistʼs successes, because they take responsibility for them by their support.
Insofar as their success can be associated with the narcissist, it is good. When their
success is their own or if they become too successful, they have to squelch them.

When it comes right down to it, the bottom line is that narcissists need their
fantasies and illusions because they donʼt want to be who they are. They canʼt
accept their problems or any criticism or they wonʼt be able to function. So they
donʼt.

Sadly, as youʼre able to see, they arenʼt functioning anyway, because manipulative
behavior only hurts others and doesnʼt get them anywhere, it only perpetuates the
problem, with hints and glints of the truth shining through on occasion. But they
ignore it.

They work to instill an illusion of themselves in others and have them propagate it. I
canʼt count the number of times a neighbor or acquaintance of my father has come
up to me and started telling me his whole story, how well intentioned or
unconventional he is, how heʼs a victim because of this or that, the whole lot.

They donʼt say it directly itʼs just their impression of him, and they impart that
impression to others. I know these things to be false because I witnessed him in
action firsthand.

By observation, narcissists are also obsessed with you. It makes perfect sense: they
are concerned with “keeping up appearances”, and youʼre a part of that
appearance.

Theyʼll go to such lengths as Googling a topic just to find something they know you
donʼt know so they can tell you about it. They donʼt reason, they just spit factoids.

They have to be the ones that do everything, and you have to be the one that does
nothing.

Narcissists donʼt just brainwash you but themselves as well. They believe it, and itʼs
the only thing they really believe.
The 16 Signs of a Narcissist ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! 73

Remember that it is only an illusion if you believe it. Aside from that itʼs just a self-
delusion and dogmatic belief held by an irrational person.

You serve two purposes in the illusion. One, you are the loser they have to support
and put up with. Two, you support and power the illusion by being the one to confirm
it to others. Without you, itʼs just the narcissistʼs very convincing words, but when
you participate in actualizing the illusion for them by being the idiot, it makes it all
the more real and believable.

There are two kinds of people who serve social purposes, losers and winners. You
already know who the losers are. The winners are prestigious people that the
narcissist associates with to look good.

They tend to have thematic identity and personal beliefs. That is, they think theyʼre
something (world traveler, real estate mogul, self-reliant backwoodsmen) that they
really arenʼt. Now itʼs not that they really have a delusion, in that they recognize it
isnʼt real to everyone around them, but itʼs what they want everyone to believe.

Everything they do is to signify and designate status within a hierarchy. They have
all of the motivation in the world to play this game for their whole lives because
without regular social prestige, they cannot function. They already arenʼt functional,
but they can just manage to function, thatʼs why they arenʼt candidates for a mental
hospital.

The illusion also means that they dominate in certain areas. These are more than
qualities like hardworking or smart and include subjects, areas and topics they see
themselves as being proficient in, and theyʼre the only ones who can be proficient in
them.

They lose ground when you get what you want. This applies especially to the
illusion, which you donʼt benefit from but you are an integral part of. You need to be
the strongest believer for it to thrive.

There are bits, pieces and elements they add to their fake life story to create a
greater whole. Narcissists are bad with sincerity but do know how to organize the
small, trite details to convey a big picture. Theyʼre meticulous with their details.
The 16 Signs of a Narcissist ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! 74

They donʼt know what they want to do or what they want out of life because they
feel constant inner pressures to be regarded a certain way, thatʼs why illusions exist.
They canʼt think of doing anything else because that urge is so strong.

Itʼs always a story of unrelenting doom, their victimization by bad people and
unwavering perseverance through the challenge and eventual triumph over it.

Irrationality in you is easy for them to take advantage of and control, thatʼs why they
will instill it through the illusion. Bad decisions at home become bad decisions at
work and in other areas of your life.

Control is an illusion itself. The illusion at the heart of the illusion is that they have
control over you. They donʼt. Theyʼre controlling people, but they have to exert
themselves to make you believe they have control over you. They convince you of
it, and you adopt that belief, effectively allowing them to control you.

All they really do is perceive the cause-and-effect of what they do and how you
respond. When you respond favorably, they continue, when you donʼt, they stop and
try something else.

So the control is an illusion of yours too. You perceive it, and youʼre the one that
carries out their controlling will, it isnʼt some natural force you canʼt control.

Despite their “perfect” image, narcissists also convey the sense they couldnʼt
possibly be manipulative, they would be incompetent and unmotivated because of
their better nature. They fool you into underestimating them, and this is another
great weapon of theirs.

Narcissists like the teacher role. The teacher is a recognized expert and authority at
a specific task or area of study. Itʼs just that they donʼt teach you, they tell you how it
is and how itʼs going to be. Thatʼs what being an expert or teacher means to them,
power over others.

There are other people who like illusions but arenʼt narcissistic in that they donʼt
craft, deliver and enforce them the way narcissists do.

Theyʼre often “really busy” and “just donʼt have time.” Regardless of how busy
theyʼre supposed to be, they always find time for control. These are supposed to be
signs of importance and status that are really signs of insanity.
The 16 Signs of a Narcissist ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! 75

Also relevant to this topic is perceived and real control. Narcissists are really good
at knowing when they have a control handle on you, but sometimes itʼs only
perceived by them and not real. If they can really hurt your feelings, they can tell,
and therein lies the control. Itʼs hard to fool them on this point, but sometimes you
can pretend emotional uncertainty and itʼll comfort them because they believe it.
Your weakness is their perceived control, not their power over you.

The key difference here being that they need to have you believe the illusion, and
they will challenge and defend it wholeheartedly to you. Then they donʼt have to
depict you as subpar or less-than them.

Weʼve covered how theyʼre concerned almost solely with other peoplesʼ opinions of
them, and they seek to manipulate these views constantly. Their appearance to
others is everything, but they will also overplay a certain trait they want others to
accept so that they can continue to deny it themselves.

Let me explain. They are scared of a certain something about themselves, so they
seek to convince someone else that they donʼt really have this particular trait so that
they can believe it themselves. Get it?

Their “perfect” personality makes them imperfect. They make mistakes, maybe
arenʼt super personal, are quirky and not socially adept. They make bold social
statements. This is all a ruse, a clever cover story. They gratuitously admit to being
flawed and not always doing things right, but they “try and have your best intentions
at heart,” you have got to give them that.

They try to make it believable, but ask yourself, who really acts that way, for
appearances only? Itʼs especially suspicious when you compare the illusion to their
actions. They make mistakes, but they donʼt really make mistakes and it really is
your fault.

It probably goes without saying that their own techniques donʼt work on them,
theyʼre just too suspicious of everyone and everything. They also recognize when
theyʼre the subject of control and work to counter-control and defy their controller.
They wonʼt fall for another narcissistʼs illusion either.

Itʼs no coincidence that they find themselves in advantageous positions; being able
to control others, they wind up having a social group that attributes more to them
than they really deserve.
The 16 Signs of a Narcissist ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! 76

By extension, this also means you have to be bad at those things for them to look
good at them. Theyʼre the bad people, and the very worst people hide behind a
friendly face to gain proximity to and hurt the good people.

In order for it to be an illusion, someone has to believe it. Narcissists are not self-
sufficient and canʼt emotionally support themselves, thatʼs why theyʼre narcissists.
But they also arenʼt strong enough to believe and support their illusions alone, thatʼs
why youʼre here. They have the need but not the strength. You do have the strength.
They perpetuate it and you buy it.

Unfortunately for them, you also have the strength to not believe it, and that is the
other side of the coin they fear so much. Donʼt believe it. All the questioning you go
through is evidence that something is wrong, and all of their efforts to convince you
that the illusion is real and they are nice is proof theyʼre wrong.

You donʼt have to look for their illusions, they come to you. Narcissists throw them at
you to propagate them no matter what. Itʼs the image youʼre going to see first that is
the illusion. Their themes you have to dig for, but their illusions will find you.

Let me close by saying that I notice virtues cropping up frequently in the narcissistʼs
presentation. These are:
1. Tirelessly hard working – always busy at work and productive, taking great
pride in how hard they work over everyone else, and I mean everyone.
2. Selfless and self-sacrificing for others. Only cares about the well-being of their
family and loved ones (when it suits them to say so). In short, they do nothing for
themselves.
3. Extremely smart with a towering intellect and intellectual abilities. I like to
use the word unparalleled here. Theyʼre the only ones on the planet with their
abilities.
4. Unconventional, innovative, special and unique and never following the
foolish herd.

With all of this said, I find itʼs usually the polar opposite. They do what they want,
and their enabler is hardworking, selfless, immensely talented and very
unconventional. Theyʼre interesting people.
The 16 Signs of a Narcissist ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! 77

3. Exhibit Black and White Thinking About

Everything and Everyone
Controlling people display a persistent mode of thinking that does not change with
age and experience. Youʼll see negative patterns in their thought process,
discrimination against other types of thinking and a tendency to discount all but
themselves.

They will be quick to disregard things without knowing much about them. More
importantly, they will tend to disregard things youʼre interested in, in an attempt to
exert control over you by denying approval of the things you like, and denying you
the things that you need.

This will begin happening after theyʼve got you in the habit of asking them for
validation. When the people they control can be affected as to what it is they like or
think about something, it gives the narcissist power.

This usually accompanies a static world-view and way of reasoning. These

encompass “good things” like them, their hobbies, their activities and whatever traits
they happen to value, and then the rest of it that they have to tolerate.

This whole crazy process is called idealization. Remember the first principle we
discussed? Since narcissists feel bad about themselves, they must have someone
else around to feel superior to, but they also delude themselves into thinking things
that simply arenʼt true.

It also has to do with projection. Youʼll learn later about how narcissists use denial to
their advantage, but they see the traits within themselves, realize how adverse they
are to the way they want to see themselves and project all of those bad tendencies
onto others.

The wonderful things and people they encounter will have something to do with
them. They are masters of implicitly taking credit for things they had nothing to do
with, especially things that make them look personally successful.

No one has ever helped them their whole lives. Theyʼve done everything
themselves.
The 16 Signs of a Narcissist ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! 78

Again, thereʼs an element of truth to this. They donʼt ever feel like theyʼve been
supported because they havenʼt; someone made them into who they are today, not
by being a good parent or friend, but with abuse they didnʼt deserve and couldnʼt
protect themselves from. Someone had to abuse them for them to become
narcissists.

Itʼs also convenient. You may support them all of the time but they wonʼt
acknowledge it. Their image of total independence is too powerful for them to let go
of. Itʼs the bedrock of their dependence denial.

Oddly enough, narcissists will cling to themes of thought, in line with their identity,
and strongly impose them onto other people. This thinking pattern also forces you
into a position of working to meet their arbitrary rules and stipulations about what is
right.

Narcissists always take the oppositional stance to whatever you do and like.
Everything is a criticism of something, not complimentary unless they associate it
with themselves. Narcissists only compliment and think well of themselves,
everyone else is bad.

If you want them to support you on something, they donʼt. If you want them to be
around, they wonʼt. If you want them to leave you alone, they donʼt. You donʼt get
what you want, and by that they get what they way.

They broadly categorize things they donʼt like, things they donʼt do and why. They
will stand in direct opposition to what the narcissist sees as their own values.

So if they think theyʼre really good at picking and comparing prices, and hence good
with money, they will hold that over others, especially those they deem not good
with money.

People who arenʼt good with money may be perfectly fine with money, but
narcissists wonʼt see it that way. For whatever reason, it doesnʼt support the
narcissistic illusion, so others have to be bad with money. Unless the person is a
brilliant investor, the narcissist will always consider them bad with money.

Take anything you like and put it in the place of money management. I like to call
this labeling (or false characterization). I donʼt know why that is, but every narcissist
The 16 Signs of a Narcissist ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! 79

Iʼve ever seen does this every moment of every day. It is ongoing and very
monotonous.

All of this is to distinguish themselves from everyone else. They have to feel unique
and special to themselves, not limping along with the mindless masses. Theyʼre
much too good for that.

To them, they have plausible reasons to not like things and people that threaten
them to justify their disapproval.

Narcissists are irrational and cannot employ reason consistently. However, they can
appear to use it as a façade to cover their bad actions. Itʼs really in the way they
talk, they sound reasonable but itʼs an illusion.

Black and white thinking aids them in denial of things they donʼt want to think about,
as opposed to having to deal with shades of gray and sort it all out. They donʼt have
the emotional capacity for that, they are children, and children donʼt deal with things
by sorting them all out. They decide what they donʼt like from how it makes them
immediately feel.

This black and white thinking isnʼt always apparent in what they say, but the choices
they make. I warn you, once youʼre able to discern what they say and what they do,
the illusion from the real, it can be very disturbing witnessing their depravity.

Itʼs fascinating how narcissists talk so much about good and bad, right and wrong.
Itʼs blasphemously wrong how they use it as a tool simply for their own gain.

Everyone deserves their criticism. When they canʼt criticize something on sufficient
grounds because it is too righteous or impressive, and doing so would make them
look bad, they say nothing.

The sad fact is, narcissists are rarely successful. By definition, they really canʼt be
because of their condition. They turn to a coping mechanism of hurting others to
deny their lack of success.

If someone does the same job as them or even better, then they have to
differentiate themselves with that person as to why theyʼre better.
The 16 Signs of a Narcissist ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! 80

Itʼs always “you against me”. They live in that comparison and contrast world and
want you to as well. Thatʼs the world they know and can control best. Itʼs the world
where they always win and you always lose; the world of illusions and things that
arenʼt real but people will still believe they are.

The truth always wins, but with human beings the perception of the truth is
sometimes more important than the truth itself.

Theyʼre just better liars and more deceptive than you, so of course you canʼt hope to
beat them at the game of illusions, but why would you even want to? Itʼs not worth
it, you donʼt have a real personal stake in it and nothing positive can come from it.

So the first part of the illusion is “Iʼm great”, but that part is tied to “Youʼre not”. This
is when they ascribe to you your character traits that you are supposed to accept.
They will be things like tardiness, lack of focus, a general feeling of you not having it
together, not being all there. These are the things they project themselves as not
being.

Which brings me to the final part of this sign: what happens when you go against
the illusion and disprove it?

Narcissists arenʼt adaptable themselves, but their illusions are. They covertly
combat your attempts to show the illusion is false or less favorable than they want.
All threats to the illusion are immediately perceived and must be extinguished.

This insanity comes to a head when you catch them doing totally unnecessary or
even harmful things, just to look busy and important to other people. Creating
problems that need to be fixed by looking for things to break, or just doing aimless
things.
" " "
Once youʼre branded as an enemy, you become a bad person who seeks to harm
them. They try to discredit you as their last desperate attempt to cut losses and
protect their self-image to others. If you start doubting them as good people, youʼre
threatening their very existence and livelihood, and itʼs either you or them and their
fantasy. I think you can guess which theyʼll choose.
The 16 Signs of a Narcissist ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! 81

4. Never Take Responsibility for Their Actions. If

Something Goes Wrong or Isnʼt Right, itʼs
Always Someone Elseʼs Fault, and Usually Yours
This is narcissistic reasoning at its very best, folks. The high point of their existence
and their greatest ability: blaming it on you.

Here is another way of saying this: Controlling People Believe Theyʼre Never
Wrong. Again, be aware that they will be convincing in their appearance of being
humble, modest, and good natured about others.

They wonʼt compliment anyone except for themselves, and certainly not you. They
will, however, compliment another to you when the other person isnʼt around. In this
way they use someone else against you while also not bolstering them to their face.
Accordingly, the other person may hear great things about you that you never hear.
If need be, theyʼll compare the two of you right in front of each other to make one
feel less adequate, but this is sloppier and appears more outwardly sadistic.

Donʼt take any compliment from them as genuine, just as you would a criticism.
They say it because they are intimidated by you. The more intimidated, the more
negative attention you receive for being who you are.

At the same time, regard compliments the same way you would insults. They donʼt
mean anything they say, itʼs just to get you to do something. You do good by
removing most of their input to your decisions.

They quite literally can do no wrong.

This may not always be covert, but for the most part itʼs apparent either way. It will
be implied through non-verbal communication and rewritten history.

Rewritten history is exactly what it sounds like: reciting things that didnʼt actually
happen, or misstating them. If youʼve ever been around controlling people, and who
hasnʼt, youʼll immediately recognize this one.

Fooling with oneʼs perceptions of what is happening is the game of manipulation.

When things go wrong, whether it be tardiness, forgetfulness or a simple
miscommunication, it will always be your fault.
The 16 Signs of a Narcissist ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! 82

Another fascinating way this manifests itself is through victimization. That is, some
force outside of their control (sometimes you), will have come in and thwarted all
attempts to fulfill their obligations or responsibilities. It wasnʼt their fault; something
totally unavoidable impeded their path.

So it may not be said, but youʼll know through non-verbal communication. Itʼs
important to understand that they might not say it is your fault, just make you feel as
though it is so that you begin accepting it. This is the key. The goal here is to have
you accept it as your responsibility, without them having to do anything.

Alternatively, my father uses another popular one among controlling people, “Iʼm
sorry that you feel that Iʼve wronged you.” This essentially means “Iʼm sorry that you
screwed up and are all bent out of shape about it, but Iʼm such a good person I
forgive you”.

You will always lose. Being around a narcissist is a negative-sum game. Youʼre
simply there to fail.

Pushing you over the edge is a big success for them. They love it when you scream
and proclaim you hate them. They like to make you upset and claim that there must
be something wrong with you.

For them, itʼs a successful case when you rightfully become upset and tell them to
back off. They canʼt imagine why youʼd be upset because theyʼve done nothing
wrong. But they have done something, and they know exactly what it is.

You are simply a tool, a cardboard cut-out and they regard you as such. They
recognize that they need you to always be around for them to take the fall. All of
their contacts, from social network to family, are means to an end. They are tools to
projecting their illusion to others to be seen in a positive light.

How can they so angrily refuse to accept the consequences of their own actions?

Why do you always walk away feeling awful about yourself after talking to this
person?

Iʼll tell you why: people who choose not to grow or worse, canʼt grow, carve out a
little social corner for themselves and put a big “keep out!” sign on the front.
Whenever anyone dares to venture near their little hovel, they fight and claw with all
The 16 Signs of a Narcissist ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! 83

of their amassed hatred and frustration for the shortcomings they donʼt want to have
to think about or deal with and kick you out, making you feel as awful as they
possibly can.

People who feel like they canʼt pursue and achieve their goals from because of
some internal restrictions donʼt want you to be able to either. If they canʼt succeed
and be happy, why should you? You should have to be like them, you should have
the same problems as them because it isnʼt fair otherwise.

Narcissists take it even further: they want you to take full responsibility for their
problems so they donʼt have to.

Theyʼre good at hurting you because theyʼve taken all of that wasted potential and
energy that could be used for doing something productive and channeling it to the
frustration they feel everyday for being idle and stagnant. Theyʼre really mad at
themselves and the people who didnʼt support them. Theyʼve been emotionally
trampled themselves, so you better believe they know how to do it to you. Theyʼve
picked it up naturally from their abusers, but you shouldnʼt fall in line and accept it
just because they had to.

They will cease to function when you need them to most, and rely on you to fix the
problem during the most trying times.

A necessary part of being a successful manipulator is to be able to oh-so-subtly

offset blame onto someone else and have them accept it. They will feel bad and
responsible for something they had nothing to do with, and the subtler it is the less
they suspect because of how much worse theyʼll feel.

Theyʼre mad because no one protected them. Narcissists feel and wholeheartedly
believe that they are entitled to more than others not only because theyʼre better but
because they got a raw deal with their lot in life and upbringing.

They shouldnʼt have to take responsibility like others. You should have to do that for
them because theyʼre victims. They have the right to be irresponsible human
beings.

Call me crazy, but thatʼs true and theyʼre right. They did get a raw deal. Most of us
arenʼt like them because we werenʼt on the receiving end of that abuse and werenʼt
forced to adapt like them; we canʼt relate.
The 16 Signs of a Narcissist ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! 84

That is, however, no justification for taking their responsibilities upon yourself. If
anything, itʼs an argument for standing up to them and making them feel the
consequences of their own actions, because itʼs the only way people learn.

Noticing when you encourage the behavior is a key to your getting better. Thatʼs
your responsibility as an adult.

So when youʼre actively avoiding them, youʼre not behaving irrationally. Youʼre
reacting to a stimulus they provided, and youʼre simply trying to avoid potential pain
and abuse from being around them.
Sometimes it wonʼt even be the narcissist that resists; other enablers will fight you
tooth and nail as well. The truth is a great personal cost to their wellbeing as well.
When they do assist you, be very wary. Itʼs overwhelmingly likely that they
recognize what it will do for them.

When you refuse to take responsibility for their actions and force them to, they will
use the guilt trip and pity party routine. I can pretty much tell you what theyʼll do:

1. Pout a frown, cross their arms and fold into themselves against a wall.
2. Start crying, usually pretty hysterically. They may start ranting to show how upset
they are.
3. Sit and hang their head and say something to the effect of “Well, I guess Iʼm just
a bad person” So that you can jump in and refute it.
4. Walk around like they are weak, sick, hurt, almost to the point of limping, like their
hurt feelings physically debilitate them.

The method they choose is influenced by a number of factors like personal

preference, personality, gender and social role, for instance.

No matter what you do or what youʼve accomplished, any modicum of success you
have must be downplayed and the confidence and empowerment it generates
within you to build upon your successes must be squelched.
The 16 Signs of a Narcissist ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! 85

5. When Performing a Favor, They Expect

Showering Praise and For You to Repay Them
Many Times Over
The “freely” giving out of favors is a basic tool of the narcissist. Why? Favors are
benevolent. A good well placed favor makes them a good person who wants the
best for you in their heart, which makes them a good person.

Favors also place them in a position for you to do something for them. Theyʼre
reciprocal in that way, it facilitates control because now you need to do something
for them. They have another reason to bother you with something.

Not surprising is how little you really benefit from their favors. It seems that no
matter how well intentioned theyʼre supposed to be, they never quite get it right.

I need to generalize “favors” here. Favors include anything that supposedly makes
them look nice but entails that you should do something back, and if you donʼt,
youʼre bad.

Letʼs take returning phone calls as an example. I have repeatedly seen narcissists
use this technique. It is common courtesy to return phone calls. Knowing this, they
will call you knowing that you are obligated to return their calls. You donʼt really want
to return their phone calls expediently, because nothing good ever comes of it when
you do. Itʼs just a useless distraction. So they make it unrewarding for you to do so,
while claiming they actually want you to.

So even if they contact you just to talk, they now have a friendly gesture that you
should reciprocate. But most likely theyʼll plant things in the conversation that entail
you having to go and do something and then get back to them.

Let me organize this section by making clear that there are three facets to favors:

1. They will defy you in some way when performing favors youʼve asked of them
(wrong thing from the grocery store, late timing, etc.)
2. They will “force favor” you; they will do something you donʼt want and disguise it
as a benevolent favor. Somehow theyʼre just totally unaware that itʼs not what you
want… but they have the best intentions so it must be good.
The 16 Signs of a Narcissist ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! 86

3. When they ask you for a favor, theyʼll employ the Setting-Up to Fail technique,
whereupon theyʼre disappointed after you donʼt accomplish an impossible task… if
you do somehow accomplish it, it wasnʼt good enough or what they were asking of
you.

The setting up to fail technique is a well known psychological trick. This places them
in the “youʼre just not good enough” position.

Interestingly enough, most of the time when you ask for something they will defy
you in some way, to show you that they can.

For instance, think about the last time they performed a favor or task you asked of
them. Did they do it satisfactorily? Was it what you asked of them?

They will perform an abysmal job, and even “unwittingly” harm you in the process,
so that you will never ask something of them again. They make it too costly for you
to ask them for favors.

When they do something for you, youʼll hear about it to the end of time. Perhaps it
was a great Christmas gift (that they know you didnʼt want), or a dropping off of
takeout that you donʼt like, or introducing you to someone that makes you
uncomfortable.

Letʼs hit that last one good and hard. As you will learn in sign #7, they cannot
tolerate you being around someone you like and having a relationship thatʼs apart
from them.

The other side to that coin, as you might also expect, is that they will recruit friends
of their own if they help to keep you in line and enforce the illusion.

When I say recruit, I really mean shove in your face constantly and force you to
acquaint with. Even if they just make you the least bit uncomfortable, it works for
them and to their ends. Though as you can probably guess, it will very likely be
much worse for you.

At the same time, theyʼll place you in a position where you have to “like” the person
and youʼre just so appreciative that they introduced the two of you.
The 16 Signs of a Narcissist ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! 87

Most of the time, the favor will have an outcome that they actually want. If the
narcissist isnʼt getting anything from it, theyʼll be miserable.

A favor is really just a tool to tag you for later abuse. At any time when they choose,
if the favor was not performed in some unspecified way, you did them wrong. Then
they can bring it up with you, again and again. Itʼs a tag: a reason to approach and
control you later inconspicuously.

6. Will Always Hide or Deny Malicious Intentions

and Lie to Do So
In any conversation or interaction, the narcissistic person is looking to find
something to boost their self-image, and hence self-worth. They must have you
believing in the illusion. Occasionally, in all of their controlling behavior, they will slip
up and youʼll see what their true intentions are and not the illusion.

Itʼs such a glaring assumption that people who say nice things do nice things too.
Many people make the mistake of not looking at what a person really does,
especially victims of narcissists.

Something that has always bothered me is how unaccountable they are. No matter
what they do wrong, most people assume that it wasnʼt on purpose and that they
are good people because they have such good intentions. Why do they get free
passes?

An illustration of the free pass to abuse would be “I donʼt need your permission to
take care of you.” What this actually means is “You canʼt tell me what to do. There is
nothing you can do to stop me from intruding on you whenever I want, out of
concern for you.”

The statement here is implicit but very clear: Iʼm going to do what I want to you
no matter what and you canʼt stop me.

There are two types of lies.

The first, and most common youʼll encounter, are lies about their intentions.
Narcissists will always claim the best intentions without exception. This valuable
The 16 Signs of a Narcissist ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! 88

claim is what allows them to abuse and justify their abuse. However, good intentions
stand in utter contradiction with their actions, as weʼve already discussed.
Narcissists donʼt tell you outright what they want you to buy. They instill you with
false beliefs slowly and over time, like cooking the frog by turning up the heat
instead of throwing him in the pot of boiling water. It qualifies as a form of
brainwash.

They make you believe it by manipulating your perceptions and using the natural
human trait of you accepting what appears to be nice, then it feels right and is okay
to trust. They isolate you from any other contending inputs, so that you only hear
their ideas.

The next is lies about their actions. Remember, the flimsy stick they are forced to
stand on because they choose to manipulate others is that they must tell lies. Their
Achilles Heel (as with every controlling person), is that their actions do not line up
with their words. They are wholly inconsistent with each other.

When my father doesnʼt want to do something, he convinces himself and everyone

around him that he “doesnʼt have time”. The signal is that heʼs so busy all of the
time he simply canʼt spare a moment to make such a minor commitment as clean
the house or prepare food.

Itʼs also a stab at someoneʼs personal needs and requests, that they arenʼt
important. There is, however, plenty of time for doing all of the things he wants to
do. He just knows his priorities, and itʼs “me first”.

He does have time, heʼs just picking where he prefers to spend it, but of course heʼs
not saying that.

Now itʼs someoneʼs right to manage and spend their time however they like. If they
choose not to do something because it isnʼt a high priority for them, thatʼs fine.
Thatʼs not what heʼs saying though. Heʼs saying he literally doesnʼt have time to
spend on you or something you want him to do, thatʼs the distinction. His priorities
take priority over ours.

That doesnʼt mean that everything they do wonʼt line up with their words or
intentions. Many things will, like taking out the trash, walking the dog or making
breakfast.
The 16 Signs of a Narcissist ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! 89

Itʼs also important to note that you will never truly know their actions for sure
because itʼs a property of their minds; only they can know what they are really
thinking. We havenʼt figured out a way to read minds yet.

The plain fact is at some point they have to lie about their actions, and actions are
something you can prove or disprove, unlike intentions. Narcissists (and all good
liars) know this well, and so they will be very careful and work diligently so that you
will not suspect and definitely wonʼt be able to prove their lie.

Control requires that you lie. You cannot do what narcissists do, create illusions,
misinform or emotionally abuse others, without lying and living a lie.

Another behavior Iʼve witnessed many times is that narcissists will rewrite personal
history. That is, when something about the past is brought up, it will be recited
differently in their favor. Whether itʼs something someone said, did or intended,
theyʼll come out as the good guy when in reality they were the problem to begin
with.

Not surprisingly, each historical recount will contradict the last, and will depend on
the situation at hand. Most narcissists canʼt create a consistent argument, only
strings of reasons and excuses that make sense based on how concerned they
supposedly are. The historical recounts will always have a common element: they
were right and you were wrong.

They love to have your well being hanging in the balance, and preferably by their
decisions. What materially and emotionally hangs in the balance, consequential
decisions of your life, rests in their hands.

They love being the ones left to “save” you and the ones who can dangle you over
an open flame if they so choose. To have your fate in their hands, or really, make
you believe that it is.

Remember they will always fall back onto their wonderful, virtuous intentions. Their
arguments will be isolated points lacking any coherent whole and poorly represents
their good intentions, because that is not their intention.

Frankly, thereʼs nothing I hate more than when someone says “Iʼm sorry” but doesnʼt
mean it and continues on their business, acting like nothing happened and you
wonʼt notice because they said “sorry”.
The 16 Signs of a Narcissist ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! 90

Here is an exercise I want you to practice. Write down what they say, and closely
observe what they do. Donʼt hold them to it initially, just observe for yourself. The
disparity may be disturbing.

Use them against themselves. If they really do care so much about you, their
actions will prove it. Take the painted picture and see what they do to paint that
picture, or what they do to really support that picture. What proves it except for their
words and false impressions? Youʼll know them as well or better than anyone else.

I must continue to stress actions speak louder than words. It is too easy, especially
if youʼre conditioned to it, to take the narcissists on their words or intentions. The
nice thing is, once youʼve noticed their bad actions, you never go back to believing
the illusion.

Upon first experiencing the deflated illusion, itʼll feel like a two-edged sword. Youʼre
so used to believing it, itʼs uncomfortable and even disturbing seeing someone for
who they are, and not the idealizations they present to you. The deception runs
deep, to the point, if youʼll excuse the cliché, that they arenʼt who you thought they
were at all… ever.

You canʼt take them seriously. You should be actively suspicious of them all of the
time, just assume they are trying to harm you. Hold nothing they give close to your
heart.

Donʼt listen to them because they donʼt listen to themselves or follow their own
advice. They donʼt do the things they said they were going to do, and they do things
they said they werenʼt going to do, and things they didnʼt say they were going to do.

If there werenʼt trusting and nice people in the world, everyone would be wise to
narcissists and you wouldnʼt be reading this book because I wouldnʼt have had to
write it.

They are seeking to deceive people, and they do so very easily because they push
the good-intentions agenda so hard and so subtly.

Most of us have good intentions, but we arenʼt suffocating others with them. How
often do you go around trying to create the impression that youʼre just a stellar
person to other people?
The 16 Signs of a Narcissist ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! 91

We donʼt do things like this because we arenʼt like them. We compliment them, get
wrapped up in their lives, enable their bad behavior but we still arenʼt them. We
canʼt be them.

7. Will Work to Disrupt and Destroy Your Close

Friendships, Hobbies and any Other Interests
When youʼre in a controlling relationship, itʼs just you and the controller. Narcissists
see most people as very general cut-outs, having no use for them. They scan for
people they can control and, upon finding them, use them for all theyʼre worth.

Anything that doesnʼt serve that purpose, that doesnʼt serve their ends, may be a
threat. They donʼt just work hard to disrupt your activities, they work to destroy your
life.

They cannot allow you to be influenced by anyone or anything other than

themselves. Once they establish control, they donʼt want to lose it. So each
incremental loss of your freedom is very valuable to them.

They cannot allow you to enjoy yourself. Hobbies, favorite dining places and
hangouts, activities and people closest to your heart and your sense of self are
opportunities for you to discover their bad intentions and get away from them.

The more you care about, the higher priority it is for them to destroy it. The people
and activities that you care about most are their biggest threats. Your lifestyle must
be to serve under them.

Friends and family are high-priority on the list of things to destroy. From the first day
they meet you, they will assess where your love lies and seek to separate and
alienate you from it.

Another way to put this is they will destroy what you love. If they canʼt destroy it,
they will remove you from it. One of their favorite ways to do this is by appearing
(talking) like they actively support you in the activity but find ways to turn you away
from it… like emphasizing something you donʼt like about the activity, or someone
who is better than you at it.
The 16 Signs of a Narcissist ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! 92

By reducing the value of what you feel you do well, they reduce your value and self-
worth. Itʼs the same exact thing with your goals. They make you feel like they arenʼt
worth achieving, that they arenʼt worthy goals because you arenʼt a worthy person.

Anything that takes away from the controlling personʼs dominance is a threat to their
life. In some way or another, they will pull you apart from what you love, starting with
what you love most.

Every success they have doing that makes them stronger and you just that much
weaker. They craft specific methods of getting between you and your favorite
activities and people. Instilling doubt as to whether itʼs a good thing,

They do not want and cannot allow you being happy, fulfilled and satisfied. They
cannot help but to be totally compelled to work against it. Your happiness is a great
cost to them.

Your career is the same way. More time spent working, especially doing work you
enjoy, is less time for you to listen to them and meet their needs. Theyʼll convince
you that you canʼt work and that you arenʼt good or capable of it.

What they want and what you want are mutually exclusive; you cannot do what you
want to do while doing what they want you to do. Your goals and their goals are
necessarily antithetical to each other, when you realize that accomplishing your
goals means failing theirs. These conditions cannot both exist at the same time.

Of course, the illusion will be that they sure wish you had more friends, like them.
They want you to be around more people (people they want you to be around for
the purpose of discomfort or control) and be more outgoing. In order to be
conditioned into complacency and acceptance of abuse, you must first be isolated
from all experiences until they become your only experience.

They like to squeeze themselves in between you and your goals and inspiration,
becoming the authority you have to ask permission to do what you want. Then when
they achieve that power, they like to be able to take it away from you by diminishing
it and disallowing, because at this point you take them seriously.

They pit you against other people in the same way, keeping your mind off of them
and putting you through troubles so you donʼt associate with them, this is when
youʼre the most vulnerable and easiest to control.
The 16 Signs of a Narcissist ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! 93

Keeping you on edge constantly is to their advantage. They dangle relief from your
constant bombardment of stress right in front of your nose. You want relief from
them, but you may not make that connection at first.

Itʼs just that whenever theyʼre around, something is wrong. Youʼre not sure if itʼs just
the way you react to them or not, but you feel it immediately. That feeling becomes
very familiar.

They say that an untruth is best told when you believe it. That is, what you think is
true, you impart with more truth in your conviction behind it. This is whatʼs
happening each and every time they deny your accusations of their abuse and put
you back into submission. They deny and make themselves the victim, as if youʼre
assaulting and hurting them, and you believe it because they do it with such
conviction behind it.

They will break your stuff, both “accidentally” and actively, but itʼs all deliberately.
Leaving it in vulnerable places where it can be broken or downright breaking it
themselves when you arenʼt around, they arenʼt above that.

When does it all end? Where does it all lead? When will it stop?

Narcissists want to stand in between you and what you want. Theyʼre the
gatekeepers who grant you permission to see and do whatever it is you want to do,
without you acknowledging it.

One of their favorite things to do is take what you love and redirect you away from it
through covert criticism and ashamedness.

For instance, theyʼll suggest you arenʼt good at something. They especially love to
do this to things you love and really are good at, because it intimidates them so
much they then feel all-powerful if they can peel you away from it.

They want you to do something else and that means something with them;
something theyʼre in control of and make the decisions on. Itʼs also a requirement
that theyʼre more skilled than you at that thing, or at least have you think that.

Their reaction to your success is to shrug their shoulders, fold into themselves and
go around like children with a debilitating physical injury. Iʼve yet to see a narcissist
that doesnʼt limp around to get attention.
The 16 Signs of a Narcissist ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! 94

Let me save you the suspense: they never stop. They never stop thinking about
how to destroy everything you love, cherish and care about most. Your interests,
your work, your relationships will all wither with their presence.

They are arbitrators and judges. They have to be in the middle of every contact you
have with the outside world. They reserve the right to have the last word and be the
final judge on everything you do, and itʼs always wrong, bad, insufficient and
inadequate.

Yet, with all of their concern, theyʼre never able to help you very much. In fact they
always seem to hurt you much more than help, doing more harm than good.
" " " " " "
They are the obstruction to your goals and the barrier to the people you really love,
and they love preventing you from getting what you want. The ways they can
disrupt, discourage and prevent you from doing things are immense and highly
adaptive.

Even though they themselves are rigid, close-minded people, theyʼre extraordinarily
adept at spotting opportunities to pressure others into behaving as they would like,
without them being aware of it.

No matter what you do, I donʼt want you to ever forget that fact. They will never help
you except to facilitate their control over you. Everything you do is detrimental to
them in the long-term, and thatʼs the most important takeaway item in this book.

8. Are Dependent and Cannot Be Left Alone.

They Must Get Attention and Praise at all Times,
Especially From Their Main Source
Narcissists are dependent; they need other human beings to prop-up their frail egos
to feel safe. As such, they cannot be without human attention for any
considerable length of time.

It is similar to when you see a codependent couple that must remain in direct
contact at all times. Theyʼll communicate many times throughout the day, without
their transactions containing anything important, including genuine expressions of
love.
The 16 Signs of a Narcissist ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! 95

Because of their denial, a narcissistʼs self-image will include their personal virtue of
remaining independent and pulling their own weight. They wonʼt ever appear
dependent or submissive to another at all.

What is this anti-dependency all about? Well, when there is something narcissists
donʼt want to accept about themselves, they relegate it to someone else. They lie
and it becomes someone elseʼs problem.

Itʼs a reaction to dependent behavior by dependent people. Dependency denial has

to do with them feeling in danger if theyʼre dependent on anyone. However, they
must be dependent on someone to function somewhat as human beings.

The great thing about this rule is that itʼs really easy to recognize. Itʼs also a dead
giveaway for the narcissist. If they cannot be left alone without controlling someone
for any considerable length of time, itʼs a really good sign they fall into this class of
personality disorders. Simply count the number of times the narcissist can be alone.

Narcissists will never leave you, because they canʼt leave you alone and let you be.
Theyʼre obsessed with you and getting you to meet their immediate and long-term
needs. This sounds like a blessing, but since theyʼre so dysfunctional to be around it
is actually a curse.

Their fake love pronouncements will always be to get you back in line. They cannot
change what they are. They will always need you around to hurt you.

Controlling people must have other people present (especially a main source) to live
through. Without them, they might as well not exist.

Theyʼre deathly afraid that you will leave. That is their first fear.

Their second fear is that you will become strong. This fear is different in that itʼs the
constant battle they have to wage to keep you in line. You becoming strong means
they lose control and become weak, and therefore feel bad about themselves.

Itʼs funny because, youʼd think becoming strong would be their first fear because it
would be a precursor to you leaving them. But theyʼre impatient and canʼt deny their
immediate needs for very long, even though they do plan for the long term. Your
growing personal strength is a dangerous trend, but itʼs also a pain for them
because they experience more difficulty exerting control.
The 16 Signs of a Narcissist ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! 96

Narcissists are by definition very weak people. They have no great ambitions
outside of control, and they cannot assert themselves because they donʼt really
know what it is that they want. Control is not a goal.

They canʼt really assert themselves on reasonable grounds because they have no
real justification for what they do. At the same time, none of their arguments has any
great sense or substance to it because they canʼt really differentiate between sound
arguments and unsound ones since that involves human feeling, and the only
feeling they have is bad.

They will be at their happiest and least aggressive when all eyes and ears are on
them, and there are no competitive pressures for attention from the outside.

They most definitely qualify as needy, high-maintenance people. But it isnʼt just
being needy that makes them dependent, itʼs that they rely so heavily on you to
function that they canʼt function without you.

So they donʼt really prop you up, they drag you down with them before standing on
your shoulders. They kick you around and trip you to make themselves look taller
and feel bigger.

They like to take great things youʼve done that they ignored and credit themselves
with them. Activities and ideas, friends, people, and even places youʼve been to,
become integrated into a long list of things to usurp from you, reintegrating them
back into their own personal stories and illusion.

Narcissists like to be regarded as experts and will lie to attain this position among a
social group. They do this by exaggerating or totally fabricating what they have done
before. The group serves two purposes: they feel good by being well-regarded by
the group and for controlling its direction. Then they can tell people outside the
group how they are an integral part of it, much-valued, sought-after, competent,
proficient and very important.

Keep in mind that they believe they have a right to control you. You belong to
them. When you resist, they feel it as an infringement to their rights. You have
wronged them to refuse their control over you. Theyʼll use a false front to cover their
concern, but there will be a heavy price to pay for your infringement.
The 16 Signs of a Narcissist ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! 97

Narcissists love to get people to compete for them, encouraging more people to
compete for them. They string along many people and use them against their main
supply. This in turn raises their perceived social value and self-worth like nothing
else can.

Iʼve talked about the main source. The reason it is the main source is that there can
be, and usually are, other sources of narcissistic supply. Friends can provide a
decent source, but unless theyʼre really enablers itʼs easier for them to take off when
the narcissist attempts to control them.

Itʼs also more difficult for the narcissist to invest in having friends to feed off of
because it takes more time than having a main source, and usually isnʼt enough and
therefore not worth it.

When I say they cannot be left alone, I mean that there is never a time in their lives
when they are without someone. If they are alone for a time, itʼs the most miserable
experience of their whole entire lives. If itʼs not you, itʼs somebody else.

When they donʼt have someone, they find someone fast. Theyʼll have made up their
mind on the person almost immediately after meeting them. I mean within a few
weeks theyʼre in a committed relationship fast, but itʼs just the person committing to
them and not the other way around.
" " " " "
Some enablers flatter themselves and take pride in thinking that they were chosen
to take care of the narcissist over many others (even though thatʼs nothing to be
proud of, because of what it reflects about them). They fail to realize that theyʼre
only the main source, with many other secondary sources to fulfill the narcissistʼs
needs, including intimacy.

Narcissists almost always need members of the opposite sex to pay attention to
them. This includes infidelity and though I donʼt have a real accurate figure to give
you as to how many commit infidelity, I suspect that most of them do.

While they depend heavily on you and like to make it look like you depend a great
deal on them and couldnʼt function without them, they in fact cannot be with
dependent people. You canʼt be a dependent person because they need you to be
strong or you wouldnʼt be able to support them. They canʼt support themselves, how
would another weak person?
The 16 Signs of a Narcissist ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! 98

In fact, theyʼd really prefer it if you were anti-dependent, in the true sense of the
word, because then you will never ask anything of them at all. They cannot perform
favors for other people, so itʼs all the better when enablers donʼt even ask for them
or are trained not to ask for them for fear of negative feedback.

The point where their dependency becomes obvious is when they panic when a
crisis hits. If something actually bad or dangerous happens, youʼll be the one who
has to be the parent and make it all right. When something happens that makes
them feel vulnerable and like children, they are incapable of remedying it and you
will have to take up the mantle.

Merriam-Webster defines co-dependency as: “a psychological condition or a

relationship in which a person is controlled or manipulated by another who is
affected with a pathological condition (as an addiction to alcohol or heroin); broadly :
dependence on the needs of or control by another.”

I define it as relying on othersʼ attention to feel good and the range of behaviors you
adopt to get that attention, with pathological conditions including personality
disorders. It sounds a lot like dysfunctional children, and thatʼs no coincidence.

Another fascinating observation from the opposites principle is theyʼll act like you
are excluding them, even though they exclude you.

The reality is that you ground them. Without you in the picture, their lives would be
very unstable and they would be scrambling to find someone like you. A full-scale
project would ensue to find the right person to abuse.

Please donʼt get into the habit, as they will encourage, of mistaking dependency for
love or caring. Donʼt feel special because they happen to be dependent on you.

Thatʼs a bad sign, it says a plethora of things about you when dependent narcissists
try to get you into their webs.

It means that you give off all of the dysfunctional signs that theyʼre looking for. They
read it from your behaviors and reactions to them, and they probably know better
than anyone else. Trust me on this one when I say that theyʼre probably right.

What it really means is that youʼre a prime contender doormat to be stepped on.
You are special only in your enabling abilities. They will have no attachment to you
The 16 Signs of a Narcissist ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! 99

whatsoever, and when they find other prime enablers, theyʼll use them too and
make them feel exactly the same way. This whole thing isnʼt about you; itʼs about
you meeting their needs. Itʼs about them. You are a tool.

9. Will Act Bizarre and Possibly Become

Dangerous When Experiencing or Sensing a
Loss of Control and Will do Anything to Get It
Back
Narcissistic personalities must have other people to dictate to and live through.
When their control of others is put into jeopardy, they will do anything to get it back.
This is because when a controlling person feels they are losing control, it is nearly
equivalent to severe injury or dying.

Faking accidents or threatening suicide to threatening someone else, they will act in
bizarre and sometimes dangerous ways to re-establish their dominance.
Oftentimes, their desperate state pushes them to doing rasher things that will
alienate you even further.

More than anything, their behavior will be erratic and lack the usual self-control they
normally display. This comes in varying degrees; they wonʼt totally lose it at first,
theyʼll be able to recognize the urgency of the situation and just “turn the heat up”,
so to speak.

Get into a habit of watching how just the slightest change in your behavior affects
theirs. They will constantly adapt to it, when what they really want is a stagnation;
no change in your behavior so that they donʼt have to change anything.

They work hard to actively control, and they do enjoy it, but they also like having
you “control” yourself by knowing what is required of you at all times and acting
accordingly without them having to step in themselves. They donʼt like getting
directly involved to the point where they dirty their hands, unless they must to get
you back into line and under their thumb.

You should expect big and dramatic events. Soppy and very self-absorbed
superficial love letters, long melodramatic expositions explaining how sorry they are,
but never admitting any guilt.
The 16 Signs of a Narcissist ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! 100

They never show regret or remorse for anything they do. They enjoyed it. My guess
is that theyʼre also proud of it.

Their first step will be to bring it back to “I love you”. Theyʼll over-perform in
showering you with nice comments and doing fun things they donʼt usually do. Yet,
theyʼll still somehow make you feel all the more uncomfortable and indebted for it.

Itʼs also disturbing how “romance novelish” a lot of their ideas about love are. They
really arenʼt their own, because itʼs not something they feel, but they do it
convincingly enough that you think they really mean it.

But when these desperate ploys donʼt work, they begin defaming you as a “bad” or
“crazy” person.

This is an important point: there is one thing I have seen all narcissists lean on in
times of trouble. As soon as someone becomes too dangerous to their position,
when they know too much and are a threat to revealing the narcissist and what they
have done in the past, that person becomes “crazy”. They go to everyone in your
immediate social circle they can get a hold of and incessantly shout ill-omens about
you.

What do they have to lose when you accuse them of being bad if they know they
arenʼt? Why would any sane being put so much effort into looking like they arenʼt
guilty unless they really are?

Iʼm not sure why narcissists like the “crazy” label so much. Probably because itʼs an
immediate fix-all that allows them to deny anything that could be wrong with them.

If it wasnʼt already ironic enough, Iʼve also heard the word “paranoid” used many
times by narcissists, when describing their victims.

Let me tell you something: anyone who doesnʼt go along with the narcissistic illusion
is “crazy” and thereʼs something wrong with them. To the narcissist, anyone who
doesnʼt believe their story is dangerous and trying to get them.

Whatʼs really fascinating is that, just by the fact they call you crazy proves they donʼt
think youʼre crazy. Narcissists know they cannot control crazy people. If they
thought you were crazy, they would have nothing to do with you. Theyʼd already be
in the hills.
The 16 Signs of a Narcissist ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! 101

Strangely enough, no matter how crazy youʼre supposed to be, they never leave or
try to identify and fix what is supposed to be wrong with you. Curious, isnʼt it?

They talk about leaving endlessly, but they never will. This is just a fake assertion to
prop up their fierce illusion of independence. Itʼs a sign theyʼre desperate. You
always have another chance with them. The truth is that itʼs actually extremely
difficult to get away from them.

Theyʼll try to take advantage of the fact that they know youʼre dependent, but theyʼre
even more dependent. They need you a lot more than you need them.

Itʼs amazing how nice they can be to get you to come back to them and return to
their side. When you do as they want you to, you support their narcissism, despite
what you may believe.

As a somewhat odd and last-ditch effort to protect their image, they might even
pretend that something is seriously wrong with them, or try to hide behind their
selflessness and family mentality.

This is poʼ me all over again. Theyʼre just unraveling under the stress theyʼre
experiencing from feeling that they donʼt have control over their environment. They
have such demanding needs that impose such heavy costs on the people around
them that it cannot be sustained. Rational human beings cannot and do not function
under those conditions.

Narcissists donʼt experience the typical emotions that we do, only fear from loss of
control. There is one exception to this rule: they can express fury, the third level of
their psyche. Narcissists can become physically dangerous when pushed to their
limits. Unfortunately, this also includes homicide.

As soon as narcissists lose perception of control over you, they panic and must get
it back. Emotional and physical threats of force and violence will be employed if
theyʼre cornered and nothing else works. Typically though, they will be subtle threats
to break your stuff, hurt your pet. Weʼve covered emotional threats in some detail,
but not physical ones. Physical intimidation is not as individual or nuanced as
emotional intimidation, so itʼs easier to identify.
The 16 Signs of a Narcissist ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! 102

It may also be indirectly at you, such as threatening to hurt a pet or loved one, for
instance. In that case, they might not threaten you with it, it just happens
“accidentally”. Theyʼll swear it was an accident.

Their demands will also become more, well, demanding and contradictory. Youʼll
find them telling you what you canʼt do and why you canʼt do it more often. Theyʼll
invade more personal aspects of your life, if you ever thought that even possible.

With more requests comes a general unease, but more on their part and less on
you, because theyʼre less organized. Theyʼll talk more about what they donʼt want
and why they canʼt have it. Nothing will make them happy but more control, and
very little will makes sense, even given the narcissistic paradigm.

10. Usually Show Subtle to Severe Signs of

Paranoia and Thematic Presumptions About
Other People
Because of the controlling personʼs deep obsession with themselves and their own
needs, they believe little exists outside of that. When it comes to evaluating other
people, they make the assumption that everyone else adheres to the same ethics
that they do, which is to say, very little.

The reason they feel this way is simple: to them the world is dangerous because
people are bad.

Look closely at how they regard their family. Are they comfortable with them? Do
they talk about their family much? Usually youʼll see their dysfunctional behaviors in
full-throttle while they are with their family, because thatʼs where it came from.

Passive-aggressiveness, deliberate defiance, denial will all be happening and a

general unease will accompany family get-togethers.

I like to call this reality-warp. Have you ever noticed that when you are immersed in
a different family that literally everything changes? We expect that with people, but
when we come up against the narcissistʼs family structures and values, dysfunction
takes this to an extreme.
The 16 Signs of a Narcissist ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! 103

Observe what theyʼve said about other people. Notice that there arenʼt any nice or
great human beings in their minds? Itʼs because deep-down, they assume that
everyone behaves the way they do and lives by the same morals. Itʼs every man for
himself and if nobody saw it, they didnʼt do it and can lie about it.

Itʼs also because no one is as good as them and nothing is good enough for them.
The worse they feel about themselves, the stronger they project it.

To the narcissist, there is no inherent good or virtue in the world. Theyʼre only able
to recognize and emulate what people think of as good and virtuous.

Another thing I have noticed is that many narcissists are at least sometimes prone
to anti-social tendencies. This isnʼt too much of a surprise since theyʼre already
predisposed to destroying relationships rather than making them. However, they
only appear gregarious and outgoing as a means of control, but are almost always
withdrawn and reclusive in their day-to-day lives.

Everything is a scheme or ploy to get you to do something against your will. Again,
this is very similar to how they see society as a whole. They believe that everyone
does something because someone else is controlling them to do it. There are simply
the controlled and the controlling, and theyʼve got to pick one.

I can only imagine that this also comes from abuse suffered in childhood, where
they assume that everyone is just bad. Narcissists grow up in households where
someone is always trying to get them (you might know that feeling).

Living and behaving the way that they do means that you never trust anyone, ever.
They may appear trusting, but they never leave their true vulnerabilities exposed for
a second, not only because itʼs dangerous for them to do so, but would require that
they expose themselves to other narcissists.

Itʼs perhaps no surprise that they recognize when someone else is trying to control
them. They take it very personally and despise it.

Thatʼs because narcissists believe that ultimately others have the same worldview
as them. They believe that others are actively trying to hurt them. This helps to
justify some of what they do and indicates just how deranged they really are.
The 16 Signs of a Narcissist ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! 104

The worst is that Iʼve seen more than one narcissist believe that people conspire
against them. Again, this follows from their belief that everyone thinks and behaves
as they do, and those who donʼt are fools.

Why is that the case? People who repeatedly lie and impart false perceptions to
people on a regularly basis must assume that others will do the same to them.

When you form different coalitions to harm different people, you must be a
manipulative person by definition. They do it because they are dysfunctional;
theyʼve been hurt in the past and so are already very suspicious of everyoneʼs
motives.

They donʼt trust others and thatʼs why they manipulate them. Their own
malevolence hurts them as a result, and their choices dig them their own hole to be
stuck in as they relate to other people.

They are suspicious of others because they do suspicious things themselves, and
therefore fear others doing it to them. Unfortunately in most cases this does not
compel them to stop and ask themselves why they are doing this. Unless they can
do that, they will continue lying and deceiving even more.

11. Will Control Your Knowledge Through

Isolation and Deliberate Misinformation
Narcissists lie, exaggerate and misinform to control your perceptions and the
amount of information you receive. This sign could have just as easily been called
“narcissists talk too much, and make up most of what they say.”

Deliberately misleading you into believing something untrue is a way of creating

illusions like in sign #2.

They know what you know and how you think because they work you into divulging
that information, but you donʼt know what they think, or at least they strive for that.

Many times, youʼll see the narcissist deliberately ignore what they do not want to
hear. This can manifest itself by sudden topic changing, talking louder or speaking
over you or to someone else in avoidance.
The 16 Signs of a Narcissist ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! 105

This does two things for them:

1. They can avoid topics they donʼt care about or want to talk about, acting as a
form of censorship. You canʼt talk about what they donʼt want you to.

2. Perhaps more importantly, if the controller can position himself as an important

figure in your life to be taken seriously, it belittles you when youʼre ignored, and
hence becomes a tool of control.

Selective inattention commands authority and dominance. It facilitates them getting

into a position for you to attempt to impress them and win their limited and oft-
wanted attention.

Selective inattention is a form of neglect. Narcissists employ withholding

information, validation and love as a means of controlling you. This qualifies as
neglect.

The say nothing response is very powerful. Itʼs also very rude and clearly deliberate.

Lying by omission is a simple trick. Donʼt tell someone something they would benefit
from knowing not by lying, but by not bringing it up. Theyʼll even go so far as to
aggressively steer the conversation so that you canʼt ask them about what they
donʼt want to tell you. When push comes to shove, theyʼll lie with “I didnʼt know.”

With narcissistic abusers in big families, theyʼre the ones who separate everyone
out from each other and prevent contact. They alone are the hub and gatekeeper
everyone must go through to communicate with anyone in the family.

When they have their way, nobody can talk directly with each other. They must relay
it through the gatekeeper, who they hope will then deliver the message. You can
only talk “through the grapevine” so to speak, only the grapevine alone decides
what will be heard and conveyed.

Try it for yourself. See how they react when you leave your borders. They have a
very specific containment they would like you to stay in, and when you venture out,
you have the opportunity to change and grow. Of course they canʼt have that.

Another thing I want you to notice is if they are rude. For some reason, lack of
manners must do something for them because I repeatedly see that theyʼll have a
The 16 Signs of a Narcissist ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! 106

nice display but lack basic etiquette in conversation and to those they arenʼt trying
to control (or are, because it is selective inattention). As I stated in sign #2 however,
this isnʼt always intentional.

Narcissists divide, misinform, separate out and set people against one another.
They recognize that because they are the source of the problem others wouldnʼt
take kindly to them if they found out. They could possibly unite and work against the
narcissistʼs interests.

Divide and conquer: they cannot have everyoneʼs critical eyes on them, they must
separate and divide people so they canʼt consolidate any suspicions they might
have. They must pit them against each other so that they cannot see the real
perpetrator. This is also a huge indicator of how aware the narcissist really is about
what they do.

How do they divide people? By instilling the same feelings they have into other
people. Make it profitable for them to do what you want by grossly abusing their
boundaries and give them relief when they work for you.

Preferential treatment makes others feel important and victims less so. Theyʼre
fantastic at making someone feel special and exclusive from others. Even if this
doesnʼt directly divide those people or make them jealous, they still seek the
validation the narcissist will give them.

In short-term relationships, they donʼt care and it doesnʼt matter. Theyʼll burn right
through people who are of no consequence. But for long-term relationships, family
and employers, they have to generate and maintain illusions to meet their needs.

They have to misinform; they are bitter enemies of the truth. But when you stop
allowing them to determine what the truth is, corrupting it, and let it speak for itself,
they lose their cover and a lot of ground.

They say different things to different people. Controlling peoplesʼ perceptions is the
name of the game, and since theyʼre willing to lie to do that, one day they will
believe something and the next they donʼt.

They become different people to different people. Their methods demand this
flexibility.
The 16 Signs of a Narcissist ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! 107

There are statements and actions that mislead you away from their intentions. They
give you false leads. They throw a lot of curve balls to keep you off of their trail.
They donʼt necessarily mind your suspicion all that much so long as it doesnʼt
translate into actions and compromise their position. They donʼt want you to be able
to call them out and pin anything on them that other people can see and think to
themselves: “This is a bad person.”

They lie to you about something, to make you believe you were wrong about it,
thereby reducing your self-confidence.

Theyʼll even squeeze information about you from someone to get what they want. If
you choose to reveal or confide in that person again then their actions led to your
isolation.

Even if you devote 1% of your energy thinking about them or being fearful, thatʼs
enough of a reward for them to do it. If youʼre mad because they blew you off, they
took up your time and consciousness for a while, thatʼs reason enough. If youʼre
trying to figure out what theyʼll do, think long term, but petty and small.

Narcissism is essentially deceit and deception; itʼs all just one big lie. They must
keep things from you so that you canʼt get wise to their scheme. The scheme is
pretty sophisticated, but the feelings and behavior are childish.

They love to send people at you, usually other family members, expressing their
concern for you. Other enablers are abused too, so itʼs really a propping up and
playing the narcissistʼs game. It is suspiciously the narcissistʼs concern, but the
enablers will be convinced itʼs theirs. They know itʼs their job to do as theyʼre told or
theyʼll be punished.

Having other people carry out their will is the top of the game in the narcissistʼs
mind. Itʼs an even smoother way of offloading their problems for you to solve and
confuse you.

While narcissists demand militant loyalty and commitment, theyʼll also feed you the
wrong information to appeal to your good nature and side with them. Since they are
“victims” of people who have committed wrongdoings unto them, they are naturally
the good personʼs cause to defend.
The 16 Signs of a Narcissist ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! 108

How we treat and communicate with our family, friends and loved ones is a good
indicator of who we are as people, and who we want to be. Deliberate
misinformation is one of the biggest red flags of people with bad intentions.

Gaining the favor of those around them is very important to the narcissist. They do
this by appearing better, and there is no surer way to do that than to be smarter
than everyone else. But smart is still a subjective term, and you canʼt possibly be
better at everything than everyone.

There is no honest, open communication forum for feeling, no system or rules of

preferences; they like to keep everything up in the air so that they retain flexibility in
their right to complain and create chaos, distort the facts, spread misinformation and
disorder to breed conflict.

Theyʼll also lie to others to make it look like youʼre the one behind their misdeeds.

Another one is the aggressive takeover of your activity. They always regulate
everything you do, at least to some extent, but this is when they start moderating
and running you around to do things that you probably do better on your own
anyway. This is them getting a control high to feel more powerful, usually because
theyʼre anxious and something else is really bothering them.

This is when theyʼre most tiring and burn you out, and burn through you. There will
be times when you just canʼt them off your back.

Restriction of information is a must to control peoplesʼ knowledge of the narcissist

and of each other. If you think about it, itʼs not really any different from what they
have been doing all along because they already lie to you about their intentions.
What is a little controlling of information if not for the better?

The real problem with this method is that it can be overused. Narcissists can easily
get caught up in their own power-plays and overdo it. When this happens, itʼs very
easy to trace it back to see that the inconsistency and deceit lies with them.

Narcissists have to control perceptions and ideally control a group to be a part of it.
The activity, common interest and people themselves donʼt matter, so long as
theyʼre all subordinate to the narcissist.
The 16 Signs of a Narcissist ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! 109

12. Are Passive-Aggressive. Rarely Display

Aggression Openly, Unless in Incoherent Rage
Passive-Aggressive… What does that mean? Am I really going to go on about yet
another term? Itʼs one more technical name for one of the modalities dysfunctional
behavior channels and presents itself to you, through/by/with abuse.

There are two types of emotional abuse, active abuse and passive abuse, with
narcissists usually falling into the latter.

Neglect, total lack of emotional support, zero commitment and a general feeling of
negativity at all times would be considered passive emotional abuse.

Despite the name, I consider passive-aggression to be both active and passive

forms of emotional abuse. The passive part means they arenʼt saying it to you
directly, but they still act in abusive ways.

Many personality disorders display this trait and it is well-documented and

understood. Iʼd bet none of them have mastered it to the degree the narcissist has.
It is their bread and butter, their standard fare.

Passive-aggressive people were never allowed to express their anger when it

arose. This apparent inability of self-expression is the whole reason they are
passive-aggressive.

Itʼs also a part of the illusion. They canʼt be angry people, because angry people,
unless justifying their anger, arenʼt good people in their minds. Remember that they
are never angry and always virtuous and justified in whatever they do, these are
their values.

They take that very seriously; they think thatʼs the accurate description of them. You
wouldnʼt want to blow your cover of being a nice person.

Unless outward aggression gives them immediate control, most narcissists forgo
methods that make them look bad. This has to do with their self-perception:
narcissists have to believe that they are good people. Itʼs just that the people
around them are bad.
The 16 Signs of a Narcissist ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! 110

Though for the most part, narcissists are capable of justifying anything they do, so
that isnʼt the only reason. Open aggression is not as useful for controlling other
people without them knowing.

For one, there can be resistance. Control based on force rather than instilling self-
blame and guilt is clunky and much less effective. When people donʼt know youʼre
manipulating them, much less suspect it, theyʼre much easier to control. The
defenses are down.

Remember that one crucial requirement is that you have to be a part of the illusion
for it to be an illusion; you have to believe they are nice people for you to believe it.
Otherwise they have to label you as the enemy. If you donʼt support the illusion, you
donʼt believe it and are a threat to their well-being.

Theyʼre also good at reserving and not overplaying the shining traits they see in
themselves, because theyʼre that much more effective when they just imply but
donʼt talk about them.

The “Iʼm a good person” cover runs deep. Narcissists donʼt believe they are bad
people and canʼt stand to hear that they are.

Itʼs a very intricate setup and well-designed structure, not some fly-by-night
operation with an explosively angry hothead. Theyʼre able to hide those feelings to a
large extent, but those feelings are still there.

An essential part of being a narcissist is being passive-aggressive; itʼs an excuse

and outlet for unleashing all of their pent up rage. Make no mistake, it is rage. Just
because they donʼt appear on the edge ready to use physical abuse doesnʼt mean
that they arenʼt, itʼs just most of the time they donʼt.

Passive aggression needs outlets: little ways (and some not-so-little) for the
narcissist to let out some of their aggression.

When they can, theyʼll use physical intimidation through body language to get you to
stand down. They arenʼt above that, but physical abuse is risky and clumsy, so they
opt for emotional abuse instead.
The 16 Signs of a Narcissist ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! 111

They emotionally beat you into submission. Each time they commit a personal
transgression and you donʼt call them on it, you donʼt stand up for yourself, you
become weaker and they stronger.

Part of this passive-aggression is keeping the pressure on at all times. You will find
that nothing is ever “right”; thereʼs always something wrong and youʼll always be in a
constant state of unsteadiness. They want you to be this way, and they are causing
it by keeping you on your toes, never knowing what theyʼll do.

Narcissists donʼt like to serve, they like to be served. For instance, consistent meal-
making within a household is probably by the abused, and if itʼs not, then the
narcissist must get a huge payoff from it. Talk about how good they are and how
good their food is, how reliable and productive they are.

If they are forced to serve you, youʼll hear about forever. Theyʼll also need to get you
back with more personal invasions to show their control over you.

Thatʼs why they love to say “no.” They love it when they place you in a position to
ask something of them or offer to help them so that they can always respond the
same way. They need that constant reinforcement, the illusion that control creates.

When itʼs something they want to happen, they say “maybe” or “Iʼll think about it”.
That way, you stay in your submissive state never realizing they were going to say
“okay” all along. They want it to happen, but they canʼt give any support to you
influencing their decisions or having any control over them.

One thing youʼll always notice about the worst narcissists is that they just have
heaps of concern for you. They are always concerned and worried over you. Some
of the worst people in the world claim the best intentions.

There are usually big, dysfunctional family talks out of concern, with mostly them
talking. That supposedly devastates them yet they seem happier following the
events, much happier and less contemplative than you are. In fact, they never seem
very contemplative or devastated following big talks.

If youʼre talking about something you like and are proficient in, and they arenʼt,
theyʼll change the topic to their specialty or most likely one of your weaknesses or
fears. They do this quite bluntly and passive aggressively change it to something
youʼre supposed to do for them.
The 16 Signs of a Narcissist ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! 112

They always have their finger on your weak spots and pressure points. They poke
and prod and pry to find the things that bother and hurt you most. Things from your
past, things people have done, things that make you sad and hurt.

There is no accommodation that will suit them. You could pour your entire life into
trying to make them happy, and it still wouldnʼt work. You could die for them, and
they would proceed to find another to take your place in a very short time.

The passive-aggressive moves are as slow, long, drawn-out, obtuse and as painful
as they can possibly make them. It usually has to do with some slight accusation
about something you did wrong.

They become very serious, with a different tone of voice, and they expect you to be
the subordinate child being lectured to by the parent. They probe and expect
complete honesty from you, but like to put you in a position to lie or stretch the truth
to see if you do, and then call you out on it.

Again, the whole problem is absurd. Itʼs some minor thing they find convenient. It
usually doesnʼt endanger anyone, itʼs just some request by the narcissist that it be
this way. But itʼs only this way right now, later on it could be something entirely
different, to help them retain flexibility about what they can complain about.

Theyʼre making you feel this way and hoping youʼll accept it, and thatʼs just the
point. Take their bad feelings so they donʼt have to deal with them, ever. Itʼs all very
much for shame, and yet thereʼs nothing to be ashamed about.

Whatʼs really going on is an angry child making a fuss over something from nothing.
They just feel bad, it has nothing to do with leaving the door open or forgetting to
take the trash out. This is their only way to vent. Theyʼll take advantage of every
opportunity you give them.

Another sign that they feel a loss of control is when they talk, a lot, much more than
usual. Itʼll be about very inane and irrelevant things and may serve to distract you
from something theyʼd prefer you not do but canʼt find a good reason to say it.

Theyʼll make requests that you go and do very unproductive or detrimental things to
bide your time. They especially need you to look totally useless when they feel
weak. This can help them regain feelings of control and power. "
The 16 Signs of a Narcissist ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! 113

The most horrendous thing about experiencing this is that you learn they actually
know how to be nice, but just choose not to be. When theyʼre really truly friendly,
you realize just how beastly they are for not acting that way all of the time. They act
like they donʼt know any better when they passively abuse you, but they give
themselves away by demonstrating they know better.

They creep a little bit, poke you and push you closer to the edge, creep a little bit
more and you take it up with them. They will continue to poke with little passive-
aggressive cuts until you blow off some steam. Now you can be the angry one and
not them.

Youʼve assumed their bad feelings and expressed it for them. It doesnʼt matter that it
was directed at and because of them, they like it that way, theyʼre in control. This is
essential narcissistic behavior.

Then they back off, because they didnʼt really care about the problem, but about you
accepting their bad feelings about themselves and expressing it all for them.

They vent in little ways too. Take small talk under the guise of terms of endearment
as an example. This is talk that pretends to inform you about something and is
adorned with words like “hun” or “honey”, “baby”, “pal”, “buddy” but is actually
aggressive and makes you feel bad.

Itʼs also passive-aggression when they interrupt you doing something they donʼt
want you to do and act as a roadblock. This is called obstructionism.

They start talking to you, blocking you and getting in the way, making requests,
sending you off, asking for your help when youʼre clearly occupied with something
else, and only when youʼre occupied with something else.

They peck with invasive questions, never leaving you be for a moment of peace. Itʼs
all fundamental to conditioning you to supply them for years to come.
" " " "
Everything they say, and in many ways do, is intentional provocation. They are
unrelenting in telling you what to do, and I consider this to ultimately be passive-
aggression, including their controlling methods. All of these methods inflict
emotional harm by channeling aggression using passive means.
The 16 Signs of a Narcissist ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! 114

The other side to that coin is when you block them from doing something, only you
really didnʼt. Theyʼll claim inaction on your part led them to indecision and prevented
them from acting, but itʼll really be that they didnʼt want to do it anyway.

Yet another variation on this method is when they do something they “need help
with” yet insist on doing it by themselves or wait for an inopportune time for you to
help. Then they rush to do it by themselves and when they run into trouble, it was
your fault you werenʼt there to help them. Why, you didnʼt even offer.

Again, they donʼt want you to help, they want you to not help so they can get their
self-righteous release and you can be the bad guy.

Ever notice your stuff disappearing? Narcissists break your things “by accident” and
give them away because “they didnʼt know”. The most opportune time is when
youʼre away, and when theyʼre mad because youʼre away.

Thatʼs why they destroy, because theyʼre raging inside. Thatʼs also why they appear
incredibly even balanced and nice on the outside. Their cover is almost flawless,
except for gross inconsistencies in the results their behavior brings about, and their
absolute refusal to change any of it.

Laughing at you is another technique. Laughing at someone for making a mistake,

doing so very subtly, is one of the best ways to get to them and make them feel
inadequate. You donʼt even bother to express dominance, what youʼre saying to
them is “I find it humorous how stupid you are.”

By not taking you seriously and chuckling when you talk about taking control over
yourself, they hope to sabotage by having you not take yourself seriously.
Deprecating and disparaging talk is the most effective, because it keeps you in line
and they donʼt have to do anything. You do the work yourself and they donʼt look
bad, even though they were the ones to implement it.

When theyʼre anxious over their control, they have reasons to bother you in the form
of fake help, questions and favors. Having tethers to make contact with you over
stuff.

They donʼt want you to have initiative, this gives them less to use against you. You
also pose the threat of getting away from them. Your big dreams scare narcissists
out of their minds.
The 16 Signs of a Narcissist ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! 115

Passive aggression doesnʼt mean theyʼre only unsupportive or indifferent, it means

they enjoy hurting you and seeing you in pain, but they canʼt do it openly. They want
to inflict emotional harm on you without consequence, thatʼs why they do it
“accidentally” and out of concern for your own well-being from the bottom of their
hearts. Clever, eh?

They pretend theyʼre not the ones creating this atmosphere, yet theyʼre the only
ones who could be.

The biggest threat is, of course, you learning what you want and pursuing it without
them, regardless of what they think. When youʼre able to assert and express
yourself regardless of what they think, you become independent from them, assume
your own identity and leave their control.

Being passive-aggressive does not mean that they are never openly aggressive or
directly mean, just that they use it regularly as a means of control. The delineation
can be very complex and varies from narcissist to narcissist.

Some narcissists will be only passive-aggressive about certain things, probably

because of how it affects the way they see themselves. Narcissists canʼt deny open
aggression as wrongful abuse the way they can passive aggression, and so it can
retain their good posture and social standing.

Itʼs the same when they work you into exploding at them. Itʼs a way for them to vent
while not having to contradict their fantasy to themselves.

The thing about passive-aggression is that itʼs not like an illusion in that you have to
believe it in order for them to hurt you. You donʼt have to take passive-aggression
seriously in order for it to make you feel bad, like the illusion.

The real problem with passive-aggression is that it makes you a furious person, who
wants to react furiously to it. The most susceptible people to passive-aggression in
my opinion are those who never express their anger passively.

That is not the way to combat passive-aggression; the way to do that is to not
accept it. It is unacceptable behavior. If you react aggressively or even violently,
youʼre only accepting and carrying out their agenda. The way to combat it is calling
it directly for what it is.
The 16 Signs of a Narcissist ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! 116

Just like the illusion, narcissists brainwash you with passive-aggression by making
sure itʼs all you know and ever see. This way, you believe there canʼt be anyone
better out there.

13. Are Not Consciously Aware of Their

Condition, Intentions and Actions
Weʼre all capable of this to some degree, but this one is still hard to accept. With all
of the reckless disregard and maliciousness narcissists commit, how could they not
be aware of it?

In one sense they are aware of it. They do know that they are different from others
and manipulate them into doing what they want without their knowing. But they see
it as a great strength and ability that makes them superior.

In another sense they believe these are just the rules of the game in society.
Theyʼre the law of the land, the way of the world, even if the rest of us donʼt admit it.
Society is just lying to itself the same way they do every day. That is, they believe
that everyone does this, so itʼs okay. They only happen to do it well, proficiently and
with a purpose.

All of these malignant behaviors arenʼt intentional. The controlling person actively
hurts other people to express their reign of control over others because they enjoy
it; it makes them feel good.

So just how is it that they know they must hide their true intentions and so act
covertly to control your perceptions and information, and still not be wrong in doing
so?

With some controlling people there is a great degree of planning and scheming to
make things go their way, they donʼt view it as bad. Remember entitlement?

I suspect that at least half, and probably more, of what the narcissist does is
instinctual and reactive, even though they donʼt know it. That is, the amount of
conscious planning and scheming takes up less of their cognitive energy. However,
they still scheme and plot while establishing general plans on how to conduct their
behavior to best manipulate you.
The 16 Signs of a Narcissist ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! 117

The controlling person doesnʼt think of morals and ethics the way you or I do. To
them, no such thing exists. They donʼt have values to value. Thereʼs nothing to live
by but their innate need to control. Controlling people live in a fantasy, and they are
perfectly content doing so, as long as nothing threatens to break their fantasy.

And guess what? To a varying extent, rules and even laws donʼt apply to them the
same way they do to us. They are fundamentally better than we are; they have
special privileges because of their natural superiority.

It also has to do with denial. The great bulk of their bad feelings are from childhood
abuse, and theyʼre able to separate that out from everything else. Denial really
means “I donʼt like feeling these feelings, so you should take and deal with them for
me.”

For example, narcissists donʼt like to have to worry. They canʼt handle it but it also
makes them feel weak and vulnerable; it isnʼt compatible with their theme. So what
do they do? They have you worry for them. You can take on the angst of something
and take the supposed weakness that goes along with it.

I also mention how theyʼll delude themselves into believing something that isnʼt true
to feel better. They choose to shut it out and simply not accept it or comprehend it,
however you prefer to look at it.

Yet again, there are some exceptions to this rule. Youʼll find that narcissists work to
actually negate their actions. That is, if theyʼre extremely controlling about
housework for example, theyʼll actively work to make it appear that they are not.

They also work against themselves. In my opinion, control over others doesnʼt help
narcissists; it only feeds the monster and makes matters worse for them.

This is also why they donʼt really have a response when you question them on it.
There is no response because they donʼt care about response; they care about the
control the initiative grants them.

Denial is them deciding that theyʼre never going to change. Itʼs also a social signal
for you to expect abusive behavior from them forever. Their back-story insists that
everything is up in the air right now but will stabilize at some point if you work hard
enough. The fact is everything has always been chaotic and will continue to be. As
long as youʼre around them, everything will always be chaos.
The 16 Signs of a Narcissist ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! 118

Thereʼs an extent to which youʼre not aware how much you enable them. Watch
how often you let them get away with things by justifying it with bogus reasoning
(the reasoning youʼve learned from them). Then they demand you validate their
wrongness.

14. Cannot Genuinely Give or Express Love. True

Compassion of any Sort is Absent.
There are two reasons narcissists donʼt express genuine, unconditional love.

First, love makes one vulnerable and this does not allow them to utilize any sort of
control. Genuine love, compassion and trust for instance, demand an extraordinary
amount of commitment they do not possess, but more than that, they require one to
be vulnerable. The narcissist will never voluntarily become vulnerable.

They will play “baby” on many occasions and require that you care for them and
regard this as love, much in the same way they enjoy pity. They will never feel or
express any true feelings for you.

Second, they cannot feel genuine love, they donʼt understand it, and hence are
incapable of experiencing and showing it. These people do not love other human
beings, they only love how other human beings make them feel about themselves.
With the inverse law, the better you do for them, the worse you do for yourself. In
this way, love is control for them.

Yet, love is a powerful tool to manipulate people. People will do all kinds of things in
the name of love that they wouldnʼt do otherwise. Itʼs unique to each person, but
enablers are much easier to convince theyʼre in love. Itʼs an all-important tool of
control for the narcissist.

With many people in controlling relationships, they confuse love with control. A
controlling person may tell you they love you, often in perverted, obsessive fashion.
Sexual dominance and the satisfaction derived from it has often been recorded.

Youʼll also find that they are in a more positive mood, and may become even
sexually aroused, when you are in a position of weakness. Illness, depression or
what have you, I dare you to take a close look at how they change with your
behavior, more likely than not youʼll find something.
The 16 Signs of a Narcissist ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! 119

15. Believe Theyʼre Absolutely Perfect and Stand

Alone in That Distinction
Ultimately, their true goal is this: they want you to make them feel perfect and good
about themselves, while not having to believe that thatʼs what they want and that itʼs
happening. Oh, and letʼs not forget that they have to tear you down in the process.
Thatʼs a tall order, wouldnʼt you say?

Itʼs also not entirely accurate. The reason narcissistic people are controlling is
because they have an innate need to use other people to bolster their self esteem.
They do this by using methods to control their image and appearance to others.
They believe that if they can convince other people that they are great, then they
are.

On the very fine level where they consciously think however, they are perfect and
nothing could ever be wrong with them. With a constant barrage of bad feelings
they experience internally, they must convince themselves that theyʼre perfect. As
long as they have that main source to feed off of, they are perfect and can feel okay.

This doesnʼt make them pleasant to be around and doesnʼt fix their problems. To the
contrary, it is a constant cycle their victims bear on a regular basis. Narcissistic
individuals can be so ill that they believe they are the ones bearing your problems,
because theyʼve offset them onto you and taken them back onto themselves.

When you become overburdened and upset dealing with their problems, they only
enjoy it because itʼs hurting you and they also get to imply that youʼre dumping your
problems onto them. Youʼre not only the one with their fake cover problems; they
project their real issues onto you as well, which is the real purpose.

This is the reason that when you make a reasonable and called-for accusation of
the controlling personʼs bad behavior, you never get a straight answer. It can be a
number of things; they donʼt remember, they think youʼre crazy, it was someone
else… they will always evade, deny and steer you away from the issue.

Weakness is too great a cost to reveal. Vulnerability might mean you using it
against them, even though you wouldnʼt. This is how they think and see the world.
The 16 Signs of a Narcissist ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! 120

Denial is the main feature of this, as I talked about earlier. Denial is the closest
friend of the narcissists, because itʼs the only thing that can get them out of
anything. I mean anything, too.

While narcissists are vulnerable, theyʼre also very careful. They wonʼt overplay their
hand unless theyʼre really in a vulnerable state and act reckless. Thatʼs when you
know theyʼre getting desperate.

They despise when you improve yourself because it results in increased self-worth
for you and less for them. Well it also creates a new problem for them: competition.

Narcissistic people are extremely competitive and have to be better than you and
everyone in some way. Theyʼll usually attach themselves to something from an early
age, smarts or looks for example, and repeatedly use that throughout their lives as
proof they are superior to other people.

This has come up with entitlement as Iʼve explained it throughout the book. They
have something going for them that makes whatever they want to do okay. They
honestly believe that.

This will also come through in the stories they tell. Narcissists will always have a
series of stories they tell about themselves to draw other people in. They can be
funny, serious or just entertaining, but theyʼll highlight something about themselves
and hold it above other people.

Whether they went to a nice school or graduated early, or did a really good job on
meeting quota and so got a raise or promotion, it usually has to do with looking
good to someone else or in the eyes of society.

What makes them better can be anything, what to look for is what they use against
you that makes them better than you. Remember that theyʼre contextual, so what
they present about themselves will depend entirely on who theyʼre presenting
themselves to. It will have a different angle, hook or spin to it to specifically target
that personʼs insecurities.

Youʼll also notice, however, that despite being mainstream overachiever type details
they attribute to themselves, theyʼll behave as if theyʼre the only ones on the planet
that can do those things.
The 16 Signs of a Narcissist ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! 121

You can see their perceived differences between your rights and theirs when theirs
is encroached upon. Then they seriously scramble because, of course, they have
every right to do whatever they want.

All of the abused get used to the idea that they all have problems and thatʼs why
things go wrong. The narcissist is charitable, benevolent, has no problems and
commits no error.

When your self-worth is inversely related to how good others feel about themselves
and how much control they have, thereʼs only one thing that can happen, itʼs you or
them. Remember though that this is not the real you, you are now an unhealthy
human being who cannot relate to other human beings in a functional way.

I cannot stress enough that they really believe it is always your fault. Always be
asking yourself, what did they say and how did it make you feel?

Thereʼs always an invisible list of problems, issues and concerns they have, all of
which involve you and require you to fix. These are things that make them look nice
for putting up with it but are really your fault. And when you canʼt fix them despite
your best efforts (you never can), these problems become your personal faults and
character flaws.

But they arenʼt just character flaws, youʼre a total screw-up. They will put you in a
position of walking on eggshells, and as soon as one of them cracks, they have
carte-blanche to unload on you.

Of course, fixing the problems bothers them, because then there is nothing to
complain about. They will now be mad at you for having acted in such a quick,
remedial fashion. Even your fierce initiative to solving problems will bother them.
They donʼt want you to attack problems, they donʼt want you to approach them, they
want you to fear them and feel bad for fearing them.

Theyʼll make you feel that it is not they that dislike you, but the whole world that
looks down upon you for these things. Theyʼre just really nice for sticking around.
But guess what? It is them, itʼs all them and itʼs always been them. Itʼs not problems,
but character flaws we are discussing here, and mostly their character flaws.

When they confront you about something and you give way to their demands,
suddenly what seemed like a life or death moment becomes easy-breezy. This is
The 16 Signs of a Narcissist ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! 122

because they donʼt care about the problem, only the release of their inner angst
onto you. You granted them a feeling of control over you, and now they feel better.

This is not a good thing. Youʼre still allowing unacceptable behavior to continue. But
for most abused people, itʼs a relief when they give up and let it continue. They just
accept as a fateful situation and learn to live with it.

The only time they will prop someone else up is if it allows them to reach higher
ground. This is always by-association. That is, they arenʼt friends with them and
may not have even met the person, but simply because they mention them theyʼre
on higher ground.

Since weʼve discussed narcissists in terms of behaviors and themes briefly to

explain some of their behavior, Iʼd like to tie it all up with general patterns.

Narcissistic are thematic and trendy, they will have themes they cling to and attach
themselves to. These themes will draw them to people and ideas they think present
them well, and they will attach themselves to those things in turn. The illusion also
draws people to them.

So this concept of perfection is: perfection from imperfection. That is, they present
humility and modest character to show how aware they are of their shortcomings.
That they arenʼt self-champions, they admire and stand in awe of other people and
they always respect others.

Given the opposites rule, itʼs likely that all of these things are not only false, but the
exact opposite of what they preach. My experience has been that this is always the
case. If they donʼt do this to some extent then they arenʼt narcissists, but just
because you never see it doesnʼt mean they donʼt do it.

What it comes down to is “Iʼm perfect because I pretend to be imperfect like all of
you. I do it better than you and Iʼm being nice by not making you all feel so stupid.
You should praise me on those grounds.”

You donʼt have to search hard to find what their self-professed glowing traits are.
Theyʼll present their themes to you, or really, smack you in the face repeatedly with
them daily. Chances are you know exactly what their themes are. Itʼs all they talk
about, just find the common link between their different statements, whatʼs the trait
The 16 Signs of a Narcissist ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! 123

they want you to derive from what theyʼre saying? Whatʼs the topic or commonality?
Itʼll be very elementary.

Their behavioral dysfunction runs in cycles. Itʼs cyclical because they need it, but it
doesnʼt fix them and stipulates that they must have more. There is never enough
and therefore it never stops. They never improve and usually become worse over
their lifetimes.

The way they keep this process going is by keeping you in a position where you feel
you have to please them to be rewarded; you have to make sure theyʼre happy for
you to feel okay. You become like them, only their pet. They literally use operant
conditioning to teach you to praise them to feel okay.

You can probably guess the not-so-subtle implication of narcissistʼs perfection.

Because you two are competitors and they always win, that necessarily means that
you are the loser. There is no winning, you are always the loser.

This is especially true when you are the spouse, offspring or some other close
family member of the narcissist. The mutual conditions for most platonic friendships
to exist cannot sustain repeated personal abuse.

Any friendship or intimate relationship that is founded upon even an ounce of

deception, for whatever reason, is doomed to never reach a fruitful outcome or
anywhere near its full potential.

Because they lie, theyʼre signing a contract that says “never assume Iʼll support you
or be there for you as another compassionate human. I have no obligations to you
nor you to me, Iʼm just here for whatever I can get in the short-term, right now.”

Maybe theyʼre not committed so they donʼt care what happens. But zero-
commitment means zero return on their investment; theyʼll never get anywhere in
life with that principle. Even when they get a little kick from it, itʼs not sustainable.

What they think is cool and right will immediately come across in their self imposed
illusions, and theyʼre not always what youʼd think. It can really shed light onto their
psyche and inner disposition.
The 16 Signs of a Narcissist ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! 124

Minor-slip ups or even embarrassments disappear or are taken out on you. When
you commit the same itʼs a big freaking deal. How big depends on how much
control they feel and consequently how insecure and bad they feel.

They carefully put themselves in a position to make big requests at just exactly the
wrong time, or right time depending on how you see it. The most opportune time to
obstruct you is when youʼve got to get something done right now, such as pack for a
morning plane flight.

The truth is that they recognize and fear your strengths, so they develop all kinds of
clever ways, hooks if you will, to turn them into character flaws. They are the highest
priority targets and the surest way to destroying your self-worth.

When they didnʼt know something consequential, it was because “nobody told me”,
never because they didnʼt take initiative or failed to hear something crucial.

Remember that theyʼre privileged, so they can ask probing questions for personal
and private information because they think they have a right to know whatever they
want.

Another part of this perfect complex involves getting you to be a bad person. Theyʼll
intentionally provoke you to express frustration. This is exactly the same thing as
you acting mean and behaving poorly to make them look nice and better in
comparison.

With their conceit comes the inability to properly identify and solve personal
problems. Narcissists kind of drive themselves crazy from juggling deception and
will start to believe their own deceptions over time. They canʼt identify the source of
(much less fix) even trivial problems that stir an emotional reaction in them.

Because they canʼt deal with their own imperfections, the finger of blame comes out
and someone else needs to resolve it or else. This childish reaction is a looking
glass peering into the heart of every narcissist. Taken individually, it could apply to
any number of personality disorders, but when given context within a pattern of
behavior and a perverse but well-defined psychological complex, it can only point to
narcissism.

We all know people who view, interpret, perceive and relate everything to
themselves. They canʼt see or understand anything else and the attention has to be
The 16 Signs of a Narcissist ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! 125

on them. Well narcissists are so good at that you donʼt even notice it most of the
time. But when you think about, you realize it always is and has always been about
everything in relation to them and what it means for their comfort or position.

Hey, life is hard. Weʼve all got problems, but they could make it easier for everyone
by not dumping their problems onto us and expecting us to solve them, or be as
miserable as them.

Their total reliance upon your perceptions of them to make them feel good and
secure in themselves (because of their fragility) gives them a great incentive to
manipulate those perceptions by any means possible. Given that their self-esteem
is inverse to yours (they feel good when you feel bad and vice versa), they
unwittingly brand themselves as enemies to anyone who doesnʼt want to live in
subordination and misery, and arenʼt consciously aware of it.

Convincing you to convince yourself that your ambitions, interests and personal life
goals are worthless is their highest priority. They donʼt mean anything and will never
come to anything. Your pipe dreams are unrealistic and will never see the light of
day. I cannot emphasize this point enough: they will stop at nothing to make you
give up on yourself for their benefit, because they have nothing else.

16. They Play the Selfless Card; Theyʼll Always

Say They Did it for You or Someone Else and
Never for Themselves
By now you understand the major tools of the narcissist so this one wonʼt come as a
surprise, but itʼs major enough that it deserves its own column.

The selfless card requires two willing participants: The narcissist who spouts good
intentions as the root cause of their bad behavior, and you who believe them so
they can do it again and again.

The selfless and good-intentioned illusion is the most finely honed skill of the
narcissist because their survival depends on it. If they canʼt find the right people to
make them function, they canʼt live.

When it comes down to it, theyʼll say they do everything for you, but they actually do
everything for themselves. Be honest with yourself when examining what the results
The 16 Signs of a Narcissist ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! 126

are for their words and actions. What good comes from it? Do they benefit you?
Have they ever benefitted you? Are they really trying to help you grow as a person
in any way?

Extreme humility and personal modesty are directly proportional to their extreme
conceit. Thereʼs a correlation; their apparent humility is actually because of how
conceited they really are.

The selfless card also works on the individual level. Victims may become suspicious
from time to time. The narcissist will then use this trick to bring them back in line.

Theyʼll do nice things for you, ask about your day and how youʼre feeling. Most
abused people will immediately respond and interpret this as generosity, precisely
because they are abused!

To any other person, this would be a suspicious deviation from the normal pattern of
behavior, but when your entire world is engineered by someone who makes sure
that you know nothing else, your naiveté becomes a part of the abusive cycle and
drives it.

Itʼs much like addiction. Theyʼre addicted to controlling you, but youʼre also addicted
to being controlled and donʼt function yourself when itʼs not there to dictate your life.
Something is wrong.

But even the most abused person knows something is wrong. They may have no
choice but to try to turn to denial, but they know abuse is happening regardless.

Either way, the abused will fall back into line and assume the same behavior. You
know how it goes: deny the bad and refuse to accept it, hope and pray this nice
streak will continue and go about with shallow complacency and deliberative
ignorance.

All of their feelings of entitlement and privilege will always be disguised under a thin
veil of modesty, humility and reason. " "

One last point I would like to equip you with, and I want to be careful saying this
because itʼs relatively minor in the scheme of things and so general that itʼs difficult
to apply to all narcissists cleanly: they will always be occupied with something.
The 16 Signs of a Narcissist ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! 127

The illusion to everyone on the outside is that theyʼre always at work, busy with
something selfless, virtuous or even just cool.

But youʼll also notice theyʼre always complaining about all the things they have to
do, and how hard they have to work. From the way they talk, youʼd think theyʼre the
only ones who have to do things they donʼt want to. Only they know what the words
“hard work” really mean.

Thatʼs because they think their entitlement is infringed upon when theyʼre subjected
to things everyone else has to do. You donʼt have that entitlement, and theyʼre being
selfless by doing things they donʼt want to do. They do things so they can complain
or brag about them.

Thatʼs a theme Iʼve found common to all narcissists. The truth is that they recognize
and avoid hard work whenever and wherever possible. They only work hard to
control, and sometimes not even for that. Having to do normal things people do all
of the time is a huge burden to them.

Accordingly, because they supposedly sacrifice and work so hard for others, this
also means that you donʼt have a solid work ethic and donʼt look out for other
people like they do.

Theyʼre always tired from work or drained from all of the people around them. They
selflessly devote themselves to other tasks for others.

Things will fail, but because they never assume responsibility for their actions
contributing or causing the failure, they keep doing the same thing over and over
again, and deny they have anything to do with its failure.

In summary, they do everything for you and nothing for themselves. They are so
concerned for you from the very bottom of their huge hearts that they just canʼt help
themselves. Even if they end up hurting you, they were so well intentioned that it
just doesnʼt matter.

Via this whole complicated and tortuous process, they appear selfless, when theyʼre
really the total opposite. They are self-obsessed.
The 16 Signs of a Narcissist ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! 128

A Final Word…
What a downer Iʼve been.

Iʼve been rambling to you about every conceivable thing narcissists do, so now itʼs
time for me to talk about what you can do.

Youʼve already been doing it; itʼs recognition. Itʼs the hardest part in dealing with
narcissists because it can be so difficult to believe what they do.

The truth is, despite all of their fancy tricks, there is only one thing they really can
do: harm you. You canʼt be around someone who wants to hurt you and still respect
and love yourself.

Take notice how you change from being around them. Ask friends and family about
changes in your behavior because itʼs unlikely youʼll notice everything. Itʼs so
gradual that it may be imperceptible to you, but others will know.

Which means there is only one thing you can do: get away and stay away.

You need to identify their intentions and behaviors, but only as it helps you to
identify the problem and then remove yourself from them. You donʼt need to learn
every facet of their behavior to know theyʼre dangerous to you.

However, I cannot make those decisions for you, only equip you with the tools to do
so yourself. My job has been to strengthen your understanding of them.

You cannot and should not approach them about the problem. You cannot fix what
is wrong with them, depending on how severe it is, and itʼs unlikely that there is
anyone who can.

You canʼt remove a narcissist from your life. You can only get away from them. You
cannot ask for them to politely leave, all this does is change their mode of operation,
as we discussed earlier. Theyʼll work to reclaim you by all means.

The fact is you can only get away when youʼre ready to. You must decide that it is
the right choice and the best thing to do, not me.
The 16 Signs of a Narcissist ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! 129

This will sound totally backward from what youʼd think I would tell you, but you
should immerse yourself in their behavior.

Live your life as you like to, on your own terms, and watch them interfere. Watch
their maneuvers as they attempt to control you. Record exactly what they did and
said.

You need to act according to your own will and principles despite the circumstances
and how they feel about it. You must witness them interfere with your newfound
knowledge in order to accept what is really going on, and grow and recover from it.

Remain ever aware of the things youʼve learned from this book. Only when you can
see and feel it for yourself can you work to get away.

Never confront or accuse a narcissist with this information.

I have found that for whatever reason, narcissists do not take kindly to the word
narcissist. I donʼt know why that is, especially considering how good they are at
shaking off things and attributing them to you, but I would be putting you in potential
danger if I didnʼt tell you to never call them narcissists.

Whatever evidence you may have, use it only to convince yourself of the facts and
figure out what you need to do.

You cannot fix or help them in any way. Anything to the contrary, such as admitting
their disorder and needing your help to improve, is another attempt to control you.
Theyʼve just thought about it and adapted new methods to fit the situation.

They will claim they donʼt abuse you and that you are unstable. This is nonsense.
They arenʼt the definers of abuse, in this situation, you are. Real abuse is whatever
hurts others for no reason, and in this situation it is you being hurt. They canʼt define
nor validate your feelings for you, because only you feel them.

The second worst thing you can do is to stand by idly and let it continue. Toxic
emotional environments hurt everyone.

Never be lulled into thinking (as they will present to you) that you must be there to
take care of them because they are afflicted. They aim to do real harm to you.
The 16 Signs of a Narcissist ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! 130

Yes they are victims, yes they are in pain and cannot help themselves, but that
doesnʼt mean you should be too.

No, they arenʼt good for children either. Theyʼre worse for children, because now
you have a potential situation to pass on more dysfunction down the family line.

Dysfunctional behavior always breeds dysfunctional behavior. The only way

for it to stop is if someone recognizes and calls it for what it is.

You arenʼt doing them or yourself any favors by suffering and being a victim to more
abuse. Youʼre sacrificing yourself and your own well-being to enable them. Thatʼs a
raw deal if ever there was one.

They will harbor and impart this view: the world is just so hard on them because
theyʼre them and youʼre the only person in the world who can do anything about it.
Only you can help them, propping them up to make them feel good.

They separate you out, making you feel special in being their emotional slave. You
certainly are special; youʼre the only one who will take it from them like no one else
will.

Of course, if you start to suspect theyʼre the problem and not just a part of the
problem, they will label you as paranoid and suspicious. When you recognize them
as your problem, you become their problem. When you see them as the enemy, you
must appear to be a bigger enemy to them.

They are the problem. They donʼt just exacerbate things, they instigate them.
Theyʼre problem engineers.

We are responsible because we are the bottom line, we are the last defense. They
get to abuse because we allow it, and we are sane people. They rely on our
weakness to fuel their vices.

Even when they hide their true nature from others successfully, itʼs still there.
Convincing others that they arenʼt what they are doesnʼt make them something else,
they are what they are. Regardless of their skills of persuasion, they will still always
exhibit the same signs, because the same controlling principle dictates their
behavior.
The 16 Signs of a Narcissist ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! 131

The plain fact is that they are absolutely miserable to be around, whether theyʼre
happy or sad. Given that this is always the case, ask yourself what kind of new
behaviors have you adopted to avoid them? That little moment of peace is
something they live to interrupt.

The scariest part about all of this is how you take on traits of theirs, and reactions to
their behaviors, without meaning to. Things like: denial, not standing up for yourself,
readily believing things that arenʼt true to protect yourself. When youʼre in an
abusive relationship or friendship like this for 5 years, 10 years or even more,
thereʼs a lot of you that changes. In many ways you wonʼt be the same person
anymore.

So you become dysfunctional yourself. Negative thinking and bad habits form, you
begin developing unhealthy ways of coping. So this whole narcissistic problem has
spread to you. No one benefits from this situation, and by hurting yourself you hurt
the ones around you. This doesnʼt just vanish when you get away from them either.
You have to work very hard to recover fully, if you can.

You canʼt really be unaffected by them, you can only get away from them. But in
order to do that, you have to stand up for yourself. By expressing your feelings and
opinions, you empower yourself to act accordingly with what you want from your life.

Youʼll have to work hard to become yourself again. I can speak from personal
experience that when you work to find something self-empowering that they canʼt
control, itʼs a wonderful thing.

They stand up and express themselves individually by abusing others, not by

standing up for themselves. You respond with timidity and subordination, and that is
who you are now.

Youʼre still thinking that itʼs about them if thatʼs the case. But it isnʼt about them and
their abuse; itʼs about you recovering from their abuse.

This helps you in the immediate and the long term. Youʼll feel empowered the first
time youʼre able to say, “No, thatʼs not how it is”. Itʼll also be useful to see their
reaction, which will help prove to you that theyʼre indeed narcissists, since they
wonʼt be able to respond the way a normal human being would.
The 16 Signs of a Narcissist ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! 132

In the long term, youʼll be able to foresee and prevent being in a controlling
relationship again. Giving them what they want is for you to sell yourself out. You
destroy yourself when you do what they want and give in to their whims.

Why would you want to learn all about it, but not get away from them? Do you think
you can remain defensive while retaining the relationship? Is that even desirable?
What is there for you to do?

Relations among human beings are only healthy and beneficial to both parties when
they are mutual. Doing something because someone else want you to or told you to
is not mutual, it is coercive, and you must have a stake in every interaction or itʼs not
beneficial to you.

Mutual means that there is an understanding by both parties about the agreed upon
terms, and that both parties agreed to it because they both benefit.

This is the principle that narcissists do not and cannot understand. Everything they
will ever do harms people because it does not abide by the mutual principle.
Instead, they choose to coerce people. It is a slow and malignant form of coercion
that they can get away with on some people.

Itʼll always cost you yourself. Look at it this way, if you insist on remaining in contact
with them, itʼs never a bad thing to be away, but youʼll always feel bad when youʼre
with them.

When the cost is you and making your own life choices, is it ever worth it? You have
to let go of them if you care about yourself. To pursue your own dreams requires
that you stop propping up theirs.

Their terms are not agreeable to your own personal success because they have
already decided they wonʼt allow it. Now you have to decide that you wonʼt allow
them to hinder your own life.

In the end, itʼs their loss. Rather than befriend you, they make you their enemy and
subject you to their vices. This horrible coping mechanism doesnʼt remedy any of
their problems, it only showcases and exacerbates their condition even further.

Youʼre always worth it, but you have to believe that, regardless of what anyone else
may say or think, to act on it.
The 16 Signs of a Narcissist ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! 133

Thanks for Reading!

Thanks for reading! I hope Iʼve had at least some positive effect on your life, and
hopefully much more than that.

If you have any questions, comments or suggestions for improving this guide or
would just like to say hello, Iʼd love to hear from you. Shoot me an email at:
Personal@[Link]

I wish all the best for you.

Take care,
Scott Bassett
The 16 Signs of a Narcissist ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! 134

Narcissists in Conversation
I admit thatʼs not a pleasant title, but this isnʼt a pleasant section, either. I apologize
in advance if any of these passages bring back sour memories.

I canʼt fully encapsulate the experience because you canʼt hear me speaking. For
now, an in-depth written description will have to do. Perhaps in a future version Iʼll
include an audio file of how they sound when speaking and how they talk to you.

Their conversational goal is to imply that youʼre not adequate to meet the needs of
the situation, but theyʼre such a nice person that they tolerate you and resolve to put
up with you. Itʼs always to convey “Iʼm unimpressed. Youʼre just not good enough.”

They will amp up the talking volume and occupy as much time talking at you as they
can. They use a simple brainwashing technique, which is to repeat an idea they
want people to believe and accept as true without question. They do this by
reiterating something again and again until it becomes the normal way of thinking
and is accepted to be true.

Remember that they say all kinds of things to imply just a few. Thereʼs what they
say, which can be all over the place and very obtuse, and thereʼs what they mean,
which is very simple, “Itʼs your fault, and you have to fix it.”

There are two main kinds of narcissist interactions: standing conversations, and sit-
down talks. The former donʼt generally last very long and are not as heavy with the
emotional abuse, they just have a need to vent at the moment, a pick-me-up so they
can go on with their day. The latter however are very tense and entail big threats if
you donʼt solve this problem thatʼs been bothering them so much. Their demeanor
will be very serious and grave, because theyʼre feeling so bad.

Thereʼs also a third interaction I like to call passing remarks. Itʼs exactly what it
sounds like: remarks they make in passing at you to make you feel bad. Theyʼre not
really interactions because they deliberately donʼt give you a chance to respond,
they just say it in passing. Theyʼre offensive, quick and serve to put you in your
place when theyʼre feeling a lack of control, are stressed or are on edge from
something. They also tend to be passive aggressive because that also ensures you
canʼt respond, then they can hide behind the “Iʼm being nice” front.
The 16 Signs of a Narcissist ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! 135

In general, when they want a big fight, they say something to upset you and give
you a chance to respond. If they just want to be mean, theyʼre quick and hit you with
it when you arenʼt expecting it so you donʼt have a chance to take it up with them
unless you hunt them down, which they donʼt like.

Their first step is aggressively starting a conversation with you. For this, I call them
aggressive starters. Their entire goal is to initiate a conversation where they are the
superior authority. They are the hunters that chase you emotionally. They do this by
throwing you off with something like:

“So [], what have you been up to? Iʼve missed you.”

Switch-a-roo phrases (pardon the name) and topic changes are used to get you to
reply to something you might normally be guarded about. They do this by first
asking you something you feel comfortable with and like talking about and then
quickly interrupt you to with a probing question. It goes like this:

THEM: “So what do you think about that whole [] thing?”

YOU: “Well first Iʼd have to…”
THEM: “Hey why donʼt you [] for me?”

Then there are the phrases that make it personal. Theyʼre especially useful for
topics that arenʼt personal in nature at all, but they make you feel that way so they
can hurt you.

“I canʼt imagine what youʼre doing.”

“I wouldnʼt expect it/that from you.”
“Iʼd prefer not to. I know/Iʼve seen what happens when I trust you to
take care of things/hand things over to you.”

Youʼre irresponsible, reckless and prone to frequent emotional outbursts with

instability… you are a child and they are your responsible parent taking care of you.

Then there are the responses and abrupt conversation enders that are meant to
leave you with a bad feeling, like self-consciousness and inability. Itʼs just never
enough.

“Almost.”
The 16 Signs of a Narcissist ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! 136

“Pretty good.”
“Itʼs okay.”
“Kinda.”
“Thanks for trying.”
“It makes a difference.”
“You didnʼt take the job? Well, I come from a different generation
then.”
“Hmph.”

That last one is by far my favorite. Itʼs the most honest and accurate one as to who
they are and how they really feel.

Here are judgments to put you in your place. You are their subordinate and they
occupy a higher place and status than you. When you donʼt listen to them youʼre
being a total fool.

“You didnʼt take the job? Donʼt you want to move up in the world?”
“You didnʼt take the job? Itʼs probably for the best, so-and-so is tough
competition. They only take the best.”
“You didnʼt take the job? Donʼt you want to get ahead in life?”
“Itʼs time to get on with your life.”
“Donʼt you want to get a real job?”
“I know itʼs not my place, but I would [] if I were you.”
“If I were you, Iʼd be all over that opportunity.”
“I know itʼs none of my business but you should really [].”
“Why donʼt/wonʼt/didnʼt/wouldnʼt you []?”

This is basically saying:

“Iʼm going to justify this mean thing Iʼm about to say to you by
warning you beforehand, or saying it like youʼve put me in this
position and forced me to respond in this way, so Iʼm right.”

When going through stuff theyʼve designated as belonging to them, you might hear:

“What do you think youʼre doing?”

“Why are you going through that?”
The 16 Signs of a Narcissist ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! 137

They will attempt to diminish your education or job to heighten their sense of self-
worth and accomplishment.

“What, you mean at [YOUR SCHOOL]?”

“I work a real job.”

Good example of their use of the word real here.

But is also common, to convey that theyʼd just be perfectly fine with it but… they
imply there are conditions where theyʼre satisfied even though there are none. Itʼs
part of their denial of who they are. Itʼs always this reason, itʼs a part of their theme.
Something mean abruptly follows.

“But”
“I appreciate that, but you didnʼt/forgot to []”
“I agree/would, but [].”
“I like [] too but [].”
“Iʼd like to [] but.”
“I know itʼs none of my business, but if I were you I know Iʼd be [MUCH
BETTER THAN YOU AT TAKING OPPORTUNITY OR DOING
SOMETHING].”

For instance, theyʼll rarely say something like:

“You idiot.”

Yet thatʼs exactly the feeling they need to try to convey.

“But” is supposed to be an exception but itʼs actually the norm; they always say
“but”. Itʼs the dividing conditional that means “it would be okay but thereʼs this thing
that makes you not okay.” They will not let go of that. Itʼs the illusion that thereʼs a
choice: they would like you if youʼd only improve. Itʼs to cover the fact they theyʼll
always hate you, no matter what.

They will use a diminutive tone when calling your name or making a request. How
they address you is offensive and disrespectful. Itʼs in their tone.

“[YOUR NAME], would/could you please []?”

The 16 Signs of a Narcissist ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! 138

“[YOUR NAME], []”

Remember, asking for a favor is actually an order for you to do something. The
implicit threat is that worse is going to happen if you donʼt drop what youʼre doing
and perform promptly.

They use negative adjectives and adverbs to describe you and/or others:

Dirty – Gross – Lazy – Half-assed – Slow – Scared – Small – Short –

Weak – Gross – Stupid

These are totally unnecessary sentence modifiers along the same line to indicate
the quality of the job you did and your worth as a human being.

“Maybe you could stop daydreaming and [] for me?”

They donʼt understand, and donʼt like, why they canʼt control you, so their next plan
is to make you feel bad to get you back into submission.

“I donʼt understand [] – your reasoning – what youʼre thinking – whatʼs

wrong with you”

What theyʼre really saying is:

“I donʼt understand why I canʼt control, and that bothers me.”

No answer will satisfy their query, because they donʼt want an answer, they want
you to be controllable again.

“I want a choice” means something similar. They donʼt want choice, they really
mean that:

“I donʼt have enough control over the situation and I want you to
forfeit your own decision making power to me, while you keep
responsibility for whatever I decide to do for your own sake.”
The 16 Signs of a Narcissist ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! 139

Finally, we have the set-you-off items. These are the things that they do to provoke
you into having a “talk” with them and then they proceed to tear you apart
emotionally, picking at you until you explode and lose it with them.

Theyʼre very personal, so providing you with concrete examples relevant to you will
be difficult. Most of the time they will try applying a label to you that you wonʼt
accept, and so you become difficult, unstable, irrational and crazy.

These deliberate provocations get a reaction out of you, so you express their bad
feelings for them, and they can go on with their denial:

“Iʼve tried everything with you, but you []”

“I just canʼt/wonʼt [] anymore.”
“I know what happens when I try to work with you and itʼs never
good.”
“I expected this to happen.” [When something you were tasked with
doing didnʼt turn out perfectly.]”
“We all know how you are.”

I like the last one, because there is no “we”, itʼs always just them with the illusion of
group support.

Sometimes they ask you questions they already know the answer to, in a format
that indicates itʼs the first time theyʼve asked you. They like to get you to reiterate
yourself and jump through the same hoops like a stage monkey.

“So [YOUR NAME], what exactly did [] say/do”?

They may ask many times to really make the wound sting:

“So, just what exactly did [] say/do again?”

It can be probing and prying or in an authoritative punishing and shaming tone.

Theyʼll use phrases to indicate theyʼre not taking responsibility for their own actions
and choices.

“I didnʼt know.”
“Nobody told me.”
The 16 Signs of a Narcissist ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! 140

“You didnʼt tell me.”

“Let me know.”
“I donʼt understand.”
“Next time, ask me first before you go and [SOMETHING VERY
REASONABLE YOU SHOULDNʼT HAVE TO ASK PERMISSION FOR].”
“Can I ask you to please []?”

Then there are the unnecessary and obscure things they say that are totally
irrelevant to the subject. Theyʼll say these things because they need to in order to
vent and feel powerful, in control over you and justified. They hope to get you
scared, upset and quiver with these responses/remarks.

“I mean it.”
“Iʼm serious.”
“Iʼm telling you right now that []”
“I donʼt mean to be [], but [EMOTIONAL THREAT, TAKE AWAY WHAT
YOU WANT OR HURT SOMETHING].”

Here are passing comments that are aggressive. Search for the keywords my and I
and see how they relate to you.

“Well I would have [] but I didnʼt know what you were doing/going to
do.”

Youʼre the crazy, unpredictable, non-committal, emotionally unstable one. This also
falls into the category of passing comments.

“Youʼre just all over the place.”

They enjoy setting and redefining conditions for you:

“If you were really serious about [] then youʼd [].”

“If you really cared you would []”

Note the sense of urgency and immediacy in their language. Narcissists donʼt want
you to think, they want you to do it “right now”. They tack on the escaping
opportunity or closing opportunity window theyʼve set up especially for you: a
scheme.
The 16 Signs of a Narcissist ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! 141

“Why didnʼt you tell me?”

“Iʼm telling/asking you right now to [].”

While narcissists see themselves as nice and all-around great people, they also
think theyʼre too lenient and need to stand up for themselves. This is just another
illusion that gives them more flexibility in concealing the things they do.

The idea is that youʼre the one always overstepping boundaries, because when you
assert yourself it feels that way to them. They lose control, so they reverse the
situation and act like youʼre the one always imposing on them. This way, when they
try to coerce you into something, they can stand behind the “Iʼve given you so many
chances but now Iʼm finally putting my foot down: now do what I want.” Remember,
the illusion is that they put up with you, not the other way around.

When they cannot deny or refute your skills at something, they make you
uncomfortable by making suggestions. Thereʼs never a real compliment like, “youʼre
really good at that”, itʼs always something you should do if you really were into it or
serious about it. Theyʼre things they know you donʼt want to do or say to deliberately
make you feel uncomfortable and self-conscious about yourself.

“You have a great voice. You should sing down here at [].”
“You should be a professor.”

Theyʼll precipitate a horrible atmosphere with body language and facial expressions
just before they play the role of victim:

“I know youʼre going to yell/snap at me but, [MEAN].”

“I love you but, [MEAN].”

You gain weight, youʼre fat. You lose it, youʼre too skinny. There just always seems
to be something wrong with you.

“It may not fit you since I can see youʼve gained weight.”
“Ohhh, youʼre too/so skinny.”

Theyʼll give you insulting advice on something youʼre sensitive about, usually advice
you didnʼt ask for and they arenʼt qualified to give.
The 16 Signs of a Narcissist ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! 142

“You know, you could really improve your voice by/with [].”
“Would you like to know how to []?”
“Donʼt you want to []?”

They feel they have a right to vent and to yell at you, letting just a little bit out a time.

“Hey!”
“I would like/appreciate it if you would/could [].”

They feel compelled to make threats, mostly empty, to control you.

“You can [] with your own stuff, but donʼt you ever try to [] my []
again.”
“I know Iʼve said this before and I donʼt mean/want to be/sound [], but
if [], Iʼm going to [THREAT].”

They make liberal use of dramatic force to make you do something they have a right
to make you do and get from you. They need that drama.

“Iʼm going to need you to []”

“Iʼm going to have to make you []”
“Iʼm forced to make you []”
“You leave me with no other choice/option but to []”
“I want a choice have a choice.”
“Just make me happy.”
“Let me explain something to you, [MEAN].”
“Iʼm going to have to ask/make you [].”

They have to? No, they want to. Itʼs okay though, you deserve it after all; youʼve
forced them into this position.

Another favorite of theirs is:

“I didnʼt want to have to [], but youʼve left me with no other choice.”

Donʼt ever believe anything like this. As soon as they try to make a point about
something and set the stage for their mean action, assume they have an agenda
The 16 Signs of a Narcissist ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! 143

and are about to lie to you. Itʼs just what they have to do before spreading
falsehoods: they talk and insist what theyʼre saying is true.

When they must concede and admit defeat of their attempt at control, they resolve
to try another day. They very rudely and abruptly say these things, like theyʼre letting
you off the hook, not that they failed. Theyʼre also very insincere. They need to
leave you with a judgment of your character, making you feel bad, moldering and
growing in your mind.

“Alright!”
“Okay.”
“Canʼt! Sorry.”

They passive-aggressively “brush” you off while in pursuit of control over you or
someone else:

“I donʼt care.”
“Whatever.”

You donʼt make them do anything. They actively work so you canʼt get a handle on
their behavior to keep you guessing. In fact, they go so far as to do the exact
opposite of what you want just to convince you they donʼt have to do anything you
say.

They are, however, dependent on and at the mercy of your actions because of their
illness. They live to react to what you do and try to control it, period. They hate this
fact, and of course, blame you for it. Donʼt let them make you accept their vices as
your own responsibility.