Why You Should Not Feel Sorry for the Narcissist

Why You Should Not Feel Sorry for the Narcissist
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The Call of the Caretaker

If you are a caring compassionate person, it is natural to feel sorry for others who suffer, including the narcissist. If you’re especially empathetic, it is your “normal” to feel others’ pain and to try to caretake them on the road toward peace and happiness. From social workers to teachers, therapists to animal welfare providers, civil rights advocates to artists, nurses to doctors, many people make “helping” their life’s work.

Taking care of others can be deeply rewarding, but it comes with risks and the need for firm boundaries. For professionals attempting to treat Narcissistic Personality Disorder (NPD), the results are limited at best. For those living with NPD in partners or parents, day-to-day life can be painfully challenging, with no solutions in sight.

The Narcissist as Tragic Figure

The narcissist is believed to have experienced a profoundly defining emotional injury at a very young age. "Narcissist injury" may be the result of abuse, loss, or a mixture of such deprivation with overindulgence and/or a highly sensitive nature.

Fundamentally, narcissists are stuck emotionally at the approximate developmental level of a three year old, and consequently they lack the most basic ability to care about the feelings, needs, and perspectives of others. Yet, as savvy adults, their powers of manipulation are off the charts.

At first glance, the narcissist may appear to be a tragically sympathetic figure. But the catch, and it’s a big one, is that narcissists are pathologically selfish and often stunningly cruel.

The Pathology of Narcissism: Overt and Covert

Those with NPD aren’t just more self-centered than most of us on the human continuum. They are, in fact, severely lacking in or altogether devoid of empathy and as a result are capable of terrible moral and legal crimes, all serving to prop the larger-than-life false self they have constructed to supplant their feelings of essential worthlessness.

Whether extroverted or introverted, narcissists assert a self that is superior, entitled, and above reproach. They are driven to continuously make a display of their grandiose “needs” at the expense of others. They do not take responsibility for their words or actions. They believe they deserve special treatment. They only “give” conditionally to get back. And they utilize a wide toolkit to get their way.

While their extravagant and manipulative agendas come from the same pathology, narcissists of the overt type are more obviously aggressive, using ridicule and rage, while covert narcissists are passive-aggressive, using guilt and pity-plays.

Narcissist Abuse Tactics

Narcissists use many strategies to get their way, assert their grandeur, and avoid accountability. Here are classic narcissist tactics:

1. criticizes

2. competes

3. violates boundaries

4. manipulates

5. terrorizes

6. lies

7. blames

8. shames

9. belittles

10. ridicules

11. denies

12. projects

13. gaslights

14. deflects

15. plays the victim

Reforming the Narcissist?

Have a narcissist parent, spouse, lover, or friend? Forget right now about reforming them. It may sound unbearably harsh, but reforming a hardcore narcissist is a debilitating delusion. Look online at major narcissist abuse recovery websites and social media forums, and you will discover a galaxy of hurt.

And the hurt doesn’t end with break up. For those who share children, the harm continues, even escalates, through custody battles and coparenting nightmares.

Do Not Feed the Narcissist

Michael Rivera, CC

Narcissists are masterful at hooking people, dangling their finest bait to attract their next blood meal. The bait is typically intense idealization: excessive attentiveness and flattery; abrupt expressions of intimacy; and sudden, premature declarations of love and commitment. For the noncommittal narcissist, devaluation follows the idealization phase. As quickly as s/he exalted you, s/he launches a litany of criticisms, complaints, and “rational” reasons for rage.

But even as the narcissist’s cast off, you are likely to find that the hook in your mouth lodges deeper the more you try to free yourself.

Why You Should Not Feel Sorry for the Narcissist

If it is not already screamingly evident, feeling sorry for the narcissist is an invitation to being abused and victimized—idealized, devalued, and rejected; or, worse, agonizingly anchored. Go ahead and feel sympathy from a distance and empathy from another continent, but do not tell yourself that you are “the one” to heal the narcissist.

The narcissist cannot and will never love you as you need and deserve to be loved. S/he will harm your children and larger family. In short, s/he will become your biggest regret.

Julie L. Hall is the author of the forthcoming memoir, Carry You, about life, and a few near deaths, in a narcissistic family. Read excerpts. Her articles on narcissism regularly appear in The Huffington Post.

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