Understand that rage, manipulation, and attention seeking will happen – Narcissists need constant validation and are always seeking out new ways to make themselves feel important. They may put you down to try and bring themselves up or they may become jealous of your success and invalidate them.
Narcissists thrive on getting attention, feeling special, and having control. He is an expert at getting an emotional reaction out of you – good or bad – because it makes him feel powerful and better than you.
Treatment Options for Narcissistic Personality Disorder
The foundation of narcissistic personality disorder treatment will be psychotherapy—often a mixture of individual, group, and family therapies—to help an individual understand the causes of their beliefs and behavior and learn ways of relating to others.
Narcissistic personality disorder is a mental health condition in which people have an unreasonably high sense of their own importance. They need and seek too much attention and want people to admire them. People with this disorder may lack the ability to understand or care about the feelings of others.
Narcissists seek endless validation, attention, and praise to compensate for low self-esteem, confidence, and a perceived lack of acceptance. These struggles are often a result of early childhood trauma and attachment issues. Typically, the narcissist did not receive enough love as a child.
He is the person most insensitive to his true needs. The narcissist drains himself of mental energy in this process. This is why he has none left to dedicate to others. This fact, as well as his inability to love human beings in their many dimensions and facets, ultimately transform him into a recluse.
The Primary Narcissistic Supply is attention, in both its public forms (fame, notoriety, infamy, celebrity) and its private, interpersonal, forms (adoration, adulation, applause, fear, repulsion). It is important to understand that attention of any kind - positive or negative - constitutes Primary Narcissistic Supply.
Narcissists tend to focus on extrinsic motivators, like money and rewards, rather than personal growth and fulfillment. Because money and material wealth are highly important to narcissists, they often become a focal point of their relationships—sometimes resulting in financial abuse.
Treatment for narcissistic personality disorder is talk therapy, also called psychotherapy. Medicines may be included in your treatment if you have other mental health conditions, such as depression.
They're often introverted, sensitive, and prone to experiencing anxiety and shame. They may also struggle to maintain close friendships as they focus heavily on themselves, require attention, and are hyper-sensitive to perceived criticism.
Grandiose sense of self-importance
Grandiosity is the defining characteristic of narcissism. More than just arrogance or vanity, grandiosity is an unrealistic sense of superiority. Narcissists believe they are unique or “special” and can only be understood by other special people.
Narcissism looks slightly different in everyone, so leave the diagnosis to clinical professionals. But there are certain common traits among narcissistic individuals. Those traits include a lack of empathy, a need for admiration, and a preoccupation with status.
People who are impressive in some way, either in their career, hobbies and talents, their friendship circles, or family. Someone who will make the narcissist feel good about themselves, through compliments or gestures. Anyone who will reflect well on them in the eyes of other people.
Narcissists often look for victims who struggle with insecurity and low self-esteem. People who think less of themselves and struggle with the “I am not enough” mindset tend to attract toxic partners. People with self-esteem issues tend to think of themselves as imperfect or unlovable.
In order to fill their psychic void, narcissists spend the vast majority of their day- time energy mining for emotional reactions from the people in their lives. Emotional fuel can be positive, as in admiration, adulation, praise, empathy, compassion, attention, kindness, physical affection, and validation.
When deprived of Narcissistic Supply - both primary AND secondary - the narcissist feels annulled, hollowed out, or mentally disembowelled. This is an overpowering sense of evaporation, disintegration into molecules of terrified anguish, helplessly and inexorably.
There are three facets of narcissism: agentic, antagonistic, and neurotic.
If there's one thing narcissists hate, it's being told what to do. When you push them into a situation where they have to answer to someone else, it's like their own personal hell. Figure out a way where you can get the narcissist in your life to be underneath an authority figure to really watch them squirm.
Narcissists crave attention and admiration above all else. Their motivation is to attain status and power as a way to confirm their belief of being superior and special.