Are you involved with a narcissist? Use these tools to find out now and get help getting out.

Maybe it’s because we’re talking about mental health and healing more these days or maybe there’s been a dramatic uptick in the number of sociopaths showing their hideous faces to the world; either way, we sure are throwing around the word narcissist a lot.

Man Thrashing and ScreamingPhoto by Nsey Benajah on Unsplash

According to the American Psychiatric Association’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders* (DSM–IV), psychologists diagnose a client with Narcissistic Personality Disorder (NPD) using the following guidelines. Five or more of these earn you a gold star in narcissism.

• A pervasive pattern of grandiosity (making themselves appear impressive or expecting to have recognition superior to their actual performance)
• Need for excessive admiration
• Fantasies about unlimited power, success, beauty, or an idealized vision of love
• Sense of entitlement, i.e. expects others to comply with his/her expectations automatically or has unreasonable expectations of how he/she should be treated
• The belief of being special or unique and that he/she can only be understood by, or should associate with, other special or high-status people
• Lack of empathy for others, including a blatant unwillingness to even try
• Envious of others or believes others are (or should be) envious of him/her
• Tendency or willingness to exploit others
• Arrogant behavior

While experts tell us that only about 0.5% of the US population has been diagnosed NPD, everyone exhibits narcissistic traits to some degree. My hypothesis is that the number is low because it’s not likely a true case of NPD would go get tested, since they are, after all, perfect.

Narcissism doesn’t always come in an over-the-top, look-at-me package. Arguably worse because you don’t see it coming, covert narcissism comes at you little by little. Like microaggressions. Little droplets that erode away even your basic understanding of who you are as a person.

Narcissists behave this way because they’re horribly insecure, little-minded people. They’re scared, emotionally immature, and incapable of empathy. They attack the strong-willed and emotionally vibrant because they want to be like them, or try to tear them down.

To make up for that insecurity and to present as emotionally available, they create this image of themselves for the world. This image adapts, like a chameleon, to the people and situations around them. They mirror admirable qualities back to people to pretend they’re everything needed in this world.

How the Narcissist Gets You to Think They’re Perfect

It’s bizarre. Narcissists’ targets are not stupid people and not hippie dreamers who think everyone is all peace and love. They’re normal people — albeit many have historical trauma that made them codependent enough to allow this treatment— who find it hard to believe that a person can say “I love you” in one breath and then be a complete monster in the next.

Because narcissists mirror behaviors, they emulate all the things you want from a partner or a friend back to you. Often, they pick your best qualities and show them to you. They ask lots of questions, and you think it’s because they want to get to know you better. What’s really happening is you’re being mined for information.

It’s a total set-up, and they’ll have you thinking you found your soulmate.

They gather all these things and use them to shape your opinions about who they are. They convince you that life with them will be everything you’ve ever dreamed of, and they can be specific because they asked you about your dreams. They tell you everything you want to hear, which is easy because you gave them the script.

From there, they get invasive. They work to shape your opinion of the world. They don’t always directly tell you what to think, though that does happen. Oftentimes it comes in the form of, “Hey, did you catch that great podcast? You should listen to that. I’d love to hear your thoughts on it.”

A normal person truly does want your thoughts. A narcissist wants to open a dialogue to argue what he/she believes your thoughts should be.

It’s called gaslighting, trying to convince you that your reality isn’t accurate. It gets you into a place where now you have to have the narc around because you need someone to save you from all the lies you’ve naively believed about the world all these years. (We really need a sarcasm font.)

Sometimes triangulation is in there, where a third party, usually another person (but could be something like their job), gets thrown into the mix. By constantly comparing you to someone or something else, you’ll start to question your self-worth. The ironic thing about this is that it’ll cause you to work twice as hard to prove that you are still the same person they “fell in love with” in the beginning.

That’s how it works, though. They have to build you up to tear you down, so they make you feel perfect. They claim to love everything you dislike about yourself. Then they start using your history and your insecurities against you to convince you that they can navigate your world better than you can for yourself. And you let them because they conditioned you to feel like an incompetent fool who can’t be trusted to know which way is up, and they’re the white knight here to save you from yourself.

Claw Your Way Out of a Narcissist’s Grip

I’ll lead with this: it’s hard. Breaking through the trauma bond is actually the hardest thing I’ve ever done in my life. You’ll benefit from working with a professional therapist who understands codependency, childhood trauma, love addiction, and narcissistic supply.

Once you realize that you’ve been wrapped up in the tentacles of a person exhibiting narcissistic character traits, whether diagnosed or not, you’ve got to make the choice to leave. It’s nothing anyone can convince you to do, even though they’ll all be begging you to.

While people tend to go back to their abusers, you do have the power to get out. You can break the cycle.

Please take a hard look at leaving if you’re in a relationship with someone who

• built you up in the beginning but now criticizes the things they once claimed to love about you (love bombing)
• constantly compares you to others (people or things) in a way that makes you feel inferior or doubt your worth (triangulation)
• finds ways to make you feel like you can’t trust yourself to know the way the world works, others’ intentions, or even your own intentions (gaslighting)
• keeps coming back around despite your efforts to detach (hoovering)

This pattern objectifies you. It makes you someone’s plaything. It’s not a relationship built on mutual appreciation and respect. You are the only one in the relationship who has an actual emotional capacity, let alone a desire to create something lasting.

Remember: These people are mirrors. It blows up because they get tired of pretending. They can’t sustain it. The sooner you can break free, the sooner you can find your own happiness and someone worthy of sharing it with you.

Leave those narcissistic people in the past with the door barred. These people get no more of your energy.

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*In 2011, the American Psychiatric Association released the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders 5 (DSM-5), but the list of traits for diagnosis doesn’t read as easily as the 4th edition. If you’d like to see a side-by-side of both, please visit this site.

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