The Narcissist’s Secret Weapon

All narcissists have one secret weapon that supersedes all others.

The most potent weapon narcissists have by far is their ability to avoid acknowledging how precarious their existence is on a day-to-day basis.

When many narcissists were children their caregivers did not give them requisite emotional nourishment to develop and function properly. The ramifications of a narcissist being “malnourished emotionally” are significant.

For instance, many adult narcissist’s interpersonal relationships are negatively impacted by him or her……

• inability to trust others
• pathological fear of intimacy
• reflexive utilization of maladaptive coping mechanisms

In order to get an idea of how important attention is to the narcissist, I think the following analogy is fitting………

Oxygen is to a normal person as attention is to a narcissist. Unless the narcissist has an unceasing connection to the attention provision module, the narcissist will not have the “psychological oxygen” to survive.

Just as a lack of oxygen causes a normal person to go into pulmonary arrest, a lack of attention will send a narcissist into a depleted emotional state such that he or she psychologically withers.

The narcissist must get emotional sustenance from outside sources because of his or her lack of ego strength. The narcissist’s lack of ego strength is a serious issue with profound consequences.

Normal people do not realize how easily the narcissist’s ego can be ruptured or bruised due to his or her psychic……..

• fragility
• brittleness
• impotence

Many normal people may lament how their former narcissist relationship partner’s rather than behave and communicate like adults and work through issues instead………

• go silent
• “go ghost”
• duplicitous begin grooming a potentially more compliant attention provision module

The narcissist’s sneak tactics and passive- aggressive maneuvers have nothing to do with psychological potency and everything to do with……………..

• a total lack of stability
• utter powerlessness
• being devoid of any semblance of control

The narcissist will likely never openly admit that he or she knows something is off kilter, even though their life histories reflect that something is clearly amiss.

Rather than be emotionally honest, narcissists will lie to themselves, and rationalize that an abundance of problems are somebody else’s fault.

The narcissist seems to inevitably put him or herself in a perpetual double bind whereby he or she recognizes there is a problem; however, the narcissist is unable to admit to the problem —lest he or she be psychologically annihilated

According to many narcissists’ world views, it’s better to avoid showing humility and sincerity as that would allegedly expose him or her to being taken advantage of by the very people who do care.

Consequently, the narcissist feels it’s imperative to be fake, not real.

Hence the narcissist is prone to behave……..

• fake strong to not appear weak
• fake nonchalant to not appear anxious
• fake nice to not appear bitter and cynical

The narcissist creates a loop or cycle where during each step of a process, they out think themselves and choose the exact wrong thing to do rather than do exact right thing.

The upshot of what I call “narcissistic looping” is that the narcissist invariably chooses the easy wrong path and they end up gravitating to the very people who do not care and repulsing those that do.