Confused? Exhausted? You're probably dealing with a narcissist....
I’d like to preface that when I use the term ‘narcissist’, I’m referring to those who display habitual patterns of unhealthy narcissism (grandiosity, need for admiration, lack of emotional empathy). We are all somewhere on the spectrum and our personalities are fluid, not concrete. We also need a healthy degree of narcissism to feel confident in our abilities and good about ourselves.
On the unhealthy spectrum there are the self-absorbed, immature individuals (who are on the lessor end of the unhealthy spectrum) and all the way to the sadistic Machiavellian or psychopath individuals who crave power and control and truly want to kill your spirit and soul.
What I’ve seen is that ALL on the unhealthy spectrum have the incapacity to truly connect with another. They lack true emotional empathy, that’s the key.
Every conversation with them is in relation is 100% in relation to their own internal world. They speak to respond, not to relate. They’re incapable of sitting with you, being curious about your experience, and truly mirroring you to feel what you feel. This incapacity in emotional empathy will come out first as a lack in conversations to ask multi-faceted, curious questions centered on YOU!
A lack of multi-faceted questions is a clear sign you’re with a narcissist.
Sure, they may ask a few questions but it’s ultimately a means to an end. That end is to bring the attention back to them. They’re listening but only through the lens of their experience. They’re always looking for a way to bring the conversation 100% back to them, 100% back to their experience.
After conversations with them you’ll feel confused or exhausted. You will most certainly, ultimately, feel unheard. It’s because they’re all smoke and mirrors. The pattern you will notice looks something like this:
1. You bring up a topic on your day that includes any difficulty/vulnerability/feelings
2. They listen, ask surface level questions to know enough, and respond how they understand cause they’ve gone through X, Y, Z
3. You either (a) succumb to a shift in the conversation that’s back to them OR (b) try to continue to be heard/understood
4. If you pick 3(a), you will feel alone & unheard. Maybe even recognize it and feel sadness or anger afterwards
5. If you pick 3(b), you will be met by a way to shut you up to get back to them. This can be via one-upping that they’ve gone through worse OR you’ll be picked apart with attempts to ‘fix’ your feelings or given advice to ‘solve your problems’ (and maybe even to the point of gaslighting you to second-guess your experience).
As soon as you see these patterns, get out. This person does not love you. They love the image they have of you in their head.
With <3, Jess
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