When you are around narcissists, it’s only a matter of time before their frustrating traits emerge. Led by selfishness and a need for control, they become stubborn, unwilling to receive input, agitated, entitled, condescending, and more. Naturally you might ask: How can you justify your obvious rudeness? Your willingness to exploit? Your insensitivity? Or maybe your egotism? Your unwillingness to harmonize? Who do you think you are?
Experience consistently reveals that narcissists are driven by massive insecurity and psychological ineptness. They are constantly trying to compensate for their emotional instability. But if you try to convince them of their obvious pathology, you will be thwarted. They don’t learn. Why is that?
Narcissists don’t learn because there is one obvious truth they choose to ignore: You are a flawed mortal.
Let’s break this truth down by examining the words flawed and mortal.
There are many evidences of their flawed nature, meaning they don’t manage themselves well in routine matters. For instance:
- They treat others as if they have little dignity or value. Instead, they readily offer insults and invalidation.
- Their emotional stability is weak and contingent upon others’ responses, meaning they are easily angry, tense, or anxious.
- They are not as brilliant or insightful as they portray, as evidenced by their many relationship miscalculations.
- As a result, they have a history of many broken relationships, which is a natural byproduct of their proclivity toward criticism and judgments.
- Their presumed logic and reasoning are not always logical and unreasonable. They are stubbornly closed-minded.
Observing this, you can query: How is it that you are an expert at seeing other’s flaws, but you cannot see them within yourself? What makes you think you are so much better?
Taking it further, they choose not to come to terms with their mortality. In other words, they run from the hard truth: You are going to die. They do not live well because they will not come to terms with their finiteness. This prompts them to ignore facts like:
- You are not the ultimate.
- You are limited.
- You are temporary.
- The world will go on long after your exit.
As narcissists illustrate an unwillingness to grapple with their own flawed mortality, it illustrates keen insights about what lies within.
- They are too insecure to face their insecurities. Their fear of powerlessness won’t allow such introspection.
- They live with debilitating denial. They cannot admit how they are in the same predicament as everyone else.
- Their defenses lead them astray. They refuse to be taught.
- Their analytical thinking is either distorted or non-existent.
- They live within a God-complex, presuming they can, should, and will have the final say about how life is supposed be.
Unable and unwilling to face the obvious truth about who they are, narcissists become permanently bound inside their own psychopathology. They insist upon being the one with power and authority over you, and believe in their false claims of superiority. They pursue superficial displays of success and show all disregard for accountability.
Healthy individuals, by contrast, will examine their flaws and accept their mortality. In doing so, they are guided by an entirely different set of presumptions. For instance, they think:
- I understand my limitations, and I’m okay with that.
- I’ll make my allotted time on this planet count.
- I’ll ponder carefully the meaning of a life well lived, focusing on priorities like love, kindness, compassion, and humility.
- I’ll be grateful for what I have.
- I’ll be teachable.
- I’ll be modest in my self-assessment, not taking myself too seriously.
- I’ll esteem others I encounter during my journey.
In their pathology, narcissists need to think of themselves as a notch above each person they encounter. They have to think of themselves as unique and distinct. Healthy individuals too can think of themselves in unique and distinct terms, but they differ from narcissists as they simultaneously acknowledge: Let’s seek goodness together. Let’s stimulate each other positively in the time we share on our journeys. There is no need to squander our time together by pretending to be someone we are not.
To watch the video on this topic, click here.
