Narcissistic Personality - Denying Any

Denying Any

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It stands to reason that, to rationalize the belief that you must have it all, you must regard your needs as all-important. The needs of others are no consideration. This is the attitude little children have, which is why they must be taught to share. Narcissists never grow out of this childishness.

Implicit in that idea is the belief that you are all important and that others are of no account. You are noble, inherently superior to them, a superior being. To make (believe) it so, a narcissist just acts as though it is.

Simple, eh? Narcissism is nothing but an acting job. That's how narcissists delude themselves. Rather like children at play, pretending to be police officers or fire fighters or doctors.

But children check back into the real world when it's time to come home for lunch; narcissists never do. They are lost in the Land of Pretending that they are grand.

The flip-side of that coin is that you are vastly inferior to them, that you are nothing compared to them.

I'm convinced that this is why your narcissist treats you like dirt — that's just her upside-down way of pretending that she is majestic. She is acting as though her highness' merest wish is of infinitely more importance that your direst need. This maintains her delusion that she is such a god that you are an significant bug compared to her. So her merest wish is all-important, and your direst need doesn't matter at all.

And she mustn't ever fail to make it so by pretending that it is. For, delusions are ephemeral things, hard to maintain. Nothing but smoke and mirrors, they tend to melt away and disappear, constantly challenged by contradictory realities.

The narcissists I have known seem desperate to maintain their delusions, as though terrified of having them shattered by some repressed truth surfacing to consciousness on them. When anything happens that should remind them of the truth about something, they act like someone frantically shoveling more dirt on a corpse rising from its shallow grave.

So, to maintain their flimsy delusion of grandeur, they must act it out in every single encounter with you, no matter what. For, if they ever treat you as an equal worthy of respect and consideration — poof — there goes their illusion. The spell is broken as reality intrudes and the house lights come up on the playacting. When, as the poet T.S. Eliot wrote in the "love song" of a narcissist...

...human voices wake us and we down.

I think narcissists live in vague terror of this happening to them. Of all their delusions tumbling down. I think this is why they are so obsessed with maintaining and reinforcing them, to the exclusion of all else. Indeed, they would rather lose a million dollars or see their business go down. And to support their delusions they will do something disastrous for their business, because their delusions are all that really matter to them. They cling to their delusions for dear life, like the rest of us cling to life itself.

The narcissists I have known jump at chances to act out how insignificant you are compared to them. They do this by jumping at any chance to deny any form of attention to others with maximum impact by an extravagant display of its opposite instead.

I mean that exactly. A narcissist doesn't show just disregard; she acts out anti-regard. At every opportunity, whether great or small.

For example, let's say she's your sister and has known all her life that you cannot eat garden peas. They make you sick. To show off her (mediocre) cooking she gives a casserole she made — loaded with, guess what? Your look shows that you know she must have done this on purpose, and that's her chance to tell you that she never considered what you like when making it.

How's that for being anti-considerate? That let's you know that she didn't bake this for you. She baked it to show off.

It's just a game this emotional five-year-old plays.

Here's another example: Say that you're a brother of hers and are far from home on Thanksgiving. You naturally expect her to invite you dinner, but that invitation never comes. You're already deeply hurt when, late in the day, she calls and asks if you'd like some of her great turkey and dressing and pumpkin pie. Then she meets you at the back door and hands it to you in a brown paper bag.

How's that for affection? I'm not kidding: narcissists inflict mental cruelty like this every chance they get and as off-handedly as you'd swat a mosquito. They must do it because hurting you, treating you like a bum, makes them feel good. They must be drunk on the high they get by getting a step up on you. And, like any drunk, I suppose they feel miserable except when they're drinking.

When someone is down and out, she'll callously become Miss Bliss, laughing and chirping about this wonderful day like a male wren in May, jabbering excitedly about every tidbit of trivia she can think of — everything but the crucified or devastated friend or family member in the middle of the room. One can't get more brutal than that. It makes you go all black inside, because it strikes you as her dancing on that person's grave.

Warning: there's no bottom to how low narcissists will go in playing this game.

Here's how the same narcissist might play it in a big way: Let's say your husband just left you for another woman and you are devastated, can't stop crying, so you turn to her, thinking she's your friend. You just want someone to talk to. She doesn't respond to the usual signals that should call a friend to your side. In fact, she heads away from you so abruptly and fast that you'd think you had suddenly emitted a blast of antigravity. So, you come right out and say you desperately need someone to talk to and ask her to come spend a few hours with you today or tomorrow. She takes advantage of this opportunity to vaunt herself on you by lightly saying that she's too busy washing her Venetian blinds this week.

How's that for a kick in the gut?

That's her way of telling you how unimportant you are. Don't make the mistake of trying to tug at her heartstrings or asking her why she's treating you this way. If you do she'll fly into a rage at rage at you.

You're insulting her, you see. A bug like you insults God Almighty by acting like her equal, by acting like someone important enough for her to show regard for. You are attacking her grandiose image by acting as her equal instead of acting as though you're unworthy of her notice. So, look out: you have a tiger by the tail.

Yes, that's why narcissists are such perverts: their behavior is perverted because their thinking is perverted. Hence your asking for their compassion is viewed by them as (of all things) an attack.

And don't think that anything you've done for her in the past will make her feel obligated to pay you back in kind now. It's quite the other way around. A narcissist's middle name is Ingrate. In fact, she will punish every good deed you do for her, because helping her when she's in need challenges her delusion of being an omnipotent god who never needs anything from anyone. It challenges the flip-side too, that you are a bug who could never do anything of any value to almighty her. In other words, helping her is just another kind of attack in her eyes. So, look out: by helping her you attacked her image, which she identifies with, so you are going to get it. Yes, even though she asked you to help her, she will hate you for doing so. An example of this phenomenon is how France has never forgiven America for coming to its rescue twice.

Narcissists react to others' need this way like machines. What do you need? Affection? Then she'll respond with anti-affection = contempt and repulsion. Comfort? She'll respond with anti-comfort = the troublesome "comfort" of Job's "comforters" (= the anti-comfort of vultures faultfinding to blame the victim).

Exception: When there is something to be gained by showing regard, a narcissist will show it. For example, a narcissist wouldn't treat her boss or anyone with power over her this way. In fact, like men swoop down on a woman in distress, narcissists instantly swoop down as rescuer on someone they barely know, whom they thus win grateful friendship from, which they then exploit to parasitize that person. Also, when a narcissist can dissemble by flying to your rescue so as to be seen doing so, she'll put on a Mother Teresa Academy-Award act of selfless and tender loving kindness and concern. And she'll tell the whole world about it. That's how she carves out her saintly image. But, when there are no witnesses, and she has already defamed you so that nobody would believe you about it, look out. Your need is nothing but a trigger for Mr. Hyde to come out. See an example Case Study in Dissimulation.

There is but one possible reason for withholding affection, comfort, or regard. And it's malignant.

I have seen every narcissist I knew do it. In fact, the impression I got is that it's a knee-jerk reflex in narcissists to do it. When there is nothing to be gained by putting on a big show in which they play the part of someone's heroic rescuer, you can count on narcissists missing no opportunity to kick a person when they're down. They do it by acting out the most callous and outrageous disregard for that person in a time of time of need.

I think they really get off on it. I think that morally trampling someone like this makes narcissists feel like they're goose-stepping the mountaintops. Because it puts you here with respect to them . . .

And they aren't least likely to do it to those near and dear: they're most likely to do it to those near and dear. In a family, they target the most sensitive child to take the brunt of their abuse. Think what that means.

In general, they target those with every good reason to expect love and compassion from them, those close to them in daily life (especially if that person is someone who has been a friend in need). The narcissist will actually spurn such person with an extravagant display of haughty contempt.

In short, they're predators simply targeting the easiest and most vulnerable (deeply woundable) prey.

Narcissists treat people like dirt on the premise that treating others like dirt makes you God Almighty. That's the way a three-year-old thinks. The message is, "Get away from me, you scum. You are beneath my notice."

And when I said that narcissists do this for maximum impact, I meant exactly that. They obviously get so high on the pain they cause that they take pains to be as abusive as possible about it — forcing that child or woman to their knees and rubbing their face in filth or telling that person that for all the narcissist cares they can just go kill themselves or take a dive into the bottom of a bottle.

Now who would believe that? Who would believe that people who pass for as normal as you or I, people who go to church, coach Little League, give to charity, volunteer, and are viewed as pillars of their community — who would believe that this is how they behave to their loved ones in a time of need behind closed doors? It's the perfect crime — the one nobody would believe.

© 2004 � 2008, Kathleen Krajco � all rights reserved worldwide.
The URL of this page is: http://www.narcissism.operationdoubles.com/attentiondenyingany.htm.
It was last updated on 3/18/2008.
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