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. “When narcissists find out they are narcissists,” is not a thing that actually happens. It is extremely rare for a person with NPD to seek professional help for their own issues, and even rarer for the NPD to work with a professional to try and heal themselves. It really just doesn’t happen.
Now, a friend, family member, spouse, or partner may approach a person with NPD and say “You are a narcissist. You check off every single box in the DSM:
a person with NPD possesses at least five of the following nine criteria, typically without possessing the commensurate personal qualities or accomplishments for which they demand respect and status:
- A grandiose sense of self-importance (e.g. exaggerating achievements and talents, expecting to be recognized as superior without commensurate achievements)
- Preoccupation with fantasies of unlimited success, power, brilliance, beauty, or ideal love
- Believing that they are "special" and unique and can only be understood by, or should associate with, other special or high-status people (or institutions)
- Requiring excessive admiration
- A sense of entitlement (unreasonable expectations of especially favorable treatment or automatic compliance with their expectations)
- Being interpersonally exploitative (taking advantage of others to achieve their own ends)
- Lacking empathy: unwilling to recognize or identify with the feelings and needs of others
- Often being envious of others or believing that others are envious of them
- Showing arrogant, haughty behaviors or attitudes
First of all: if you are NOT a licensed professional, and the person is NOT your patient, you don’t have any standing to make a diagnosis.
Second: if you recognize this person as toxic and confront them with their behavior and show that it matches a checklist of NPD traits, you have just handed the toxic person a loaded weapon and they will use it to destroy you.
The core emotion of NPD/abusers is rage and shame. They know they are defective. They know that there is something missing. They hate and envy people they see as having what they don’t have. They do not have the emotional maturity or the ability to self-reflect, so as soon as their inner shame is triggered—by someone telling them that they are personality-disordered, for example—they will immediately go into denial, rage, and attack mode.
“No! YOU are the narcissist, YOU are the abuser, YOU are the one who has done these things to ME!” the NPD/abuser will scream.
And then the NPD abuser will tell anyone and everyone as many terrible things about you as they can think of (most or all of which are projections—ie: they did these things to you or someone else, but they will accuse you of doing them first and worse to make you look like the bad one)
Confronting a narcissist with the truth is a dangerous and unnecessary thing to do. It will not help or heal them, it will not improve your relationship with them, and it may cause them to decide that you are The Enemy who must be utterly destroyed. And, just because their emotions are shallow and childish, does not mean their intellects are defective. Many NPDs are very intelligent and quite successful in their own way, and they can provide a very convincing story about what you did to them, that will alienate you from friends, family, social groups, and possibly even lose your job or professional credentials if the NPD takes it far enough.
Just don’t do it. It is not worth it.
Footnotes
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