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The line by Captain Barbossa in Pirates of the Carribbean “drink would not satisfy. Food turned to ash in our mouths. And all the pleasurable company in the world could not slake our lust.[2]”….that is essentially the curse of the Narcissist. As soon as they acquire something or someone, it loses its value, fades in beauty, and becomes an object of scorn and contempt.
That being said, their brains do *not* understand cause and effect, or ‘karma’ as most of us understand it.
Just a quick note: Karma[3]is an Eastern religious concept and most westerners, not being raised in the culture, aren’t going to really ‘get’ what karma really means. Folks may view karma as something bad randomly happening to a person as a result of some unrelated bad action. Or they may see it as a divine punishment in the afterlife for someone’s actions in life. Many people say ‘karma’ when they simply mean ‘consequences.’
I can’t speak for divine retribution or random bad luck, but YES, narcissists absolutely do get real-world here-and-now consequences for their words and behavior. They are rejected and reviled by individuals and groups from every walk of life they have stormed through and broken and destroyed. They lose jobs. They lose friends. People who loved them end up leaving, heartbroken and angry and bitter. They lose positions of authority or trust. All as a result of their own behavior. They have health problems from overeating, binge drinking, drug addictions, sex addictions, and other compulsive unhealthy behavior. Many narcissists die alone, unloved and unmourned.
However, none of these effects (consequences) register in the mind of the narcissist as the natural results of their own behavior. It is an integral part of their illness that they aren’t able to self-reflect. They aren’t capable of introspection. They don’t learn from their mistakes because, quite simply, they are incapable of recognizing or admitting that they made a mistake. It’s always someone else’s fault “I take no responsibility” as one famous narcissist said.
So even as they die alone, unloved, and unmourned, having left a trail of destruction in their wake--bankruptcies, broken homes, broken lives and broken hearts…they will never understand that they are the ones who did wrong. They see themselves as eternal victims, so they will go to their graves feeling bitterness and anger at all the terrible people who abandoned them and did them wrong.
If you are waiting around to see a narcissist finally admit that she or he is wrong and change their ways, please get counseling and get on with your own healing and your own life. It’s not going to happen. It’s like a very depressing cartoon, watching Wile E Coyote smash himself with rocks, anvils, and long falls over and over again, never learning his lesson and never doing any better.
Footnotes
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