evile

No. Narcissists have a mental disorder; their brains are damaged. They are not capable of fully being human, with the range of emotions that most normal humans have. They are stuck in a stage of emotional development somewhere between two and six years old, and all of their emotions are that of a two to six year old child. They are easily frustrated, easily bored, selfish, self centered, and lacking in compassion or empathy because at that stage of development most children do not understand that their adult care givers are anything other than a source of food, protection, emotional comfort, etc. They do not understand that the adult humans around them are people with needs of their own.

As the narcissist matures intellectually, he or she will learn ways to fake ‘adulting’ and mimic the people around them to seem as though they are functional humans, but they are not.

Some narcissists may learn through film, literature, music, or observing other humans, that an act of being ‘complex’ and having ‘inner demons’ makes other people sympathetic, makes other people give them physical gifts, emotional support, or other forms of validation. They will also observe that people who are ‘sick’ or ‘fighting demons’ or having some kind of dark and mysterious past trauma, are people who are allowed to lash out, behave abusively, brood, break things, detach emotionally, etc. and the people around them allow the behavior and make excuses for it, “he had a bad childhood,” “her husband used to beat her,” whatever… so they make that act part of their story so that they too will be allowed to treat people badly and behave badly and not be held to account because of all of their ‘past trauma’ and ‘personal demons’

Rest assured that you cannot love and care for a person like this ‘enough’ , your love and caring will not ‘heal’ them. Giving to people who behave like this and treat you badly will only drain you, and it will not fill them up. You will be drained and discarded and they will use your name as the name of the villain in the story they tell to the next person who wants to help and heal them with their love and caring.

In short: don’t think of it as the narcissist ‘has’ demons, think of it as the narcissist is a demon.

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Editing to add: Posts tagged 'quora' were originally my answers to peoples' questions on quora.com. They were monetized but I am giving them away for free here.

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