Bert Tassoni Happy Relationships Blog

To get started in discovering how to deal with a narcissist I will give you the actual psychiatric definition of someone who has the Narcissistic Personality Disorder just to make sure I do not leave anything out.

These are the traits most often seen:

A persistent pattern of grandiosity, need for admiration, lack of empathy, as shown by at least five of the

following:

1) A grandiose sense of self-importance

2) Is preoccupied with fantasies of unlimited success, power, brilliance, beauty, or ideal love

3) Believes that he or she is “special” and can only be understood by, or should associate with, other special or high-status people.

4) Requires excessive admiration

5) Has a sense of entitlement, i.e., unreasonable expectations of especially favourable treatment or automatic compliance with his or her expectations

6) Is interpersonally exploitative, i.e., takes advantage of others to achieve his or her own ends

7) Lacks empathy and is unwilling to recognize or identify with the feelings and needs of others

8) Is often envious of others or believes that others are envious of him or her

9) Shows arrogant, haughty behaviours or attitudes

Have you ever met someone with at least a number of of these qualities? Chances are you were dealing with someone who was at least a little narcissistic. I think what defines a narcissistic personality is someone who thinks they beyond doubt are, “the bee’s knees”. They think they are better than everyone else, warrant special treatment, and seem to live in their own little world. In common parlance: SELFISH. There’s commonly an ‘entitlement’ thing going on; where he / she acts like a king or a queen and expects people to drop everything to ‘serve’ him / her.

Unfortunately, countless women have the experience of being raised by parents like this and / or being in friendships and intimate relationships with such people. They come to therapy feeling ‘crazy’ because they are enraged with such people, yet don’t think they should be because the narcissistic person has persuaded them otherwise.

Narcissists are some of the most wearisome and crazy-making people to deal with in the universe. My hope is that you have no clue what I have just spoken about because you have never experienced it, but I gamble you do know from personal experience. Narcissism abounds in this crazy world of ours.

In order to learn no how to deal with a narcissist make use of the criteria for narcissism listed at the commencement of this article to understand whether someone in your life may be narcissistic. Then do whatever you have to do in order to shield yourself from being a victim of this person and their insanity. There are a lot of good books and websites out there, which will help you in this vein. I suggest doing a search on the internet or on your local library’s catalogue. Read as much as you can.

Educate yourself. Then take the steps necessary to protect yourself and your children. It may be beneficial to see a reputable psychotherapist as they will be able to give you helpful tools to learn self-care in the face of narcissistic personalities. Often this means getting away from these people all together, and sometimes you can have milder but distant contact. The most significant thing to remember in dealing with these people is that it  is them who has the problem, not you.