Do You Know A Narcissist? 11 Common Traits

A Narcissist is one of the most soul destroying people you could ever meet or become involved with, yet they themselves have no inner soul connection. The definition of a narcissist is someone who will never learn from their life, from their experience, and will never look inside or change or grow. For real! It may not surprise you that these people are everywhere. I've often referred to them on this website as the Lost Ones. They include the ones who are very dark. So, how many narcissists do you know?

I've been looking into this issue for a while now, having been raised by narcissists and knowing many of them during my life. They are easy to spot. As I describe this kind of person you will also surely recognise the ones who have touched your life, for there are millions of them present upon this world. They look just like the rest of us yet they are totally devoid of Soul. They have no conscience. They have no true self, but more of a manufactured self an like anti-self, for they literally are. Let's discuss their attributes first in case you are unaware, then I would like to later discuss how they are spiritually and psychically as well, for there is more to this grand story than meets the eye.

Who Are The Narcissists? - Easy

Please note both men and women can be in this category of mental condition. To give a standard kind of description, the Narcissist has an inflated, grandiose sense of their own importance, whilst barely beneath the surface they have a fragile sense of self, low self-esteem, and are extremely sensitive to the slightest (imagined) criticism. Add to this, or because of this, a deep, overpowering need for excessive attention and admiration from anyone they come into contact with, i.e. friends, lovers, and strangers. They possess not one ounce of empathy within them, and no ability to feel what others are feeling, and because of this they always have extremely difficult and often short relationships. It must be noted that once a relationship breaks down, they do not ever think about it, dwell on it, learn from it or grow. They simply move on, no lesson learned, to the next one who comes along.

One of the most important points to be made about them is they have no capacity to love. They do not love their own self and so are not able to give love to anyone else, ever. Not family, friends or lovers. And this is the heartbreaking part of it. They came into life on this planet with no connection to their Soul, which they had partially or completed divorced their self from before coming here. Since they essentially hate their own self, and they are unable to love any other person they "connect" to, although they never truly connect to the rest of us. It is a sad story but because they are so destructive, the only way a human can deal with a narcissist is to stay far away. They cannot be fixed or healed and you will see why further down.

11 Common Traits Of The Narcissist

There are many big, Red Flags that surround each and every narcissist that must be discussed. It is the strangest phenomenon but, as many I've read comment, it is uncannily like each narc has read and adheres to some big book of instructions on how to be a narcissist. They are all alike to a tee. I suppose if you are missing your Soul, this is just how you turn out. It is uncanny! Here are the traits of every narcissist:

They have an inflated sense of their own importance when around others
They are unbearably entitled and believe they deserve constant admiration
They are superior to all others, even if they have not earned it or done anything special.
They love to steer the conversation to themselves regarding how good they are and how much they know.
It makes them feel better to belittle people who they see as inferior (most people) and they want to find others who they feel merit them or are also somewhat superior.
Pretty soon they start to manipulate everyone, especially those closest to them and they expect your compliance. You must at some point give in to them if your relationship is to last (they never do last forever)
They are unable to see your needs at all, and what you want is unimportant to them. They have no way to even read what you feel as they have no empathy and are not typically "human" as you would normally think of it.
They work from a level of envy, yet they envy superficial things like money, power, fame even, youth, etc. If they envy you, they will work to bring you down so they can climb above you.
They show their arrogance and must always have the best of everything, i.e. best house in the most expensive area, best car, best looking partner, etc. They are often haughty and very pretentious.
When they are at home and not trying to impress others, they are silent. SILENT. Do not talk, do not have a personality and can almost seem haunted, like no one is in there. You are seeing the not-self that they are. I feel almost sorry for them.
If you are in a relationship with one, you will receive narcissist abuse of a severity I can barely describe. Keep reading. They steal all from their partners and cause horrors that can take a lifetime to heal from. If only they were 90% toxic, but no: they are 100% toxic. They MUST cause you pain in order to offset their own, internal pain of having no soul. You will never get anything other than pain from the narcissist.

Tactics Used By The Narcissist which are, Yes, All The Same

Common tactics the narcissist uses in a romantic relationship are:

Love Bombing
Gaslighting
Triangulation
Being Devalued and Ignored
Smear Campaigns
Hoovering
If you accept the hoover, now the cycle begins again from the top

The one thing the narcissist wants from you and from every person is constant attention to all their needs. This constant attention is called Narcissistic Supply. Especially a love/sex relationship is where they look for Supply. Whilst they are not capable of personal love and they do not love you, they want you to excessively love and care for them and in order to win you over, they give you a bunch of wholly fake "love bombing".

1. Love Bombing is what always happens at the start of a narcissistic relationship. They tell you outrageously loving things, buy you many gifts, make you feel validated, loved, and basically amazing. They are charming, agreeable, and do all they can to make you love them. They can no longer live without you and tell you how special you are. They can do this for a while until you are overwhelmed with love and have a strong attachment to them. They come onto you extremely quickly and the romance goes unnaturally fast, almost like they need to capture you before you change your mind. You fall completely in love with them. After some months of this unbelievable romance, it suddenly stops and they start to Gaslight you, perhaps gently at first.

2. The Gaslighting is when they first become disagreeable and start to make up things and lie boldly to your face constantly. You will notice this phase when it begins and they may even start to ignore your texts and tell you you are being too sensitive. Suddenly like that the romance phase is over, the show of love is finished. What the hell happened? Well, they "got" you, you were the prize and you convinced them you would never leave. So now they are ready to gaslight you endlessly until you think you are going mad. So what is this gaslighting?

This term comes from an old black and white movie where the male character (narcissist) would turn down the gaslight in the couples home each day. The woman was always asking who turned down the gaslight to which the male would reply that no one had turned it down. It was down the whole time. He wanted to make her feel like she was going crazy and make others think she was crazy, and sure enough she began to doubt her own reality. She doubted her own thoughts and thought her reality wasn't real any longer. She began to crack up. Now he had the fuel to convince others she was indeed crazy. And he stayed calm, sat back and enjoyed it, constantly turning the gaslight down.

When you meet a narcissist, there is always bold gaslighting as they deny everything you say, to your face, and make you feel crazy. Tell them a fact and they deny it, and they explain to you why that isn't true. Then they do that every time you open your mouth to speak. Then they also deny how you feel and tell you that you shouldn't feel what you are feeling. Can you imagine the torment of this occurring in a once loving relationship? If the love bombing was strong enough, you stay beholden to them even though they constantly gaslight you about EVERYTHING. This is utterly toxic. You think you are going crazy. Now it is time for the triangulation to begin....

3. Triangulation is something I never experienced because I always walked away at 2; I can't stand gaslighting. But narcissists will always triangulate you with an old ex, or a new secret partner of theirs, or bring others into the relationship to belittle you, make you jealous, create drama and more attention or supply for them. It can happen in narcissistic families also. It may take you awhile to realise you are being triangulated with another to cause trauma, upset, which the narc then feeds off. What a waste of time! An example may be they begin to play you off a person at their work, always mentioning how you should be more like this person, and how great this person is, how this person never does what you do, etc. You don't even have to meet the person you are triangulated with. If it goes their way you get jealous of them, you get sucked in, you are hurt, etc, etc. This is a weapon of choice of the narcissist and you will surely fall into it if you stay with them. But eventually, the narcissist begins to tire of you, or you aren't loving them enough, so here comes stage 4.

4. After a while when the narcissist gets tired of you, they naturally start to devalue you, dismiss you, ignore you and this will be extremely painful and annoying, keeping in mind how much you love them (they tricked you into loving them), and how you still think they are a normal, sane-minded person. In this stage, they tell you all the things wrong with you (project themself onto you), going deeply into your personality in all ways, changing you as you begin to walk on eggshells around them. They set rules about what they do and don't like; then every few days the rules change! You are no longer walking on solid ground and you begin to actually disappear. In fact, you don't even know who you are anymore and you lose yourself. You are trying to please the narc because, strange as it sounds, every now and then you get a normal day from them. But it only lasts a day and then they revert again to their old games.

Then, to make matters even worse, you constantly get the blame for all the bad things they do to you, like it was your fault they did that to you! For example, "The way you act is making me come home late from work. I can't be around this kind of behaviour." Or, "I wanted to be romantic but I never know how you will react anymore." It is NEVER their fault and it is always somehow your fault, no matter what. Oh they are so reasonable but this behaviour is actually sociopathic. This person is not really a normal person and this ghastly behaviour is sure to traumatize you.

And the reason these ploys work on you (at first) is because you are yet to figure out it is deliberate, planned and has been done over and over again to others - this person is a Narcissist. You don't at first realise your partner has a mental health condition called Narcissism, and you are unaware they have no connection to their soul. Remember, they look human but are not like a normal human! You are under the belief they are a regular person who loves you. No! This is all a ploy planned from the start and is part of a sick cycle to use you to get supply. They always need supply above all else.

Now we move to the smear campaign part of the cycle, which on top of everything else is extremely hurtful, especially if you are still in the dark about who they are.

5. Smear Campaigns are a dreadful way to hurt you further and you WILL be smeared. This is the narcissist way. Whether its their friends or your friends, he or she, will begin to convince them you are a bad person. They will tell them this and will lie in an unbelievable manner to destroy your standing, making out you are crazy and they are perfectly sane, and make sure you have no friends left. Even more, they will try to turn your family against you and is so convincing it often works. Everyone else thinks this person is wonderful, remember, because they spend all their time charming others and convincing others of how wonderful they are. This is serious and is how the narcissist will make sure your whole life is destroyed. They will leave you with nothing. This is why I say the narcissist is 100% toxic. And to think that all you ever did was love them. Oh, what a crime. You will eventually be forced to move on from them. They may be couch surfing never even coming home, may never even have discussed it but just left it up in the air, and you will leave them.

But after a while, they will return to start hoovering you...

6. Beware the Hoover! Yes, this is when they tell you how sorry they are and how they want it to go back to how it used to be. He still loves you, needs you and Yes, he is set to use every lie he can think of to get you back, if you are worth it to him. The narcissist tries to hoover (suck back in like a vacuum) every relationship he has ever had because they hate to loose supply.

If you are duped, you may somehow believe all the toxic stuff he did to you was a lesson, that he has learned, and that it won't happen again. He has learned how special you are and that he can't live without you. Oh boy, that is until he begins to gaslight you again and the cycle begins again from the top. How can they have the gall to do that to you again? Really? But these are the only tricks they have and they often work. People do forgive them and do go back in to put up with more abuse. Empathic people may think they can change the narcissist, and Forgivers think they just need to forgive them to fix them, or try to give even sweeter supply, even deeper love. But you can never make a narcissist happy no matter what you do. Due to the lack of connection to their soul, they are endlessly empty and everything you give just gets sucked down that black hole. They are unable to love themself, unable to reflect upon experience, unable to learn. They will take you round and round again the same old game, if you let them.

So we are onto 7, which is really just a return back to 1 again...

7. The hoovering, should you accept it, will begin the cycle once more of you giving them supply, and them treating you badly with the same old tactics, gaslighting, triangulation, smear, etc, etc. At some point you need to get out of the cycle. They will try to keep you in it, believe it or not, with so many convincing lies but look at their actions. Many say to write down all the bad they have ever done to you so you can get the picture. They are no good! You may be surprised when you begin to cataloge it how much there is.

A narcissist cannot be fixed, sadly. You need to move on and begin to find yourself and heal again. You deserve this. You deserve to be healed and to come to realise that all the rot said to you was never personal. All the criticisms, all the triggers he set off, all the pain, it was not personal to you. It is his way of getting supply by hurting you, and he never spends one second contemplating if you deserved it or if it was true. It was never personal. So now you need to let it go and heal. Go No Contact with them forever if you can.

What To Do Now?

Honestly, having had narcissistic parents, siblings, a narcissistic best friend and then finally falling in love with a narcissist, all I can say is that at some point, you need to go No Contact and get them out of your life. I am one of the types (an empath) that narcissists go for. I give love and empathy. I am proud to say I have got rid of every last narcissist in my life to date, and I am not looking for any more of that hell.

The hardest was the one I fell in love with who was also the most recent narcissist. The hard part was falling out of love again after enabling him, letting him have his way. Learning that he was not connected to soul but rather just acting out a parody of being human whilst not being fully human at all (not as we know it). It was enough to make me finally get over this person. I was in love with the fantasy of him....not with him. He was just a bitter old shell that was empty of all things - bleh. If you know a narcissist, it may take time to get over it fully as it did with me. But we all get there eventually, we all realise that the pain is just not worth it and we get away from them before we heal ourself.

I want to write more on this topic as I go so as to help others. It is time that humanity became more aware of narcissists, who they are, what they are doing to us, and begin to heal. There are narcs in Hollywood, a lot in politics, CEO's are mostly narcs, anywhere they can get power, wealth and other empty, superficial things. These awful relationships are just too damaging for us to put up with any longer.

Below are some more articles on this topic:
Do You Know A Narcissist? 11 Traits of the Narcissist
Loving The Narcissist - The 6 Stages of a Narcissistic Love Relationship
Why Narcissists Can Never Let You Go
The 6 Types Of People Who Attract Narcissists
Narcissistic Personality Disorder: 9 Symptoms
Narcissistic Love-Bombing & Addiction
Is Compassion For The Narcissist Possible?

Please Share!