Narcissism: a performance of a lifetime to an audience of one.

A narcissist is not a bad person. A narcissist is a person who is trying to impress oneself by trying to convince themselves they are ‘mastering life.’ They do this by replacing authentic happiness, love, and joy with a “good-looking” life—or a good-looking lie—often both.

The severity of the condition varies dramatically. It can be a horrifying shit show of parenting that NOBODY is fooled by, except the parent that is still under a narcissistic illusion that they can talk their way out of the problems, explain. “Others will understand I’m doing fine considering I’m under impossible circumstances.” They are aware of their problems but convince themselves they are not coming from them or are not very serious, and they’re at least unavoidable. “Nobody could do any better under these conditions.”

At the least severe end of the spectrum, we are talking about a person who sacrifices their happiness for a perceived ideal, typically an unhappy marriage they refuse to leave in order to prove to themselves they are “not the guy who bails on their wife.” This is typically men’s problem. Same-level mildly narcissistic women are usually more loyal to other women and are more likely some “feminist hero” and at least respectful of another woman’s marriage even if she’s in love with her husband – and could have him if she wanted to. Yes. I am calling respecting a marriage a narcissistic trait. Most people wouldn’t. They’re still in that phase. 😉

A narcissist punishes people who rattle the stage backdrop.

Narcissism is about replacing the ugly truth with a prettier-looking façade. Happy marriage, happy extended family getting together when nobody really wants to be there, a great job that you hate, keeping up the appearances no matter how false they might truly be.

Narcissists** will also punish other narcissists for rocking the boat… Rocking the stage backdrop. “Don’t break the backdrop. It’s flimsy, but it’s all the beauty we have.” And most of us would be ashamed to show that what everybody thought was a perfect life turns out to be a nicely done painting.

You can take solace in the fact that painting a convincing backdrop is not easy to do. It is often harder than actually living an authentic life. That’s the irony of it. It’s that we often wind up on a stage, and it’s difficult to leave the stage in the middle of a play. It’s such a rude thing to do. To interrupt another narcissist’s act is rude. It’s literally why we get stuck into these things: you’re never alone on the stage.

A narcissist is never alone on the stage.

For as long as you play along, you are also a narcissist, even if a less severe one. A narcissist is never alone on the stage. Narcissistic supply depends on another narcissist, not a healthy person because a healthy person won’t play along. The healthier you are, the more you hate the show. The sicker you are, the more you depend on the show. There’s also the narcissist who loves the show, and they are the overt narcissists who don’t hide the show very well at all, as they think everyone lives their life their way “acing it” or would at least want to live their way.

And even though you are all playing a stage show, you are mostly performing to yourself. The audience is just a bunch of critics, but you are the only audience that matters.

You will heal once you start feeling in control of your own life.

To be fair, to cure oneself of all last traces of narcissism is not an easy feat. For the record, I am not free of it, either. Whenever we keep a “place holder” lie in there, we are still in a narcissistic phase. We clear out placeholder relationships and place holder jobs and whatnots one by one, and try and replace them with more authentic ones. We might have fake flowers in a vase until we learn to care for real ones, and we may claim they’re “hand made” or give them some justification of existing. We know this is not the love of my life, but they’re a good person, right?

Basically everyone is a narcissist until they’ve walked the walk of shame or aced their life so they are not ashamed of any aspect of it. The first step to this is to stop playing to oneself, to be honest with yourself, while you may still feel the need to play along and help your friends and family keep lying to themselves. Therefore, if you want to exit the play, you may have to “write yourself out” with a story that both matches their externals and your truth. It has to flatter your old circles, fit their personal narratives, but also fit your truth. And THAT is a tricky thing to do… Impossible if you factor in people’s IQ’s.

You just do the best you can, and if they have to replace a stage prop because you knocked something over on your way out, so be it.

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