Narcissists** play a role for themselves; a performance of a lifetime to the audience of one.

If you’ve wondered why you cannot appeal to the narcissist’s sense of reality, shame, or guilt, it’s because in their world, you’re about as real as a character in a movie they’re playing for themselves. They’re only annoyed if the plot doesn’t go their way, as they see themselves as the only significant character, and everyone else is simply an extra. Your role is to make the narcissist look good to themselves, and it doesn’t matter if you’re all laughing at them behind their backs – that’s fine; just don’t do it to their face, where they’d have to rewrite the whole script for it to make sense as themselves as the hero(ine).

You may get rid of them when you break their vision of themselves so they have to work harder and harder to maintain their heroic view of themselves.

We all have to perform for ourselves, too.

Normal people also perform for themselves, too, when nobody is looking. WE STILL have to do the right thing by our own standards so we can tolerate ourselves. But for a narcissist, this means they still have to watch out for their own best interest when nobody is looking. They cannot let the role slip TO THEMSELVES by their value system: “I am the only character that matters, I have to watch over myself.”

While a normal person has to enjoy themselves being themselves and, more importantly, approve of their own actions, we take others’ good into account as well. A part of our self-satisfaction, our own performance to ourselves is how well we treat others. A narcissist can’t or won’t do that – too complicated. Their social IQ is very low, and therefore, they can only mind the needs of one person; themselves.

Narcissists** are not self-critical.

The narcissist’s performance of themselves is so thoroughly based on a lie that to a normal person, it boggles the mind to think the only audience member they’re concerned about is themselves. It feels unbelievable that they can blind themselves from the moment that they wrote the script and still perform the role as intended and believe their own BS. They seem to have a fractured sense of reality: the part where they’re manipulating others into playing the role is one half of who they are, and then, there’s the part of the psyche that enjoys the ensuing show.

When nobody agrees to lie and perform for them, they feel cranky and appalled at other people’s narcissism and unwillingness to cooperate because their play suffers. When the actors bail mid-scene, they find it harder to write and perform their own script for themselves.

Oh, the fun you can have with this realization.

Now, let me first tell you, that the best thing you can do to a person is to break their false ego and force them to see reality. Whenever you can fortify someone’s AUTHENTIC sense of self, do it, but if you see them lying to themselves, break it if you can. At least try not to add material to their humbug, unless you need to direct them out of your life with a flattering script you can play for them. How they “dumped you” for instance, but you have to realize that if they can blind themselves to the reality, they’re often very willing to do so.

“No, that didn’t happen. I don’t like the idea of seeing with my own eyes that my husband was cheating on me. I don’t like it one bit. I’ll just edit that out.”

A narcissist that actually gets angry at your disobedience is already on the road to healing. They’re awakening to the fact that their world CAN BE a little nasty… They just don’t deal with it all that well, and try to force you back into playing your role the way they wanted you to. A full-blown narcissist pretends they didn’t see what they saw, and will act as if nothing ever happened, and will refuse to even discuss it.

Get the truth out with flattery.

A narcissist can even commit a murder and then figure “well I didn’t like my view there, I’ll just rearrange the facts and edit that ugly bit out. My husband just moved away for a high-paying job and all’s good.”

You might get the truth out by playing a role where you flatter them and admire them for what they’ve done and achieved. They are suckers for flattery – not so much for guilt trips or scare tactics. You have to give them what they want, as they block the scary and nasty things away with an amazing power.

Flatter them enough and you might have them confess to a murder they didn’t commit – something to consider for those who want the truth.

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