Narcissism is a hot topic right now and you can find a lot of information on social media regarding narcissism. Some of the information is valuable, while other information discussed isn’t completely accurate.  I want to discuss some common misconceptions of narcissists you may have heard.

I will start with saying nothing is absolute in the world of narcissists.  As you review the common misconceptions I will be discussing, keep in mind that these examples will sometimes apply to narcissists.  It is not possible to discuss every likely option regarding narcissists, or any other topic, in short videos.  These are common misconceptions but that doesn’t mean they are never true. 

One of the most common misconceptions is that anybody who acts like a narcissist, is a narcissist.  This is incorrect.  You can behave like a narcissist, meaning you show some of the traits of a narcissist, but that doesn’t mean you ARE a narcissist.  We all make good decisions and bad decisions throughout our life and can’t be labeled based on individual decisions we make. At some point in time we all act entitled, envy what others have, want special treatment, and don’t have empathy towards someone and their situation.  This is all part of being a human and not responding like a robot to situations we encounter.  We have emotions and past experiences which drive how we interact today.  It is important to not take things out of context and to put more weight on a specific interaction than it deserves. 

And to tie into this misconception, there is also the belief that “narcissism” and Narcissistic Personality Disorder are the same thing.  That misconception is understandable because the terms are often thrown around interchangeably and if you don’t understand the difference then they can easily be viewed as the same thing. Narcissistic Personality Disorder is a diagnostic disorder found in the DSM-5.  It is a personality disorder which impacts almost all areas of a person’s life and is resistant to change. Narcissistic Personality Disorder is a specific mental health condition. Narcissism is a more general term to describe narcissistic traits displayed by someone that doesn’t fully meet the criteria for Narcissistic Personality Disorder. 

There is also the misconception that narcissists are incapable of love. The narcissist is capable of love, but love that is defined by the narcissist and not a more generally accepted definition of love that is defined by society.  The narcissist can love very strongly and be highly devoted to people in their life.  The problem is, this love is very much conditional.  Whether the narcissist loves you is dependent on whether you are benefiting them.  As long as you can benefit the narcissist in some way, the narcissist will love you.  As soon as you wrong the narcissist, based on their own assessment, they will no longer love you. 

The last misconception I will discuss today is that narcissists intend to hurt people. The truth is, they don’t intend to hurt people. The narcissist is mean and brutal in their words and actions and surely they intend to do that.  Why else would someone behave in a way that hurts others?  Again, you can’t think of narcissists as the general population and examine things using a non-narcissist perspective.  The narcissist thinks only of themselves and everything they do is to protect their fragile ego and low self-esteem.  They are always on the defensive to protect against narcissistic injury. The narcissist hurts people as a way to protect themselves.  The narcissist hurting people is a result of them protecting themselves.  When you are considering why a narcissist behaves a certain way, you must consider it from the perspective of a narcissist and the narcissist does everything for their own benefit, without consideration of others.  

There are many other misconceptions about the narcissist and these are just a few that I discussed today. The narcissist is predictable, but also difficult to understand because they don’t communicate why they do what they do.  They are constantly at the mercy of the world around them and how they act doesn’t make sense because only they know what internal feelings they are responding to.  This makes it very easy to misunderstand the narcissist and contributes to the misconceptions.