Being in a relationship with a narcissist is difficult and hard work.  On one hand they are charming and appear to cater to your needs and wants, but on the other hand they can be brutal and abusive.  The back and forth in emotions is overwhelming, and you never know which version of the narcissist you are going to get.   Things appear to be going well with the narcissist and then they attack you with abusive words or behaviors.  This seems to come out of nowhere and they are very different from who they were just a day ago.  When things are going well, the narcissist ruins it and it seems as if they want to hurt you on purpose. 

Why would a narcissist want to hurt you? In this blog, I will discuss why narcissists have to hurt you.  However, one thing I will not go over today is whether the narcissist knows they are hurting you. That is discussed in my blog “Do narcissists know they are mean?”.  Check that blog out for more information on whether the narcissists knows how they are acting.  Today, I will discuss reasons why narcissists have to hurt you. 

The narcissist presents an image of superiority and grandiosity.  They have a sense of entitlement and exaggerated sense of self-importance.  They take advantage of others to get what they want and cannot recognize the needs and feelings of others. The world revolves around the narcissist. 

Much of how the narcissist behaves is an act they put on to protect themselves.  Despite the appearance that they think they are superior to others, they actually have an unstable sense of self with low self-esteem.  They are incapable of managing positive and negatives within themselves and actively work to protect against feeling the deep-rooted shame they possess.  Their life is a constant focus on self-preservation of their image so they can protect against narcissistic injury. 

The narcissist also lacks empathy.  Empathy is the ability to understand and share in the feelings of another person.  If someone is sad, you don’t need to be sad over the same situation, but to experience empathy means you can understand why that situation makes them sad and can relate to that feeling of sadness because you have experienced it before.  Narcissists lack empathy and they cannot relate to the emotional experiences of someone else.  For this reason, when the narcissist hurts you, they are unable and/or unwilling to understand how their actions negatively affect you. 

With this lack of empathy, the narcissist can actively engage in repeated abusive behaviors because they don’t have to feel how they are making you feel.  Most people don’t engage in mean or abusive behaviors because they can understand how the other person might feel and they don’t want to hurt the other person.  However, a narcissist doesn’t have this ability to relate to someone else’s feelings so they can continuously hurt you with no real consequences to themselves. 

So how does all of that explain why narcissists have to hurt you? Because narcissists have deep rooted feelings of shame and to experience any negative emotions or thoughts would confirm to them that they are not the superior person with high self-esteem they want you to believe they are.   Their life is a continuous game of smoke and mirrors. The narcissist plans their interactions with others as a disguise to draw attention away from who they truly are.  If the narcissist can hurt you first, then they can protect themselves from others hurting them.  The blame-shifting and projection often seen from narcissists is how they direct attention off them and onto someone else. 

When the narcissist starts to experience a negative emotion or thinks they have been “found out”, they become their most brutal. They enter into self-preservation mode and attack to hurt you. During periods of narcissistic rage, you are left feeling confused and beat down, which is exactly where the narcissist wants you to stay.  When you feel insecure about yourself and your actions, the narcissist feels better about themselves because their narcissistic supply has been refilled. Narcissists can’t independently feel good about themselves and require you to feel bad about yourselves for them to prove they are the grandiose person they present to the world.  In short, narcissists hurt you to feel better about themselves. 

At Mindset Therapy we provide mental health services in Texas and Washington from trained professionals, via telepsychology, which allows you to attend the appointment from the location most convenient for you. Visit Mindset Therapy at https://www.mindsettherapyonline.com/ to learn more about the services offered and make an appointment.  Also visit our YouTube page, Mindset Therapy, PLLC, for the Mental Health Minute series that provides quick pieces of information for common mental health issues.