4. A constant self-referentiality.
Egocentricity inherent in a narcissistic personality structure prevents narcissistic people from comprehending that other people may be experiencing problems, difficulties, sufferings, or obstacles since their intense self-focus is preventing them from understanding the inner struggles of other people. This is the reason why narcissists often exhibit something called constant self-referentiality – a tendency to make everything about themselves.
For example, if a person tries to voice their problems to a narcissist, the narcissistic person is likely to rudely interrupt them and start talking about how that problem is affecting them even more than the person who is really affected by that problem.
5. A person tends to pedestalize people who help them drive up their own sense of self-worth.
Narcissists are very prone to idealizing people who can help them regulate their unprocessed feelings of worthlessness and inadequacy, especially early on after they’ve met a new person. This excessive idealization of the other person is not recognition of that person’s qualities, but a narcissist’s way to feel better about themselves by staying in proximity to such a great person – which often means, a person whose status they perceive as higher than their own.
6. A person has a very polarized view of themselves and other people.
A narcissistic person processes information about themselves and other people in black-and-white terms – they tend to view everyone as either good or bad, saintly or full of sin, perfect or worthless. The cause of this is a primitive, infantile defense mechanism known as splitting, which refers to a person’s inability to reconcile other people’s both positive and negative qualities into a mostly functional, coherent whole.
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