3. They Fear Being Criticized.
A third thing that narcissists fear, and that is they fear being criticized. Now, I want you to think, is there a narcissist alive out there that doesn’t criticize heavily? Of course, they do. Now, the rule, though, is you can’t criticize them. They can tell you all sorts of things that you have to do and what you did wrong, but you can’t do the same in reverse because their criticism is their way of saying, ‘Well, this illustrates that I am above you.’ And so, if you say, ‘Well, turnabout’s fair play, I’m gonna criticize you right back,’ it’s like, ‘No, no, that means that I have flaws, just as I know you have flaws, and I can’t get down there on the same level with the rest of you poor slobs out there. I’m not human in the same way you are. I’m above you. I’m superhuman.’ And so, criticism is something that they dread.
Recommended: Becoming the Narcissist’s Nightmare: How to Devalue and Discard the Narcissist While Supplying Yourself- By Shahida Arabi.
4. They Fear Ridicule.
Now, taking that one a little bit further, a fourth thing the narcissists fear is ridicule. It’s one thing to feel like you’re being criticized, but narcissists, if they feel like you’re looking down on them in a disdainful kind of way, then that just go flies all over them. So, if they’re ever the object, for example, just of teasing, or certainly if they think that you’re joking about them or you’re speaking sarcastic remarks about them, or definitely if you taunt them and hold yourself in a derisive way over them, maybe you call them names, something like that, then that’s going to bring out all the anger all the more, and it’s like nobody, and I mean nobody, gets away with this. But again, it taps into that fear. ‘I can’t stand it when somebody thinks that poorly of me.’
Now, speaking personally, I don’t like being ridiculed. I don’t like people speaking poorly. But at the same time, I think that I’m wise enough, at least in most cases, to realize when somebody’s ridiculing me or anyone else, that’s more of a commentary about who they are. I don’t need to take that in and make it a commentary about myself. The narcissist is like, ‘No, that’s not what I do.’ What they’ll do is they’ll reverse the field and they go into a ridiculing mode toward you. And many times, you’ll hear words of humiliation toward you, and they can get into name-calling, and they can be really ugly about it. They’ll call you a loser, a reject, or scum. Or they’ll throw out ethnic slurs, anything and everything to make you feel like you’re in the down position because they fear themselves being in the down position.
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