2. Extreme hypersensitivity.
The second trait that you’re looking for is extreme hypersensitivity, particularly to criticism or negative feedback that comes from outside. They’re extremely hypersensitive. Now, why would this be an indication of covert, vulnerable, or fragile narcissism? Simply because as a structure, as a personality formation, the architecture of the personality, when we’re talking about covert, fragile or vulnerable narcissism, it’s not stable, it’s not very strong, it’s not very robust. If the narcissist, if the human being who’s using narcissistic personality disorder to cope with the harsh realities that we all have to face, if they’re in a classic phase, a grandiose phase of narcissism, they’ve successfully convinced the world that they’re amazing.
And everybody goes, “You think you’re amazing? Well, most of us agree you are pretty amazing. Have this special treatment. Enjoy your entitlement. You know, go first and so on.” The covert, fragile, or vulnerable narcissist fails to convince other people. They can’t bully or cajole or seduce other people into agreeing, into matching the treatments of them with their hyper-idealized self-image. So their narcissistic supply is low, it’s patchy, it’s not high quality, so they’re kind of like a junkie struggling to get good junk.
And so they become fragile and they become hypersensitive to criticism because there’s already an internal voice, it’s called a superego injunction or an inner critic, that’s already badgering them, that’s already telling them, “You’re useless, you’re no good.” And they feel a lot of shame because their entitlement is up, and the treatment they get from the world is down. That disparity creates the stress, the somatic stress in the body that we call cognitive dissonance. They then become extremely hypersensitive to new sources of narcissistic injury that are reminding them, “Kid, you ain’t that special.”
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