4. Quick to exasperation.
So the fourth thing that’s an indicator is that they’re extremely quick to exasperation and frustration, and they get really grumpy. Because they can’t listen, when you talk, they lose track of what you’re talking about and they’ll get really frustrated and really cranky really quickly. For example, they’ve just talked for like 10 minutes about their own life, perfectly happy, perfectly switched on. They were listening to themselves and they were there, they were present. You talk for more than 30 to 45 seconds, the eyes glaze over, they start stifling a yawn, start looking around the room, and then, they’ll tune back into the conversation, realize that they’ve missed the last 30 seconds, and they’re angry, and they’re cranky.
With who? With themselves? No. No, it’s called narcissism. They’re not going to be angry with themselves. They’re angry with the person talking. They became incredibly frustrated and incredibly angry two minutes into me talking. The energy was moving onto another person and their whole system was switching off. And this led to them feeling, I think, a degree of pressure. They were like, “Oh, my God, I’m being pressured to listen to somebody else’s a boring story.” Who are we talking about? What is this story about? So they’re very, very quick to exasperation. That is another indicator of covert or fragile narcissism.
5. Terrible friends.
The fifth indicator that somebody that you’re dealing with could actually have elements of covert narcissism if not be a full-fledged covert, vulnerable narcissist, is simply that they make terrible friends. So what do I mean by this? Think in your mind now what you do conscientiously to try to be a good friend, to try to be a good and supportive friend. What do you do? You pay attention to them, you give them time. If they need to see you, when you know that they need to see you and it’s not super convenient for you, you’ll go and see them anyway, and so on and so forth.
And then take that list of five things you do as a conscientious friend, and compare it to what this person is doing. And you will see, they do literally none of them. They are terrible friends. Just like functioning friends, they do not know what they’re doing, and they’re awful at it. They make terrible friends, and this is an indicator that they can’t cope with an egalitarian, equal, horizontal adult-to-adult relationship, which is a big indicator of narcissism when it’s shot through with hypersensitivity to critical feedback and passive aggression. It’s not just narcissism, also, if they’re withdrawing from the world a lot, it is covert or vulnerable narcissism.
Read More: 5 Weaknesses All Narcissists Have But Don’t Want You To Know.
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