#3: Plainly honest about yourself.
When you have a sense of responsibility, you’re just plainly honest about yourself. For example, if you have anger issues, you say, “Yeah, I know sometimes I don’t manage my anger correctly. I need to look at that.” Or it might be that you have a problem with insecurity, and it shows up in the way that you react to people. “I need to look at that, and I know that sometimes my insecurity takes me to places I really don’t want to go.” Or it could be that there was a big blunder or mistake, and in honesty, you say, “Yeah, that was me. The other person may not have done everything I wanted, but I participated.” That’s honesty.
You want to have a sense of openness, and it leads to a sense of accountability. That’s what responsible people do. How many narcissists do you know that take that kind of pattern? It’s like, “No, I’m not gonna be honest about it. If I have anger, insecurity, or defensiveness, it’s not what you think it is, and probably it’s your fault anyway.”
#4: A well-developed value system.
A fourth element that is required is having a well-developed value system, or we might say a moral code. Narcissists have rules and regulations: there are certain things you’re supposed to do and certain things you better not say, or you have to manage it this way. But when it comes to having a well-developed value system, they don’t really have a well-conceived notion of the whys. For example, if I have a problem with anger, my value system says, “I can manage my anger in such a way where I still treat other people with respect.” That’s part of my value system.
The narcissist thinks, “Well, if you have anger, you’re supposed to do this. You shouldn’t have done that.” That’s about as far as their thinking goes. They don’t go deep into the why, the meaning, and the morality of what they do. It’s just simply surface-level. Narcissists are known for heavy black-and-white, all-or-nothing thinking, and that’s it.
Continue reading on the next page
Sharing is caring!
