How To Deal With A Narcissist - Discover How To Protect Yourself

To get started, I will present you the actual psychiatric definition of someone who has the Narcissistic Personality Disorder just to make sure I do not leave anything out. This comes from the standard text, the DSM-IV, which psychiatrists employ to diagnose people. Here's their definition:

A persistent pattern of grandiosity, need for admiration, lack of empathy, as shown by at least five of the following:

1) A grandiose feeling of self-importance

2) Is preoccupied with fantasies of limitless success, power, brilliance, beauty, or ideal love

3) Believes that he or she is "special" and can only be understood by, or should associate with, other special or high-status people.

4) Requires excessive admiration

5) Has a sense of entitlement, i.e., unreasonable expectations of especially favourable treatment or automatic compliance with his or her expectations

6) Is interpersonally exploitative, i.e., takes advantage of others to achieve his or her own ends

7) Lacks empathy and is unwilling to recognize or identify with the feelings and needs of others

8) Is often envious of others or believes that others are envious of him or her

9) Shows arrogant, haughty behaviours or attitudes

Have you ever met someone with at least several of these qualities? Chances are you were dealing with someone who was at least slightly narcissistic. I think what defines a narcissistic personality is someone who thinks they truly are, "the bee's knees". They think they are better than everyone else, deserve special treatment, and seem to live in their own little world. In common parlance: SELFISH. There's commonly an 'entitlement' thing going on; where he / she acts like a king or a queen and expects people to drop everything to 'serve' him / her.

Unfortunately, countless women have the experience of being raised by parents like this and / or being in friendships and intimate relationships with such people. They come to therapy feeling 'crazy' because they are infuriated with such people, yet do not think they should be because the narcissistic person has convinced them otherwise.

Narcissists are some of the most testing and crazy-making people to deal with in the universe. My desire is that you have no clue what I have just spoken about because you have never experienced it, but I gamble you do know from personal experience. Narcissism abounds in this crazy world of ours.

To be able to protect yourself from people like this, avail yourself of the criteria for narcissism listed at the commencement of this article to understand whether someone in your life may be narcissistic. Then do anything you have to do in order to protect yourself from being a victim of this person and their insanity. There are a lot of good books and websites out there, which will assist you in this vein. I suggest doing a search on the internet or on your local library's catalogue. Read as much as you can. Educate yourself. Then take the steps needed to protect yourself and your children. It may be valuable to see a reputable psychotherapist as they will be able to give you helpful tools to discover self-care in the face of narcissistic personalities. Often this means getting away from these people all together, and sometimes you can have milder but distant contact. The most imperative thing to remember in dealing with these people is that it is them who has the problem, not you.