If narcissists cause so much damage, how is it possible that they fool so many people, including trained professionals, therapists, and legal institutions, and go unnoticed? How is their statistical prevalence so low? Let’s try to get answers to these questions by discussing how narcissists fake being normal.
Narcissists are actors.
They create this false self from a very young age, the structure of which has all the personality traits to create a mirage for others. They mimic all the characteristic traits, like being affectionate, being charming, being kind, being pleasant, being caring, being empathetic, being there for you. and by mimicking all of these traits. They dupe you because they can get around your critical factor.
If someone comes across as this whole package and knows how to use these personalities, these pseudo-personality traits against you to make you think that this person is a wonderful being and it’s one of a lifetime experiences, how on earth would you be able to detect that narcissism? How on earth would you be able to see the narcissist behind the facade?
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You wouldn’t, and that’s why they’re chameleons: the monster they’re hiding won’t come out until they know you’ve fallen for them or they’ve created some kind of dependency on you, and you wouldn’t be able to leave easily or do anything about the monster that lives within them.
The fact is that they put on this false persona of being a nice, amazing, caring, charming, present, pleasing, affectionate, compassionate, empathetic person just to delude you and prey on you. This is how they fool you. And you need to know that you are not a fool for falling for all of this because people tend to think and find good in others. And that is what you did, because they came across as this thing. You did not know that it was a lie. You did not know that it was an illusion.
Fake empathy.
Empathy is one of the most important emotional states for a human being to experience because it informs them about how the other person is feeling and how to connect with others. This is the foundational and basic block for trust to develop. You have to be empathetic and compassionate towards others, and the narcissist has none of it in their personality. So what do they do? They feigned it up.
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They fake being caring, they fake empathy. And they would come across as someone who is really attuned to you, has their eyes on you, of course, in a predatory way, but in the moment, you would feel like they are really paying attention. They really want to get to know you. They really feel your pain. They could sometimes even cry. When you are crying, when none of those tears would be real. These are crocodile tears, and they know that if they shed some, they would be creating an unconscious rapport with you.
So, by faking empathy, you think that they are as normal as others. You think that there is nothing wrong with them. And how on earth would someone be able to imagine that this person who is crying right now and was being so empathetic, caring, attentive, thoughtful would be a monster deep within? Nobody would. Because again, we do not need to think in those ways. We are influenced by what we experience through our sensory perceptions. And our sensory perceptions are what the narcissist creates for us, thus making it really difficult to see beyond what we feel and how they make us think and feel for them. So essentially, it’s the narcissist controlling your perceptions of them and then fooling you through those perceptions. That is the truth of it. And the truth is also that they do not have any empathy. The concept of empathy is alien to them. They do not know what it means to be loving or empathetic.
The only person they can ever be loving towards, loving, or empathetic towards is themselves when it’s not true empathy. It’s pseudo-empathy because empathy is felt towards someone else, not yourself. That would be self-absorbed. They rewrite history. They would go around convincing people that they were the victims and you were the perpetrator. They will twist stories, create false narratives, and weave these into false ones. Lies and creating a web of those for you to be stuck in them. As someone who is the third party listening to the story, what happened between the narcissist and the victim?
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So the narcissist is again able to elicit your sympathy and your empathy for them and see them as this poor being who was wronged, who was abused, who was taken advantage of, and then use your empathy against you so that you can eat up the narratives and just accept them as they present them without objectively considering the stories of both the parties and then deciding on your own. They just do not give you this space. They overwhelm you with this victimhood of theirs and then force you into thinking that they were victimized in the relationship and the real victim is being projected or, you know, made the perpetrator in the story when none of it is true. By nature, they are pathological liars, which means the lies that they speak are so strong and seem to be the real truth. And they have this convincing power of making you believe what they think to be true because they believe their own lies.
So that explains everything. That is why they are able to convince others. That’s why they are able to influence you. But none of the parts of their story are true. It’s all a lie just to get people’s attention and gain sympathy for the narcissist by making them feel sympathy for the narcissist’s fake acts of kindness or altruism. When narcissists fear that people are into them and they’re about to find them out for who they are, they will just pull the random act of kindness out of the bag of their tricks and techniques. They would do something so kind that it would make you think, “Wow, what kind of person is this? Maybe I was wrong. See how generous he or she is? How could they be abusive? How or how could they be, you know, so unkind?
This is the most compassionate person that I have ever come across. They could do things like give charity and give huge amounts. They would donate everything they had. They would just connect with these organizations that do the work for, you know, human welfare, the welfare of children, the welfare of animals. And that would confuse the hell out of you. You would really, really wonder, like, how can this person be so dark when they are doing all of this on the surface level?
But do you need to know that the narcissist was and is connected with none of these acts These are just the acts written in the script of their narcissism? They know that if they were to do this, if they were to follow this line or say this thing, they would get a specific outcome. They know what the outcome is going to look like from their years and years of practice of this, these narcissistic traits, and their reinforcement of them. They know that if they were to do this one thing, you were going to think that way, and that way is how they want you to think about them because image also matters a lot for them. They invest everything they can to just create this false image of being this wonderful person and do everything in their capacity to maintain it.
So, if a person is obsessed with maintaining an image and doing unimaginable things, how can people find the real person behind this facade? Nobody would question because they see these grand gestures of kindness and altruism that mask their true dark personality. They will just be fooled right away, and fall for the narcissist right away, and that is how it happens. And unfortunately, that is how many, if not most, of the victims, get isolated in their experiences because no one believes them. The narcissist is this wonderful, amazing person on the outside, but no one knows what happens inside the four walls, and only the one who is very closely attached to them knows them for who they are, like the spouse or the child, or whosoever knows what the real deal is. As a survivor of narcissistic abuse, if you fell for these tricks and the things they did, do not think that you were a fool. You are a human being who believes in trusting others, who wish to see the good in others, and who strives to make their projected or fabricated reality a reality. The real truth but of course, it isn’t about you.
So you couldn’t do anything about it. It’s about them. It’s about the evil nature that makes them take advantage of other people, and their emotions, and prey on them. It’s not about you at all. I want you to know that you’re a wonderful human being. Who knows what it is to experience compassion, empathy, and affection and what it is like to connect with others without any malicious intent? I hope in this episode you were able to understand how narcissists fake being normal and that it validated your experiences. If you found this video or this episode helpful, please make sure to drop your experiences and your feedback in the comments below and share this episode with other people as well. I’ll talk with you very soon in the next one. Till then, let the healing begin.
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