Relationships

The narcissist is supposedly always right: How to end the myth

By Gail Berry

Published 12th March 2025

There will always be someone to blame and vulnerability will be an open invitation for risk. Empathy will always be absent, but shame will be there in its place.

This, my friend, is what to expect unless you are on the side of the narcissist. Any feelings you have are wrong and deemed selfish. Love and respect? No, these are in very short supply and usually only when the narcissist needs something from you, they will, by and large, be disingenuous and entirely faux.

The narcissist's feelings take precedence and others will have to cater to theirs instead of their own. So it is easy to see how one’s own authenticity will either be, or swiftly become, absent.

Your own soul will feel like a hollow place and pleasing will take over. This can either occur incrementally or, if it is a romantic relationship, to keep the narcissist happy, will become the rule of thumb pretty quickly. This is because voicing your own opinions will be so questioned by them that your own feelings will become questionable even to you!

You will feel distinctly uncomfortable and this is a clue, a red flag, please acknowledge it. Being yourself, if you can still remember what that felt like, will feel like it could be dangerous and a prelude to abandonment and discard.

mutuality
meeting in the middle
equal exchange
empathy
understanding

All of the above will not only be absent, but these normal relationship dynamics will be considered by them to be undeserving based upon their views and their own interpretations of any situation. So you’re there but without any rights.

This is perilous to your own self-esteem and self-worth, and if you are an empathetic person who has questionable self-esteem issues of your own, you will lose small bits of yourself in every exchange. You can hang on in there due to the honeymoon periods, which will be intermittent and less and less eventually, but you will always be back sitting in the mud, with them watching and never sitting by your side.

The narcissist will always stand their ground. This is what will eventually both expose them and ultimately betray them as their inability to commune in any relationship but always stand separate by way of their tactics of imperialism and superiority not to mention sickening hubris, will eventually (when their victims wake up) make the truth about their condition or disorder impossible to deny. They will become technicolour in the light of others' rights and good emotional health.

Here, instead of timing, timing and timing, will be awareness, awareness and awareness. They cannot bear dropping the mask or for anyone to expose them.

And so the narcissist’s version of things will be the one that takes precedence in people’s minds despite the calumny they engender on behalf of anyone who is in their bad books or who indeed attempts to challenge their truth in lieu of “the actual truth.” Their brainwashing tactics can confuse even the most astute of us, and their enablers are usually charmed and/or rewarded to ensure they are continued cohorts. So the dysfunctional status quo is secure.

Those they tend to ally with or solicit for either friendships or romance and marriage are therefore most likely to bear co-dependent characteristics or be those for whom these patterns were learned and familiar in early childhood family dynamics of their own. The familiar seems safe as it is known. Co-dependent people tend to have low self-esteem, and deny their own needs. There can also be physiological additions to abuse cycles, making this exchange inevitable and where it is normalised.

Dynamics within narcissistic relationships

These are the dynamics that will exist in narcissistic relationships so that you can be aware and recognise them :

isolation
rage
blaming
triangulating
gaslighting
shaming
nervous breakdown
PTSD
CPTSD

Let us address these one by one.

Isolation

Narcissists love to cut off and alienate their victims from close friends and those that support them, and also from supportive family members. Because a lot of abuse is done behind closed doors and never in public view, they will often be thought of by outsiders as charming. The abuse is always hidden... once you are back home, or in the car going to an event or coming back, it will be just you and them or maybe in the presence of someone who they can count on who they are allied with.

This means you will be gaslit into believing whatever happened was your fault and/or it never even happened, comments like "I was only joking" or "Don’t be so sensitive" will be said and you will be struggling to understand or call it what it is, which is abuse. Even you yourself will end up doubting your own lived experiences.

The continued predictability of these scenarios will go deep into your psyche and, odds are, a part of you will end up believing in their version of everything, including even who you are.

To add to this, they will convince you and anyone who counts that they are the wronged or maligned party!

Dangerous advice can often be given out by those not in the know or understanding of it, and suggest reconciliation so that the cycle of abuse (which is coercive control) is endlessly perpetuated, and the effect of the constancy and inevitability of this cycle is upheld. To them, as long as their mask is upheld, what happens to you is irrelevant as long as they win the day. You will be vying for their approval and doing anything to mitigate or avoid further attack.

Rage

When most reach a level of rage, it is because there will have been an accumulation of things and events, but narcissists don’t operate like that. Their rage is right there ready to explode without warning, it will be someone, something, and no warning. Anger will be skipped, it will be rage and outrage and someone will be to blame.

Apologies will be very rare unless for the sake of appearances. Remember in their eyes they are always the victim, never the victimiser. So ironically the hypervigilance runs both ways. It runs their way because their own vulnerability is so intense to them under their own skin, and it runs your way because their rage has a feel about it of a perpetual sword of Damocles. So you placate and prevent, becoming what is necessary for any kind of peaceful interaction with them.

Trying to unlearn that it is always your fault can be one of the hardest things to learn post having a relationship with a narcissist. I have developed a method in my talking therapy and emotional coaching that I am delighted to say has really worked. I do this with the relevant flower remedies and by a virtual unpacking through visualisation and another exercise proving that change is possible, once this is known and felt, it gives hope that outshines the resignation that had been endemic for so long, often decades.

Gaslighting

Gaslighting is an insipid form of psychological abuse; suggestion, insinuation, denial, false claiming. This disintegrates and crumbles one’s own belief in what is real. Self-credibility is diminished and credibility to the narcissist thereafter seems impossible as the victim has an invented track record proved to be questionable. To the extent that doubting even your own sanity might be experienced, backed up of course by their only too willing endorsement. Once again, always away from witnesses. This is a very private affair, this kind of abuse.

Blaming

It will always be you:

You’ve imagined it.
You are imagining it.
You are oversensitive.
You got it wrong, it was a joke.
You have no sense of humour.
You are crazy.
You never listen.
You made me do that or do this.

There will be a lot of “you are statements”

Shaming

After years of being involved with narcissists, you will be full of shame and self-doubt. If you are somehow devalued and they can again and again prove this by their endless devaluations, your shame and thinking it is you who are the problem will be so close to the surface of your own self-belief and evaluation that they will hardly have to lift a finger.

Confused with guilt, which is 'I have done something bad', shame is 'who I am is bad'.

Narcissists don’t feel guilt, however inwardly they are tormented by shame. Projecting this shame onto others is how they mitigate their own shame, by publicly disowning it. If they instill it in you, then they have the perfect weapon to use on you again and again if you are vulnerable to these accusations and insidious messages of shame.

Triangulation

Triangulation is so common in their use of devaluation. After all, if someone else can be on board with their perspective or thoughts, then, 'hey... everyone else thinks it as well', can be a useful devaluation mantra so that you can feel on the outside looking in.

The third party is brought in for the narcissist’s leverage. This endorses distortions, lies and playing one person against another. This is used to stir up insecurity and conflict. It also keeps you on your insecurity toes, as the other person in the triangle and you probably won’t be in dialogue with each other. I had a “friend” who always used triangulation for years until I started joining up the dots. It was, on every level, a truly awful experience.

In narcissistic families, triangulation is usually always part of the family dynamic. To create doubt and fan the flames of mistrust, one of the best ways of dismantling it is to make contact directly with whoever the other person is in the triangle. This can be a real eye opener and weakens the hold of the person who created the triangle in the first place, namely the narcissist. It realigns the autonomy, which disempowers the intention of the maladaptive intention because narcissists rely on creating division and alienation in others, and they do this by creating apocryphal stories given to each one in the triangle to set one against the other.

PTSD

PTSD is often only associated with those of us who experience truly terrible experiences in war-torn countries, or terrible events of any kind, which of course is totally appropriate. However, PTSD can also occur after a daunting, awful experience that has rocked your world on a personal level too.

In a relationship with a narcissistic person, the distortions that become eventually normalised can leave you hypervigilant on so many levels, which is a symptom of PTSD. Their irrational thinking patterns and their insistence that others go along with their black and white thinking leave in its wake elevated trauma states, whereby the central nervous system is constantly in a survival state of flight or flight.

CPTSD

Complex post-traumatic stress disorder is more about ongoing trauma, especially in relationships. Those suffering with it will have a battered sense of self-esteem, often feel a sense of residual loneliness and always believe that fault lies with them. So it is less about a particular event than PTSD and more about being constantly derailed so that one’s innate belief of self is corrupted.

Nervous breakdown

Being at the receiving end of NPD (narcissistic personality disorder), is really no laughing matter. You can end up so traumatised by all of the above that you become a whisper of the person you once were, and worst still be so utterly terrified of their discard that you believe in so many of the distortions and lies you have been fed.

I have in my practice over the years had the most gifted, kind, well-meaning individuals reduced to being in a state of complete breakdown. Thankfully, through support and talking therapy, and also through taking certain healing flower remedies, these wonderful people have healed and become more aware. So it is really important to know that recovery is entirely possible and making better choices is so much easier when we are informed.

Getting help

It is so important to get help in order to be able to not only live a normal life, but to make better relationship choices where and when you can. If the narcissist is within your family, making things harder because of your family ties, then you can at least be supported and learn where to employ appropriate boundaries.

Narcissists do not like boundaries and often those who fear abandonment also fear them. But healthy boundaries will support individuation, which is so necessary as it allows us to see who we are in situations and in times of conflict, and not lose touch with our own inner voice.

You don't have to do this alone - reach out to a professional with experience in this field for support.