Are They A Narcissist?
9 Signs You Need to Know

Have you wondered if your partner was a narcissist, and if so, what that actually means? Well, in this video I'm going to help you differentiate between who a narcissist is, what narcissistic traits are, versus a true, full-blown person with narcissistic personality disorder. And we are going to go through some really important components of this overall so you can make a clear distinction about what to do.

So first and foremost, narcissism technically, just like many other things exists along a continuum. So we can have somebody who has narcissistic traits and you know, certain narcissistic qualities or components of narcissism. But then on the full other end of the continuum, we will see somebody who actually has.

Full-blown narcissistic personality disorder. And even how strong or how evolved that narcissistic personality disorder is can exist along its own stretch of that part of the continuum. So a lot of people often wonder because they seem. Certain elements or traits like selfishness in the relationship or somebody taking advantage of them or being manipulative or gaslighting.

And we can think right away, okay, because this person did this, they must be a narcissist. But it's a little bit more nuanced than that. So essentially what you can think of is according to the dsm, there has to be five of these nine key qualities to decide if somebody actually has narcissistic personality disorder.

Please keep in mind you can't use this to like actively diagnose somebody, but if you just wanted education about the DSM and some of the core qualities, I think that this would be quite helpful. Helpful. So one of the first components is that nurses tend to have this grandiose sense of self importance and they really tend to.

feel like they are much greater than, much more significant than you know, other people. And they tend to have this sort of comparison drama that can kind of revolve around that, where they may think of how much more important their time is than others, or how much more important they are as a whole.

 And so that grandiose sense of self importance is one of the crucial traits. Number two is narcissists tend to have a bit of a preoccupation with power, beauty, or success. Now, I remember personally working with a client years ago who absolutely had narcissistic personality disorder.

 And he would always say things to me like nobody understands. So I was seeing him and, and his partner and he said, nobody understands love like our love. Nobody could even dream to, to love. You know, each other. Like we love each other. And it was almost like he just had this like unlimited idea of what love meant.

And that was despite his relationship really being in, in shambles. And that can exist along the continuum of power being really preoccupied with power social climbing, name dropping of powerful people, you know. You being really fixated on appearance comparing your appearance to others, thinking your appearance is so much more attractive than others, and really just being preoccupied or fixated on these things, whether it be power, beauty, success, or love.

 And number three, we'll absolutely see a really strong sense of entitlement with narcissists. And they can feel really entitled to, your time, your emotional energy. You know, to how they treat perhaps like waiters or waitresses in a restaurant, they can sometimes be very like entitled about their treatment there.

So you'll see like a very strong sense of entitlement in a variety of different forms. Our next one here is that they tend to feel like they only wanna spend their time around other people who they consider to be special or important. And this is because they have this really strong value around like status, power, importance, specialness.

 And the way I tend to think of this is from our six basic human needs, which we know are from Tony Robbins work. You know, we've got certainty and uncertainty, and we have significance, and we have connection, and we have growth, and we have contribution. The general way I see narcissists is that their need for significance is always significantly higher than their need for connection.

And so it's almost like all the time in their relationships, they're trying to get their sense of. Connection met through significance. It's like they need to feel significant and validated as a means of connection. And it's interesting to see how these sort of dynamics play out. Like I know for myself personally, I have a really high need for contribution and it's actually a little bit higher than my need for connection.

So I know that, even though that's a very high need for me too, so I know that for me, I sometimes fall into the trap if I'm not aware of it, of Trying to like teach things to people or share things with people or. really go my way to support them as kind of like a means of building connection.

 But sometimes that can lead me in this path of having, like, you know, if I do that for too long and I'm not mindful, sometimes I can over give and then not be great at asking for what I need back and end up in slightly skewed relationships that are more one-sided. And so I'm mindful of that and I'm mindful about you know, paying attention to that.

Or another example is I, I was speaking with somebody once. And they were saying that, their way of getting, like they had a much higher need for certainty than uncertainty. So their way of like getting their uncertainty or exploratory kind of needs met had a lot to do with doing it in like really safe ways, like watching the travel channel and seeing things rather than like going out and traveling and doing all sorts of experiences.

So you'll see like the way our needs hierarchy is structured can impact this. And from the narcissistic point of view, really the, the true narcissist, their need for significance is so much greater than and higher than their need for connection. The next big piece we'll see here, and again, remember you just need five of nine to qualify for this and if you're a sibling of a narcissist, a child of a narcissist, a partner of a narcissist and acts of a narcissist.

 Like there really is a lot of turmoil that comes with being in these kinds of relationships, and it's extremely valuable to do work around healing from narcissistic abuse and to really do work on healing and, and like reprogramming and reconditioning the wounds that were left from being, because the, the subconscious minus programmed through repetition plus emotion.

 So if you're constantly in. In somebody's company who's like this, they're gonna program a lot of limiting beliefs into your subconscious about yourself, thinking that you can't fend for yourself or that you're too weak to be on your own or you're never good enough, or you'll always be betrayed, right?

So you can have a lot, cuz you get a lot of betrayal wounds from that relationship. So we have number one, this grandiose sense of self, this huge sense of like self-importance a preoccupation with unlimited beauty, power, success, or love this sense of entitlement in so many different ways.

This dynamic of feeling like you can only be around. High power, high important or special people. And it's not that they will think that they only can be around those people, but it's like they'll really strive to be around those people and they will feel like they don't wanna waste their time with like other normal people cuz it's kind of like they're below them.

And you know, I'm all for like picking friends and people that are a match to your needs and sort of being in that space where you're intentional about the friendships you wanna create or people you wanna surround yourself with. But this is different in the sense that it's like, they feel frustrated, angry, like people are lesser than them and like, oh, this is a waste of my time.

 And they see literally people through the lens of like how special they are. Significant they are. The next one we have is somebody who is interpersonally very manipulative or exploitive for their own gain. So they'll tend to exploit other people. And, and this isn't like a, somebody made a mistake, they accidentally asked for too much support cuz they were in a vulnerable position.

 It's not like that, it's like, It's like they actually like premeditate a little bit about how to exploit people and what resources they can extract from people. And this may not just be like from the lens of like physical resources, it can actually be through the lens of like emotional resources, like getting attention, time validation, like these sorts of different dynamics.

 And this is where you'll often hear this one. And the first one where it was like the grandiose sense of self-importance. This is where you'll hear the term referred to as narcissistic apply. Like they're always needing this like sense of attention. And this brings me to the next one, which is there's a really strong sense of arrogance and you'll feel it I personally believe that confidence is quiet. It's like subtle, right? Somebody, if they're confident, they don't need to prove to you how great they are. They just feel comfortable in their own skin. But when we see arrogance, or sometimes it's referred to as like a haughty attitude that can definitely represent the narcissist.

And our next one is this really strong sense of just like lack of empathy. And you may see sympathy sometimes with narcissists. They may. feel for people and kind of like sometimes express emotion, but sometimes that expression of emotion is kind of like being used as a tool to manipulate.

 Not always, but it can be. That's where you sort of think of the term, like the crocodile tears or the expression of emotion can be like from this sympathetic space, but not like empathetic space. Like this person isn't taking the time to really consider like how you're feeling and what it feels like to be in your shoes as you.

They're kind of like seeing you through the projection of them as if you're kind of like the character in their story. And then we have this belief in a lot of narcissists that they believe that people are envious of them or they can be really preoccupied with envy around others. 

And there's this huge sense of admiration is a huge one as well. So this, you know, grandiose sense of that need to be admired to be, you know, seen and, and. Thought of as like fantastic or great or powerful. So anyways, you'll see a lot of these things kind of have some, some similarities in there, but this is not supposed to be used as a tool that's diagnose, but it can just help shed some light on, like if somebody just has narcissistic traits, because sometimes I find that people can think, oh, because my partner is selfish or self-oriented, or because my partner.


You know, gaslight something and listen, gaslighting is a massive red flag. If somebody gaslights you, you should seriously consider leaving the relationship or like address it immediately. And the person should have like a strong apology and appreciation for why they made a mistake and, you know, These sorts of things, but I generally see that sometimes we can get confused in there.

 So these tend to be the really predominant traits that you wanna watch out for, and I would highly advise if you are in a relationship with a narcissist, it's so valuable and so important to be. Able to walk away. Hope this makes a whole lot of sense. Thank you so much for watching.