The Tragedy of Covert Narcissism: We all know about narcissism because it’s widespread in the modern popular culture that we encounter in our every day lives. Yes narcissism is considered normal and possibly even a desirable trait. Some people actually admire the brash swagger and haughty glance of a narcissist told by society that they are special. Many of these pop icons are anything but special. They are in fact oftentimes the bottom of the barrel of society with no real abilities or accomplishments to speak of. But they are famous and to the superficial of the world that is enough. So is it any wonder that the average person thinks it appropriate to emulate these narcissists. Yes in our society the more you think of yourself the more value you have. It seems that in the past few decades parents have been in a mad rush to give their children just a slight edge over their peers by pumping their own children full of self esteem. Yes these children are praised into the heavens regardless of their accomplishments and the resulting over-inflated ego and sense of self is not a pretty sight. At least to those of us who are sane enough to realize the value of humility and accurate self assessment. This is the narcissism people are aware of, the overt type, the type many of us think is the only type until the day we encounter the serpent in human flesh called a covert narcissist. Yes the overt narcissist is aware of their narcissism and everyone they come in contact with is aware of it as well. You take these overt narcs or leave them but at least there is no question about what you are dealing with. Covert narcissism may share the label of narcissism, but it is an altogether different condition of the heart and soul. Covert narcissism is a malignancy, a pathology that destroys every person that has the misfortune of coming in contact with it. It is the evil twin of overt narcissism. Overt narcissism is out in the open, covert narcissism is by it's very nature, undetectable to the outside observer and possibly the covert narc isn't even fully aware of the scope of their own condition. Many a covert narc considers themselves noble and righteous and just thinks it fully acceptable to lie, cheat, steal, deceive people, and to pretty much do whatever they please and can get away with. Somehow the covert narc never sees any of these obviously wrong and evil actions as a problem. The covert narc at their core has an attitude problem, a soul that is profoundly diseased and because of this somehow believes they are entitled to be evil. The covert narc is a warped dis integrated individual full of contradictions that can't be explained rationally because the covert narc themselves is irrational. How can you even begin to understand or explain to someone that a narc thinks of themselves as superior to everyone and has totally convinced themselves of that and yet that self same narcissist doesn’t feel that they themselves have any intrinsic value. Yes paradoxically, the covert narcissist felt inferior, inadequate from as early as they can remember. Their way of coping with that was to convince the world and also themselves that they were more than what they were, different than what they were. Yes the narc felt that dealing with the reality of their true inner self was too painful and too complicated. The narc's attitude or method of coping was to develop an alter ego that would protect them from their difficulties in the real world and take them away from the actual person that they were. So if they were being emotionally abused by their parents or neglected, etc. that abuse or neglect was directed to an “other” and that allowed the narc even as a child to avoid any shame by disconnecting themselves from their real persona. So yes, the narc would be different. Different on the outside than they were on their inside. Usually that meant more intelligent, richer, more accomplished, but most importantly different. Yes even as a young child the narc never felt their inner self was good enough. You could say the narc felt that they were always “better than themselves”. Even from a very early age the narc began that cycle of deceptiveness to the outside world and to themselves, because deep inside the narc felt deficient, not good enough. So as the narc progressed through life they fulfilled their own prophecy,: they were deficient and not good enough. Yes, towards the middle and latter half of the narcissist's life they are exactly what they predicted they would be: a hollow shell with nothing inside of it at all and only a tenuous fake facade that needs careful maintenance so that no one can ever look behind it. At the core of that facade is a creature that never grew up and became more and more jaded as the years went by. How could such a tragedy occur? Because the narc never gave their real self a chance. A chance to develop, to grow, to learn from mistakes. It was so much easier for the narc to pretend than to do the work. Sadly, the narc had betrayed their own inner self, had not even shown loyalty to their own self. Yes, the narc divorced themselves from their own inner persona. So is it any wonder that after years and decades of putting on this show and betraying themselves that the narc has no ability to be truly loyal or commit to anyone?

With the em path or the narc abuse victim, there’s a similar problem with self-evaluation. They also feel they have no intrinsic value and therefore they see nothing wrong with being downgraded by those that they love around them. They see no problems with other people in their environment asserting their superiority over them. Yes, others around them are given every right to take away their accomplishments and their sense of self esteem. Others around them have every right to consider themselves superior to the em path or codependent. So this leads right into the theme of the difference between self-esteem and the more popular notion of self love. There is a very key difference. Self esteem means correctly estimating your abilities to do anything and correctly assessing your knowledge across a broad gamut of topics. Not assessing yourself to be less than what you’re capable of doing or knowing less than you know and not assessing yourself to be more capable than your actual abilities of what you can do or knowing more than you actually know. The third and possibly most important aspect of self-esteem is correctly assessing your self in relationship to others, being able to see that you are more accomplished than others in some areas and less accomplished or able in other areas. Yes, when you clearly see your own self more accurately, you can begin to understand the complexity of the human condition. Things aren't black and white, but instead each person no matter what walk of life they come from, has been given their own gifts. Again, the Bible spends a great deal of time discussing that each person has value in and of themselves and they should embrace both their own strengths and weaknesses. The Bible gives the analogy of believers in Christ being one body with each person being a member of that body with his or her own function, some people being feet and others hands, others eyes or ears. Each member of the body of Christ having their own purpose as described in 1 Corinthians 12 for example verse 17 and 18 “17 If the whole body were an eye, where would the sense of hearing be? If the whole body were an ear, where would the sense of smell be? 18 But in fact God has placed the parts in the body, every one of them, just as he wanted them to be.” Each person has been born with their own set of gifts and abilities and needs to embrace those abilities and use them in order to fully reach their true potential. This is the core of what makes the narc dysfunctional. The narc never realizes their own potential because they literally refuse to accept themselves for what they are or accurately assess their own capabilities. The narc runs away from their real self instead of embracing who and what they are. So this is a far better way to look at narcissism than to broach upon the subject of self-love. The Bible knows that each person intuitively has their own love of self. That is something that the Bible does not want us to cultivate. On the contrary, the Bible wants us to be less focused on the self and our own will and our own accomplishments and instead we should look at our value simply as how useful we can be to God in fulfilling His purposes through our lives. So a person's true value or assessment of themselves or self-esteem should be based on and really lies in how close we are to doing God's will in our lives. This removes our focus on ourselves. Yes the purpose of every person's life, if it is fully realized, is to glorify God. Anything that we do for our own self image and our own sense of accomplishment is robbing or taking away from that ideal purpose. We should look at our abilities not by what we personally can do but what we can do through God as His tool. To do this we need to fully realize and embrace the abilities or gifts that we were born with, that God gave us. If we allow ourselves to be used as God's tools we will realize our full value and have an accurate sense of our own value or self esteem. Both the narc and the em path have a self esteem problem and that is what creates Ross Rosenberg's aptly named “Human Magnet Syndrome”. The narc is so disconnected and divorced from their own core being and has neglected that being so that it remains an emotional infant. The narc simply refused to grow. So the narc got into the pattern of having to overestimate themselves at all times. The em path on the other hand simply grew up getting into the pattern of downgrading themselves and underestimating their abilities. The em path somehow was conditioned to believe it was noble and correct to let others take away any accomplishment, anything that they had or did. The em path felt it was totally OK to be denigrated and treated badly. The em path almost felt it was their purpose to be another person's doormat. Yes the narc copes by convincing themselves they are superior and the em path convinces themselves they were put on this earth to be another person's emotional enabler. The em path sees the energy that is being drained from them as giving love to another person. It never occurs to the em path that they should be concerned about any needs of their own. That would be selfish and wrong in the em path's opinion. The empath never sees the irony, that they actually feel it is quite alright for another person to be selfish. Yes the empath feels they are serving their intended purpose by allowing others that selfishness. Yes the narc agrees the empath was made to give it all to the narc. Now this human magnet syndrome might seem to be a workable situation, a symbiotic relationship, and maybe it could be if the narc had any ability to love and be concerned about another human being. Unfortunately, the narc doesn't have any empathy, commitment, or loyalty and that is when this situation takes an evil turn. That is what makes the narc the evil and rightfully maligned creature that they are, because the narc left their partner and simply used them for everything that they could get. So yes, that is the key difference in this dysfunctional “dance of death” or death spiral, it leaves one person as a victim. The key is for the em path to see and perceive what is going on and learn that they need to change. The em path has that ability, although it will be very difficult for them. The dysfunction of the narc on the other hand is so deeply ingrained and the damage the narc has done to themselves by neglecting personal development for literally a lifetime means that the narc is almost irredeemable or un reformable. Yes genetics and environment all play a role in the narc's twisted malevolence, but let's make no mistake, the narc also made choices. Choices to be evil, choices to turn a blind eye to another person's suffering, choices to lie and be duplicitous, choices to be a fraud. Yes ultimately the narc is a living breathing human being imbued with a mind that can think and the ability to see the difference between right and wrong and the narc has chosen to continue doing what they do. That is the tragedy of narcissism, certainly for the victim but also for the narcissist. Yes the narc viewed that relationship as a game and whatever we may say about the em path, the lion's share of the problem lies with the narcissist. Why? Yes that em path may have been an enabler, but here is the key difference. The em path was committed to the narc, they did love, they did care, and they were genuine. The em path was looking at things from a long term, lifetime perspective and although they may have overlooked the narcs deficiencies and may have even enabled them the em path had a long term goal and that was to help that narcissist become the person they knew that narc could be. So no there is NO equivalence whatsoever when it comes to the narc and the em path. The narc is the perpetrator plain and simple, The em path is the victim. It is the em path's responsibility to learn and be a victim no more. Now let's resume with our analysis of what creates a narcissist and take things a bit further. Yes that young narcissist has gotten into the habit of creating a false persona and masking their true inner self. They’ve taken the easy way out of every situation that they’ve ever been in and yet they somehow feel cheated and they somehow sense that their fake bravado and fake pronouncements of great accomplishment are all just delusions. Yes, on the inside the narcs know this. So the narcs look around them selves and become very envious when they see that there are genuine people that have legitimate accomplishments and this creates a great deal of envy in the narc. The narc's way of dealing with this is to tear those people with legitimate lives, legitimate personas, and legitimate accomplishments down. Let’s now break down what we’ve found out so far about narcissists. Number one, they set up a fake persona that protects them from whatever their real self is suffering or is unable to accomplish. Number two, they subconsciously sense their own inferiority and phoniness and seeing that others around them are the genuine article they become envious of those people. Three, the narc's way of coping with their subconscious understanding of their own inferiority and phoniness is to tear down those around them that have genuine accomplishments and to build up in themselves a sense of superiority. Yes the narc must be superior to everyone. But then the narc encounters another problem: they have to live in the real world. So in order to continue believing in their own superiority the narc creates a fantasy world for themselves, a fantasy world in which they are imbued with great abilities and accomplishments and where everyone around them is far less than they are. In order to construct and maintain this fantasy existence and maintain a position of superiority over others the narc needs to use every tool at their disposal. Those tools are One: lying, cultivating lying and being better at lying than anyone else around them. Two: Cultivating gaslighting so that they can disorient everyone around them and be the only one that knows the truth. Three: Insulating themselves from any real vulnerability to another person by not having any significant attachments to another human being. The roadblocks in the narc's path such as conscience, clear thinking, looking at themselves and their environment objectively, will have to be demolished. The narc's lack of attachment causes them to isolate themselves, put themselves into a bubble, literally prevents them from having any deep and emotionally satisfying interactions with other human beings. That emotional detachment also causes the narc to see people as mere objects or utilities or appliances in their environment. The narc truly becomes a very self-centered individual. Their sole concern is for themselves and for themselves alone. The narc will convince themselves that their own selfishness is an absolute necessity and what does it matter anyway since those around them have no value compared to the narc themselves. So the narc lives in a world of one. It’s a lonely world and an empty world, a world without substance or energy. Without deep attachment to other people the narc trades any vulnerability for a far greater problem. The narc has no ability to generate any positive emotions or have any self-created energy so in an ironic twist the narc, whose goal was to have no dependence on any other human being and to be totally self-sufficient and independent is actually the most dependent human being on earth. The covert narc cannot survive without the energy and fuel that they obtain from others. Yes the narc never understands the strength and courage it takes to make yourself vulnerable. The narc never sees their emotional detachment for what it really is, cowardice and to put it in the narc's terms inferiority and weakness. So that is the narcissists story. The victim's story is a very different one, because the very nature of a narcissist and their interaction with someone they call their partner creates the most incredible pain that a person could suffer in a relationship. The narcissist persists until that partner of theirs is 100% convinced the narc is serious, is 100% convinced the narc is committed. Once the narc has fully engaged their victim and gotten everything they want they simply walk away with no concern whatsoever about the pain that they cause. Then some of these narcissists go one step further and actually enjoy inflicting additional pain and suffering upon their ex partners. So yes, the victim of a narcissist is placed, through no fault of their own, into a very bizarre scenario. That victim of the covert narc needs to face a situation where they have deep love and concern about someone and that very same person has now become a stranger that has nothing but malevolent intentions towards them. The greatest slap in the face of all is the fact that the evil narc uses all of the confidences shared with them, all of the trust, all of the good wishes and kind actions directed towards them and uses those gestures of love against the victim. How can any person understand the level of depravity and lack of appreciation that can drive someone to cause as much pain as possible to the person who gave it all to the narc and never had anything but love for that narc. The evil that would actually take the good gifts given them and weaponize them. That is a covert narcissist and their method of operation. That is why no disparaging metaphor or statement about a narc can ever be too harsh. So does it require any additional explanation as to why covert narcissism is a tragedy? It is clearly a tragedy for the victim. The victim may look back on that narc encounter and see that it made them stronger, but for many victims that isn't the case. Some people are left scarred for life so the question is what was the significance of the narc in the victim's life? That narc encounter was a pause, a roadblock, a shock to the victim's system. That narc was a challenge, a mountain to climb and to some victims they can never see themselves ever getting to that summit and looking out at the bright horizon behind that lofty and intimidating peak. For me it was a challenge I could have never met without doing it with God's help and with His strength. I have not yet reached that mountaintop and I have no idea what I will find on the other side, but I have no doubt that it will be far superior to the desolation I have put behind me. That stark, emotionless, fake, phony world of a narcissist relationship. So what was the purpose for the victim to be in the narc's life? We can only speculate, but I will attempt to make a guess. The narc was given a chance for love, for understanding, for compassion. The narc was given a chance to heal and find peace. The narc was given everything a person should ever want and expect from life and that narc warped all of that good and threw it away like worthless garbage. So what was the victim's purpose for the narcissist? Each victim is another nail in the narc's coffin. Another reason that the narc has no excuse for being as evil as they were. Does the narc really believe they were never understood, never had love, never got a chance? Maybe. But the string of victims in that narc's wake tells a very different story. A story that narc will never be able to escape. So yes, in the end covert narcissism will be a tragedy for the narcissist themselves as well. But there will be no tears of sympathy for that creature as it's life unfurls around it, fully displayed with no ability to cover anything up, and like an anchor pulls it into the abyss. The lake of fire. A place of no return. Any narc alive may still have a chance, but it is only a matter of time before they get to the point of no return. Jesus can help, can save, but the vast majority of narcs won't have Him. Thank you for watching. Comments are welcomed. Peace be with you.