Contrary to Popular Belief, Narcissists Don't Love Themselves

And focusing on caring for the self FIRST is beneficial, but narcissists don't.

Narcissists Don't Love Themselves

Wikipedia defines narcissism as “a self-centered personality style characterized as having an excessive interest in one's physical appearance or image and an excessive preoccupation with one's own needs, often at the expense of others.”

I agree with that. I know they have a definite preoccupation with their needs. However, narcissists don’t know how or won’t actually go through the trouble of trying to fill their needs the correct way.

Because they go about trying to fill their needs the wrong way, the needs never get filled, hence the preoccupational focus. If you were always hungry, and food wasn’t satisfying you, you would tend to focus intently on trying to satiate the hunger by eating more. Their needs are never met because they’re trying to fill them the wrong way, with narcissistic supply.

Narcissistic Supply refers to the attention, whether good or bad, that they desire from other people to try to fill the hole inside of themselves. That hole inside of them is their lack of self-love. It’s why they’re trying to find love and appreciation from others.

As children, they likely felt unloved or underappreciated. They probably felt like they were not worthy of love, all by themselves, because there was no unconditional love to be found. Presumably, they learned that in order to get attention, appreciation, and/or love they had to do something special, they couldn’t just be themselves and be loved. They were likely rejected in some way, and rather than believe that the rejection was actually because of the other person, they internalized the rejection. So, someone in that situation would think, if they’ve been rejected, it had to be because there was something wrong with themselves. They start to believe that they are unlovable. But no one wants to feel that way. It feels so wrong because it’s not true.

There can be a cognitive dissonance in a child like that, thinking “I should be lovable, I feel like I’m worthy of love, but they don’t love me.” Eventually, they decide to dissociate from whatever people seem to show dissatisfaction with and try to prop up whatever seems to cause people to like or love them. Remember, these people are growing up in an environment where those who surround them are not unconditionally loving the child. Their parents or guardians may very well be narcissistic too, which is why the child never sensed love from the family in the first place.

In the act of dissociating from whatever seemed to cause people to not like them, they have actively chosen to hate that part of themselves. They hate that part of themselves that they think causes others to not love them. This hate causes a hole, a lack of self-love. Years of living like this (dissociating from and propping up other traits) will likely cause them to forget or not notice that they hate themselves.

So, you likely won’t see a narcissist show that they hate themselves. Why would they? They don’t want you to know that part of them because then they would have to face that childhood trauma again and risk rejection. They are placing a made-up mask on their face because of their fear of rejection. They don’t want you to know the real them because you might reject them, just as they rejected themselves. They fear facing that pain again. If the narcissist loves something, it’s this façade that they have spent so much time and energy creating that is supposed to help them not face rejection again. But, what you resist persists. As they attempt to resist rejection, they often end up being rejected because no one wants to deal with such a fake drama-filled person.

When you interact with a narcissist you are interacting with a projection, character, or mask that they have created that they think you will enjoy. They will cover up anything about themselves that they think you will dislike. They will paint themselves as a “victim” and someone else as a “persecutor” to keep from having to take responsibility for their actions that have hurt you or another.

A narcissist is stuck in the drama triangle. To take personal responsibility, which is what people outside of the drama triangle do that makes them different, would be to take personal responsibility for their feeling of love or worthiness. They wouldn’t make it someone else’s responsibility to love them. Instead, they would focus on self-love. If someone truly loved themselves, then they wouldn’t try so hard to get acceptance from other people.

The Drama Around Pronouns & Gender Identity

Taking personal responsibility to feel confident in your own skin and love yourself (instead of looking for narcissistic supply), would cure a narcissist. I’m not saying they would do it, just that it would cure the problem if done. They can fill the hole inside with self-love which would satiate them. Then there would be no need to look for narcissistic supply outside of them. The self-hatred is likely strong which keeps them stuck in this rat race, always looking for other people to love them rather than face their own need for inner healing.

Fixing a Narcissist?

Someone asked me how to fix them. If you want to fix them you’re viewing them through the drama triangle lens. The question is based on viewing a narcissist as the “victim” to the “persecutor” of narcissism as a mental disorder, and the questioner would be trying to play “rescuer” or “savior.”

We can’t fix them. They have to take personal responsibility for their emotional and mental health. You cannot help a person to love themselves. That’s an inside job. If everyone stopped trying to “fix” them and stopped interacting with them in their drama games, then they would probably finally hit rock bottom and decide they are all alone and need to heal themselves. With drama games, the only winning move is not to play along.

Loving Yourself First

Hopefully, you can see the benefits of loving yourself first now. If you actually focused on meeting your emotional, physical, and mental needs first, then you would not be as bothered with what other people are doing or not doing. When you focus on taking personal responsibility for your health (in all forms), then you don’t try to pawn that responsibility off onto someone else.

Too many people enter relationships looking to feel loved because they don’t have a lot of self-love and acceptance. When you do that, you enter into a co-dependent relationship, viewing the other person as a “savior” rescuing you from loneliness. When they heal and move on, you feel lonely all over again, because you placed the responsibility for love onto them, rather than yourself.

A lot of relational conflicts wouldn’t even exist if each individual was taking care of their own needs instead of trying to get their partner to take care of those needs. Because other people are fallible and have their own needs to take care of, they will inevitably fail to be there for their partner. And that’s not their fault. The fault lies in the one giving away the responsibility over their needs to their partner in the first place.

If you take personal responsibility for all of your needs, then you will not put pressure on other people. Other people, no matter how much they love you, will always eventually fail to be there to meet a need of yours. It’s not their responsibility to meet your needs, it’s yours. It’s also not your responsibility to meet all of their needs either, it’s theirs.

If we all focused on meeting our own needs, we wouldn’t be placing responsibilities for that onto fallible people. Then we wouldn’t be let down when they failed to meet our needs. If everyone focused on taking personal responsibility by meeting their own mental, emotional, and physical needs, world peace would probably be possible. But, as we know, there is an allure to making someone else be responsible for you. Most people don’t seem to want to grow up and take that responsibility.

America First

I can imagine many Democrats who rag on narcissists would say that “America First” is a very narcissistic saying. There is nothing wrong with wanting to focus on one’s country first before the whole world. It’s as important as a mother placing her oxygen mask on first before assisting her child on a plane in trouble. If the mother puts the mask on the child first and then faints, she can’t care for the child in the event of a crash or turbulence. If the mother puts the mask on first, then she can take care of getting the mask on the child, saving both of them.

If we, as a country, focus on saving others while we’re falling apart inside, we eventually will cease to exist or will be rendered unable to assist others in the future. For various reasons, this country is getting more and more divided. As a country, we’re not taking care of ourselves and we’re ailing. At least, the America First people realize this and are reaching for the oxygen mask. If we can fix our states, and country first, before assisting others we might make it.

But, because of weaponized empathy, the democrats are focused on others (their “perceived” victims) who will not be able to be helped (saved/rescued) by the US if we end up in a civil war. By rejecting the America First platform, they may be dooming the very people they’re trying to “save.”