Do Narcissists Love Themselves?

Is their grandiosity and selfishness all an act?

YES ABSOLUTELY, narcissists love themselves most of all.

And also no, narcissists do not love themselves, not at all.

Like most things narcissist, they are a contradiction.

A person with NPD has a shame-avoidant brain disorder in which their emotional development stops at toddler years.

As such, they can never emotionally attach.

Therefore, they feel things much like toddlers do.

They are the bestest baby.

They are entitled and don’t want to share.

They cry to be held accountable.

They lie about everything.

They’re lazy and just wanna play.

They’re jealous of other kids.

They deserve whatever they want.

THEY LOVE YOU AND PROMISE NEVER TO DO IT AGAIN JUST GIVE IT TO THEM!!!

Also, they are not self aware.

They think everyone feels and experiences the world like them and there’s nothing weird about how they feel or what they do.

A narcissist doesn’t walk around thinking “I’ll act like I’m the best but deep down I hate myself.”

A narcissist’s baseline brain says, always, I AM THE BEST. NOTHING IS MORE IMPORTANT THAN MY NEEDS. I AM ALWAYS RIGHT.

Any challenge of that does not make them reflect or hate themselves, it makes them hate you.

In that sense,

YES THEY LOVE THEMSELVES MORE THAN ANYTHING AND WILL DEFEND THAT LOVE UNTIL THE DEATH.

HOWEVER…..

What self?

The narcissist doesn’t actually have a real self due to wearing a mask….

…and they’re not even aware of that.

And if one were to rip off their mask, then…

…narcissist collapse.

In a collapse, you see a narcissist confront the truth:

I’m unlovable.

I’m rotten.

I deserve to be abandoned.

I don’t deserve to be alive.

I hate myself.

This is why a collapse turns so quickly into such a disorienting narcissistic rage.

Because these ideas are a threat to their existence.

A THREAT TO THEIR SURVIVAL.

THEIR ENTIRE IDENTITY.

Shame is that toxic.

So, they need to find the predator making them feel unlovable and make them pay.

Their brains PROJECT the self hatred onto you.

Anyone whose had the misfortune of having a targeted narcissistic collapse on your back knows how disorienting and deadly it is.

It feels wildly disproportionate.

I always felt I broke up with narcissists in fair, gentle, kind, rational ways. I often even took the blame, saying it was clear I wasn’t making them happy.

The rages I experienced were everything from arson, being drugged and sexually assaulted, kicking down my doors, wrecking my belongings, draining my bank account, putting thousands of debt on my card, calling and lying to my therapist.

And many of these were the nicest, well respected men.

For so long, I couldn’t understand why I made men so very very unhappy and so very very angry.

AND WHY THEY STILL WOULDN’T LET ME LEAVE.

Well, the answer is… 🥁

BECAUSE THEY LOVE THEMSELVES MORE THAN ANYTHING.

AND THEY HATE THEMSELVES MORE THAN ANYTHING.

And they have no self at all….

A.M. Champion is the author of She Saints & Holy Profanities (Quarterly West, 2019), The Good Girl is Always a Ghost (Black Lawrence Press, 2018), Book of Levitations (Trembling Pillow Press, 2019), Reluctant Mistress (Gold Wake Press, 2013), and The Dark Length Home (Noctuary Press, 2017). Her work appears in Verse Daily, diode, Tupelo Quarterly, Prairie Schooner, Crab Orchard Review, Salamander, New South, Redivider, PANK Magazine, and elsewhere. She was a 2009 Academy of American Poets Prize recipient, a 2016 Best of the Net winner, and a Barbara Deming Memorial Grant recipient.