Covert Narcissism 5 Signs to look out for

– Hello, ladies and gentlemen. Today, we’re gonna get into the five traits that let you know you’re dealing with a covert narcissist. The first one to watch out for is if you see a pattern of behavior that in psychology, I’ve seen in different papers, is called withdrawn self-centeredness. So if you see the person actually withdrawing from life, withdrawing from people, and becoming very, very self-centered in a sort of an isolated space, that is an indication of narcissism, that they’re self-centered, but the covert narcissism is covered by the fact that they’re withdrawing from the world.

So why would they withdraw from the world and become self-centered?

They’re withdrawing from the world because of covert or vulnerable narcissism, which means that they think that they’re amazing, they think that they’re wonderful, they think that they’re special, but largely speaking, they’re struggling to convince the world that that’s true. So when they get feedback from real people, and they’re not just getting feedback from inside their head, it’s creating multiple small narcissistic injuries. ‘Cause largely people are going, “Actually, you’re not particularly interesting. No, you’re not very special,” and they get negative feedback from the environment. In narcissistic personality disorder, remember, everything is all about this thing that we call the false self.

They have a delusional view of themselves as all powerful, super sexy, super exciting, super interesting, the richest, the bravest, the most intelligent, the most qualified, whatever.

That’s the false self, right? Reality and truth are the enemy of the narcissist. They have to keep the reality and truth at bay in order to support the false self. So the perfect environment for them is to largely withdraw and become avoidant of the world of people of reality and to become extremely self-centered.

In another way, we could say that they’re withdrawing into a world of their own creation that supports them in their fantastical and delusional view of themselves. The second trait that you’re looking for is extreme hypersensitivity, particularly to criticism or negative feedback that comes from outside. They’re extremely hypersensitive. Now, why would this be an indication of covert, vulnerable or fragile narcissism? Simply because as a structure, as a personality formation, the architecture of the personality, when we’re talking about covert, fragile or vulnerable narcissism, it’s not stable, it’s not very strong, it’s not very robust.

If the narcissist, if the human being who’s using narcissistic personality disorder to cope with the harsh realities that we all have to face, if they’re in a classic phase, a grandiose phase of narcissism, they’ve successfully convinced the world that they’re amazing. And everybody go, “You think you’re amazing? Well, most of us agree you are pretty amazing. Have this special treatment. Enjoy your entitlement.

You know, go first and so on.” The covert, fragile, or vulnerable narcissist fails to convince other people. They can’t bully or cajole or seduce other people into agreeing, into matching the treatments of them with their hyper-idealized self-image. So their narcissistic supply is low, it’s patchy, it’s not high quality, so they’re kind of like a junkie struggling to get good junk. And so they become fragile and they become hypersensitive to criticism because there’s already an internal voice, it’s called a superego injunction or an inner critic, that’s already badgering them, that’s already telling them, “You’re useless, you’re no good.

” And they feel a lot of shame because their entitlement is up here, the treatment they get from the world is down here.

That disparity creates the stress, the somatic stress in the body that we call cognitive dissonance. They then become extremely hypersensitive to new sources of narcissistic injury that are reminding them, “Kid, you ain’t that special.” Ladies and gentlemen, I hope that you’re enjoying this video about covert narcissistic traits. If you would like to know more about how to get out of a narcissistically abusive relationship, and never get into another narcissistically abusive relationship again, I have a course for you.

It is not easy, it takes about three months to complete, but it works. It’s called the Unplug from the Matrix of Narcissistic Abuse Course, and it’s available from the link above my head.

I have to laugh when I’m doing this third one. I have been in a sort of a mock friendship for a couple of years with somebody who I came to realize finally, and I do this for a living, it’s embarrassing, I know. This is fairly recent as well.

So, bear that in mind when you take me as an authority. I still have people like him. I teach this stuff and people still get past me. So I had somebody in my life who was odd and I would say they were eccentric and they weren’t particularly easy to get along with, but I thought of as fundamentally a good person.

Vulnerable narcissism, fragile and covert narcissism, I’ll come back to this person in a moment, is marked by passive aggression.

And there’s even something, it’s called the highly negativistic personality disorder. So these people, like, they constantly complain. Everything is a drama. Everything is hard for them. And whilst they’re complaining about their own martyrdom and their own victimhood, they’re actually quite passive aggressive.

But when I think of passive aggression, I thought of something that was a little bit more overt. I was thinking of something that could potentially lead to physical violence. And that’s wrong. That’s wrong. So, there’s something I learned, and the final piece of the puzzle clicked into place for me with this person.

So the passive aggression, how’s it gonna show up when you’re dealing with covert narcissists? I’m glad I know it now. It shows up as them being terrible listeners, terrible listeners. Like, they expect to be heard, but when it’s your turn to talk, they can barely keep up with the conversation.

Once you’ve started talking about yourself and not them for more than 30 seconds, they’re clearly drifting off.

But wait, there’s more. They yawn when you talk. They start yawning when you’re talking. This is actually, I think we could say this is like a non-intentional passive aggression. They can’t help themselves with this.

They start yawning. And these are also people who will use eyerolling. So these are people who will roll their eyes and pull faces when other people are talking, if they think that they’re beneath their contempt. Incredibly rude and incredibly frustrating. And I didn’t know that these were indicators for covert narcissism.

When I found out about this, I was like, “Oh, oh, I’ve let another one in. Oops. That’s kind of embarrassing. Close the YouTube channel. You Dunno what you’re doing anymore, Richard.” So passive aggression can also manifest as this, which leads me to my next point.

So, the fourth thing that’s an indicator, and I, again, with the same person had this experience multiple times and this didn’t click for me, it’s embarrassing but it’s true, is they’re extremely quick to exasperation and frustration, and they get really grumpy. Because they can’t listen, when you talk, they lose track of what you’re talking about, and they’ll get really frustrated and really cranky really quickly. You know, they’ve just talked for like 10 minutes about their own life, perfectly happy, perfectly switched on. They were listening to themselves, and they were there, they were present.

You talk for more than 30 to 45 seconds, the eyes glaze over, they start stifling a yawn, start looking around the room, and then, they’ll tune back into the conversation, realize that they’ve missed the last 30 seconds, and they’re angry, and they’re cranky. With whom? With themselves? No. No, it’s called narcissism.

They’re not going to be angry with themselves.

They’re angry with the person talking. In this case, it was me. And I would go like, “Wait, wait, wait, wait. Who are we talking about?” I’m like, the person, I’ve been saying their name since the beginning of this story. I’m listening to myself talk. I’m a pretty good communicator. It’s not rambling drivel I’m coming out with. I’ve been very, very clear as to who I’m talking about.

I’ve been talking about one person from the beginning of this story. We’re only two minutes into the story. I’m still talking about the same person. That happened over and over and over again. They became incredibly frustrated and incredibly angry two minutes into me talking, because they couldn’t follow what I was talking about.

The energy was moving onto another person and their whole system was switching off. And this led to them feeling, I think, a degree of pressure. They were like, “Oh, my God, I’m being pressured to listen to somebody else’s boring story.” Who are we talking about? What is this story about?

So they’re very, very quick to exasperation.

That is another indicator of covert or fragile narcissism. The fifth indicator that somebody that you’re dealing with could actually have elements of covert narcissism if not be a full-fledged covert, vulnerable narcissist, is simply that they make terrible friends. So, what do I mean by this? Think in your mind now what you do conscientiously to try to be a good friend, to try to be a good and supportive friend.

What do you do? Can you think of, let’s say make a list. I love lists, like this. There’s probably five things that you would do that would make you a good friend. Then take that list of things, the five things that you conscientiously do, not just with the one person you’re thinking of now, with all your friends in your life.

You pay attention to them, you give them time. If they need to see you, when you know that they need to see you and it’s not super convenient for you, you’ll go and see them anyway, so on and so forth.

And then take that list of five things you do as a conscientious friend and compare it to what this person is doing. And you will see, they do literally none of them. They are terrible friends.

Just as a functioning friend, they do not know what they’re doing, and they’re awful at it. They make terrible friends, and this is an indicator that they can’t cope with an egalitarian, equal, horizontal adult to adult relationship, which is a big indicator of narcissism when it’s shot through with hypersensitivity to critical feedback and passive aggression. It’s not just narcissism, also, if they’re withdrawing from the world a lot, it is covert or vulnerable narcissism. Ladies and gentlemen, thank you so much for your time and your attention today.

I hope that you enjoyed that video, and I look forward to speaking to you again very soon.

Thank you. Hello, folks. Just to let you know, we now have a new course out. It’s finally finished. It’s called Unplug from the Matrix of Narcissistic Abuse, and it’s available from RichardRannon.com. Just hit this link right here and you can go get it.

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