Narcissism is getting more and more attention. In everyday language it’s used for people who are strongly self-focused and rather full of themselves… At the same time the term has become so embedded in daily speech that it has lost much of its meaning. If we look more deeply at what underlies the narcissistic defence, we may arrive at new insights — and different conclusions. 

What strikes me is that there is still a lot of confusion about narcissism — especially the more hidden or veiled forms. Hence this (extended) blog in which you’ll read how to recognise an unhealthy form of narcissism in others and in yourself. I’ll also show how you can free yourself from it and return to your own authentic, natural flow. 

The content of this blog flows from a thesis I wrote for my integral coaching training. I encounter narcissism frequently in my coaching practice — people who grew up with a narcissistic parent, who themselves (often unconsciously) display narcissistic traits, or who (also unconsciously) are drawn to a narcissistic partner.

Table of contents

1. What do we mean by narcissism?
2. How narcissism develops
3. Unhealthy or pathological narcissism
4. Recognising unhealthy or pathological narcissism
5. Freeing yourself from narcissism
6. References

1. What do we mean by narcissism? 

I’ve read many books written by victims of narcissism. I often miss the distance there; the emotion is still palpable and the analysis lacks depth, nuance, and self-reflection. Other, more academically grounded books help to recognise underlying patterns and causes, but tend to remain on rational diagnosis and analysis.

Once you see it, you see it. That’s true for narcissism as well. It no longer sits in your shadow. Some core aspects of this personality disorder are:

1. Self-aggrandisement: an exaggerated sense of self-importance or superiority.
2. Lack of empathy: an inability or unwillingness to recognise and understand the emotions or needs of others.
3. Manipulation: using others for personal gain or pleasure, often without regard for consequences to the other person.
4. Need for attention: an ongoing need for admiration and attention from others.
5. Lack of humour: an inability to laugh at oneself or at situations, often by taking everything too seriously.
6. Sensitivity to criticism: an extreme reaction to criticism or rejection, often accompanied by anger or a quickly wounded ego.

Broadly speaking, most descriptions indicate that a narcissist loves himself too much, lacks empathy, cannot tolerate criticism, and in contact with others is primarily concerned with making himself important. Someone with a narcissistic disorder also finds it difficult to love himself in a healthy way, to dare to question himself, and to treat others with respect. All this points rather to a disturbed self-love. Few people are free of fear and insecurity, but a narcissist finds it difficult to deal with these negative sensations. He doesn’t want them, cannot tolerate them, and represses them. Proud and convinced, he holds up a mask of superiority and grandiosity. He blinds and is blinded. Body-oriented psychotherapist

Diana Ruthgeert – Geboied door narcisme – mythe en masker

A narcissistic defence protects us against feelings of insecurity and fear and helps us to stay above the shame threshold. In narcissism there is a lack of distance from one’s self-experience and the narcissistic dynamic is unconscious, whereas self-esteem is connected with a conscious evaluation of the self.

Psychoanalytic therapist and researcher Frans Schalkwijk – Narcisme – elementaire deeltjes

In the Being-oriented view, narcissistic defence is described as a defensive layer — a kind of mask — with which we keep up appearances and pull ourselves above undermining feelings of dependency and the resulting vulnerability. It’s our ‘nothing to see here’ attitude.

You are, in fact, very lonely. As Schalkwijk also points out:

The tragedy of narcissism lies in the feeling that you are the only one who can see your true self. To make your loneliness bearable, you have placed your inner world above everyone else. If you’re going to be alone, then at least on top. To maintain this way of relating, you are constantly seeking recognition and admiration. That makes the wounding so painful; it touches the loneliness that had to remain hidden.

In my own words: an unhealthy form of narcissism is, at its core, the inability to see and feel yourself as you truly are. You were insufficiently met and mirrored by your parents, which led you to distort reality. You had to “leave” your most vulnerable core self — or it never found a conscious place. You’ve spent the rest of your life doing everything to prevent being seen in that vulnerable place: by shouting yourself over others, by demeaning or idealising the other, and/or by making yourself invisible. 

The narcissistic paradox

A narcissist will do everything to keep the inner emptiness hidden from the outside world — either by inflating himself or by focusing on the other. Authenticity and vulnerability are hard to find.

How can someone be so arrogant and have a low self-image at the same time? The paradox is that beneath the pseudo-personality there is no deeper layer. That inner emptiness is masked by placing a false self-image over it and identifying with that. His entire development is based on that tactic; it serves his self-protection. 

To stay afloat and fill his vacuum, he needs positive reflection from outside: a trophy to show off or a prey to feed on. He can hardly help but remain dependent on something he borrows from other people — even fictional characters — from the work he does, the car he drives, the house he lives in, the things he has achieved. 

By denying what he considers the inferior part of himself, he sets himself against what he sees as inferior in others. The tragic irony is that inwardly he doesn’t win with this attitude, no matter how hard he tries to bind others for his benefit. For a start, the inflation is not a successful way to neutralise his unstable foundation. Moreover, he eventually clashes with people because his hard-to-understand behaviour is often disproportionate to what happens, and there is no subsequent correction. For him, that behaviour is very normal; it stems from the disowned instability. 

Sometimes, when losing work, relationship, or status, the inner emptiness can indeed come to the fore. He is confronted with the wreckage. Often there are co-occurring disorders: depression, anxiety, sombreness, addiction, or increased suicidality. That existential emptiness can become a turning point in your life. 

The willingness to show the dark inside can differ per type of narcissist. In practice it is more often the vulnerable, covert narcissist who applies for therapy, much less the obvious one. The latter often remains particularly alert to showing himself, from the principle ‘better to strike than be struck’. Body-oriented psychotherapist

Diana Ruthgeert – Geboied door narcisme – mythe en masker

2. How narcissism develops

It starts in early upbringing

Narcissism develops in early childhood when sufficiently adequate conditions for a “healthy” development have been lacking. 

But what is healthy upbringing? Body-oriented psychotherapist Diana Ruthgeert distinguishes four conditions for optimal personality development, aligning with the work of Albert Pesso (2):

1. Fulfilment of basic needs
   Basic needs are place (embeddedness), nourishment (filling), support (being carried), protection (safety from external danger), and boundaries (limits for danger from within). By attuning to these needs, parents enable the child to live its unique potential. 
2. Integration of strength and vulnerability
   For a balanced personality it’s important to balance our autonomous strength (outward) and connection or vulnerability (open and receptive). Genetically, every person has these two poles, just as a similar polarity is found in every molecule and every atom.
3. Development of awareness and the steering “I”
   Awareness has to do with the capacity for self-reflection — stepping out of identification with feelings and thoughts (15). In short, awareness of yourself and your environment. A child learns to understand emotions because they are mirrored and reflected back. This is how the capacity to mentalise develops. A parent fosters social and emotional development by continuing to provide words for the child’s fears and desires. This also contributes to secure attachment. Awareness also has a coordinating capacity that oversees what someone thinks, feels, decides, and does. With this steering “I” you learn to make purposeful choices, develop mental flexibility, and the capacity to control unwanted impulses. 
4. The development of respect and validation of uniqueness
   If parents enable the child to attach safely, they simultaneously give respect, which can then be internalised as a basic attitude. Regardless of fundamental differences, the other is well seen and well regarded. Respect has two pillars: providing safety and tolerating distance. From respectful treatment and socialisation arise feelings of connectedness, compassion, and modesty. That attitude translates into the development of healthy self-worth. The child is then equipped to integrate respect as a universal human value in its personality.

Being able to handle ambivalence

Schalkwijk identifies three important themes that can “feed” narcissism (1):

1. “Together-strong” narcissism
   Being strong together (initially with your parents) nourishes self-esteem but takes on unhealthy traits when mutual idealisation is needed to mask vulnerability. Schalkwijk gives a telling example of a client who says at the first meeting: “I Googled you and saw that you publish regularly. I thought, maybe I’m an interesting client for you and you could write an article about me afterwards.” 
2. “Wanting to be admired” narcissism
   Being admired contributes to self-esteem, even if only in fantasy. The inevitable absence of it only slightly and temporarily affects self-esteem. It becomes unhealthy when it is experienced as true. Then a lack of recognition of talents or special qualities leads to a wounded feeling that goes hand in hand with strong anger toward the other or toward oneself — the arrow outward or inward in Marinet Ritz’s wind-directions model (5). 
3. “Admiring the other” narcissism
   The need to admire also nourishes self-esteem. This takes on unhealthy traits if someone is idealised one-sidedly and excessively on the one hand — or devalued on the other — and it takes little to flip completely. 

Unhealthy or pathological narcissism thus arises when development stalls because the toddler cannot tolerate ambivalence. That stagnation manifests in two phenomena:

1. desire disappears — which cannot be fulfilled without dependency on the other
2. the other is no longer internalised as loving and benevolent.

As Freud sketches: 

“Those who are too focused on their own inner world are usually too little focused on the inner world of the other.”

This inability to handle ambivalence plays out increasingly in our individualised and polarised Facebook world. We live in a reality in which everyone creates their own reality and we seem less and less able to integrate differences. It would take us too far to go into this deeply here, but it’s important to realise that narcissism is also becoming more deeply rooted in our culture and society.

Emotionally absent parent(s)

Healthy upbringing contains two important components: warmth and boundaries. Being met and well mirrored is crucial (1). Ruthgeerts (2): 

“The innate drive to realise what is potentially present moves a human being through life. That developmental process does not happen in isolation, but fundamentally in interaction with the environment.”

Finding the right balance is the most essential focus, according to Ruthgeerts. The crucial question is: what does my child need in order to grow? (and not: what does my child want?). 

In people with a narcissistic defence, warmth and boundaries have often been lacking. Your parents — and especially your mother — play an important role. Schalkwijk: “Interaction with your mother must be satisfying; otherwise it’s not worth it to ‘give up’ on yourself.” He refers to Kohut’s authoritative developmental psychology (1):

“For healthy development it’s necessary that parents ‘good enough’ attune to their child and recognise its desires — partly fulfilling and partly (inevitably) frustrating them. If this goes well, the child internalises an inner conversation with them for the rest of its life. Those others then become part of its self-image and can evoke a comforting feeling.” When a child shows a tendency toward narcissism, it actually needs more guidance — certainly not less. But there can also be too much guidance in an authoritarian upbringing. In short, again: attunement and empathy with the other are key. 

Narcissistic parent(s)

Anyone familiar with family constellations knows how often patterns and habits are passed on through generations. That’s logical: (young) children are completely dependent on — and at the mercy of — their parent(s). Alongside emotional absence, narcissism in one or both parents is therefore common. 

Ruthgeerts (2): 

“For a psychological birth, a parent is needed who can distinguish between their own needs and those of the child; a parent who can see their own experience apart from reality; a parent who can respond sensitively to the signals transmitted. For narcissistic parents this is difficult. They don’t see the world through the eyes of their child. The impact of a narcissistic parent on the child is therefore great. Think of:

• rejecting affection from child to parent
• coercive behaviour by the parent
• possible abuse
• no room to express feelings
• no room to express criticism or a different opinion
• no room for deviant behaviour.”

The consequences are not hard to guess: every attempt to develop an authentic self or congruent self-image is nipped in the bud. Loyalty often wins at the expense of one’s own development. There is little room for feelings and vulnerability, and the child either inflates itself or makes itself smaller. This emotional neglect can lead to psychological and physical complaints such as perfectionism, fear of failure, depression, stress, relationship problems, and performance pressure. Deep down, a person feels unworthy and rejects love and closeness. 

Ruthgeerts (2):

“A narcissistic parent tends to distrust a child’s affectionate declarations and reject them again and again. The narcissist’s self-interest comes first and takes on a coercive quality. Other psychological problems often play a role — possibly with abuse as a result. More than once you see the child having to realise what the parent could not achieve. In a narcissistic family it’s difficult to impossible to express a feeling that could upset the parent. The same goes for criticism, a different opinion, or deviant behaviour. Some children grow up in a climate of chaos and outbursts of anger, followed by denial in one moment and patched up with outbursts of misplaced affection in the next.”

3. Unhealthy or pathological narcissism

Outward characteristics

Narcissism is not by definition unhealthy. When do we speak of a narcissistic personality disorder? According to the diagnostic manual (DSM-IV), someone has a narcissistic personality disorder when (13):

• there is a persistent pattern of inner experience and behaviour that brings a person into conflict with external expectations. This manifests in how someone interprets self and others, emotional responses, interaction with others, and impulse control.
• rigidity, inflexibility, and an inability to adapt one’s own behaviour.
• a personality problem that arose early in life and has remained virtually unchanged since.
• a personality that the person themselves experiences as obstructive to success at school, work, or in relationships.
• a long-standing behavioural problem that is not caused by another chronic or recurrent psychiatric disorder, a medical abnormality, or substance use.

The DSM description mainly targets the outward, compensatory behaviour of the patient and largely overlooks the more hidden, common forms of narcissism. 

It therefore bypasses the layered nature of narcissism (1)(2). To recognise subtler forms it helps to distinguish different presentations. Mixed forms are common. As Schalkwijk states: “Strange, really, that this hasn’t been broadly noted and accepted much earlier.”

Masks for distraction and effect

In schema therapy, links are made with deeper causes and symptoms. Because patients with narcissism have overcompensation and avoidance as coping styles, they are hardly aware of their schemas most of the time. You could also see these typologies as masks. 

Masks are functional and helpful as long as there is sufficient congruence between the outside and the deeper layer (1). In a narcissist, however, a mask becomes a way to encase the self: the outer layer covers the inner state from the eyes of the world. They’re then intended for distraction and effect.

The schema modes in narcissism are usually (4):

• the lonely, rejected, or ignored child
• the self-aggrandiser, competitor, or critic
• the detached soother, sensation-seeker, or speculator.

Emotional deprivation, defectiveness/shame, and unrelenting standards are the most important schemas in patients with narcissism, but there are often others:

• mistrust/abuse
• social isolation/alienation
• failure
• insufficient self-control/self-discipline
• subjugation
• approval/recognition seeking 
• unrelenting standards/overcriticalness 
• punitiveness.

Recurring patterns and specific behaviours

For a good diagnosis of narcissism it is important to have a deeper understanding of what may be at play. Schalkwijk (1) distinguishes three interrelated characteristics that must be present strongly enough to lead to a serious obstruction to healthy psychological functioning:

1. Inadequate regulation of the sense of self
   There is excessive, unrealistic idealisation or devaluation. It’s black-and-white — no shades of grey. It can also swing between extremes, causing you to shoot from idealising yourself to despising yourself. A narcissist is not aware of this; otherwise he would risk coming into contact with his vulnerabilities — which must, of course, be avoided. 
2. Inadequate emotion regulation
   There are strong emotional fluctuations (e.g., narcissistic rage or a short fuse) that change the underlying sense of self. There is often a strong armour against shame and the narcissist places everything outside himself.
3. Interpersonal problems
   A narcissist inevitably runs into relational problems — for example because he constantly needs others to prop up his self-image. He attributes relationship problems to circumstances rather than to an inner conflict. Unconsciously, he tries to obtain satisfaction for what he/she didn’t receive earlier in life. Narcissism often goes with an insecure, avoidant attachment style (not the other way around: not everyone with this pattern is a narcissist). 

In unhealthy or pathological narcissism, patterns and specific behaviours occur consistently. 

Feeling layer and undercurrent

You often won’t recognise narcissism straight away — especially not under neutral life conditions. The environment doesn’t see it, partners see it too late, helpers miss the signals, according to much literature. Many people in therapy with narcissism had a particular talent as a child: they were smart, beautiful, athletic, or artistic. And they’ve practised a narcissistic stage play all their lives and are often very skilled at it — otherwise the narcissist would have been unmasked long ago. 

The key is to look not just rationally, but also from the feeling layer and the undercurrent at someone’s behaviour. The disturbed balance between thinking, doing, and feeling shows up first at the level of empathy and intimacy, according to Ruthgeerts.

To pierce the façade you have to be well connected to your own feeling as a coach or therapist — likely a reason why more cognitive approaches often fail to get through.

An initial indication of unhealthy narcissism is behaviour in interaction with others. The more intimate or intense the relationship, the greater the chance that unhealthy forms will manifest. The disturbance also affects emotion regulation and the functioning of conscience. Narcissism becomes more visible under excessive stress or perceived threat. In a long-term, more intimate relationship the issue inevitably comes to light — at least if the other person is awake to it and aware that it isn’t only “their fault”. 

Distinction from other personality disorders

Importantly, the absence of specific conditions for healthy upbringing does not always lead to a narcissistic defence. Insecure attachment, for example, can also lead to DSM-IV personality disorders such as borderline and schizoid personality disorders. 

Narcissism differs from the schizophrenia spectrum, among other things, in that the latter shows indifference and distance. In a paranoid personality disorder someone is strongly suspicious. They experience themselves as the object of hostility (13). 

In borderline there is ego weakness resulting in blurred ego boundaries, dominance of primitive defences, lack of anxiety tolerance, reduced impulse control, and a damaged capacity for sublimation. The separation–individuation process has not been completed well and you seek in the outside world what is missing in the inner world — “good objects” that provide holding. One has not learned to distinguish well between who I am and who the other is (14). People often suffer from overwhelm. Someone with mild borderline traits becomes angry, cries a lot, or suffers from addictions.  

People with a narcissistic defence also often suffer from feelings of inferiority (14). However, they have a stronger ego than people with borderline and develop a mirroring or idealising form of transference. They create a beautiful outer shell and are empty inside. A narcissist has more capacity to manifest than people with borderline.

4. Recognising unhealthy or pathological narcissism

Overt and covert narcissism

The narcissistic defence also has subtler expressions that are much harder to recognise. Think of behaviours like self-sacrificing, self-effacing, or being a know-it-all. Again: not every know-it-all or self-sacrificing person is a narcissist. Ruthgeerts (2) speaks of covert narcissism (alongside overt). Schalkwijk (1) also argues for recognising more hidden forms — he calls them “self-evident” and “vigilant” narcissism. Others speak of thick-skinned (arrogant) and thin-skinned (hypersensitive) types, or arrogant and sensitive types. 

Whatever the label, in this veiled variant the person focuses strongly on the other — in fantasy or in reality. He/she is highly attuned to sensing the needs and desires of the other, or fills them in and then fulfils them. The implicit aim is to be seen and loved by the other through this strategy. Such a person draws less attention, shows no extravagant behaviour, is more inward, and avoids contact. They are highly sensitive to the opinions of others and usually sense flawlessly what their “close ones” need. They also feel different from others, secretly longing to be unique or special. They like to see themselves as a rescuer — and thus important.

American psychoanalyst Glen Gabbard compiled a handy list comparing the two forms of narcissism. The two often blend into each other. 

Narcissism can also present with feelings of inferiority, loneliness, and powerlessness. Introversion, vulnerability, and oversensitivity then become a cover for the hidden side of narcissism — symptoms often attributed to borderline.

Four forms of narcissism

In his latest book (1), Schalkwijk makes a more refined distinction than overt/self-evident vs. covert/vigilant. Both self-evident and vigilant narcissism can be expressed overtly or kept covert, as illustrated in this schema by Schalkwijk. 

The same applies to vigilant narcissism. There are therefore four forms:

1. self-evident overt narcissism
2. self-evident covert (hidden) narcissism
3. vigilant overt narcissism
4. vigilant covert (hidden) narcissism. 

The picture isn’t black-and-white; you can carry multiple forms that you live out depending on context. The names I give these four roles are: the shameless narcissist, the know-it-all, the self-sacrificer, and the self-effacer: 

1. The shameless one (self-evident overt narcissism)

The stereotypical image of a narcissist is Trump: someone who inflates himself, looks down on everyone, never doubts himself, and makes no effort to hide his narcissism. The current classification system (DSM-5) fits this stereotype well. 

2. The know-it-all (self-evident covert narcissism)

In overt self-evident narcissism, someone expresses grandiose fantasies or self-image outwardly. He considers himself better than others, craves admiration, and lacks empathy (6). In the covert form, someone keeps their views more to themselves — yet believes they know better or that the world revolves around them. 

3. The self-sacrificer (vigilant overt narcissism)

In vigilant narcissism, the overt form may parade a negative self-image and invite others to disprove it. Someone puts themselves down and invites the other to contradict it: “You all go ahead and drink — I’ll be the designated driver tonight. You know that if I drink, my less pleasant sides come out.” 

In vigilant overt narcissism there is often drama and/or indirect attention-seeking. One rejects oneself (arrow inward) while simultaneously wanting others to see one’s “greatness”. “Look how good I am.” There may be a lot of negative energy in the undercurrent and/or a kind of sucking energy. 

4. The self-effacer (vigilant covert narcissism)

An even harder variant to recognise as narcissism: the vigilant covert narcissist. In the covert form someone effaces themselves. A well-known book on this is Het drama van het begaafde kind by Alice Miller (9). She describes how someone can become so focused on performing tasks and taking responsibility for others that they lose contact with their true self — or never experienced it. 

They worry more than is good for them, their spontaneous laughter is gone. It’s dangerous not to know who you are when you want to enter a relationship: how do you respond when it becomes intimate if you don’t know yourself? There is fear of being overwhelmed by the other — typical of those who fear being empty inside. It is difficult to be peacefully alone, because the art of being alone is understood only by those anchored in themselves. Depressive moods begin to appear because many emotions are suppressed. 

In their rich character structure, such fine nuances of feeling and thought arise that a parent did not recognise — and therefore did not respond to. A child then quickly starts to think that these own feelings have no right to exist, are strange or stupid or burdensome. 

Vigilant narcissism is often accompanied by burnout symptoms. The underlying wounds are often expressed in a socially highly valued form (e.g., helper), and are therefore not recognised (7). 

Combination of symptoms pointing to narcissism

Unlike the shameless narcissist, the know-it-all, the self-sacrificer, or the self-effacer are much harder to recognise. For me, the combination of most of the following symptoms raises the suspicion that unhealthy narcissism may be at play. I developed a categorisation that shows an increasing degree of disrespect. Someone in a higher category also shows symptoms from the lower categories. 

Three disclaimers:

1. Many people recognise themselves in the patterns above — that’s part of being human. In unhealthy or pathological narcissism, however, there is a combination of most of the listed patterns and a recurring or structural pattern. Or as Schalkwijk says: a pattern applies consistently.
2. I don’t claim to be exhaustive, but these are features I often encounter in the literature and recognise from experience. I have tried to avoid the many more “flat” or superficial lists that caricature narcissism and overlook the subtler forms. 
3. To properly assess whether someone suffers from a narcissistic personality disorder, you must always look deeper at underlying causes, patterns, and their biography. 

Category I: empathic emptiness

• Lack of attunement
  In a narcissist, empathy is lacking due to a deficit of felt empathy. You often experience being talked at, not with. It’s as if someone is only in their head, not felt, and unable to connect with their inner emotional world. The emotional life is, as it were, not anchored in the body. 
• Cognitive empathy
  A narcissist may seem very empathic but only at a cognitive level — from the head. He then accurately identifies and understands thoughts, feelings, and experiences in the other, with the aim of better predicting the other’s behaviour. 
• Absence of spontaneity and (self-)relativisation
  Healthy narcissism has a temporary character and includes (self-)relativisation. Pathological narcissism is marked by a lack of flexibility, creativity, self-deprecation, lightness, humour, and relativisation. Everything personal is taken seriously and has an all-or-nothing, black-and-white quality. With much control and alertness, he prevents uncertainty and fear from becoming visible and stays above the shame threshold. 

Category II: keeping distance

• Externalising everything
  The whole personality structure in unhealthy narcissism (unconsciously) aims to avoid vulnerability, thereby preventing an underlying sense of inferiority from being seen. Dominant defence mechanisms: denial, rationalisation, avoidance, projection, externalisation. If vulnerability appears, it’s at most surface-level or staged. The narcissist seems emotionally blocked. Doubt, uncertainty, and sincerely felt apologies are (of course) not an option. 
• Few or no deepening relationships
  In personal contact, reciprocal interaction is not desired — it’s potentially threatening. Relationships are instrumental and aim to provide admiration or appreciation. People often do things alone and have difficulty entering (long-term) deep relationships. In fact, the narcissist lives in social isolation with a lack of meaningful relationships — which can lead to recurring feelings of loneliness. 
• Suddenly broken relationships
  A narcissist may initially idealise a relationship. This inequality can suddenly flip later, after which the other can do no right. A pattern of abruptly broken relationships is common. 
• Unexpected, disproportionate rage
  As you get to know a narcissist longer and come closer, it’s almost inevitable that situations arise where he loses control. He is touched in the loneliness that had to remain hidden and goes into resistance. This narcissistic injury is very painful. To prevent feelings of inferiority, the narcissist can do nothing but aim the arrow outward as described in Marinet Ritz’s wind-directions model. The other then gets a completely disproportionate outburst of anger — often out of sight of others — and an authentic correction (of course) does not follow. 

Category III: manipulation

• One-up position
  Many friendly, intelligent narcissists have built a façade that exudes confidence, speaks easily, and can seem charming. Behind that is someone who behaves arrogantly, controlling, manipulatively, and condescendingly toward close others — making them “smaller” to feel better themselves. There may also be suspicion, envy, or jealousy, especially of others’ success. 
• Gaslighting
  In an intensified private or work relationship with a narcissist there are soon various (often subtle) forms of manipulation that make the other strongly doubt themselves. This is reinforced by the narcissist’s lack of doubt and self-reflection. This is known as the gaslighting effect. It’s a subtle form of manipulation that occurs in many relationships (which doesn’t necessarily mean one is a narcissist). Robin Stern has written extensively about this (8). 

Category IV: wolf in sheep’s clothing

• Draining energy
  The lack of reciprocity and restriction of the other’s freedom can, over time, lead to a feeling of being drained. A conversation is either only about him — or only about you. Nothing in between. Due to a lack of respect, boundary-crossing or hurtful behaviour is lurking. That draining energy can even take on vampire-like forms. 
• Taking the other hostage
  Narcissism can take distressing forms due to lack of respect. Many authors (often victims themselves) describe this in detail: for example, someone is held hostage, brainwashed, and/or abused by a narcissist. To the outside world nothing seems wrong because the narcissist behaves “normally” there. Escape is difficult because there is often dependency — children may be involved, or you risk losing your job (and thus income). 

5. Freeing yourself from narcissism

The path to healing and authenticity

Developing awareness offers the possibility to break your most persistent patterns, heal your deepest wounds, and begin to see your greatest shadows. By seeing and feeling how you fall out of contact with yourself, you can break undermining patterns. You gain more self-direction and come more into contact with reality, the now, and your authentic self. From this connection with yourself you also connect more with the other. 

Why is it so difficult to free yourself from your narcissism — or other stubborn personality disorders — to become free? Because it is often deeply anchored in your personality. In narcissism — as in most personality disorders — the path to healing is “going inward” and facing yourself. That takes time, safety, mirroring, love, and practice.

I arrive at the following (sometimes parallel) steps to free yourself from narcissism — in yourself or in your relationships. Everyone has their own unique journey to make. The steps also apply to many other deeper personal issues.

1. Falling off your pedestal and getting stuck

It often takes a lot to let go of your self-image and face your shadow. Anything is preferable to breaking through the ice and feeling your deep, underlying pain. You only face the deeper confrontation with yourself when you really can’t avoid it. The trigger is often a complete deadlock — a serious relationship, work, or midlife crisis. Escaping reality is no longer possible. When the narcissistic defence shows cracks, you start to see your vicious circle and want to break it. You realise you’re “bankrupt”, i.e., unconsciously incompetent — and you can’t get out alone. The problem isn’t others — it’s yourself. See how you project your inner world onto others to avoid feeling deeper pain. Realise this: trying to change others is pointless. It starts with me.

2. Self-work — but not alone

If you can’t find a way out and won’t settle for the life you’re living, there’s nothing left but to ask for help. For a turning point you need another — someone who mirrors you lovingly. Someone who offers safety, stays well connected to you, and gives you exactly what you need to let a new reality in. That is often the tipping point.

The chance that an overt narcissist will take such a step is small — they will never locate the problem in themselves. A covert narcissist (or a victim of a narcissist) is more likely to seek help. You often take a step only when your longing for lasting, deep relationships becomes stronger than your fear. Realise that you can only expand your awareness gradually. Every step counts. Find someone or a place that gives you trust.

Choose supportive, nurturing private or work relationships in which vulnerability is not a dirty word — and increasingly leave behind people and environments that feed or maintain your narcissistic defence. Work with a coach or in a training, or join an intervision group. A step further is to live one or two years in a community for awareness, as was possible until a few years ago at Venwoude. You then learn a lot through interaction and reflection. And avoid overly cognitive approaches. They help you understand more, but often don’t help break patterns. You then still learn what was missing in childhood. As Ruthgeerts puts it (2):

“The best antidote to a narcissistic addiction in a child is a parent’s capacity to show vulnerability — and to trust enough to share it with the child. A coaching style of parenting also helps, in which you indicate how things can be done better or help to approach them differently. You provide information and space to talk about feelings. Promoting social awareness helps too — it offers a counterweight to self-interest.”

3. Out of your head, inward, into your body — to stretch awareness

Your mind is always in the past or future — projecting and filtering like crazy. The head is not to be trusted. From a cognitive approach, structural change usually doesn’t happen — at best you understand better. To break patterns you need to go inward, into your body, to feel more and experience reality in the now. Only then do things really change.

Almost daily meditation is enormously effective in becoming less reactive and more present, in the now. That’s a condition for dismantling your narcissistic defence. If you are completely in your head and have little body awareness, start body-based: Yin Yoga, Zhineng Qigong, haptonomy, massage, or kinesiology. Or the Rebalancing School for Bodywork and Awareness. These help you come into your body. Forms of stillness such as meditation, mindfulness, and systemic/family constellations help you become less reactive and feel more consciously. Or experience the Hollow Bones Mondo Zen Koan process.

4. Dare to act, fall flat, and learn from mistakes

You learn a lot by doing and making mistakes — like a child. In adulthood, our capacity to learn drops because the ego guards the status quo. It likes control and doesn’t dare to make mistakes. They say you attract what you still have to learn — that you keep encountering the same things until you go deep enough into the lesson. If you had to deal with narcissism in childhood, you may unconsciously attract people with a narcissistic defence — people who felt safe and familiar because, like you, they cannot be truly and authentically vulnerable. Exactly those moments of collision or unexpected rupture turn out — from an awareness perspective — to be “perfect” learning moments because the protective armour no longer functions. In retrospect, a blessing in disguise… 

The art is to make the deeper learning instead of placing blame outside yourself or giving up (otherwise you remain stuck in the same vicious cycle). For this it’s important to connect with deeper emotions such as anger or sadness. By allowing these emotions, healing and integration occur and you become freer. The other then turns out to have held up exactly the right mirror.

5. Choose a longer-term deepening trajectory

Many people engaged in awareness remain at the level of a coaching or workshop here, a retreat there. With stubborn patterns, you only make a real breakthrough by committing to a longer-term trajectory in which you can transform narcissism (or other patterns) in a congruent and integral way. A loving, safe, and experienced holding can help you dare to let go, fall flat, and reach a deeper emotional layer.

When choosing a deepening step, look for a coach or training that can truly free you. Some criteria you might consider:

• Does the coach/training cycle through all Kolb learning styles so that learning integrates and sticks — cognitively, body-based, experiential, and intuitive?
• Does the coach/training offer plenty of room to bring and explore personal issues?
• Does the coach/training integrate knowledge from Western psychology and wisdom from Buddhist traditions?
• Does the coach/training bring state-of-the-art awareness — at the individual, relational, and systemic levels?
• Is the coach/teacher 100% committed to your process (and do they not see you primarily as a revenue source)?
• Does the coach/teacher inspire you through presence and mastery? Do you experience a safe container and congruence, with little shadow?

6. Get to know your own biography — and see how patterns are passed on

Your family history plays a major role on the path to wholeness. This is where you were formed. It underlies many issues you face. Embrace your past rather than resist or deny it — you have become who you are because of it. Many issues still play out in your family history and are unconsciously passed on across generations.

The more you can see, feel through, and embrace your past, the more you accept yourself with everything that is — including less attractive and shadowy sides. That is the path to wholeness and congruence. An essential step for anyone working with people and/or wanting to live a deep, connected life. Writing out your biography helps to see patterns and red threads, and to become more aware of the influence of your family of origin on your formation. The deeper you engage with yourself, the freer you become. You then have the choice to accept others completely as they have become — without closing your heart to them.

7. Live consciously and authentically, without (narcissistic) shadow

Through awareness work you can return to your natural, authentic flow — more present and connected than ever. Becoming increasingly aware of who you truly are and which patterns and habits take you away from that. The deeper you go and the more you heal, the less separate your view of reality becomes. This is an endless process, like a spiral or lemniscate.

It’s a path beyond trying to “fix” things. It has become a way of life. Lived from this depth, you are autonomous and connected. You are more one and in contact with everything. You have freed yourself from living in inferiority on the first floor, from distorted self-love, and from the absence of space for self-reflection.

Leaving a narcissistic relationship

I often meet clients who see themselves as victims of a narcissist — for example by denying themselves and (unconsciously) allowing manipulation (see also §5.3). Yet reality is often more nuanced. It is common for the “victim” to also (unconsciously) display narcissistic traits. 

The key to healing and freeing yourself is to recognise and feel through the role you play in the dynamic with your business or private partner. On the one hand as a victim — allowing manipulation by not setting boundaries and not daring to take steps. And also as a perpetrator — who says you didn’t do things that maintained the situation or had destructive effects?

Questions that point to co-dependency (2):

• Why were you (in work or private life) attracted to a narcissist? 
• Why do you keep investing in a relationship that is destructive? 
• Why do you keep taking the first step to say sorry? 
• Why do you want to give his image a new boost? 

As a child you had no choice — but as an adult you do. How to break co-dependency? By unmasking the other’s unhealthy narcissistic behaviour and becoming aware of how you deny and reject yourself. According to Ritz’s wind-directions model, you fall out of contact/connection with yourself because:

• the arrow inward (blaming yourself) becomes active
• or you move into an under-position by denying what is really going on and what it does to you. 

Ruthgeerts (2) offers a set of increasingly strong guidelines to break this pattern. These align with the through-line in Integral Coaching (5) and the Koans in Hollow Bones Mondo Zen (11):

1. act less reactively: don’t respond immediately
2. ground: feel your body
3. follow your own compass: use your ethics as a guide
4. self-compassion: stop rejecting yourself
5. choose yourself: what serves you?
6. healing and integration: contact the old lack
7. self-boundaries: learn to listen to your body
8. boundaries toward the other: confront in contact.

Someone with narcissism will not easily locate the problem in themselves. You only manage to break the unhealthy interplay when you realise you cannot change the other unless they choose it. This doesn’t necessarily mean ending the relationship; it simply means you are not dependent on someone else for your happiness. 

Once co-dependency is broken, there are three options for improved self-care: change, endure, or leave. Yet taking these steps often proves difficult. Motives vary: fear of loneliness or loss, protecting the children, avoiding shame, or maintaining a positive image. Another common driver is overestimating yourself: I can endure it; they won’t get me down.

Ruthgeerts (2): 

“By maintaining the unacceptable, you not only stretch your own psychological pain threshold, but you also help to sustain and strengthen the narcissistic interplay. Ending the relationship may then be the only option to return to yourself and no longer allow manipulation or hostage-taking.”

Finally, Ruthgeerts also points out that it’s a myth you must forgive the narcissist in order to let go and move on. Reconciliation requires two. In fact, forgiveness should not be mainly about the narcissist, but about yourself. You forgive yourself because, in blindness, you endured a bad relationship.

References

1. Narcisme – Elementaire deeltjes. Frans Schalkwijk. May 2018
2. Geboied door narcisme – mythe en masker. Diane Ruthgeerts. 2018
3. Narcisme – Psychoanalytische beschouwingen. W. Heuves & N.J. Nicolai (eds.). 2009
4. Schemagerichte therapie – Handboek voor therapeuten (downloadable). Jeffrey E. Young, Janet S. Klosko & Marjorie E. Weishaar. 2005
5. Moeten we nog volwassen worden? – Naar een nieuwe realiteit van leven (downloadable). Marinet Ritz, Tijdschrift voor Coaching. March 2016
6. Narcisme in relaties – Loskomen uit het web van een narcistische partner. Alice Vlottes & Daan Wienke.
7. Narcisme te lijf. Onbalans tussen denken en voelen bij het pathologisch narcisme; een neuro-psychosociale benadering. Piet van der Ploeg. 2014
8. Het gaslighteffect – Verborgen narcisme. Robin Stern. 2018
9. Het drama van het begaafde kind – een studie over het narcisme. Alice Miller. 1983
10. Stemming en Stoornis. Allen Frances & Michael B. First. 1999 
11. Mondo Zen – Ego Transformation Koans – Emotional Awareness Intervention Koans (downloadable). Friends of Zen Hollow Bones Order. September 2019
12. Zelfcompassie. Kristin Neff. May 2011
13. Inleiding in de psychoanalytische psychotherapie. M. de Wolf. 2002
14. Herkennen van borderline en narcisme bij coachklanten. Opleiding Integrale Coaching, Shanta Baan. 2013
15. Mindsight. Daniel J. Siegel. 2010
16. Various blogs on De Katalysator and Online Brainspotting.