Now that I’m free from the shackles of an abusive marriage of seventeen years, I’m a good narcissism detector. But a friend recently recommended YouTube videos from a life coach named Richard Brannon in Southern California. He made some very wise links that answered some serious questions that I never seemed to be able to get an answer to. (I’m putting a link to his channel at the end of this blog. He’s excellent, but he uses language that some people might find difficult to listen to.) Seriously, he’s the best narcissism detector I’ve ever heard.
His first observation that caught my attention was that if you want to become a narcissism detector, all you have to do is take one little test. SmileImage of a chocolate milkshake with a long straw. The text says: “Be a Narcissism Detector with One Test – Poem Records” and say no. Boundaries are unbearable for narcissists. Brannon described it as sitting in a restaurant with a milkshake. The narcissist across the room extends his straw all the way into your milkshake and drinks it. The narcissist’s aggressive behavior is always about destroying personal boundaries in order to gain complete control. It’s after you and everything you have.
The first rule: What is his is his, and what is yours is his also. Narcissists don’t share.
My in-laws would always send me a check for my birthday, which my ex-husband would immediately confiscate. During the fourteen years I was married to him, I was never able to take any of the money that others gave me. I got around this with my parents by asking for specific gifts, but that was a source of great resentment for me. Sometimes, I would pull myself together and decide to say no.
One Christmas in Kentucky, we were desperately short of groceries. When I went to the mailbox, I found my birthday check there and spent it on groceries at a local Asian market. I came home with several bags of groceries and about fifty dollars in my pocket. I made the mistake of owning my birthday present. In his mind, that gift belonged to him. The anger on his face is something I still remember. He kicked me and the girls out of the house.
Rule No. 2: Any attempt to exceed the limits will be severely punished.
I had kind neighbors who drove me five hours to the Atlanta train station where I crossed the country with my four daughters. At the time, my youngest child was four months old. I remember the anxiety and exhaustion of crossing the country by train. We didn’t have a sleeper car. Any attempts to set boundaries have generally been met with this type of response. People often asked me why I couldn’t talk to him or reason with him. How can I explain that? This kind of reaction happened with over a hundred dollars.
Related : “I thought you knew”: 9 phrases that show you’re dealing with a covert manipulator
Another question Brannon answered for me is why it is so hard to leave a narcissist. They keep coming after you, over and over again, to the point where they become ridiculous. After a five-day train journey with three little girls and an infant, I arrived at my parents’ house to find John calling me incessantly. I can’t describe how apologetic he was. He trapped me for hours on the phone, begging me, pleading with me to take him back. Note to self: Narcissists talk for hours and hours. I can’t help but think of the proverbial verse that says in so many words that there is sin.
Rule #3: Narcissists overwhelm you with words and break verbal boundaries.
The narcissist does not rest until he is completely destroyed. They lure you over and over again until they can cause more and more destruction. The reason for this is that because they are unable to access, let alone possess, the horrific emptiness within themselves, they strive to create it in others so that they can experience it vicariously.
When Brannon put this into words, some interesting context came together for me. When John and I told my mother, at 17, that I was pregnant and that we were getting married, she was shocked. Later, she described to me the eager look on John’s face when we announced the news. She felt like he enjoyed her emotional pain at the news. She was more right than she knew.
Rule Four: Narcissists enjoy your pain.
He often seemed to enjoy my suffering, putting me in situations that were, at best, impossible and, at worst, humiliating. At one point, I was about to start my first job as a teacher. On the morning I was scheduled to start, he took the keys from me, leaving me to my employer’s disappointment. I believe that was just the beginning of his plans to destroy my career as a teacher, although fortunately he failed.
I have since learned that the smile he often wore on his face is typical of a narcissist. Do you see the look of contempt on your wife’s face? Narcissists love to see you unhappy. It makes them feel in control and gives them a feeling of power. Contempt? Well, if you give in, they’ve proven you’re the weak one. If you don’t surrender, prepare for war. Either way, they enjoy the pain they cause.
Rule No. 5: You detect narcissism in your life.
Another point he made in the video I watched is that not all narcissism is overt. My ex was definitely a powerful narcissist. But one of the dangers of natural empathy is that covert narcissists will often look out for you. These narcissists spend a lot of time discussing empathy, but rarely offer any. They come to you and pour out their woes, and then after they leave you discover that you have exhausted your energy.
Basically, if you want to be a narcissism detector, you have to say no to the boundary pushers in your life. The final point he makes is that a diagnosis of narcissistic personality disorder is not up to you or me. Even trained psychologists have difficulty with this because all narcissists lie. All that matters is that you become a narcissism detector in your own life.
Narcissistic abuse, whether pathological or not, harms people. Find out early in the relationship by setting boundaries if the suspected narcissist views those boundaries as a threat or amusement. Say no a few times and see how they handle it. How people respond to rejection speaks volumes about them. If you want to be a narcissism detector, say no. Say no to theft or destruction of your property. Say no to the word salad that overwhelms you. Celebrate taking pleasure in other people’s suffering, including your own. Their reaction will tell you all you need to know.
My final observation is that Proverbs says that a friend is satisfied with himself. This means that a good person has developed himself sufficiently so that his emotional, intellectual and spiritual life is satisfactory. A healthy person doesn’t have to drink anyone else’s milkshakes. They like them just fine.
