Key Points

One study found that the higher people scored on measures of grandiose narcissism, the more resilient they were in dealing with problems.

This study is consistent with a pattern of other studies that show grandiose narcissists are highly capable of managing life’s problems.

Boosting your confidence in your ability to cope with stress can help even non-narcissists deal with problems.

It’s all too familiar: You’ve made meticulous plans to attend a family event, a friend’s birthday, or take a business trip. But then the hours of planning and preparation you spent minimizing accidents seem wasted, as do everything that could go wrong.

Part of dealing with disappointment and frustration involves overcoming that nagging feeling in the pit of your stomach that there’s no way out. Think about traveling to a friend’s birthday party. When you made your original arrangements, you allowed yourself plenty of time to get there, and you booked the cheapest flight you could find that would give you an extra three hours to get to the party. Sure, there were other options available, but they were out of your budget.

Unfortunately for you, for no apparent reason, your flight has been canceled and you’re stuck in the airport lounge. There are no seats available on any other flight, and it seems the party will continue without you.

One way to respond to a failed plan is to protest the forces of fate that gave you this very bad deal. However, you can scream all you want at the ticket agents, but that won’t solve your problem. They’ll only get angry at you, making it less likely that any of them will go out of their way to help. On the other hand, if you retreat to the nearest bar to lick your wounds, anyone who could have helped will ignore your problem.

Somewhere between an aggressive attack and retreating behind a wall of inaction is the right approach to dealing with frustration and disappointment due to circumstances you can’t control. Psychologists talk about two ways of coping, neither of which is necessarily “better,” but each has its merits:

In problem-focused coping, you try to change the situation; in emotion-focused coping, you don’t try to change anything, but instead try to make yourself feel better. In this case, after calming yourself down (focusing on emotions), you can go online or call the airline to try to get a spare seat on the next flight.

Frustration resilience is part of a larger picture of coping with life changes in general. In a review of studies on resilience and coping with life changes, psychologist Cecilia Cheng of the University of Hong Kong and her colleagues (2015) note:

Related : Is Your Narcissistic Mate Really Schizoid?

“Some people are sensitive and prepared for such changes, actively trying out different strategies to cope with the changing environment, while others are surprised and uncomfortable when changes occur and resist formulating new strategies to cope with the changing environment.” (p. 1582)

There are ways to measure your ability to cope with stress using the scales that Cheng and her colleagues developed from their review of the literature. Both of these approaches involve combining problem- and emotional coping rather than using one at the expense of the other. Being adaptive to stress means that you can choose from a variety of coping styles depending on the situation, and thus ultimately be able to match your stress-reduction strategy to the nature of the situation.

How Narcissists Cope

We might expect that the response narcissists choose when things go wrong would be one of lashing out, rather than consciously and deliberately considering alternatives. An integral part of narcissism, after all, is the sense that you are entitled to get what you want. When the odds don’t cooperate, you get angry and lash out at anyone and everyone, but especially those you identify as getting in the way of your goals.

Getting angry when your desires are blocked falls into the category of emotional coping: it accomplishes nothing other than upsetting the people who could help you (and perhaps making you feel—temporarily—better). If you’re a narcissist, such an explosive response puts you in a negative light, which is the last way you want to appear to the outside world.

But it turns out that there are two types of narcissists, with different levels of psychological well-being:

Grandiose narcissists are those who have an inflated sense of their importance; their self-esteem tends to be high.

Vulnerable narcissists are at the other end of the spectrum; their self-esteem is low, as are their overall levels of adjustment. Their weak sense of self leads them to overcompensate—their narcissism is just a superficial cover for feelings of inferiority.

A research team led by Henry K. S. Ng of the University of Hong Kong (2014) examined how the two types of narcissists deal with stress, and thus, how their coping styles relate to their psychological well-being. They already knew that vulnerable narcissists would have lower levels of self-esteem and well-being than grandiose narcissists. The question was whether the two types of narcissists differed in the flexibility of their coping styles.

[Before jumping into the findings and their implications, it’s important to note that the term “narcissism” is used somewhat loosely because these are not clinical populations. Instead, research on narcissism in nonclinical samples uses a questionnaire scale that ranks people along a continuum from low to high in what we might consider everyday forms of self-aggrandizement, entitlement, and lack of empathy for others.]

Ng and his colleagues administered questionnaires to assess narcissism, self-esteem, stress levels, and preferred coping methods for reducing stress. They did not expose participants to stress or track them over time. Of course, all of the measures were self-reported, and these qualifications should be kept in mind.

Using a basic model in which narcissism scores served as indicators of life satisfaction and perceived stress through the role of coping resilience, Ng and his team found that the higher people’s scores on measures of grandiose narcissism, the more resilient they were to cope—and the higher their self-esteem. In turn, coping resilience and high self-esteem were associated with higher life satisfaction and lower levels of perceived stress. The opposite pattern emerged for vulnerable narcissists: These individuals tended to cope less flexibly, have lower self-esteem, be less satisfied with life, and be higher in perceived stress.

This study fits with a pattern of other investigations showing that people high in the narcissistic personality trait (the grandiose type) are surprisingly able to manage life’s problems. Again, this is not true for pathological narcissists who meet the criteria for psychopathy. However, it does suggest that the next time you’re feeling overwhelmed, you can take a few pages from the healthy narcissist’s book:

Boost your sense of self-esteem, especially your confidence in your ability to cope with stress.

Remind yourself of times when you were able to overcome a problem by keeping your wits about you.

Instead of feeling like the world is coming after you, take a more positive view of your situation.

Review all the coping strategies available to you, especially those you didn’t initially think of.

Coping with stress isn’t just a way that healthy narcissists use, it’s a way that can help you deal with the stresses you face daily.