Key Points

The narcissist’s inability to manage emotions such as unhappiness is at the root of his or her lack of self-awareness.

Narcissists have undermined close relationships, as healthy relationships require reciprocity, vulnerability, and trust.

A primary coping mechanism for narcissists is to take out unhappy feelings on a target.

The saying “misery loves company” provides an apt description of what happens when a narcissist becomes unhappy, and the reasons for this will be explained here. However, understanding what a narcissist does when unhappy first requires a basic understanding of the narcissist’s relationship with his or her feelings. Although narcissism exists in both genders, I will use the male pronoun in this post.

To begin with, the term narcissistic personality refers to narcissistic personality disorder, as defined in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (5th edition; DSM-5; American Psychiatric Association, 2013). At the core of narcissistic personality is a distorted sense of self, one that is focused on a special and superior identity, or what clinicians refer to as grandiosity. Because one cannot have a distorted view of oneself and also be highly self-aware, a lack of comprehensive self-awareness is the basis of narcissism. While narcissists may have occasional moments of self-awareness, it is important to understand that a narcissist’s true self-awareness is, by definition, fleeting and superficial.

While I have addressed the roots of narcissism in previous writings, I will briefly explain the relationship between self-awareness, ego strength, and emotions. When an adult has a healthy (not defensively inflated) ego, he or she has the psychological resources to see himself or herself honestly, which means acknowledging the strengths and weaknesses that define the undeniable makeup of the human being. Because an adult with a healthy, reasonable ego can see himself or herself honestly but imperfectly, he or she can also acknowledge the negative mix of emotions that come with failure, flaws, disappointments, and pain. Although he or she does not like these experiences, he or she can manage them emotionally.

When circumstances in life cause a person with a healthy ego to feel negative emotions, they feel their feelings completely unaffected by them and live in them when they are upset. More importantly, when a person with a healthy ego feels unhappy as a result of circumstances, the circumstances never threaten their overall value and worth as a person. What is noteworthy is the fact that they do not seek human superiority that protects them from such sudden ego falls. Of course, the higher one rises in oneself, the further one has to fall.

How Narcissists Deal with Unhappiness

It is helpful to think of the narcissistic ego as a mercury thermometer, moving up or down based on the amount of attention and validation they receive as valuable and superior. The narcissist navigates life without a solid internal anchor, relying instead on a risky strategy in which the circumstances of the moment determine how they feel about themselves. Given how complex and constantly changing the emotional demands of daily life are, the misguided strategy that narcissists adopt—a kind of emotional insurance policy—is both troubling and flawed. If the narcissistic ego and emotional coping strategies of narcissists are headlines, any of the following statements apply to them: “self-worth at stake”; “structure built on fault lines”; or “project doomed to fail.” In the case of the latter, the projects that suffer most are relationships that cannot survive without proper emotional management.

Because the narcissist’s self-image is based on external events (attention and validation from others), it is possible to infer how narcissists behave with others when they are feeling down. But to be clear, a narcissist who is feeling sad:

Unable to manage or “contain” their unhappy feelings
Inside themselves feel overwhelmed, slightly panicked, or “off-track” but are unable to express this vulnerability for fear of “getting hit when they are down”
Stuck “living” in their feelings rather than feeling them and then overcoming them
The process of dealing with negative feelings culminates in finding the safest person to take their unhappy or upsetting feelings out on

For narcissists, the only way out of emotional turmoil is to take out their negative feelings on someone else, and that “someone else” is usually someone in their home or work environment—but never their boss. (They play emotional chess for a living; they are not fools.)

When the narcissist’s ego is stimulated—which is almost always the cause of their unhappiness—their feelings are so big and unclear that they cannot deal with them or integrate them clinically. As a rule, the narcissist is guarded and proud, but he becomes pathologically so when he begins to feel unhappy because his unhappy feelings are feelings he cannot control or manage. The cycle of negativity continues, and his repressed, unbridled negative feelings escalate to the point where he becomes like a glass bottle about to explode. In relationships, whether personal or professional, those close to the narcissist feel the narcissist’s heightened tension and are often on the receiving end of a confusing, angry, mind-bending verbal outburst. (Because the narcissist’s close associates aren’t fools either, they’re like air traffic control technicians who know exactly what’s coming.)

As the narcissist escalates and escalates, focusing on his target to start a fight, the pattern of behavior from an analytical perspective seems calculated or even disturbing. Is he aware of what he’s doing? Does he know he’s a predator when he picks his target, laying the groundwork for what he needs to release to feel better: a full-blown argument or at least seeing you as upset as he initially felt? Does he love fighting? Is he aware of the amazing way he hides behind manufactured logic and ego during a senseless conflict he’s needlessly starting?

And most importantly for those he’s abusing, does he want to hurt them? Is his motivation to make his coworker or domestic partner feel small and angry? Is his motivation to make that poor person hate their life in those crazy, stormy moments?

In answering these questions, I’ll ask two more. Hypothetically, would a 4-year-old who threw a tantrum at a local restaurant today intentionally try to ruin his parents’ meal? Was the 4-year-old’s motivation to make his parents unhappy? While the narcissist we are considering here is an adult by chronological age, it is important to understand that by the age of emotional development, the narcissist is (counterintuitively) more like a child when he becomes unhappy than a typical adult.

Key Takeaways

In short, the narcissist is not motivated to hurt those close to him; hurting them is simply an inevitable byproduct of anyone being close to someone trapped in an adult body but operating from the emotional developmental level of a child. Secretly, the narcissist tells himself at such moments, “Well, they may feel upset after our interaction, but no one has any idea what it felt like to be me.” The narcissist ends up justifying his behavior because he tells himself that the cross he is carrying is far worse than anyone else’s. This is why doctors often talk about the amazing kind of logic the narcissist uses to portray himself as the victim.

After all, anyone in a close relationship with a narcissist has learned firsthand what happens when he becomes unhappy. These individuals learned early on that when they become unhappy, the entire household becomes unhappy. It is important to note that when people close to a narcissist end their professional or personal relationship with him, they do not feel happy, but rather relieved.