The Difference Between Narcissists and Those With Antisocial Personality Disorder: Narcissists Feel Shame and Regret for Hurting Others Even When it Doesn't Have to Do with Empathy, and Antisocial Personality Disordered Do Not

this is part of the series on Shaming

In one of my last posts, I was challenged in the comments section about whether narcissists had any shame, and from there I felt that I needed to write this post, and to feature other posts by other authors and researchers (below), that differentiate between Narcissistic Personality Disorder and Antisocial Personality Disorder. 

In fact, as the title suggests, that's where the dividing line is between the two disorders: Narcissists can feel quite a bit of shame, and can even feel much more of it than other people, and their tactics and abuse don't help them diminish their shame, which increases their shame even more, but the Antisocial (i.e. sociopaths and psychopaths) don't feel regret or shame at all when they hurt other people.

Or they might feel it a little when they are being incarcerated, but it's more like they'll be telling themselves that they committed some act of abuse "stupidly" and that they'll plan it out better next time.  

Why is this significant? Because people with Antisocial Personality Disorder are quite a bit more dangerous and menacing. These are people you should not directly confront - they will never accept, or even hear with an open mind, what you have to say about their behavior. They don't care what you have to say, and they don't have the empathy to care if they hurt other people either. For most of these folks, empathy died for them in their childhood. There are a number of factors that go into why their empathy is so dead, but to keep this post relatively short compared to others I have written, I will be focusing on the difference between them and the narcissists.

One major difference is that they aren't driven by morals or ethics. While your run-of-the-mill narcissist may be low on ethics, most of them don't commit crimes against others, while the Antisocial Personality Disordered folks have no ethics at all, and are likely to be dangerous and hurt people with impunity, with no regrets because of that fact. They are driven by self-serving agendas always, period, and as simplistically as I stated it. Most of them are basically con-men or con-women through and through, exploiting who ever they think they can exploit with as little effort as they think is necessary. They don't care what other people are going through at all. 

In order to make it easier to talk about the Antisocial Personality Disordered types, I will refer to them as psychopaths. Why? Well because Antisocial Personality Disorder has subtypes: primary psychopaths and secondary psychopaths. To confuse you more, secondary psychopaths are often referred to as sociopaths. Primary psychopaths are born with their disorder, and have different autonomic nervous systems (which boils down to the fact that they don't feel fear or trauma when confronted with dangerous situations or of being overwhelmed by the enemy in a battle) and sociopaths are much more influenced by home life and the environment they grew up in, but have the same autonomic nervous systems as the rest of us have. 

Then there are sub-categories of sociopaths, mainly the functional sociopath and the dysfunctional sociopath, but even there, psychologists keep coming up with even more subcategories. 

And to confuse you even more, there is a brand of narcissist called the malignant narcissist. Malignant narcissists have a combination of Borderline Personality Disorder, Narcissistic Personality Disorder, and Antisocial Personality Disorder. They aren't likely to feel much regret or shame either if they hurt other people, though they may pretend to. And that's the problem; they are big pretenders, and they can appear very, very functional except for their rages, manipulations and very commanding, demanding natures. It is hard to tell the difference between malignant narcissists and the psychopaths, and sometimes the difference between malignant narcissists, the run-of-the-mill narcissists, and to some extent, one of the sub-types of Borderline Personality Disorder. Malignant narcissistic traits tend to stand out more than run-of-the-mill narcissists, and like the psychopaths, they don't feel much remorse for hurting others (they tend to engage in domestic violence, some crimes and bullying) and they over-react to anyone who questions their self-appointed superiority and grandiosity with incredible amounts of rage. 

Even with malignant narcissists, there are subcategories: the overt malignant narcissist, the covert malignant narcissist, the vindictive narcissist, the sociopathic narcissist, the dark triad, the dark tetrad, and the dark empath.

In some of my explanations, including the malignant narcissist, I'll be calling them psychopaths. For the malignant narcissist, it's not all that accurate to proclaim them psychopaths, only that they have psychopathic tendencies to a large or small degree, depending on the person. However, like purely psychopathic individuals, they do have traits and proclivities to do harm to others.

But I'm trying to simplify it so that you can be aware of the differences between them as opposed to the run-of-the-mill narcissists who do carry around quite a bit of shame inside them. 

THE DIFFERENCES
(simplistically covered)

Narcissists: primarily ego driven. They put enhancement of their ego above just about everything else and anyone else. A need to appear perfect and superior to others. High need for power, control and domination in personal relationships, a high need to be in powerful decision-making situations or professions. 
Tends to be emotionally abusive or dismissive of anyone who stands in their way of their agendas, including people in their personal lives.
Fairly charming. 
Feels shame and regret, but not in an empathetic way. The shame and regret comes from people finding out that they are not who they are making themselves out to be. It is expressed more as paranoia, and rage at the person who exposed them (so that the person doesn't expose them further).
While you can't appeal to them to be empathetic and to care about the feelings and life situations of others, you can appeal to them in terms of how what they are doing might destroy their reputation since they are reputation oriented. 

Psychopaths: primarily driven to take from others by force, or to bully people into submission. Some psychopaths only target people who they think are "easy" or who they deem to be weak: children, women, the disabled, the elderly, etc. 
Exceptionally charming. 
Feels no shame or regret. They are so driven to take from others, or over-power others, that regret would short-circuit their ambitions. Their attitude is that people are to be used. 

Malignant narcissists: a combination of both agendas.
If male, tends to be domestic violence offenders and child abusers. Very menacing and cruel if they don't get their way. 
Exceptionally charming, two-faced, Jekyll/Hyde personality, can fool others easily, can act the part of being fawning to get what they want.
It is very rare for them to feel shame or regret. Attaining power, control, domination, wealth, and an air of superiority is so overwhelming that they rarely, if ever, consider the feelings of others. If someone tries to get them to consider the feelings of others, they may rage like a narcissist, or punish and get violent like a psychopath. 

THE CHILDHOOD BACKGROUNDS
AND BELIEF SYSTEMS THEY ADOPTED
(simplified)

Narcissists grew up in traumatic environments where there was a lot shaming and blaming going on, and there was likely to be emotional abuse in those environments too, as well as emotional neglect at the very least, if not other forms of neglect. In other words, they tended to have a narcissistic parent with authoritarianism at the center.
     Now narcissists can be plenty exploitative of their children too, just like the psychopaths, because of entitlement issues. Both disorders display entitlement.
     But narcissists are driven by different ambitions than psychopaths. Their ambition is to be thought of as a "superior being" compared to other people around them, to be thought of as "special" with special attributes that only other special people can decipher. Narcissists want to be spoiled with constant praise. They feel they need to compete with others in terms of who can win at beauty or handsomeness, who can win at arguments and debates, who can win at "wealth games", who can win at "head games", who can win at "phoniness" (most of them believe others are as phony as they are), who can win at fooling others, who can win at work through work place bullying, or triangulation, or sweet-talking a boss, and who can win at being thought of as the most charming upstanding citizen, who can win at being thought of as a victim if they don't get their way in their relationships.
     Narcissists are basically in competition all of the time. They wake up with manipulating others in mind, and they go to sleep with thoughts of manipulation in mind too. They don't like the thought of "letting things be". The agenda, in other words, is primarily social: looking and acting superior, trying to get people to listen to them with baited breath, getting lots of positive attention. It is exhausting for the narcissist to put up this front all the time, especially in front of people or children who they deem to be weaker or voiceless compared to themselves. "The mask" falls, and they become abusive to take off steam, especially if they feel that their superiority is being questioned, and they worry that they'll get caught at being abusive, at being phony, that people will see their perfection and superiority as phony too, and that they might have to deal with community shame. 
     Narcissists in their early environment were much more likely to be expected to "fawn to power and control." If you watch them carefully, they will be exceptionally fawning to anyone who has wealth, popularity, fame, and who they believe is "superior" to them. Whereas, they will tend to be abusive to children, the disabled, females, people in poverty, people of a minority race or religion, people who have weight issues, and so on, especially in their close personal relationships. They are very dependent on societal disenfranchisements to tell them who they can pick on and who they have to look up to.
     And because they fawn to power, and were expected to fawn to power when they were children, they expect others in their close personal relationships to fawn over them too when they insist on being dominant and bully others.

As I said above, the psychopath is driven by different agendas. Again, they are con-men through and through, and usually learned to take from others or to impose themselves on others in their childhood environment.
     They tend to grow up in environments where parenting was spotty, or neglectful, or where they had to parent themselves. While some of them are taught ethics, it may have been a situation that was inconsistent, or where the rest of the environment was not particularly ethical (growing up in environments where there is gun violence, war, little adult supervision, a lot of crime, and so on). 
    They can also grow up to be a golden child, where anything they do is enabled, including hurting other people, or being violent.  
     Malignant narcissists and psychopaths tend to be very, very exploitive of children especially, expecting them to do things which take away a child's maturation process, and their dignity and individual selves, to serve the parent. They must be a pretty close version of a mini-me version of their parent to not be abused. The malignant narcissist or psychopath has the fantasy that they are a tyrant king or queen, and that their children are to be either submissive little helper servants or to be abused (and they more or less infer or say outright: "take your pick").
     For malignant narcissists, it is to make their children into narcissistic supply, to puppet them into spouting unequivocally that their parent(s) are "the grandest of the the grand", the all-superior, the all-knowing, the all-wonderful, all-superior beings. And they must promote the idea that they are the all-helpful doting parent(s) too. Or again, the child will be punished. It kind of reminds me of the Turpin family who were unchained and put in matching outfits in public and to smile for the camera, even though they were being starved, lying in their own excrement and abused at home.
     The malignant narcissist who tends to want both social acceptability and to exploit others (having others do work for them while taking credit for it, lying about workers in the workplace to get them fired so that no one will stand in their way of getting to be the boss's only reliable and knowledgeable source, winning a race by disabling their opponent, the extremes of being brought up by a narcissistic parent who put competition before anything else) will manipulate others through terror and rewards to take control of the narrative, to get others to believe them.
     Neither the malignant narcissist nor the psychopath are interested in child welfare, "good practices in parenting 101", treating children with dignity and respect, treating them in age-appropriate ways, encouraging their own personalities and interests to come forward, and unconditional love (they wouldn't even know what this is, and if they did, they wouldn't want it anyway - a mind set on exploitation can't love unconditionally).

Narcissists and malignant narcissists manipulate their children and grown children through rewards and punishments as a way to temper the behaviors and speech of those closest to them, particularly compared to those they feel hierarchically superior to.

I have talked in other posts about how fawning is incredibly unhealthy and traumatic, especially when the fawning is done because of the threats, punishments, blackmail, silent treatments, coercive control, and other forms of abuse by narcissists and malignant narcissists. It is particularly traumatic for children because children learn over and over again that they have to fawn to abuse, any abuse. With normal healthy families, children are taught to have good boundaries and self respect instead, to keep safe, to leave people who abuse. Narcissists teach their children the opposite, and many children are even exposed to narcissists who expect them to apologize to other abusers. They are also at risk of other predators: child molesters, rapists, kidnappers, child abductors and child murderers.  

In the case of the two kinds of narcissists, note that rewards are not benevolence. Benevolence is giving because someone needs help, or is hurting, or is overwhelmed with a life situation, and it requires empathy. Rewards are a manipulation: "I'll reward you for x, y, and z , but if you slip up, the rewards go away." In other words, it's transactional and dependent on something: for scapegoats, whether they can be used for blame, shame and abuse in return for rewards, and for golden children, whether they can uphold a perfect, superior image of the parent (this is what they are rewarded for). Narcissists learn early on that people, and especially young children, can be manipulated and molded very easily with the reward/punishment tactic, and they use it for the entire life of that child, into old age if necessary. This can and is of detriment to themselves, and often their images are at stake because of it too, so there is a backfire built in to all of it. Rewards and punishments are used by them for self-serving purposes only, and not for their children.

In contrast, psychopaths tend to manipulate through terror primarily. They also tend to choose victims who they deem to be more powerless than others, who are hurting, vulnerable or alone than others because they feel they are easier to prey upon, and get things from. They aren't going to reward if they can, at all, help it. They don't care about impressing unless they feel they have to in order to exploit, and take advantage of. 
     Their agenda also tends to be less about shaming than just taking, unless they are malignant narcissists. In contrast, run-of-the-mill narcissists love to shame because their agenda is more social than material, to appear as someone to worship, look up to, to have power and control so that they don't ever have to fawn to power and control themselves as they did as children. They get the feeling that power and control is all that matters. 
     Psychopaths get the feeling that only money, material things, property and forcing themselves on others are all that matter, and that they don't have to work for them because others who work are an easy mark. "They have too much and can share, so I will take ..." 

In fact, all narcissistic, malignant narcissistic and psychopathic parents will have a "me first" agenda and attitude when it comes to how they relate to their children. The psychopathic parent will just be more "me first" than the others (i.e. all of the time) than narcissistic parents.
     If you are a child who grew up with any of these parent types, you are either going to be a "hurting mess", feel trauma-bonded and imprisoned by your parent, and have trauma symptoms, or you are going to have the coping skills of another Cluster B, one being another "rewarded" immature narcissist who fawns to power, and abuses the powerless.

One reason why psychopaths become so dangerous is that they believe that by hurting others, or threatening others, that it will bring the reward of submission of the other person they are abusing every single time. They don't think of any other ways to deal with others other than to "charm and harm." And if they don't get submission, they keep hurting the other person, and escalating the pain that the other person is in, more and more and more, sometimes to the point of outright torture. 

We see this in leaders of countries who invade other countries without provocation too, who commit atrocities in order to make a population submit (i.e. fawn to being overtaken). 

They don't worry about accountability, or of getting caught, or paying for their aggressions, or even concern themselves with a societal reputation because they are so arrogant and really do believe they will never get caught, ever. They believe they will get away with their abuses and terrorizing over, and over, and over again, indefinitely. Some of them play "catch me if you can" games and cat-and-mouse games with police to assure themselves they will never be caught, that they can even win with law enforcement hunting them down, surveillance, DNA evidence, and teams of agents brainstorming where and when they will make their next move.

Likewise, tyrannical invading psychopathic leaders who commit atrocities also do not believe they will ever be held accountable either, that they can wear any opposition down. Most will always believe they have more power and destructive capabilities than anyone who confronts them.

But it is also their arrogance and the feeling they have rights to aggress upon people, and their property, that cause them to make blunders. 

Here is an illustration of what can go on:

The psychopath: "How can I get money and material things, and wealth, and servitude from this situation? How can I fool people out of what they have?"

Malignant narcissist: "How can I get money and material things, and wealth, power, control, domination, and most of all, most everyone's attention on me, and get the admiration from the rich and powerful? How can I make others serve me to these ends? What connections do I have to have, and how much do I have to lie about my status to ensure that this happens? How much lying do I have to do to remain on top at all times, or at least give the appearance that I'm on top? How much blame-shifting and gaslighting do I have to do to keep my status as 'top dog'. How much fawning do I have to do to the rich and powerful? How much threatening of the peons do I have to do?"

The run-of-the-mill narcissist: "How can I get attention, admiration, get to be known as a superior likeable charming person who would never harm anyone or compete with anyone? How can I get power, control and domination over others? How unselfish do I have to appear to be? How much of myself do I have to hide, how much fawning do people expect of me, how much do I have to reveal about myself to get what I want, how much empathy do I have to pretend to have, how many people do I have to lie to, how many people do I have to pretend to be empathetic towards, to be accepted as one of them, how many people do I have to reward for putting me on a higher hierarchy or pedestal, how many people do I have to discard or hurt to get what I want?" - you can see that this kind of narcissist would care a lot about how other perceive him or her, and why they are vulnerable to shame and regrets, and why the other two types aren't as much.

The shame and regrets, by the way, have nothing to do with empathizing. It has to do with their standing in social circles and in society, and how much their standing is rising or falling. They feel they cannot manipulate people if it is falling.

One of the reasons your plain envelope narcissists hate their scapegoats is because scapegoats are usually not so quiet and they know first hand that the grandiosity is false, and that there is an abuser underneath. Some of them do not have the incentive to stay quiet either. They know that no one ever had a law changed, or helped the abused, disenfranchised and downtrodden by being quiet. They know they aren't going to help themselves by being quiet either. Societal changes, in large part, mean going against what narcissists and psychopaths want, and are getting away with, and getting rid of their loopholes including coercive control, corporal punishment of children, silencing the opposition to abuse, and reducing or eliminating assault weapons (mass murders are overwhelmingly committed by young collapsed narcissists, malignant narcissists who are negative on others and have significant prejudices, malignant narcissists who also have other personality disorders like Paranoid Personality Disorder, obsessed psychopaths, and Paranoid Schizophrenics, none of which can easily be detected, even the paranoid schizophrenics because most of them don't get symptoms or show mental illness until their twenties at the earliest). 

Anyway, the narcissist, the malignant narcissist, and the secondary psychopath learned in childhood (from it being modeled by a parent or other authority figure) how to be this way. The likelihood that they will pass this down to at least one child is very high. 

This is very simplistic, but when I get to adding to the list of the rest of the Cluster B personality-disordered (I only have the primary psychopath at the present time), I will talk much more about how childhood influenced them.

BREAKING THE LAW

All of the types I mentioned will break traffic laws, and they tend to be obnoxious entitled drivers. Speeding, going significantly over the speed limit cutting other cars off, making dangerous moves like going from a third or fourth lane to make a quick exit on to an exit ramp, speeding on bumpy country roads where there are children and farm animals, aggressive driving, and blaming accidents on other drivers is usually par for the course, especially when they are in their twenties, thirties and forties, but it tends to still be their mode of operandi when they are older than that too, if less so. 

Run of the mill narcissists tend not to break the law when it comes to hurting other individuals. They are rarely violent, choosing to use emotional, psychological, proxy, and financial abuses to achieve their ends. If they are accused of abuse, they will usually tell others that their victims are crazy. When it comes to breaking the law, they will break laws that won't incarcerate them. Instances are: carrying illegal drugs, going swimming on beaches that have "No Swimming" signs, smoking in designated "no smoking" rooms, jay walking, purposely ignoring "no trespassing signs", nude swimming on beaches that are designated for swimsuits and families, the smaller illegal activities and crimes in other words.
     When they abuse, it is usually ego driven. They want flattery, even when other people are having issues with them. 
     They tend to be hypocrites, and will not treat others the way they demand to be treated. 
     They are "terrible listeners" because everything you say will be filtered by them in terms of how your message will influence them, what it will do for their ego and what it won't do, what is in it for them, and some childhood background issues: not believing in the truth because the truth was not practiced in the childhood home, not believing in what you say because they are so agenda driven to get power and control and figure everyone around them is too, and so on. So whether you are silenced by them, or whether they listen to you, they aren't going to hear what you have to say regardless, even if you try to get them to understand you. They live in their own reality, and they also don't care what you have to say beyond how things effect them. If you feel like you are talking to a dense brick wall, it has to do with the narcissist's selective hearing.  

Male malignant narcissists tend to be domestic violence offenders. They get in your face, they rage in your face, they grab you, they can push you around without your permission, and otherwise aggress upon you in a physical manner, which very often leads to physical attacks: punching, tripping, slamming you into the wall, and so on. They think that if they are in enough of a rage or angry, that they have a right to act in this manner even though it is against the law and you are both adults.
      If they do commit domestic violence and are confronted by authorities, their favorite thing to say is: "She made me do it."
     Some of them engage in false imprisonment or trying to isolate you from the empathetic people in your life. If they can't do it through persuasion, they will try to do it financially, or disabling your car, or losing your keys on purpose, and other kinds of motives to keep you in some sort of state of bondage to them.
     If this is a partner relationship, they are very suspicious of you, where you go, what you tell others, if you are trying to escape, if you might be thinking of an affair, and so on. This is especially true if they have had affairs on a partner themselves. Malignant narcissists cheat on you as a way to ensure they have another love relationship to go to if you aren't acting like a puppet, or if you leave. It's just one way they like rubbing your nose in the fact that they don't need you as their partner, that you aren't special.  
     Child abuse tends to be more severe than the run-of-the-mill narcissists too, with child exploitation, lots of gaslighting, absurdly long and pointless silent treatments and infantilizing lectures (lectures meant for a child much younger than the child is), and "child discipline", a lot of it lasting well past childhood, and almost always accompanied by shaming, and verbal abuse. Tearing down a child's self esteem is mostly part of the picture too with at least one child (usually their designated scapegoat child).
     Children are often "silenced" when the malignant narcissist does not want to hear anything that is not in line with how they want to see things, and what they want to believe, or that alters their perception of other people or phenomenon. They like to be the authorities on speech and knowledge, and that goes for what "the truth is" too, even if what they believe or are spouting isn't the truth. This is one reason they are prejudiced, either on a personal level against a number of people, or on a societal level. It tends to be both, each influencing the other.   
     Like all narcissists they insist that they appear faultless, except with a capital "F". They will not tolerate being blamed for anything, even when they commit illegal acts. They can and do react with violence to being blamed, especially if the one confronting them is their child or partner. You are "supposed to" believe what they want you to believe, and you are pressured via rewards and punishments to go along with their beliefs in every facet of life. And we wonder why therapists, psychologists and psychiatrists tell their patients to get away and stay away from malignant narcissists as soon as they can.
     The "you have to's" don't end there, however. Malignant narcissists also often tend to be micro-managers, and don't ask you permission to be that, even if you are both adults. They just aggress themselves upon you in that way. "Take out the garbage! Do this, do that!" If you counter them, they go into a rage. Let's say that you feel sick during one of their micro-managements, they are likely to shout, "You aren't sick! Get out there and do it now!" - and from that you can also tell that they don't deal with reality. They make it pretty clear that they can't deal with excuses, no matter how relevant the excuses are. 
     They are bullies, using their status, or power to order you around. If they fail miserably at ordering you around, they treat you with contempt or violence or a discard. 
     This means that relationships with malignant narcissists aren't really relationships. They are a drill sergeant or terrorist ordering you around, and for you it is a test of endurance only, until you either break from the trauma bond, or if you leave, or if you call authorities. 
     It is common to have trauma symptoms or PTSD if you relate to malignant narcissists in any long term way.  
     They very rarely confess their wrongs unless there are some social benefits for them in doing so. For instance, some of them start channels on You Tube because You Tube pays them if they have enough of an audience. But aside from that, most of them do not admit to any wrong, and if anything, will blame their victims time and time again.
     They tend to break other laws and codes of conduct because they are also driven by what psychopaths are driven by, plus what narcissists are driven by. If they have more psychopathy than narcissism, they will insist that joint property be theirs entirely, or mostly, and if property or money belongs to others, they will insist to themselves that they have to have it. They don't have the ethics to care how these attitudes effect others, or the empathy to care how it effects others either. They'll say things like, "All that you care about is stuff and money!" (showing projection of how they behave) or "You need to stop thinking about what you've lost and enjoy life!" (trying to persuade you not to notice what they are taking from you).
     Home invasion is not out of the question for malignant narcissists, even though it carries huge risks. It's part of the psychopathy part of malignant narcissism.
     On the world stage, malignant narcissists love to invade other countries, including invading citizens' houses, and taking their belongings and farm land. It's usually a "bloody war" where they try to take over as much as they can by killing as many people as they can too. If they succeed, they are often on to invading the next country on their list of "places to own". They really feel that this will catapult them into a "great memorable leader status."   
     They have little to no regret for hurting other people, believing that people should fawn to their authority. They will keep hurting others if they feel they can get away with it, depending on how much psychopathy they have compared to narcissism.
     They also won't care too much what their reputation is if the psychopathy is more pronounced than their narcissism. One way to tell is if they are more "loner" than wanting to be around others, and to impress others.  

Psychopaths are a lot like malignant narcissists, except that they don't really care about their reputations that much, unless having a reputation can help them acquire more property, wealth, sex and material things. Either way, they tend to be more secretive, master-minding plans to achieve more and more wealth. They are extremely driven to take from others, and to get others to serve them, with the more functional psychopaths using more societally acceptable means to get there, and the more dysfunctional psychopaths resorting to petty theft, and sometimes graduating to home invasion, grand larceny, burglary, assault, aggravated assault, rape, etc. 
     It's hard to get people to part with their money, children, property or things without crimes being committed. So the functional psychopath has thought of ways around those loopholes. And what profession attracts functional psychopaths the most?
     Venture capitalism. There are a lot of psychopaths who are venture capitalists. When big companies fail or start to falter, one of the reasons they start to falter and fail is that they have capital shortages. The owners or CEOs of these companies look to venture capital firms to keep the company going. But most often, venture capitalists try to take them over and force huge "discount sales" of inventory to raise cash. In some instances they sell merchandise at such a discount that it costs more to make the merchandise than what they are selling it for. Then the venture capitalists have a liquidation sale and close the business. The venture capitalists walk away with millions, and occasionally billions. 
     And all kinds of sectors are played with to enrich a few while destroying otherwise sound and needed businesses, and can include loaning institutions, housing, consumer goods and supplies, banks (credit default swaps, quantitative easing, and other tactics including lobbying for less regulation) ... in other words, the emphasis is on money much more than on society, relationships, and taking care of relationships.
     All psychopaths sacrifice relationships, and even benefits for the society they are living in, for an insatiable appetite for more money and property for themselves.
     So many of the shows out today glorify psychopaths including The Sopranos, Breaking Bad, Billions, and Yellowstone to name a few. I really liked Outlander until the main character, a man in this case, was tortured and raped over a few episodes by a psychopath. Television is actually so flooded with shows about psychopaths, and their sadistic acts, that you can't possibly watch all of them, even if you wanted to. And in those shows, the victims are barely considered, barely a character. Even if we look at history shows like Ken Burn's The American Buffalo on PBS, it is likely that psychopaths killed the herds down to only 27 buffalo from hundreds of millions of them through what is now known as The United States (murder and making money are very much a psychopath's calling - they don't have ethics; they don't have compassion or empathy; they don't care who it effects or if it leaves people starving; they are always going to justify taking in ways that are purely destructive, and in this case their excuse for such destruction was "to solve the American Indian problem" - horrible!).
     How can featuring and glorifying psychopaths to the extent that our media companies are, going to  lead to peace, such that invasions are intolerable, that school shootings and other mass murders are intolerable, that money mixed with murder is intolerable? Are we becoming numb to what psychopaths do to us and just accept them and their deeds forever?
     On a personal level, psychopaths threaten or practice egregious forms of abuse against their siblings while at the same time spouting false narratives about their siblings so that the parents will believe the psychopath is the victim, and leave their entire inheritances only to the psychopath. They tell bosses false narratives about anyone who they feel threatened by, in terms of dedication and talent, so that the boss is left with no one but the psychopath to lean on in making sure the business runs smoothly (but it won't). They steal money from businesses if they can get away with it. As bosses, they are tyrannical and expect people to be total puppets. They tend to fire a lot of people. They tend to be divorcees unless a spouse lets them order them around. They try to make everyone except themselves seem like money grubbers, only obsessed with what they can gain out of a situation, because they are like that.
     Psychopaths rarely tell the truth about anything because they are so focused on "getting something" out of every situation that truth is inconvenient to that ambition. 
     Are psychopaths charming? Yes, they are, probably a lot more than any of the other Cluster Bs. But again, whether it is charm or harm you are getting from them, every single conversation and encounter is going to be "me" oriented, or it is going to be fluff or fawning that they feel they have to endure until they can get "the goods". 
     
You can see why the secondary types of psychopaths might be produced by narcissistic parents who try to exert power and control via constant rewards and punishments. The rewards and punishments don't end in childhood either. 
         

LYING

Run-of-the-mill narcissists primarily lie about things that will prop their ego: that their IQ is higher than it actually is, that their school grades were more admirable than they actually were, that many men asked to marry them when only two of them did, that they received awards for good citizenry when they actually didn't, and so on. 
     They are going to be lying for ego-related reasons. 
     And they will hate and often reject anyone who finds out otherwise. This is how narcissists are exploitive. They demand flattery, and if you don't give it to them, you're "out". However, they are hyper-critical of others, and often like breaking the self esteem of others. Go figure. That kind of entitlement is part of the disorder, and everyone who is close to them will see it eventually. 
     They will lie about what great parents they are, and sometimes manufacture events that never happened. Often they put down their spouse, even when they aren't an x, to make themselves look like the hero in every situation. 
    They can't stand to be in any kind of relationship where the other person isn't flattering them constantly, or at the very least, isn't doing enough to prop them up into some superior position, whether that is at work, at home giving them power and control over you, or in their friendship circles. 
     They are so focused on that, that hardly anything else really matters to them, even their own children and spouse unless their children and spouse are acting like the flattering marionettes they were trained to be through rewards and punishments. 
     These standards were probably multi-generational. Children of narcissistic multi-generational families aren't valued or loved for intrinsic reasons (i.e. for who they are), only for extrinsic values (whether they can make the family look good, whether they have admirable professions, whether they are wealthy, whether they flatter authority figures, and so it goes down the generations).
     Most narcissistic families are also authoritarian families who tell the younger generations what to do with themselves and their lives, what to say to whom, and who to accept and not accept in terms of their relationships, and it is life-long, even if it is not in the best interest of the member. If the member doesn't go along with the authoritarian, and tries to explain why it is not a good idea (perhaps they are being abused by another family member, or do not want to be part of the family business), they can be marginalized or ostracized to teach them a lesson as to what happens if they don't go along with what an authoritarian wants, including a false narrative that an authoritarian is trying to get many others to believe. Very unhealthy, very heartbreaking, if not totally toxic. 
     So budding narcissists who are still children learn that they have to be "special" and "superior" because of those circumstances, or they won't be accepted or acceptable, thus all of the posturing, lying about their credentials, lying about how much money they have, lying about how prestigious their job is even if it is not, lying about being good friends with whoever is rich and famous, pretending to be much more than they actually are. They were not accepted by an authority figure for themselves in childhood, or their sibling wasn't, so they try to be accepted through distortions, false narratives and outright lies. 

     Narcissists are quite vulnerable to psychopaths, as psychopaths can, and do flatter them to get what they want. And since narcissists are known to need a lot of flattery, and reward for flattery, they can be caught unawares when they "get taken" and the psychopath leaves them high and dry.  
     They tend to lie less than the other two types I discuss next, however. 
     

Malignant narcissists lie out of habit to get what they want socially and in terms of wealth and property. 
     Again, it depends on whether they are more narcissist or more psychopath as to what they will lie about. 
     One favorite phrase of malignant narcissists and psychopaths is "I would never lie to you." 
     Since they are such phonies (while tearing up people behind their backs), they sincerely believe that everyone is a phony, and they often accuse others of being phonies. 
     Thus no one can get very close to them because "no one is home" in terms of them having a reliable personality type. They have drives certainly, but they use others' personalities and mirroring to get what they want. As children, they may have felt that they had to do it to survive, and when it worked to get them what they wanted, they kept using it. 
     Flattery won't necessarily work on malignant narcissists; they don't trust anyone. However, they may not show their distrust. 
     It is possible that malignant narcissists grew up in a similar style to run-of-the-mill narcissists, but I bet you anything that someone in that environment was being threatened and terrorized, whether it was another child or their other parent.
    To illuminate your understanding of malignant narcissists and their ties to how secondary psychopaths grow up, the dysfunctional types of psychopaths usually are exposed to quite abusive, traumatic, crime-ridden, or war-like environments, so this would be the added element to the way run-of-the-mill narcissists grew up. Perhaps they felt they needed to steal food, or others' belongings to sell.
     Secondary functional psychopaths can grow up in environments where "money is everything" to the point where how you attain it can be unethical. For instance, they commit white collar crimes. Or they are 22 when they inherit money, and they buy a slum apartment building and live off of the income and become quite wealthy from other people's poverty. The poverty, of course, would be blamed on the tenants solely, rather than looking into whether the culture or society contributed to it. They become anaesthetized to the suffering of others, and they learn to be unempathetic in all relationships to the suffering of others. 
     Malignant narcissists lie to aggrandize themselves, to sully the reputation of others, to get money, property, power, control, and domination over others. And they tend to lie a lot. They lose people in the process of doing all of this and move on to the next person to take advantage of them without remorse too, and without empathy for the next person's life they have destroyed. 
     Malignant narcissist men are known for committing domestic violence, and even if they have put someone in the hospital they will lie about how their partner fell down the stairs, or crashed into a tree, or hurt themselves in some manner, anything to keep from being accountable. 
     They use people, lie about people, lie to people, all with a lot of deadly charm. They can sadistically laugh at everything they are getting away with, and do. They can come across as huge fawners, flatterers, sensitive little boys or girls who cry for show when others have had enough, whereas when they are with people who they deem to be weak, they act like terrorists, bullies, tyrannical bosses, micro-managers, and insulting contempt-filled megalomaniacs, and in close personal relationships can graduate very fast into being physical abusers. 
     They don't have regrets about hurting other people because they have been brought up in a hierarchical way where the weak get abused and the powerful are the abusers. If they think they can get more power, control and wealth by being a bully, they will keep escalating bullying to get ever more power, control and wealth. Again, it doesn't matter how they get it; it only matters that they attain it.
     That's why they don't care about anyone but themselves: their whole system is about getting rewards from bullying and disenfranchising, period, by pretending and lying to get others to go along with them, including how to get help bullying others. 
     On the larger scale, this is why malignant narcissistic tyrannical leaders can go into another country and commit atrocities. It only matters that they "get" what ever property and wealth that exists in the countries they invade. They do not care about the people, or populations they destroy in the process, not even the number of people they are hurting and traumatizing - the psychopathy part of them gets off on the acquiring of other people's property and territory, and the narcissistic side believes they will be worshipped and held up as great fearless forceful leaders who got their country more territory, more wealth and who crushed a population of rebels. 
     And all of how they "get" it is based on lying about the people they are invading, and false narratives to soldiers in the trenches as well as their own country-men, and self aggrandizement that is left from their deeds. 
     Like the run-of-the-mill narcissists, they will only listen to fawning sycophants and flatterers. 

As for the psychopath, the loner types of psychopaths who don't trust people who flatter, or who fawn ...  These psychopaths know they aren't trustworthy when they fawn, so they don't trust others who fawn either. 
     "What are you trying to do here!? Are you trying to get something from me?!" - this is how some of them think, if they are flattered. So if you flatter someone and get an aggressive hostile response, consider that they may be a psychopath. 
     The dysfunctional psychopaths can be loners and tend to be alone when they plan their misdeeds or crimes because they assume they aren't liked. 
     Dysfunctional secondary psychopaths tend to grow up in abusive homes, and in crime-ridden neighborhoods, or in full time traumatic situations. Often there is very little parenting, ethics aren't enforced or introduced; it's like a free-for-all where they do what compels them to do. Without an adequate background of care and concern for their well-being, or the well-being of others that the psychopath is pursuing, they are going to choose the easiest path to obtaining money, wealth, and property. 
     The more functional psychopaths, however, who grew up in financially stable situations, but who were neglected or ignored in other ways, can also grow up with the feeling that they can do anything that compels them to acquire wealth, or what ever they want including sex by force. They are also not likely to grow up with ethics either, or they were modeled unethical behaviors so much that they don't care about how their behaviors impact others. 
     They also lie and plan to obtain what ever it is they want to attain, no matter what it does to the lives of others.  
     Because they are so singularly driven to exploit, if you confront them, and try to stop their aggressions towards others, they will project it all back on to you and use shame, contempt, rage, manipulation, abuse and sometimes even violence to get you to stop confronting them. Any time you  confront a sociopath, you will "pay" (as in their revenge against you) for having confronted them, challenged them, or questioned them and their motives. You are not supposed to see their motives or agendas, so their retaliations will be pretty extreme. 

That is all I have to say on this subject for now. I will discuss fawning to abuse more in other posts, as it causes much more trauma than other forms of trauma reactions ... It is necessary to know about in terms of healing, in terms of holding those who traumatize accountable for causing it, and hold politicians accountable for passing laws that protect its citizens from violence and abuse, so that we can all live in a world of more peace and empathy.

The further reading section below goes more thoroughly into the differences. The posts in the "recommend" categories explain some things that I have not covered in this post.  

FURTHER READING

Recommended: Sociopath Vs. Psychopath Vs. Narcissist: What Is the Difference? - by  Hailey Shafir, LCMHCS, LPCS, LCAS, CCS, and reviewed by Rajy Abulhosn, MD for Choosing Therapy

My note: this is a thorough article, and more importantly tells you how to deal with people with personality disorders: avoid, talk about "information" types of topics, choose public spaces, stay off of personal topics, etc. 

Recommended: Narcissist or Psychopath—How Can You Tell? (We hear the terms all the time, but what is the difference?) - by Joe Navarro, M.A., and former FBI Counter Intelligence Agent, reviewed by Jessica Schrader for Psychology Today

Recommended: Is There A Psychopath, Sociopath, Or Narcissist In Your Life? How To Know - by Brianne Hogan for the Scary Mommy website (includes interviews with Sterlin Mosley)

Recommended: Sociopath vs. Narcissist: What's the Difference? - by Elizabeth Plumptre, medically reviewed by David Susman, PhD for Very Well Mind

Sociopath Vs. Narcissist: Understanding the Difference - by Renee Skedel, LPC and reviewed by Kristen Fuller, MD for Choosing Therapy

Basic Differences Between Psychopathy & Narcissistic Personality Disorder [Part I] - by Rhonda Freeman, Ph.D. for Neuroinstincts

Married to a Narcissist or a Psychopath? - by the administrators of Rich in Relationship

Psychopath, Sociopath or Narcissist — How To Spot The Difference (No — they’re not all serial killers the way they are portrayed in movies.) - by Kim Mia for Medium.com

Antisocial Personality Disorder - by the administrators of the Mayo Clinic

How to Tell If Someone Is a Psychopath - by Laura Dorwart and medically reviewed by Michael MacIntyre, MD for Very Well Health

Recommended: The #1 Myth About Psychopaths and Malignant Narcissists: What People Get Wrong About These Types - by Shahida Arabi, MA, for Psych Central

Recommended: Why psychopaths cannot love their own children, according to a psychologist - by Lindsay Dodgson for Business Insider

Real-life psychopaths actually have below-average intelligence - by Jessica Hamzelou for New Scientist

How to Stay Mentally Strong When You're Dealing With a Psychopath at Work (Working alongside a toxic person will take a toll on your psychological well-being. These strategies can reduce the damage.) - by Amy Morin for Inc.com

8 Common, Long-Lasting Effects of Narcissistic Parenting (What happens when you live in the shadow of a narcissistic parent?) - by Craig Malkin Ph.D., reviewed by Kaja Perina for Psychology Today

Narcissistic Obsession with Attention (The most important person in the life of a narcissist is the narcissist.) - by Kristy Lee Parkin Ph.D., reviewed by Gary Drevitch for Psychology Today

Narcissistic Men and Their Mothers (Why selfish mothers tend to raise selfish sons.) - by Berit Brogaard D.M.Sci., Ph.D, and reviewed by Kaja Perina for Psychology Today

Subtypes of psychopathy: proposed differences between narcissistic, borderline, sadistic, and antisocial psychopaths - by by Carolyn Murphy and James Vess

Why Do Narcissists Feel So Entitled and Why are They So Rebellious?

ENTITLEMENT

According to the Help Guide article Narcissistic Personality Disorder:

Sense of Entitlement:
Because they consider themselves special, narcissists expect favorable treatment as their due. They truly believe that whatever they want, they should get. They also expect the people around them to automatically comply with their every wish and whim. That is their only value. If you don’t anticipate and meet their every need, then you’re useless. And if you have the nerve to defy their will or “selfishly” ask for something in return, prepare yourself for aggression, outrage, or the cold shoulder.

Entitlement is one of the major signs and symptoms of Narcissistic Personality Disorder (that whole article is worth reading if you are new to studying narcissism).

If you have a disagreement with the narcissist, expect that they will leave you with a list of demands that they expect to be fulfilled. If you don't fulfill them, you will be given the cold shoulder and they will try to smear your reputation and character. While it is extremely hurtful, don't take it personally - realize that it is part of their disorder.

Dr. Ramani Durvasula (whose video I have inserted below) makes a very good case that a narcissist's sense that they deserve entitlements that others do not deserve, has a deep connection to why they are not empathetic. I recommend it even though it's for narcissist's ears to hear, not their victims.  

In most relationships with narcissists, make-ups aren't a mutual effort. They expect you to make all of the efforts and overtures (that's often the first time you see their entitlement). If you don't do it, most of them just give you the silent treatment and try to sully your reputation. It is their way of showing you contempt for not doing as they please. Most of them go on to someone new who they think will better serve their needs. Usually that is as far as it goes. 

However, it can go much further where they are dangerous to you: stalking, threats, threats of physical or social harm, sexual abuse, financial threats and financial abuse, demands that put you in danger, kidnappings or false imprisonment, murder. 

You won't know how dangerous they are. It depends on their personal make-up and how distracted they are with their new source of narcissistic supply. It also depends upon whether they get similar narcissistic supply that they used to get from you. And it depends on how enraged they become over time about the contact or lack of contact you give them (a warning: they usually aren't happy with either so it is usually a no-win situation).

When they are "supply deficient", when their grandiosity is going through incredible challenges, when they are being called upon to deal with any kind of shame-related or illegal activities that they perpetrated, when they have expressed violent behavior in the past (with peers, or children, or animals), they can become dangerous. If you don't know enough about the violence or illegal activities they perpetrated in their past, the advice is to usually plan an exit, to stay away from them and keep law enforcement in the loop by keeping a record of aggressive texts, e-mails, conversations and actions. Talk to a domestic violence counselor and to police if you think you may be in danger.

Which is to say that their entitlement to initiate punishments and afterwards to receive apologies, attention, for you to be obedient towards them and their wishes, to put up with their abuse can become quite harmful and happen in ways you do not expect.

But ... while they seem fine without you, and even try to promote a separation, there can be a double bind: they usually hate to be ignored. According to the Healthline article, What Is Narcissistic Rage, and What’s the Best Way to Deal with It?

Narcissistic rage is an outburst of intense anger or silence that can happen to someone with narcissistic personality disorder ...

... We all desire attention and admiration from the people around us.

But people with NPD may react with narcissistic rage when they aren’t given the attention that they feel they deserve.

This rage may take the form of screaming and yelling. Selective silence and passive-aggressive avoidance can also happen with narcissistic rage.

Most episodes of narcissistic rage exist on a behavior continuum. On one end, a person may be aloof and withdrawn. Their goal may be to hurt another person by being absent.

The next article I'll present to you basically says the same thing with the caveat that it's a no-win situation for you if you ignore them (when they go silent and you accept the silence between you) or when you engage with them (which is likely to bring out their overt rage and the demand that you give into them): What Happens When You Ignore a Narcissist? According to 8 Experts by the editors of Up Journey: 

How will a narcissist react to being ignored:
If you ignore a narcissist and deny them their source, they may become enraged and try even harder for your attention – especially in ways that can be toxic or abusive. Ignoring a narcissist will enrage them because of their fragile egos. They’ll feel humiliated and lash out against you to protect themselves.

So for all intents and purposes, narcissists who hurt you by rejection and moving on to have a relationship with someone else, who forget about you or don't bother with you any more are a blessing compared to narcissists who become continually enraged that they didn't get what they wanted or expected to get from you (who are more likely to become dangerous). By the time you are discarded and they have moved on, perhaps you are exhausted from trying to please the impossible-to-please narcissist anyway. It certainly won't seem like a blessing at the time, but it can certainly be one later on as you realize that they were only in the relationship with you to attain more and more power, control and domination over you, and basically run your life.

However, if you are involved with a narcissist who is continually becoming enraged (or conversely hoovering and stalking you) over being ignored, what do most domestic violence counselors suggest that you do? 

Most domestic violence counselors will be making suggestions that will keep you safe. A good domestic violence counselor will always make that their first priority. So the general advice is to accept the silent treatment, move on with your life, and if they become enraged to the point where they "punish you" for not giving into them (giving them what they want), these counselors tend to advise getting law enforcement involved. Stalking, harassment (including unwanted communications from them), threats, stealing, slander (smear campaigns), restraining you, financial abuse, false imprisonment, attempted murder, attempted violence and physical abuse are all illegal. Eventually all states in the United States are likely to have coercive control laws to add to this list too. You have rights to peace, boundaries and safety and to not be controlled and manipulated by someone else. Note: people who are controlling in a close personal relationship usually have narcissistic traits. I encourage you to look at the other traits they tend to exhibit (some of them are listed on the right side of this blog) to make a determination if that is who you are dealing with.

A lot of blogs having to do with narcissistic abuse (like the one I found here that is a great blog in terms of what happens when narcissists try to dismantle your reputation and life, but not a good one in terms of keeping safe). These kinds of articles will tell you to keep ignoring the narcissist as he or she ramps up the attacks via smear campaigns, however ignoring them also means they are ramping it up without resistance - quite abusive and dangerous. Abuse always escalates, and most of the time it continues to escalate whether you are talking to them or not. Smear campaigns are just abuse-by-proxy. So resorting to a strategy where you are just ignoring them and their aggressive behavior (or their passive aggressive behavior) and the problems and attacks they are perpetrating in your life are often not a great idea. Always remember that ignoring them (even if they are the ones who originally initiated a silent treatment or discard) can mean that their narcissistic rage is deepening into an obsession, to the point where they have to do something to you to get relief from the rage.

They are often thinking ahead on how to do destruction to you or your life, so you have to think ahead too on how to handle it. Being proactive in terms of reporting is a great way to achieve a record, and to get legal help when you need it. There are many other things to do, and for that a domestic violence counselor should be sought. 

Be aware, however, that victims tend to downplay the abuse and violence they are receiving. "It's not that bad", "He (or she) loves me", "He has a hard day at work, so I give him a little leeway", "She has to take care of all of our kids and I understand why she goes off the deep end sometimes", "I can put up with it", "He (or she) wouldn't be doing this if I had apologized more" and so on. Under-reacting happens because you are overwhelmed (and cognitively in a fight or flight mode), so it's natural to diminish abuse (but it is also dangerous).

Most of the people I know who are continually exposed to narcissistic abuse (including abuse-by-proxy) eventually feel they have to move, go no contact, contact a lawyer, get police involved, to get some sort of relief and legal protection to totally avoid the narcissist and the destruction they are trying to wield. However, moving is not always your preference, or do-able. But sometimes moving and going "no contact" is the best strategy with the present laws and types of protections we have in the United States (where there are too many loopholes in the laws and not a consistent form of training when it comes to police enforcement and protection).

As far as entitlement goes, abusers in general feel entitled to abuse you. They will make all kinds of excuses for why they have a right to abuse and to be emotionally dysregulated (i.e. rage off the charts). The excuses run the gamut:
- "I was abused too as a kid. It was all I ever knew" - while it may be true, they have an obligation to clean up their act.
- "I fed you and took care of you! I was a much better parent than my parent!" - it may be true, but they have an obligation to seek help to stop abusing you. 
- "It's just the way I am! I fly off the handle! If you don't like it, leave!" - good advice. Leave.
- "I'm sorry you're upset. I have a right to rage if I want to. I'm not obligated to be 'Mr. Smooth Emotions' around you." - this shows lack of empathy for what their rage is doing to you (one of the definitive characteristics of narcissism is lack of empathy). While technically rage isn't against the law, it is a form of intimidation that tends to get worse over time. Raging at you a lot is a power and control move: they count on their rage intimidating you enough where you will give in to what they want. It should be a deal-breaker in terms of trying to maintain a healthy relationship.
- "I'm sorry I insulted you so much, but you brought it upon yourself" - very typical phrase among abusers, and a sign of blame-shifting.
- "If you had vacuumed the room perfectly, I wouldn't have gone off on you like that.", "If you had taken all of the dishes out of the dishwasher when I told you to do it, I wouldn't have smashed up the kitchen" - perfectionism in an adult-to-adult relationship is a common expectation among abusers, and they use it as an excuse to abuse. Notice how imperfect they are and stop trying to reach their absurd standards of perfection ( I suggest the movie "Sleeping with the Enemy" as that movie demonstrates the absurd levels of perfection that can be expected over time). 
- "Stop crying, or I'll strangle your scrawny little neck!" - they feel entitled to tell you when you get to express emotions. Most narcissists do not have empathy when you cry, and they find it irritating. Plus they get enraged when other people cry over how they are treated by them. It puts the abuser in a shame-rage spiral (when narcissists feel ashamed, unlike the rest of us, they rage - they also do not feel you have a right to shame them, which is another reason they rage). Also, believe them when they make threats of strangulation. They definitely feel entitled to threaten, abuse and rage when they are feeling ashamed by anything, including your crying.
     However, just to put this in perspective, look at how much they shame you and others - probably a lot. Shaming is a form of abuse. Don't take any of this behavior personally and don't put up with their hypocrisies. 
 
Some of the other common entitlements they expect:
- they often feel entitled to tell you what you think and what you feel and will often resist being corrected by you.
- they feel entitled to break your self esteem to teach you that they are more superior than you are, and that you should always be be their student.
- they feel entitled to teach you "behavior lessons" (i.e. to treat you like a child who needs to learn lessons from them on how to behave in ways that will make them happy and where they can feel emotionally regulated enough not to go into a rage)
- they feel entitled to shame you continually (to wreck your self esteem so that they can be in charge of what you do and what you say) 
- they feel entitled to meddle in your career or job. Some of them don't want you to work at all, especially if they are jealous (boss, co-workers, people you have hired, the type of work you do, etc)
- they feel entitled to pit your spouse, siblings, children, grandparents, nieces and nephews, friends, co-workers, and boss against you. 
- they feel entitled to treat their children like little slaves

- they feel entitled to break promises any time they feel like it
- they feel entitled to ignore your feelings

Need I go on? Narcissists can feel entitled to get everything they want, whether they hurt other people or not. The higher they are on the spectrum, the more entitled they will be.

WHY ARE NARCISSISTS SO REBELLIOUS?

One of the telling signs of a narcissist is road rage, going way past the speed limit, passing on the solid line, not letting you merge with traffic, hitting your car with their car and telling you that it was "all your fault". 

If you are riding with them and you get into an argument in the car and you aren't responding the way they want you to, they can threaten to drop you off in the middle of nowhere and make you walk. 

Some of the other things I have noticed personally:

* swimming in reservoirs (for drinking water) where there are clear signs that say things like "no swimming and no boating"
* on the Long Island ferry there are clear signs everywhere that cars should not be started until the boat docks and comes to a complete stop. But invariably the "entitled people" start their cars up anyway, sometimes way before they see land (to keep the heater on, to listen to music - gassing out the people in the car behind them). 
* during the mask ordinance, a lot of the people who didn't wear masks felt that they had special immune systems, or special medications, that they could dodge the virus while watching the rest of their countrymen die or get sick (because, they reasoned, the average citizens had "inferior immunity", and lack of knowledge about medical or herbal "cures") 
* break laws about nude swimming
* stealing
* if they are "financially challenged", and a car is unlocked with a wallet in the front seat, they might feel entitled to take it
* having affairs despite their marriage vows to stay faithful
* abandoning their children, and because they don't want to be embarrassed by that fact, they tell others that their children abandoned them instead
* they are caught cheating and to not be embarrassed it, they tell the person who caught them that their spouse is a domestic violence offender and that their new lover is saving them
* they indulge in domestic violence and child abuse even though it is illegal
* false imprisonment even though it is illegal
* trespassing even though it is illegal
* stalking, even though it is illegal
* threats to hurt their spouse or grown children if you don't do what they demand (illegal in some states in the USA under new coercive control laws, completely illegal in the United Kingdom)
* teaching a child how to shoot a pistol even though it is illegal
* killing wild animals out of season, harvesting more wild animals that is over the legal limit
* torturing wild animals in ways that are illegal
* setting traps where there are "no hunting, fishing or trapping" signs
* hunting on private property where there are "no hunting, fishing or trapping" signs, hunting within 100 yards of someone's house (both illegal) 
* consumption and trafficking of illegal substances
* trafficking children or other human beings
* lie about how much alcohol and drugs they consume
* lie about cheating
* lie about being victimized when they are the victimizers
* then there is Jeffrey Epstein who felt entitled to have sex with a lot of underage girls, breaking the law blatantly, because he was wealthy, had co-conspirators, manipulated prosecutors into giving him "sweetheart deals" and had "dirt" on other wealthy people - he had all of the criteria for Narcissistic Personality Disorder plus some of the criteria for Antisocial Personality Disorder and communal narcissism.   
* and then there are a lot of narcissists who don't want to care a shred about how you feel and what you've endured, and they also feel entitled to refuse to hear you out, but when you put up boundaries and refuse to talk to them about certain subjects, and want "out" of the relationship, they find it maddening and cruel 

Most of these incidences show rebellion. In other words, they feel entitled to act in these ways, but do not want others in their life to act like this towards them.

This is all so confusing when it comes to children: "Am I supposed to do what you do, or am I supposed to only listen to what you want me to do? And by the way, why do you get to do what you don't want me to do?" That's where the cognitive dissonance starts: wrong is right somehow, and right is somehow wrong. If you are a good kid and tell the truth, you are somehow bad, and if you lie a lot (especially for them) you are good. That's just a small example of the thousands of mixed up messages kids get. And to make it all worse, one kid from the same family practically gets away with murder, while another kid can't even get away with a facial expression the narcissist doesn't like without getting abused over it. That is because narcissistic parents put their children in roles. And to randomize this set of circumstances, some narcissists change the roles on their children so that no child gets comfortable with consistent treatment!

One of the greatest hypocrisies that most people notice early on in a relationship with a narcissist is that they expect complete compliance, conventional adherence, loyalty, and even hate any signs of rebelliousness from their victims, but are often over-the-top rebellious themselves, refusing to live by the standards they set for others.

They feel free to thumb their noses at societal norms, to be disloyal, to lie and over-inflate what they do and who they are, even break laws, and to top it all off, too cowardly to confess when they've broken laws. But others? They want complete confessions and reparations, especially if abuses, mixed messages and crimes committed against them. They have expectations of others that they would never live up to themselves. 

If they are so rebellious, why can't they give you a break when you are just a tad rebellious? Do they only give themselves a break to act out, and excuse themselves for acting out, and not you? 

The answer to this is "yes". 

And it is why it is so hard to respect them, or even listen to their defenses, lectures, insistences of compliance, and attacks on our character. We get fed up with their double standards and their "Do as I say and not as I do" stances and excuses. 

It's all about how they feel entitled to "special treatment", the typical definition found in just about every major medical description of Narcissistic Personality Disorder.

Entitlement, rebelliousness, "it's okay for me to act like this, but not okay for you" attitudes, and all of the glaring and myriad hypocrisies around their entitlements are too hard to live with day in and out, for anyone ... They are also some of the first signs that we see when we have gotten to know narcissists a little for who they really are. We come to understand that entitlement explains why they break promises without any kind of feeling or introspection, but feel that others should not only keep their promises to the narcissist, but do everything the narcissist wants. What kind of fantasy world do they live in?

A big one.

Their entitlement and hypocritical rebellions are also one of the biggest contributors to why they are incapable of hanging on to deep authentic close personal relationships. They can't be close to people because they have a compulsion to control them in ways they can't be controlled = bad outcome for relationships of longevity. 

"Introduction to Entitlement"

by Dr. Ramani Durvasula:
(my note: she makes the case that entitlement is deeply connected to their lack of empathy):

"Understanding the narcissist's entitlement (30 DAYS OF NARCISSISM) - Dr. Ramani Durvasula"

"When narcissists use their performance/accomplishments to justify their entitlement"
by Dr. Ramani Durvasula:

"Your Disobedience Toward A Narcissist's Control"
by psychologist Dr. Les Carter
for Surviving Narcissism

"7 Signs Of A Narcissist's Entitlement"
by psychologist, Dr. Les Carter:

"How To Handle A Narcissist - Dr. Phil"
with Dr. Phil McGraw:

also from Dr. Phil McGraw that I thought was really to the point
(he makes the case of why narcissists should not be in therapy):
What Is Narcissistic Personality Disorder?

FURTHER READING

Narcissism and Entitlement: "Do I Have to Stand in Line?" (When living large means something different) - by Karyl McBride Ph.D. for Psychology Today

Covert Narcissist: Signs, Causes, and How to Respond - by Jodi Clarke, MA, LPC/MHSP, Medically reviewed by David Susman, PhD for Very Well Mind

Revisiting the Psychology of Narcissistic Entitlement (Not all narcissists are created equally when it comes to entitlement). - by Susan Krauss Whitbourne Ph.D. for Psychology Today

Endlessly Entitled Narcissists: What to Look For - by Linda Sapadin, Ph.D for Psych Central

Do Narcissists Ever Grow Up? (New research investigates continuity and change in narcissism from young adulthood to midlife) - by Scott Barry Kaufman for Scientific American 

What Is Narcissistic Entitlement And What To Do About It - by Melanie Tania Evans, popular You Tuber and writer on narcissism

How to Think Like a Narcissist and Why They Hurt People (Understanding a narcissist's mind shields and empowers you to react effectively.) - by Darlene Lancer, JD, LMFT for Psychology Today

The Psychology Behind Sense Of Entitlement - by Robert Porter for Better Help

Tell Me All I Need to Know About Narcissistic Personality Disorder - by Christina Gregory, PhD
and Krista Soriano, medically reviewed by Jean Kim, MD for Psycom

Narcissistic Entitlement - by Roy F. Baumeister & Kathleen D. Vohs for Sage Knowledge

How to Deal With a Narcissistic Mother - by Dr. Silvina Galperin, C. Psych. for CBT Psychology for Personal Development

The Narcissistic Mother or Father: Why they make their children suffer - by Jay Reid for Jay Reid Psychotherapy

Narcissistic Parents Are Literally Incapable Of Loving Their Children - by Joanna McClanahan for the Scary Mommy website 

5 Damaging Lies We Learn From Narcissistic Parents - by Shahida Arabi, Contributor, #1 Amazon Bestselling Author and Founder of Self-Care Haven for the Huffington Post

Why You Should Not Force Children to Apologize (also discusses forced apologies in abusive narcissistic families)

Note: this is part of a series:

1. Why you should always apologize to your child when you hurt him or her (avoiding trauma in your child)

2. This post: Why You Should Not Force Children to Apologize (also discusses forced apologies in abusive narcissistic families)

more posts to follow 

Since this blog is about abuse, I will be talking about the difference between the healthy "prodding" of children to be empathetic (and therefor remorseful) when they have done something wrong versus strong-arming, threats, blaming and shaming typical of abusive parents to get children to apologize to people they probably should not be apologizing to.

The following articles are written for parents who are invested in "healthy parenting", who want to be the best models of healthy parents for their children, and who, through "healthy parenting tips", have kids who are "genuinely empathetic" and capable of heart-felt apologies.

If you have children who don't apologize for what the parent sees as "obvious transgressions and wrong-doings", usually something is either going on with the child, or with the parent, but most of the time the reasons are intricately linked in the relationship between the parent and the child.

While there are some exceptions like conditions and disorders that can make a child unempathetic, most of those conditions would mean the child having an unempathetic approach all of the time, in almost all situations (and becoming part of the personality). All children but future psychopaths are born with empathy. If empathy goes away over time, there is a reason for it (environmental reasons tied to how they were parented is usually the most common).

In some cases autistic children can present as appearing unempathetic, but on the inside of the child there is so much empathy and they feel others pain so deeply that they freeze (here is another link to another article on that phenomenon).

For the sake of this post, I will be discussing both the healthy style of parenting (where communication lines are open, judgments about what happened are kept open too, and empathy is calmly discussed) versus the unhealthy style of parenting (where parents push and strong arm their children to apologize, threaten or punish their child if an apology is not given, all with a lot of rage, blaming, shaming and impulsive judgments which are rigid).

But first we get to the health tips for parents who bend towards healthy resolutions with their kids.

You will notice in these articles that most psychologists strongly advise parents not to force children to apologize, but that apologies (which boil down to an outward expression of empathy) are best when authentically felt and expressed by the child. Many psychologists' advice is to talk to children more about empathy than a singular apology. Also the most long lasting impression for a child is seeing his or her parent making apologies, making amends, talking openly about how they have hurt or overlooked another person, and showing how they want to resolve it. Children learn from example more than from words.

I saw some parents once telling their kids to stop swearing once in this way: "Shut your f*cking trap! I told you both to stop swearing now! I mean it, you little sh#ts!"

Needless to say it doesn't work. The parents are now dead and the kids, in their fifties, still swear most of the time (every other word is a swear word in all their family get-togethers, but they mostly don't swear while out in public unless they are irate about something). So it is like the parents might as well have been talking to a brick wall in terms of the impact they made with their words on the kids.

It's the same with empathy: "You need to be sensitive to other people's feelings, you rotten, no-good  child! If you can't apologize to me right now (and I mean right now!) for crying in that store, you're going to get a good spanking on your little bottom when we get home! You want a sore bottom? You are really going to have something to cry about then! In fact, I hope you cry all night long! And it will hurt like Hell! You asked for it! You're going to get it good!" - A parent who talks this way is teaching the opposite of empathy. They are teaching cruelty. And the hypocrisy is rampant!

What is more, children can detect hypocrisy as young as seven years old, and furthermore, they know that it is wrong. You cannot fool children to do as you say and to ignore what you do. While we think of teens as having lost respect for their parents, young children can lose respect for a parent too. The parent will have a very hard time winning respect back once it is lost. Trying to force a child with commands to respect you because you are their parent does not work either. 

In this article by the online magazine "Fatherly" (written by Virginia Pelley) children want respect as much and as deeply as adults do:
The crux of the matter, however, is that parents who complain about kids being disrespectful often treat their kids with disrespect, says John Petersen, Ph.D., a clinical psychologist in South Bend, Indiana ... 

... A helpful way to think of respect for you as a parent is to strive for cooperation, not compliance, Petersen says. When you’re ready to head out with your kid to do errands, for example, it can be trying to say calmly, “I know you’re having fun with your toy right now, so take another minute to play with it, but then we have to go pick up your sister at practice,” instead of, “Put it down and let’s go, now.” But the payoff is a kid who knows how to show respect for others ...

... You’re going to make mistakes. All parents do. You can mitigate the damage to your family relationships with an apology that makes them feel heard and understood, Petersen says.
First, ask your family what the experience was like for them. Listen, honor their emotional experience and summarize what they expressed, he suggests. Even if you see the situation differently, talk about what you’re prepared to do so it doesn’t happen again. 

In order to have a healthy approach to teaching your child how to have empathy and how to apologize, think about yourself as someone who is on stage in front of someone who is really impressionable (your child), and they are watching everything you do, and may very well be normalizing what you do too. If they are critical thinkers, they may not approve of everything you do even though you are their parent (it is actually natural for them to have different perspectives than you about your behavior: you cannot expect to be thought of as an exemplary parent throughout your life, and if you aren't narcissistic, you won't become enraged about that fact either - which is to say that narcissists become enraged at the thought that they aren't perceived as being "wonderful" or "better than other parents").

Parents should always understand that if they are critical, analytical and discerning of how other people behave, their children will probably be too. Likewise if you are critical of your children, they will probably be critical of you (even if they do it behind your back). Narcissists want to have the entitlement to criticize others on steroids while never being criticized themselves. Good luck with that.

Apologies will work the same way. Healthy approaches to apologies are about you, the parent, modeling good apologies towards a person or people you have hurt and want to make amends to.

If you are a child abuse survivor and reading this, realize that growing up in an environment where you were expected to apologize too much and too often, but never or rarely saw your parent apologize, it is crazy-making. These are really not teaching moments. I go into how it effects children when I flesh out the section for child abuse survivors below (recognizing what you went through and the symptoms you may have as a result of your upbringing). 

Following are the articles on healthy ways to help kids understand the impact they have on others. Note: I could not find a single article that suggested forced apologies were good parenting practices. 

After these articles, I talk about why abusers have such a hard time taking the healthy approaches as stated in these articles. But for the rest of us, I hope these articles (most of them written by experts in the field of child psychology) make sense:

Parents: Take a timeout before you force your child to apologize - by Laura Bailey from The University of Michigan

excerpt:

... Parents who force unremorseful kids to apologize to others before they’re truly sorry may do more harm than good.
That’s because the main point of an apology—to express remorse and repair relationships—is lost because children may dislike the apologizer even more after the insincere apology than before. Children know when you mean you’re truly sorry.
The new study from the University of Michigan looked at whether children distinguish between willingly given and coerced expressions of remorse—and they do ...
... “Coercing your child to apologize is going to backfire. Other kids don’t view that apologizer as likable. The teachable element of having the child apologize has gone away and the goal of the apology prompt—to help your child express remorse, soothe someone else’s hurt feelings and make your child more likable—is lost.” (quote by Craig Smith, research investigator at the U-M Center for Human Growth and Development).
How can parents help their young children respond with empathy after they’ve upset another person, and ultimately deliver a willing apology?
“When your child is calm, help them see how the other person is feeling, and why,” Smith said. “An apology is one way to do it, but there are lots of ways. Research shows that even preschoolers value it when a wrongdoer makes amends with action. Sometimes this is more powerful than words.”

Children Are Wired For Empathy And Insisting On Apologies Is Not Necessary - by Adriadne Brill

excerpt of the headlines in the article:

* Children are Wired for Empathy

* A Child’s Apology Might Not Look Like One At All

* Going Beyond Just “I am Sorry”

* How to Teach Children To Say Sorry Without Insisting on Forced Apologies

* Creating opportunities for Children To Learn How to Make Amends
   1.Listen with Curiosity

   2. Avoid Blame (talks about having a blame free home)

   3.Activate Empathy

   4.Patience and Flexibility ("A rushed sorry is not nearly as valuable than thought out way apology")

   5. Notice the Sincere Apologies

   6. Model Making Amends (i.e. model apologies to others and your children)

* The Take Away

   "When it comes to helping children learn to say sorry, remember that more valuable than the words our children use, it is what they take away from each moment".

Why you shouldn’t force children to apologize - by Alison Bowen for the Chicago Tribune

excerpt:

In his latest research, released Nov. 19 in the Merrill-Palmer Quarterly, Smith and his co-authors found kids were aware when apologizers were coerced and didn’t like that — for them or the recipient.
Parents often urge children to immediately apologize, he said. And although that is not out of bad intentions, it can be counterproductive. Other children see a lack of authenticity, and a child forced to apologize is learning to feign remorse.
“One of the reasons I think we do it, with apologies, is because it’s a really accepted script that we use; it’s really almost an expected script,” he said. “We want to prepare them to be successful socially, and part of what that entails is being able to make amends.”

... The researchers wanted to explore whether children are sensitive to the fact that some apologies do not convey true remorse. Even young children, Smith noted, understand that an apology is a way of showing that someone feels bad about something. “They understand that if a victim gets an apology, they’re typically going to feel better than a victim who did not get an apology.” ...

Chiding your kids publicly to apologize can make them less 'likable.' Here's why. (Maybe you both need a time-out) - by Robby Berman for Big Think

excerpt:

A new study finds that making children apologize can make things worse.
When kids say fake "sorry" their victims dislike them even more.
Children respond most positively when regret is sincere.
"You did what? You apologize right now!"
That may be the sound of a grownup making a mistake. According to new research published by the University of Michigan this year, forcing a child to apologize when they don't mean it usually does more harm than good.
"Coercing your child to apologize is going to backfire," says the study's author, Craig Smith, of the University's Center for Human Growth and Development. "Other kids don't view that apologizer as likable. The teachable element of having the child apologize has gone away and the goal of the apology prompt — to help your child express remorse, soothe someone else's hurt feelings and make your child more likable — is lost."

Should Parents Make Their Children Apologize? (This is what decades of research say about children and apologies - by Denise Cummins Ph.D.

excerpt:

... Should parents insist that children apologize when they cause intentional or unintentional harm to another? The evidence seems to indicate the following practical course of action:
1. Encourage young children to apologize to each other because it will help mend hurt feelings, and very young children don't seem to distinguish between prompted apologies and spontaneous apologies.
2. As children reach elementary school age, spontaneous apologies have more impact, so parents should think twice about whether and how to prompt apologies. If your child's apology doesn't seem sincere, it will have less impact in mending broken relationships.
3. Offers to make restitution not only heal hurt feelings, they also make the repair to broken relationships. Parents can be helpful in making suggestions of how children can make up for the damage or hurt they caused either intentionally or unintentionally ...

There are many more articles on this subject, but they more or less say the same thing in different ways.

As you can see, most of these approaches are anti-authoritarian. The authoritarian approach is: "You MUST apologize!" And in cruel, punishing abusive families it is: "You MUST apologize or there will be dire consequences for you including our cruelty."

IF YOU HURT OR WHIP THE CHILD

DOES HE BEHAVE AND APOLOGIZE?

THE ABUSIVE APPROACH TO GETTING A CHILD TO APOLOGIZE
AND THE EFFECTS TO THE CHILD

One of the things people learned back in the olden times when torture devices and torture chambers were all the rage is that it did not necessarily work in getting the truth out of victims (if the prosecutor and the monarch were looking for the truth). The thing it tended to get out of victims is what the torturer wanted to hear - and it was done mainly to get the torture to stop. So a lot of people ratted on people who were innocent. Even the victim might be innocent. So you and the innocent people you ratted on might go to the stake or chopping block or get drawn and quartered. 

One of the reasons why America adopted "innocent until proven guilty" was because they had the foresight to reject these practices. 

Killing innocents probably did not move monarchs to much regret in these circumstances because the people who worshiped them ("Our Great Leader") were brainwashed to seeing them as close to God (and God's perceptions and benevolence). Also, there were so many documents to sign and court intrigues that the monarch often made hasty decisions just because he or she was overwhelmed by so many of them. There were also "persuasions" to listen to by cabinet members. If you killed a lot of innocent people, it was the cost of doing business, and you could find the real people responsible eventually and kill them too. 

And, of course, you had to find a few others who might be perceived as getting out of hand and kill them at the same time. Rebellions were not allowed and monarchs never thought much about the why part of rebellions. That got some of the monarchs killed themselves (the last Russian Czar comes to mind). 

For all intents and purposes, child abusers act like corrupt implacable monarchs. Like monarchs, they expect to be flattered. They will go into a rage if you don't flatter them. That is because there is an assumed hierarchy. They expect that you will follow their orders and conform even if the orders are clearly not to your benefit and cruelly designed. It is watered down monarchy, typically referred to as "authoritarian parents". 

Parents should never have been allowed to have as much power as they do. In the present legal system, if you want to make your underage child a slave to you and a whipping boy for everything that goes wrong in the life of the parent, or in the family, you can pretty much get away with it, especially if you home school or otherwise indoctrinate your children.

And a lot of psychologists think that after these child abuse victims have been damaged by years and years of this treatment that therapy can heal these victims.

But the problem should not look like this. It is really like this:

"You get to do anything you want to your child (and be sure to home school so there will be no eyes on the situation), be abusive, invalidating, cruel, scary and unhinged, and destroy your kid as much as you can ... because when he or she is 18, or 25, or 38, he or she might discover they were abused and seek therapy from us. Then we may be able to heal the child." - it is just wrong. It's like saying "Drive down the highway any old way you want, in which ever lane you want, and even recklessly, flex your 'freedom muscles', even drive drunk if you choose, and anyone that you hit? We'll be there for therapy for them."

There is a reason why we, as a society, should not expose people (and especially children) to danger. And yet, children under 12 are beaten a lot more than adults, are abandoned more than adults, they are raped quite a bit more more than adults, they are abducted far more than adults, and they suffer a lot more than adults because their constitutions are simply not ready for this level of cruelty.

Part of the problem is that narcissists have hair trigger rage (based on shame) which a child can never solve. It should never be a child's responsibility regardless. I have included a video below where psychologist Dr. Ramani Durvasula talks about the rage cycle of narcissists, the unpredictability of the rages, the vindictive part of the rages, and how the rages can be about something else but are taken out on you, the child, instead.

But ... in order for the narcissist to keep himself (or herself) emotionally regulated (i.e. out of experiencing the overwhelming rage-which-is-based-on-shame), they constantly want apologies from you. They want you to take on their shame so that they will not feel shame (and feeling so emotionally unhinged that they want to hurt you and the relationship they are in with you). Always remember, the discard stage happens around issues of their shame, and their inability to handle it.

If you don't offer the apology, or cannot be talked into an apology, the rage gets quite a bit worse in the narcissist and they become very vindictive, petulant and cruel to make you bend to their will. It's in the video.

Obviously this should never be a child's responsibility. We do have to have laws to keep this from happening to children. But in the meantime, children are counted on by these parents for regulating their parent's rage via apologies. Children who are abused for "lack of apology" often don't know what they have done and don't mean to hurt their primary caregivers anyway, and most of the time don't even understand what is going on, in the same way that a victim in the torture chamber says something to the torturer to end the torture. It doesn't work.

If you actually click on Dr. Ramani's video, you can see the comments from many, many child abuse survivors. The high majority of the people who comment tell others to walk away from these relationships.

If something has been un-fixable for 18 years, you don't keep trying to fix it. And by age 18, you know that all of the apologies over all of the "nothings" and erroneous stuff and the fantasies the narcissist has about your character and intentions (they are exceptionally bad at reading people), never ever fixed anything any way, at any time. I think every child gets to the point of "this is my last apology. I can't do this any more." And they walk away from their parent. The parent can cry the blues, make up even more stuff about the child, go on a retaliation binge (which they do), whine to their friends about how they are the victims and how much you wronged them (which they do too, and I bet if you are the child, you have lost a lot of respect for your parent for doing this), and you can be vilified to everyone you know without breaking your resolve.

The reason you don't give in to them is because these apologies are so wrong, and make you so ill, you can't do them any more. Adulthood gives you the strength to walk away. And it is like walking away from a cult where they will punish you if you try to run away with anything other than the shirt on your back.

Once you are out of the role of apologizer for all of these rages, the narcissist will hate you, and the hate will eat them alive. They become obsessed and possessed by thoughts and plans of putting any and all culpability on to you, their child, especially if you have served that role for them in the past (the scapegoats are the children in narcissistic families who generally get put into these roles). Sometimes the smear campaign is enough for some narcissists, especially if they can collect a lot of people, but often it isn't enough because part of narcissism is paranoia. They focus so much of their energy on people, and triangulating people, and manipulating people to get into positions of power and dominance, and vengeful thoughts and plans, especially if they are malignant narcissists, that hate is just another "people focused" thing of theirs that they get fixated on, unlike the rest of us who are just trying to bring up our kids in the healthiest way possible, keeping food on the table, working our jobs, and being with our spouses. They desperately want to harm you more, much more, but they don't know how to do it without narcissistic fall out (i.e. without the possibility of moral people ashamed of them).

And despite all of the hate they have for you, and all of the damage they want to do to you, all of the head games and chess matches they want to play with you, and the push-pull love-you-hate-you scenes, you just want out of the crazy cult of their paranoia-and-rage cycles and start a new life. That is obvious from the comments sections for children of narcissists.

Anyway, if that wasn't enough to deal with, you will be expected to apologize to other members of your family who are abusive and bullying. The strong-arming to apologize to other abusers is a big red flag of Malignant Narcissism. There is a reason why they want this so badly from you, and I will be covering it in another post.

In order to coerce and terrorize you to continually apologize for things you didn't do or say throughout your childhood, they have to do an incredible amount of gaslighting and invalidation of your experiences, feelings and thoughts. They can't really get you to apologize for nonsense without those tactics.

Children experience both of these tactics as confusion and anxiety. If you have seen the Gaslight movie you see how the main character becomes very confused and anxious, almost unhinged by the possibility that she does not know her own mind and perceptions. She gets talked into being crazy. If you have ever had terrible arguments where you are defending yourself over what you are feeling, or thinking, or experiencing, you know how infuriating or frustrating it is when the narcissist insists you were feeling or thinking or experiencing something else entirely - that is an instance of invalidation. When they feel entitled to tell you what your reality is, that is gaslighting.

And believe it or not, they even gaslight you and tell you what you were going through when they weren't there for the experience that you had. It happens more than you would think!

If you are a child, you may have even been punished for your narcissist's crazy-making fixed opinions about how crazy you are and the narcissists insistence that your feelings, thoughts and experiences are not valid. The only reality that the narcissist accepts is their own opinion about the feeling, thought and experience you were going through.

If a child is forced to apologize with all of this going on, and for at least 18 years of it, it adds up to trauma in the child. With other kinds of traumas added to the mix, the end result may be full blown PTSD (or C-PTSD - which is recognized by The World Health Organization but not by the Diagnosis and Statistics Manual of Mental Disorders, the latter using the term PTSD instead).

The problem for children who have been put in the endless apologizing role where the apologies always go from the child out to the parent and extend to other abusers, is that their trauma cannot be resolved inside the family. One of the big reasons why it cannot be resolved is that narcissists lack empathy and self reflection. They aren't going to be soothing their child. They aren't going to be apologizing to their child for hurting them.

The common narcissistic apology, in fact is, "I'm sorry you feel that way" (I will be discussing the narcissist's apologies in an upcoming post). This is why tougher laws must be instated for victims of child abuse. This is why children need to be given some rights to go into foster care if they want to. I will also be discussing what I found were adult children's wishes about what they wanted in terms of stopping the abuse, but to give you a nibble, about half of all child abuse victims would have jumped at the opportunity to be placed into foster care. If you are psychologist, run these statistics yourself, and I think you will see similar numbers to what I saw.

Now some of the reasons why the forced apology with invalidation and gaslighting happens so frequently to victims of child abuse is that the parent may have suffered child abuse too. Alternatively, they could have been a Golden Child in their family of origin and feel that shame is beneath them, something for other people, never for them.

In terms of the non-Golden child abuse victims who tend to take on a victim-type mentality, and be the covert vulnerable type of narcissists: they could have seen or experienced too much shaming in their childhoods and cannot stand any more of it landing on them. So to make themselves feel better from all of the trauma triggers that shaming brings to them, they do what their parents did: put the blame and shame on the child instead. In fact, where you find covert narcissists, you often find that they are super-sensitive to any criticism and any hint of shame. They become wildly destructive over perceived criticisms and perceived shaming, in fact (and yet they dish out plenty of it). It is common for covert narcissists to present with cormorbid conditions like PTSD.

For the Golden Child types of narcissists (who tend to be more of the grandiose style narcissists), they were groomed to feel they could do no wrong, as well as not to feel empathy for victims of bullying, and to go along with flying monkey pursuits and agendas like bullying, shaming and smear campaigns for the head narcissist in their family of origin. While they, too, are rageful and sensitive to criticism, they are not as sensitive as someone who has had direct hits of erroneous shaming in childhood and is saddled with trauma. They appear smug and unmoved emotionally while shamed (much like Jeffrey Epstein when interrogated by police).

Not being able to handle shame in a healthy way other than to be vindictive and rageful would also explain why perpetrators often choose going to prison over intensive daily therapy and anger management classes. And they do. They cannot stand the thought of feeling or dealing with shame in a therapist's office, or in front of other perpetrators at classes, so they think that prison will be a lot easier for them.

It means that most narcissistic parents will not be practicing the kinds of healthy parenting tips I discussed at the beginning of the post. Without any consideration for healthier parenting approaches, not caring about how this impacts the child, no way out for the child unless the child knows to call 911 or Domestic Violence Services, you have a more and more traumatized child (something that society will be saddled with in terms of on-going cost for trauma therapy).

"The Narcissist and the Shame-Rage Spiral"

by psychologist, Dr. Ramani Durvasula

(my hope is that this video of hers explains why you can't "win" with a narcissist

who wants you to take on all faults within a family):

further reading:

Gaslighting: is an apology necessary to heal after you’ve been abused? (Restorative justice is an approach to healing. But how is it possible with sociopaths, pathological liars, blackout drinkers who rely on fractured memory for truth?) - by Ariel Leve for The Guardian

Characteristics of Abusers 

Sorry Not Sorry -- Do You Force Apologizing in Your Home? (Forced apologies are as common as forced sharing in our culture. But apologies that are insincere are also ineffective.) - by Avital Schrieber Levy, Contributor for The Huffington Post

Apologies (Abuse and Relationships) - by Michael Samsel

The value of an apology in sexual assault claims - by Tracey Emmott

Apologizing When You’ve Done Nothing Wrong - by Laura Polk for Crosswalk.com

You’ll Be Sorry – Children and Apologies - by Janet Lansbury for Elevating Child Care

Cult leaders often have the same characteristics as abusive parents (or abusive heads of a household): here is an article I found on Psychology Today by Joe Navarro who explains the characteristics of cult leaders

Here's what works way better than forcing your kid to say sorry (You can insist that your child apologize, but how can you help them to feel genuine remorse, make amends and do better next time?) - by Rachael Rifkin for Today's Parent 

What to Say to Little Kids Instead of 'Say Sorry' - by Michelle Woo

Instead Of Forcing Preschoolers To Apologize, We Should Be Doing This Instead - by Lauren Celenza for Scary Mommy

What to Do When Your Child Refuses to Apologize - by staff of Sleeping Should Be Easy