The Scripted Reality: How Narcissists Control Their Environment

[00:00:00]People who are very narcissistic are extremely concerned with power and control and controlling how they are seen is a big part of why.

[00:00:08]The need for power and control and the existential crises go hand in hand.

[00:00:14]They need power and control to prevent the psychological collapse that would come if the identity narrative they have of themselves were to be disrupted.

[00:00:23]For people with a stable, developed, and cohesive identity, it's hurtful when other people think that you're something you're not, but it's not going to destroy you.

[00:00:33]You have a grounded, developed identity and you know who you are. You do not define yourself through how other people see you. For people who are pathologically narcissistic, this is not the case. They cannot generate this without feedback and participation from other people, which means they need to control their environment and everybody in it to make sure that they get the feedback that matches the image they have of themselves or that they need to project of themselves in order to function.

[00:01:03]It's like being in a play. If all of the actors just start saying and doing whatever they want, the story of the play is ruined. They have to react a certain way. They have to say and do certain things. They have to follow the script and do exactly as they're told according to their roles or the play is not going to work to tell the story that is supposed to be telling.

[00:01:24]If people do not follow the script, the narcissist's illusion of themselves is totally ruined. They attempt to control everything to prevent that from happening because if it does, the psychological consequences for them are generally disastrous. They're very extreme.

[00:01:39]It's important to remember that this typically goes far beyond just trying to fool other people into thinking that the narcissist is somebody they're not in order to get away with stuff.

[00:01:51]This is often what it results in, but as a thing, it's much more important to their psychology and functioning than that. That's how it impacts you. How it impacts them is much bigger.

[00:02:03]This is about creating a reality they can actually live in and experience themselves through. They live in a fantasy land, an illusion of themselves and their lives and their place in the world. And this cannot happen in any tangible way unless other people go along with it. They need other people to believe in the illusion and help to make it real so that they can believe it, so that they can live in it. If that doesn't happen, they can't.

[00:02:29]This is why trying to get them to agree with you is pointless. First of all, they are in a different reality than you are anyway, which you already know from interacting with them. These people are way out in left field somewhere.

[00:02:41]Secondly, they tend to be extremely contrary and very often they view agreeing with the other person or even listening to them at all as a form of submission and giving up the power position, which you may not know, but undoubtedly have seen.

[00:02:56]These two things alone make the situation legitimately impossible. Add in the existential need to protect their narrative and it's just a colossal waste of time.

[00:03:06]This is regarding any subject, but the biggest waste of time of all is trying to get them to acknowledge their own harmful behavior toward others, which is what most people are trying to do. The problem is there's a fundamental disconnect here that cannot be bridged.

[00:03:21]From where you're sitting, you are trying to show them facts about their harmful behavior and get them to care about that so that they'll stop doing it.

[00:03:30]From where they're sitting, you're trying to get them to agree with your opinion that they're an abuser and just a bad person.

[00:03:37]This is just not going to happen. Even people who are not narcissists tend to find acknowledging their own harmful behavior extremely difficult. And if you consider the fact that this personality is literally unable to cope with real life in any way to the point where they have to pretend that they're somebody else just to face life at all, you can see the problem here.

[00:03:58]It's just not something this person is going to be able to do. They don't believe it's really true anyway, because in addition to these things that we've been talking about, an external locus of control and their narcissistic defense mechanisms such as projection, denial, and their problems that affect perception like cognitive distortions legitimately prevent them from seeing it.

[00:04:20]To them, it's just a battle of whose opinion wins. They cannot see the rest of this at all, as you can probably already tell from dealing with them.

[00:04:27]They just don't see it.