Relating to a Narcissist

Scripture seems to identify the narcissist easily. Here is the prototype of sin. Haughty, lover of self (2 Timothy 3:2), and spiritually dead. End of story. Case closed. The cause of a narcissist’s maddening lifestyle. Confession and God’s forgiveness are the answer. But for a number of reasons, this can’t be the end of what God says. One reason is it doesn’t explain enough. We are all sinners and can say with the apostle Paul, “Wretched man that I am!” (Romans 7:24), but we are not all narcissists. A second reason is these judgments must be surrounded by self-judgments, and we will start there.

As a way to curb our own frustration with narcissists, note the similarities we share with them. “Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you clean the outside of the cup and the plate, but inside they are full of greed and self-indulgence” (Matthew 23:25). We are the Pharisees. The seeds of narcissism are in us all, and this, of course, is a critical starting point.

We are all familiar with our overflowing self-concern and desire for the attention and regard of others. This insight will help. But there remains the eerie sense that this person is also different from you. Hollow, unable to look in a mirror and see an accurate picture of themselves. They are shameless. Humanity is a composite of sin and remnants of the character of God that is dispersed among us all. In the worst of people, we can usually find something good. But here, the good is barely perceptible.

The gospel is for embodied souls. When we get to the brink of losing all patience, certain that the narcissist is simply mean and self-centered, we consider how Scripture provides more than one way to understand other people. We are souls who can sometimes seem spiritually dead. We are also embodied, and the body imposes strengths and weaknesses.

DETAILS ABOUT THE BODY AND BRAIN

Everyone can acknowledge that we are a collage of strengths and weaknesses, but we add a fatal attachment to this reality. When it comes to judging others, we assume that people are like us, with our assorted strengths and weaknesses. If we are able to resist a shot of whiskey, the alcoholic should too. If we can show respect to others, then other people should be able to do the same. But other people do not share our strengths and weaknesses. When it comes to taking a hard look at ourselves, pride can make us see only someone else’s problems. But self-examination is also an ability—a strength or weakness. Some of us do this easily and accurately; some of us don’t know what it means or how to do it. After a brain injury, for example, what is most frustrating to family members is that brain-injured people do not understand their own disabilities and are prone to endlessly making the same mistakes. Sadly, we can mistake that inability as being hopelessly self-centered.

Here is a general rule: the more physical and brain weaknesses we see in another person, the more patient we become, and with patience comes wiser and potentially more helpful words. As a result, we try to understand the abilities of a narcissist.

Emotion-less. A self-described sociopath, kin to narcissists, observed, “I feel like my risk-seeking behavior stems from a low fear response or a lack of natural anxiety in potentially dangerous, traumatic, or stressful situations.”¹ In other words, this person doesn’t feel fear or anxiety like the rest of us. Without those feelings telling us, “You will be sorry if you do that,” expect recklessness and risks that carry a high probability of failure.

Dulled emotions can also affect our view of the future. One feature of narcissists is that their lives are trapped in the present. They are poor at anticipating future difficulties and rarely make plans. Arrogance, of course, doesn’t listen to any advice, but add to that arrogance an inability to feel consequences, and there is no reason to prepare for future problems because future crises simply don’t feel like problems. Perhaps those problems, when they come, make the person feel something, which he or she welcomes.

If a narcissist doesn’t feel as much as others, imagine how this will affect empathy. Empathy is an expression of love. It means that you can understand, at least in part, the feelings of others, and you are affected by both how they feel and the events that provoked those feelings. Such empathy is a spiritual matter, yet it depends on certain abilities that rely on the brain.

Our brains regulate and provide the neurological base for our emotional range. Some of us are exuberant and hopeful. Some are darker, brooding. Others are emotionally steady and less affected by the events around them. Some experience shades of frustration and little else. These differences have their reasons, and the brain is one of them. There is a direct link between your own emotional experience and empathy. If you feel intensely, you will be more capable of feeling intensely on behalf of others. If you feel rejection, you will understand others who feel rejection. If you don’t feel rejection, you won’t be sympathetic when those you love are rejected. If you don’t register fear or danger as much as others, you will not have sympathy for them in their fears. If you do not have certain feelings because your brain has a limited emotional range or because you have learned to deny those feelings, you will be handicapped in your compassion.

If these observations actually fit, they will affect the way you relate to a narcissistic person. For example, you will be less offended by their apparent indifference to you—it is not necessarily personal. You will also be less prone to expecting your emotional tone—your hurt, your anger—to have any impact. Narcissists can be confused by empathy or requests for it. Instead of judging them as amoral through and through, you might approach them as those who come from a different country and speak a different language, and you have to figure out how to have basic communication with them. From this perspective, you might find that the person is actually trying to have a relationship more than you thought.

Now add the possibility of a disability in making assessments of personal strengths and weaknesses. Some of us are fairly accurate in those assessments, some of us see weaknesses and no strengths, and others see all strengths and no weaknesses. Those who fit the descriptions of narcissist seem to be poor at assessing their weaknesses. They are all strengths, no weaknesses. This might be another reason to ignore the future. When people believe they can master anything, they will bring this mastery to any future problems. This can be catastrophic for families, and the narcissist will be unsympathetic because it will not feel catastrophic for him.

Why won’t they just listen to you and your feedback on them? If you have a friend who suggests you are not as good at math as you thought, you might listen; you might not. You will likely not listen if you have been getting excellent grades in math and there are people who keep telling you how gifted you are. In other words, the feedback of others must make sense to us in order for us to heed it, and it will not make sense to a person with poor self-insight.

All this means that wisdom relies on our emotions more than we might think. If we are to learn from our mistakes, it helps to feel that bad things will happen when we choose foolishly. Wise people are typically capable of considering a particular decision and then imagining or feeling possible consequences. They can feel “that would feel horrible,” and they don’t make that decision. A child who forfeited a favorite toy as a consequence for not listening to a parent will be quicker to listen tomorrow because she remembers the pain of being separated from that toy. Without the emotion of horrible, we would all be prone to unwise judgments. People who cannot access these emotions need to learn other ways of making wise decisions.

LISTEN, ASK, LEARN

In response, we too aim for humility and listening, and we search for creative ways to help. In this, we are happy to get help from most anyone.

Here are a few useful ideas you might hear.

Say no to your anger. Your anger will not help you or the self-absorbed person. It will be distracting and the equivalent of nonsense words if the other person doesn’t know what to do with emotions. Instead, you need a calm and measured engagement that invites discussion. In the face of the other person’s outbursts, you will want to do something, but responding in anger will not help, and identifying your pain might just leave you frustrated. Calm responses are your goal. A conversation will be more productive if there is at least one person in the room who wants to grow in wisdom.

See the other person as a child. The self-centered world, the difficulty learning from consequences, the inaccurate self-assessment—these are what we expect from a child. That image can be helpful for you—always their birthday but never growing up. It limits your expectations; it dismantles your assumptions of what you think is understood; it challenges you to communicate in memorable and persuasive ways. Only be careful in how you use it.

The same image applies to those who have a long-term history of addiction: the addiction essentially shields them from the challenges of life that mature us, and the addict is easier to understand as a twelve-year-old rather than a forty-year-old. This is an imperfect analogy, but it can be helpful in your relationship. The benefit is that you will be more patient with the person if your expectations have been adjusted.

Other images include disabled, blind, and hard of hearing. Each image can be bent both toward hard hearts and unusual brains. When you read through the book of Proverbs, you can see the author laboring with questions such as these. How can I help a blind person to see? How can I help a deaf person to hear? How can I help a foolish person who is unable to see the consequences of their actions to learn from their errors? Then watch the wise king’s method. He labors to get our attention. He uses vivid images, such as a gold ring in a pig’s snout. He uses humor. He doesn’t talk too much at one time but leaves room for reflection. He certainly wants his words to catch our attention.

“Look at me, please” is something you might say to a child who is not listening to you. With an adult, you want to speak with respect, but your words might be similar. Your goal is to get their attention and then have them respond to what you said.

“Do you have time to listen? There is something I wanted to talk about.” When there is either no response or one that is unrelated to your request, you can repeat it. “When will you have time to listen? I need ten minutes.” Notice, you are being more specific and concrete. That can help.

Still no response? Time for humor. You sing, loudly and badly. You bang on the nearest pot. Or you describe your schedule for the day. “Today I have been asked to drag race, with owner’s cards going to the winner. Then it is off to the local drug dealer to check out the prices. . . .”

When you study the various ways that Proverbs tries to get your attention, you become more creative at getting the attention of others.

And there is a time to be more direct. “I know you are frustrated right now. You can help me to understand what is bothering you, or you can put the frustration aside and we can just move on.”

Do not use “narcissist” and other labels. Diagnostic labels have their benefits and liabilities. They can help you see certain behaviors. They can also blind you by leading you to believe that everything is a result of the diagnoses, which it is not. For the person who wears the label, the word can be meaningless or offensive. It will not help. The same can be said with words such as arrogance, pride, selfish, entitled and many others. Stick with descriptions: “This is what you do,” rather than “This is who you are.” Practice your own empathy skills. Empathy is the ability to step into someone’s world in a way that the person feels understood. An apparent absence of empathy is what is most difficult about narcissist types. They do not understand either your world or their own. In response, you redouble your own efforts to grow in empathy, to which there are many ingredients. Here are three:

1. Know their story

When someone is hard to understand, it is helpful to know something of the culture of their family. With narcissism, we might find a history of being spoiled or deprived or parents who were preoccupied in their own selfish worlds and never affected by the good deeds of their children.

Don’t expect such discussions to help the person directly though. Those who lack insight are rarely enlightened by their past. They can praise those who were unkind and abusive, while they demean those who were kind and gentle. They usually see past hurts as no big deal and resist our attempts to suggest long-term patterns. But these insights encourage our own patience and kindness.

2. Assume that they are normal human beings

Amid all the boasting, entitlement, and “I don’t need you or anybody else,” expect to find people who want relationship but act in ways that push people away. Expect people who fear failure and, in response, blame others when things go wrong. Expect people who don’t know how to deal with or express their struggles. And expect that they do not have the ability to identify these experiences, so the result is meanness. Expect people to be alone and living on that unsettling ground of the opinions of others.

“I think you are saying that you have had a really hard day and I’d love to hear about it even if you would rather avoid it.”

3. Look for good

When someone is demanding or showing off their greatness for your affirmation, it is hard to see anything good, but empathy looks for the good. If the person is talking about his achievements, try to find one. Look for something good. After hearing complaints about how the world is not serving him as it should, sometimes the good is hard to find. So you pray for help.

And if the complaints and blame keep coming? If you don’t know what to say, you probably wouldn’t say anything. You might reframe the complaint, “I am the same way—I have plans for the day and then something interferes with my plans.” This could open a conversation to how God can use troubles to test our trust in him.

Your goal is to bring together empathy and wisdom. Here is one such response by a wife, spoken with preternatural calm, to her fuming husband. You can almost imagine that she is speaking to a child, yet her language is respectful and inviting.

“You know, I don’t believe a word of that. It’s not that I think you are lying. It’s just that I know you, and I know how difficult it can be for you to tell me that you miss me. When I’m distracted, like this week, you often feel as if you are unimportant to me. I can understand how upsetting that must be for you. But there is no need to put me down or blame my job. You aren’t giving me a chance to care about you when you speak to me that way. . . . I’d like to start the conversation over. How about you?”²

“She knows her spouse. She knows that emotions and their meanings are elusive to him, so she gives him words that help him. She is specific about what he has done but reminds him, quite clearly, that she does care and wants to care. Then she proposes a way to reboot the conversation without it being mired in analysis, which would be asking too much of him. To speak to an immature person like this might not bring instant repentance, but this is a fine example of a skillful response.”

Remember the thing of first importance. In all this, we hope to speak the truth of Christ with gentleness and kindness and with courage and clarity. We return to our home where we remember what is most important. We “are not [our] own, for [we] were bought with a price” (1 Corinthians 6:20). There, we know that we are not alone, and the Spirit is in these critical details of our lives. Frustration is sure to come, but it gets postponed because you know that you—a friend, a family member, a helper— can grow. As God has been patient with you, you extend that patience to others. As God has surprised you with the best of news, you strategize and find help so you too can surprise in the best possible way.

It begins with the Spirit’s work in you. You need to be rescued by Jesus, to see yourself in light of God’s words, and to live by relying on what Jesus did and the Spirit he gave us. To do that, you return to the good news of Jesus and become persuaded, again, that it truly is good news.

Only then can we offer Jesus to others.

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1. M. E. Thomas, Confessions of a Sociopath: A Life Spent Hiding in Plain Sight (Crown, 2013), 108, https://books.apple.com/us/book/confessions-of-a-sociopath/id601923525.
2. Wendy Behary, Disarming the Narcissist (Oakland, CA: New Harbinger Publications, 2021), 158–59.

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Excerpt adapted from I Have a Psychiatric Diagnosis: What Does the Bible Say? © 2022 by Edward T. Welch. May not be reproduced without prior written permission.

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