What happens if you tell a narcissist they hurt your feelings?
Narcissists don't know they're hurting you. It doesn't even enter their minds. And, if you try to tell them how you feel, they get defensive and make you feel you're wrong again. In fact, they'll even rather “innocently” tell you: “I'm only trying to help you.”
Does a narcissist care if they hurt your feelings?
They can know they're hurting your feelings, but as long as it elevates their status, they may not care. Someone living with narcissism does cry. They can feel regret, remorse, and sadness. These emotions, however, don't often have roots in empathy.
The narcissist's lack of emotional empathy means that they are unable to feel remorse for the pain they cause others. This is not because they do not know that they have hurt someone, but rather because they do not care who they trample on as long as they get whatever they want.
What happens when you tell a narcissist they are wrong?
Calling out the narcissist really has no benefit. They won't start to acknowledge their wrongs and make efforts to change. By calling them out, you just open yourself up to more abuse from the narcissist. This might be hard to hear because this means you are left with no way to be heard for how you are being treated.
Regret can occur if your action hurts someone else, or if it hurts you, including the potential to hurt you. For a narcissist, they can experience regret, but their regret is inward focused and is void of concern for how it could have affected someone else.
An injured narcissist will go into a narcissistic rage and self-sabotage relationships with their loved ones or at work in order to preserve their false self at all cost. They will hold the critic in contempt and view them as a threat for their survival.
They will often deploy a variety of narcissistic relationship patterns such as manipulation, charismatic, and exploitational tactics in order to ensure that their own needs and wants are met. As a spouse, you may be the subject of their manipulation and abuse, while your partner treats everyone else positively.
It comes hand-in-hand with this that narcissists hate being criticised or called out. Which is exactly why there's one word in particular narcissistic people cannot stand: "no".
The narcissistic personality is likely to draw their partner into a trauma bond, so letting go of a narcissist can be incredibly challenging. You become so dependent upon their intermittent reinforcement that you cannot seem to cut ties with them.
By deliberately hurting you a narcissist is able to obtain a tangible representation of their “greatness”. It makes them feel like they are better than you, which validates and reassures their grandiose sense of self, because they can see that you are in a weak and vulnerable position.
The most effective weapon to fend off a narcissist is self-love. Narcissists do not want to feel like you don't need them, that you are better off without them, and that you love yourself exactly as you are.
When the narcissist realizes you don t care anymore?
But here is the rub: Over time, the narcissist usually senses that you are pulling away, and it is then that your problems take on a different form. Narcissists hate feeling that they might be rejected or that you might conclude that they are defective. So, they go into compensation mode by turning the tables.
When a narcissist realizes they can no longer control you, it is common for them to use many different manipulation tactics to try to regain control over you, such as gaslighting, baiting, intermittent reinforcement, hoovering, narcissistic rage, discarding, smear campaigns, and self-victimization.
Although narcissists act superior to others and posture as beyond reproach, underneath their grandiose exteriors lurk their deepest fears: That they are flawed, illegitimate, and ordinary.
Rejection causes major narcissistic injury and is one of the top 10 things narcissists fear the most. They can't handle it, even if it's a tiny slight. Remember, they have a sense of entitlement and pride themselves on being the ones who reject and discard their victims.
