Narcissistic rage occurs when a narcissist is confronted with contrary beliefs about their perceived importance or grandiosity. The narcissist is injured, and responds with anger. Being on the receiving end of this rage can produce feelings ranging from anxiety to downright terror.
Deep-Seated Fear of Rejection / Being Unimportant – This is the core of narcissistic rage. Many narcissists are constantly hounded by the insecurity that people may not see them as the privileged, powerful, popular, or “special” individuals they make themselves to be, and react intensely when their fears are confirmed.
When their “true self” is revealed, a person with NPD may also feel threatened, and their self-esteem is crushed. As a result, they may react with a variety of emotions and actions. Rage is only one of them, but it's often one of the most visible.
Causes of Narcissistic Rage
Grandiosity. Need for power and control. Lacking empathy. A sense of entitlement.
Explosive narcissistic rage often appears completely unprovoked. Such outbursts usually appear highly volatile where the victim is attacked with physical or verbal abuse. Sometimes the person can damage others with their angry outbursts, either physically or emotionally, while in their rage.
1) Give them time to calm down
They may consider their anger to be the result of some deep-seated sense of injustice rather than merely a feeling, or they may fly into a rage and later dismiss it as trivial. So, when a narcissist is mad at you and you want to know how to respond, give them space.
They get jealous about everything
They talk a good game, but narcissists actually have very low self-esteem. Low self-worth/confidence/esteem is at the core of a narcissism. This low sense of self naturally makes it extremely easy for them to become jealous – very jealous.
"Narcissists are primed to be abusive because they're so hypersensitive, and they don't have empathy, and they don't have object constancy," Greenberg said. "So they are primed to take offence and be abusive and not really understand... It's a lot of work for the non-narcissistic mate."
Narcissistic personality disorder may be linked to: Environment — parent-child relationships with either too much adoration or too much criticism that don't match the child's actual experiences and achievements. Genetics — inherited characteristics, such as certain personality traits.
Here are some narcissism red flags to look out for: Lacking empathy. They seem unable or unwilling to have empathy for others, and they appear to have no desire for emotional intimacy. Unrealistic sense of entitlement.
A narcissistic parent will often abuse the normal parental role of guiding their children and being the primary decision maker in the child's life, becoming overly possessive and controlling. This possessiveness and excessive control disempowers the child; the parent sees the child simply as an extension of themselves.
Narcissists also gaslight or practice master manipulation, weakening and destabilizing their victims; finally, they utilize positive and negative emotions or moments to trick others. When a narcissist can't control you, they'll likely feel threatened, react with anger, and they might even start threatening you.
Asking You To Stop
Some narcissists may calmly respond to your tears and simply ask you not to cry. They may say that to try to act compassionate and make you believe that they're comforting you. But truth is, it's about how your tears are making them uncomfortable.
Narcissistic collapse happens when a person with narcissistic personality disorder experiences a failure, humiliation, or other blow to their secretly fragile self-esteem. Depending on the type of narcissist, collapse may look different and happen more frequently.
When a narcissist gets humiliated they experience a narcissistic injury. This triggers their suppressed painful emotions and compromises their emotional stability. To stabilize themselves, narcissists could use narcissistic rage, self-victimization, and/or discarding to regain control of their painful emotions.
People with narcissistic behavior already see themselves as superior to others, so they may become rude or abusive when they don't receive the treatment they think they deserve. While they hold themselves superior, they may speak or act rudely toward those that they deem are inferior.
And like a tired, cranky 3-year-old, the end result is a massive (and unpleasant) tantrum. "Narcissists often control people through these tantrums because their rage can be so worrisome or downright frightening that everyone gives in to them," says Durvasula.
In a survey we conducted among 400 survivors of narcissistic abuse, we found that the average duration of a single narcissistic rage episode is three hours. We also found that the average duration of narcissistic rage from a narcissist who was experiencing multiple episodes is five-and-a-half days.
A narcissist may react aggressively to criticism in an effort to avoid re-experiencing the loneliness they suffered in the past. In response to criticism, a narcissist may also take great pains to devalue or invalidate the person criticizing them.
“A vindictive narcissist is not always physically violent,” Hardy says. “Although they may have exploitative behavior or extreme responses to certain experiences, this does not always mean they will physically assault you.”
Narcissism tends to emerge as a psychological defence in response to excessive levels of parental criticism, abuse or neglect in early life. Narcissistic personalities tend to be formed by emotional injury as a result of overwhelming shame, loss or deprivation during childhood.