Narcissistic people have several needs, and none of them are psychologically healthy. Most of them are oriented towards domination and use them to be the center of attention.
They can be charming and then list in all sorts of detail the many flaws that you, yes, you, have. They are not going to recognize that they are imperfect at all, although in the depths of their being that is what bothers them the most.
We can say that the needs of narcissists They are quite varied. We are going to discuss them below not only for the purpose of getting to know them, but so that they also help us identify those narcissistic people in our environment who feed on attention at the expense of our health.
The needs of narcissistic people constitute a whole set of practices that are seriously harmful to their immediate environment. Their way of being makes them comparable to true predators, only unlike sharks, lions or tyrannosaurs rex in nature, narcissists do so within human societies, looking for victims to take advantage of. They don’t care about the context or the circumstance, they only care about being the center of attention or the admiration of others even if that means harming other people.
But although we may well compare them to predators, they differ from those found in nature because, while a wild animal may seem like it or it already suggests a certain danger to us, narcissists are still people whose first impression does not suit us. causes any fear. They are very skilled individuals when it comes to captivating, appearing very pleasant at first, extroverted and knowing how to connect deeply with people. They are people whose emptiness, instability and damage they harbor within us would never occur to us.
Fortunately, psychologists do know what they are like, and we can have an intuition, at least slightly, when we are in front of one. We know that narcissists carry out behaviors that are on a spectrum, moving between prosocial and also antisocial behaviors. That is, they can do good things for others, especially at the beginning of the relationship, and then they can do the worst of the worst, causing harm.
This behavioral ambivalence is what confuses their victims so much, which narcissists undoubtedly take advantage of: “How do I treat you badly? Don’t you remember how much I’ve done for you?”, “You’re the selfish one! You are the one who mistreats me!” and so we could continue ad perpetuum.
Whatever their way of exercising their dominance and attracting attention, one thing should be clear to us: they are deeply unhappy people. Narcissists are very self-conscious about who they are, and they really wish they were better, experts in absolutely any skill and gifted at anything that comes to mind. They want to be perfect, but they know that they are not and, far from accepting their weaknesses and contrasting them with their strengths, they prefer to look for the weaknesses of others in order to exaggerate them and feel that, despite everything, they are above others.
There are several needs of narcissistic people, and all of them help us understand that They are generally not happy people Those who show this type of personality usually experience continuous psychological discomfort, immersed in constant conflicts with those close to them, which translates into having unhealthy social relationships that continue to deteriorate.
This deterioration of their relationships further increases their needs for attention, external validation and domination. Because of this, they progressively enter a vicious circle whose result is always the same: disagreements and loneliness. Even the most unconditional person in the social circle, be it their mother, father, siblings or friends, has a limit, especially if they have been constantly subjected to the cruel treatment of the narcissist.
He ends up losing his relationships and returns to solitude, where he realizes that he is nothing without other people to exploit. This causes him increasing discomfort, a deterioration in his health that ends up motivating him to engage in risky behaviors, such as addictions.
Next we are going to see in depth what the needs of narcissistic personalities are. We have already warned that some of them may even seem paradoxical to us.
1. Love and admiration
The narcissist needs a constant supply of admiration, validation and approval He needs everyone who is part of his or her social circle to be close to him or her, such as family, friends, partners, co-workers… They very intensely desire to be the focus of attention in every situation, achieving it thanks to that his behavior, with grandiloquent and extroverted gestures, hardly goes unnoticed.
They want to be loved and admired, but they don’t reciprocate. We could say that they use the principle “I ask much and give little.” They demand a lot of attention, care and admiration, but they never return it properly. The closest thing to it, if they give anything back, is a harmful love, lacking empathy and without reciprocity.
2. Confidence your way
Another need of narcissistic people is distort, interpret in your own way, trust When we just meet them, they will make us believe that they are those people who can be trusted, the perfect ones to turn to at any time. They will convince us that no one understands us better than them, causing us to fall into their web of difficult escape.
The irony is that they They are not going to trust us or anyone They need to put emotional distance, being emotionally cold and distrustful. In fact, this is one of the fundamental characteristics of narcissistic personality disorder.
3. Need for control
Control implies having the feeling of power. Having one or more people under their control to reinforce their identity, based on the idea that the more people they have under their influence, the more important it is. This obsession with controlling others, with taking the helm in every circumstance, is actually a way of camouflaging their low self-esteem
They need to control you, turn you into their puppet, to feel happy for even a small moment, believing that this is the right way to become someone important. If they do not achieve it, if they do not achieve admiration and domination over other people, they feel that they are nobody, that they are not worth the most, being aware of their many insecurities and low self-esteem. This is why we say that they are predators, since they need others to have self-esteem and their own identity.
They lie more than they talk. You could say that lying is their mother tongue. The narcissists They will try to make us believe in their infinite virtues, trying to convince ourselves that, by being by his side, only good and incredible things are going to happen to us. They will promise us a splendid life at their side, believing that they emit a kind of halo of good fortune and whoever is close to them will enjoy their triumph.
However, that triumph means nothing if it is based on imaginations, dreams, wonders and castles in the air, so light and weak that they disappear with the breath of common sense. But, although everything is invented, narcissists come to believe their own falsehoods, turning their most absurd and surreal lies into reality, at least in the scenario of their mind. It is a useless task to try to discuss their rantings if you are not professional.
5. Creation of fantastic stories
The creation of fantastic stories and their profitability is a necessity that goes one step beyond lying It is a characteristic of narcissists to create an image of themselves, assume it and, later, try to impose it on their prey. Who said fantasy couldn’t be commercialized? These people, men and women, are true merchants of fantasy, of a dazzling story with which to survive and advance positions, gain influence.
In order to take advantage of their deceptions, they do not hesitate to crossing what for many mortals would be a sacred line, an impregnable limit: ethics and respect It does not matter if false information is spread, very harmful to other people, or if it incurs serious signs of disrespect. Who are they going to respect if they consider that others are worth less than them? They lack scruples and this can even cause them to commit criminal acts. After all, because they think they are above others, sometimes they feel that the law does not suit them.
6. Hiding your weaknesses
In order to make sure that their story that they are above others is convincing, that they are better than others and that therefore they have the right to trample them and constantly get their attention, narcissists are experts at hiding their weaknesses. Your insecurity, low self-esteem, fear of loneliness, frustration… there are many negative emotions that, in the form of silent self-criticism, pass through your mind, being aware of all of them, facts that would ruin your fantasies.
They don’t want their weaknesses to be known. If it is already difficult for him to suffer them on the inside, it will be more difficult for him to suffer them on the outside They are people who feel empty, and it could be said that their harmful, predatory, disrespectful behavior towards the people they say they love is actually a coping mechanism for their psychological discomfort. They are so self-conscious that, to feel better, they need to detect complexes, failures and weaknesses in others, exaggerate their importance and feel that others are worse than them.
You may be interested: “What are personal insecurities and how can you treat them?”
The narcissist is aware, at least to some extent, that he is not perfect, although he will never admit it This implies that if you make a mistake, far from assuming its consequences, you will pass them on to others. They are never to blame, if something bad has happened it has to be the fault of other people, accusing them of having done it on purpose or, simply, because since they are not as perfect as them, it was a matter of time before they did it wrong.
Dating a narcissist is synonymous with him blaming us all the time for the bad things that have happened in the relationship. Working with him means that, the day a project is not delivered on time or a report has been done incorrectly, the blame will fall on us. Whatever they do and whatever you do, they are always the victims of your bad acts or the incompetence of others. We could say that they are experts in throwing balls out even if this means destroying the self-esteem and feelings of others.
Final reflection
Seeing all these needs of narcissists, putting up with one of them can be very psychologically exhausting. Surely, while you were reading all of them, someone who has some of these characteristics has come to mind and, with a little luck, it is a person who you can remove from your life without too much complication, such as a co-worker with whom you barely interact or a college friend who likes to be the center of attention. If you distance yourself from them, their influence has no effect.
Things get complicated when that narcissistic person is closer, like a “friend” or family member. It is essential to know how to recognize this type of people, because the only thing they are going to bring us if we do not put a little distance from them is discomfort and suffering. It sounds cruel, but that’s how it is. Even if it is a family member or someone who has apparently done a lot for us, if her way of being involves trampling on our rights as individuals, it is best to keep her far away.
Of course, putting distance is not easy. It may hurt us and we may even end up looking like the bad guys in the movie, but we must prioritize our mental health and not laugh at him or satisfy the selfish and cruel needs of a person who, as we said, is still a social predator. . It is not convenient for us to have around us a person so self-conscious that, far from improving or accepting their defects, they look for them in others to cause harm. Their way of meeting your needs is just another form of abuse. You have to avoid the clutches of these predators to be happy.
