What is the Difference Between a Narcissist and an Abuser?

My name is Jessica night, and this is the relationship recovery podcast. And today we're going to talk about the difference between a narcissist and an abuser, because many people who are in an abusive relationship will refer to their abuser as a narcissist. And it can be problematic because. It puts you down this path of basically like putting all of users in the narcissism category when it's much more complex than that.

But I do think that this happens for many reasons and primarily you're likely trying to make sense of your own reality. And if there's narcissism present in the relationship, there is likely abuse, but narcissism and ideas of narcissism are scattered all over the internet. And more specifically in. And I know for me, it brought me a sense of comfort and pointed me in a specific direction and understanding around certain behaviors that I was experiencing in my relationship.

But it also caused me to fix date on his behavior and his actions instead of the fact that I didn't like the way I was being treated. And I wasn't showing up as my true self anymore. And over time, things became more confusing because the posts that I would see would relate to some behaviors I was experiencing and some wouldn't, which turned into a bit of self victim blaming where I couldn't rationalize all the behaviors.

So I was trying to pick and choose which ones fit in which ones. And I do see this with a lot of clients who want so badly to be able to classify their abuser as something, to make sense of it for themselves. And so today I want to better explain what a narcissist is and differentiate a narcissist from an abuser.

And to do that, I'm going to talk about the DSM, which is the psychological way that a narcissism is defined. But before we go there, I think it is just important to note that an abuser might have narcissistic qualities, but not every abuser has narcissistic personality disorder. So let's start with looking at abuse or abusive behavior because abusive behavior occurs in many different ways and various combinations of ways.

There's also usually a degree in which it shows. And so if you've been listening to this podcast, you know, that abuse is a cycle and narcism has a cycle too,

but in the spectrum of personality disorders and personality types, there's such a wide range of how many of those people can be abusive. You don't even have to have a diagnosed personality type or disorder to have abusive behavior. And in my story, when I was down the path of trying to figure out he was a narcissist or not, I was reading almost every book I could find.

And at one point I felt like he was a sociopath. And at another point it was a psychopath. And at one point a numerous points, he was a narcissist and then it got into borderline personality disorder. But the truth is that none of that really matters. All people can be abusive. And so. Trying to figure out and to diagnose them is an actually helpful because when we encouraged the idea that every abuser is a narcissist, we overlook people who are experiencing other types of abuse.

And we overlook the fact that this behavior is a behavior that can be stopped with the proper work. So just to be clear, once again, An abuser can have narcissistic behaviors without having narcissistic personality disorder. And if you choose to view narcissism as a personality trait, like you would introversion or extroversion, you can see how some of the behaviors exist without the diagnosis.

And so I imagine what I just said was quite confusing. So I want to unpack that a bit more people. Can have and present narcissistic behaviors, but not be diagnosed a narcissist one way to think about this is I'm. I classify myself as an introvert. I can absolutely turn on extroversion when I need to. I don't really like to, it does require that.

I need more time alone to kind of regain my energy, whereas an extrovert gains their energy from being around people and they don't need that time to recharge in the same way that introvert might or that I personally might. And so I might have qualities of extroversion that I can tap into, but I'm not an extrovert.

A narcissist or people may have narcissistic qualities. They may only have a few that come up or that present themselves without being a narcissist.

So we're going to look at the nine characteristics of a narcissist and remember a five of these need to be present in order for them to be diagnosed as a narcissist.

Has a grandiose sense of self importance. So for example, this could be like they exaggerate their achievements or their talents. You might expect to be recognized as superior without having like those achievements, you know? So like they might want to be seen in this great light without actually doing the work to get there.

That's what that looks like, you know, in conversations, this can come up because they might feel like they are the smartest person in the room, or like they know so much better than you when you actually might have more experience with it. That's a narcissistic personality. They might also be preoccupied with fantasies of unlimited success, power, brilliance, beauty, or ideal love.

So what that means is like they might have this idea of. Like, this is the way this should be. Or like, this is what love looks like. Or this is what success looks like when it's actually not grounded in reality. It's just like everything is this honeymoon when we don't have that, it it's wrong or it's not, it's not right.

That's the way that they would view it. Three, believe that they are special and unique and can only be understood by or associate with other special or high status people. And so they might have this feeling of like that they are, you know, they're unique that they're important that they are special.

And like, if you're, if you don't have those accolades, like then you don't, you kind of, you can't be in the room with them in some. For requires excessive admiration. So this is the type of person that you may tell them. Like, they look nice, but that's not enough. Right? It's like they want to feel admire.

They want to feel like the most special person.

I think I'm on five now. Yeah. Five has a sense of entitlement. So this one's actually pretty important. So there's unreasonable expectations. Uh, favorable treatment or automatic compliance with their expectations. And so this comes up a lot, like, so we may see this a lot when we're thinking about abuse, right?

Like when you're in an argument with an abusive person, they have this sense of entitlement or expectation of how you should be responding, what you should be saying, how you should be at. What you should be feeling how you should be responding, right? There's a, there's like a sense of entitlement to your reality.

And so that's something that I think is really important to think about and to like, think about like, like that push and pull, because if it's a narcissistic trait, it still will be very hard for them to change that and to work on their unreasonable expectations, which is actually why. My clients come to me and say things like, do you think that they're going to change?

My, my answer is no, because they're going to have to believe that there is something to change. They're going to have to work on these unreasonable expectations. Can they truly work on that within themselves? Probably not. When I have clients who have unreasonable expectations, they typically one, no, it.

And two are very willing to work on. It are very willing to kind of be in that uncomfortable space where they're working on those expectations and trying to find a way to be a bit more present.

Six is interpersonally exploitive, which means that they take advantage of others to their own. So in narcissist, and I'll probably talk about the narcissistic cycle in a future podcast, but a narcissist would basically take advantage of the person that they're dating or that they're with in order to get what they want out of it.

And I mean, this can come up in a lot of other various situations, but usually they're not playing fair.

Seven lacks empathy. This is key unwilling to recognize our identify with the feelings and needs of others. This is super, super key. A lot of people that are healing from narcissistic abuse will come to me and say, why does he not see what he's doing? Why does he not feel like my pain? How can I be crying in front of him?

And he just has nothing like he's a blank. They are unwilling to feel empathy. And if they do feel empathy, or if you feel like they're feeling empathy, it's usually because they're not getting what they want out of it. Like there, the empathy is for themselves and you can feel that sometimes you're like, wait, you only have feelings right now because you're the one who's hurt that has nothing to do with my hurt feelings.

It has nothing to do with hearing me empathy is when you're able to kind of look and put yourself in the shoes of another. And to you don't have to feel their suffering, but you can notice and sense that they are struggling. You know, when my partner is upset in front of me, I don't want them to be upset.

Like, I mean, there have even been times where like, I've teared up, seeing him upset. Like I don't want him to be upset. Right. And narcissist will have a stone face and narcissist will only care so much as it serves them. You're suffering. And your struggle doesn't matter because they don't have the ability to feel the empathy.

So if you're wondering, why doesn't he feel this? That's why, but again, an abuser can have these traits without being a full blown narcissist taken. Still have. Eight is very envious of others or believes that others are envious of them. And so the way that this shows up is there's a, there is like a little bit of a, like a proxy here, right?

It's cause like they're envious of others, but then they believe other people are jealous of them. What that actually looks like is like, this is their own shame and productions. Like they are so shameful that they can't. You know, even say, oh, I'm so jealous of that person. I want to have that too. They just kind of project that onto somebody.

But the truth is that like they're actually really jealous and when they don't have that, like stature and, um, success, that's where their energy goes. It goes more into the ND rather than the Emery. And lastly, nine shows arrogant, haughty behaviors or attitudes. So, you know, again, most important person in the room, you know, is the superior doesn't mind talking about themselves.

Think like their arrogance is like, it's less about, you know, like confidence, but it's more about like

a lot of narcissism is rooted in shame. So it's not like they are confident in themselves, but it's more like they are so shameful that they cover that up with arrogance and like self-importance to cover up how shitty they actually feel.

And as we look at this, as you look at what the actual diagnosis of narcissistic personality disorder entails, we can see that it's much more complex. What we believe, you know, it's much more complex than just what's posted on Instagram. So if you're trying to make sense of this, I would, I would encourage you to, like, if those posts are helping you continue to read them, but don't continue to try and diagnose this person, try and look at the behaviors, the behaviors that are happening.

And if there are some nurses who behaviors, you can just like one way. Tell yourself as that, he's not going to change this, not going to change. It's not going to change unless he wants it to change. And so you might be thinking that sounds a lot. Like my partner, like I mentioned, abusiveness can look a lot like narcissism abusers, demand that you look up to them.

They refuse to take accountability for their actions. They know how to turn on term when they have a goal in mind and when they want people on their side. They're usually very comfortable lying and they think the problem resides not in them, but another people, usually the people that they're involved with.

So how do you make sense of this in the context of emotional abuse and maybe your reality? And I think Lundy Bancroft puts this really well. He says abusers could hide their abusiveness from the public for a lifetime and no one other than their intimate partner and children will know the truth.

Whereas a narcissist leaves a trail of enemies behind them though. They also pull some people along the way. And I think the important point of that. Uh, narcissist. Well, they very typically in Narcisse we'll have like this thread of people where they've heard before, where abusers usually only abused certain people, like, you know, they abuse the people that are close to them.

They have to maintain control in some way, but they don't do that everywhere. Narcissism, if you're a true narcissist, it's going to conflict. Um,

and this is the, and this is the important point, and this is why we don't want to name everybody who was an abuser, a narcissist, because abusers are overwhelmingly influenced by attitudes and values and behaviors that they learned from people in their lives. Specifically male relatives, their own peers, men in, um, their culture icon.

Like they, this a lot of times abusive behavior is learned behavior. When we label an abuser, a narcissist, we are contributed where you, ah, sorry. We are contributing to the likelihood that people are going to blame the victim. They should have known better. They shouldn't have gotten in tangled. Or even like at the NAR, if the narcissist is, has a way to like, um, kind of like turn on the charm there, or like have something called flying monkeys where you get a bunch of people on your side and sort of, again, victim blame.

That's what we want to be really mindful of. It's like, we don't want to contribute. Like we would need to be really mindful of that. When we confuse these two together, it leads to victim blaming because then it's sort of like, they should have known better. This is what this looks like. This could have been this.

When we really need to look at like that abuse is caused by attitudes in society.

We all have to change our attitudes around that. We have to stop letting this be normal or excused.

Otherwise it's not going to go away and something that I chose. To do is to like really label the behavior as abuse. This is abuse, textbook abuse. And when people had, or, I mean, I think a lot of people were afraid to use that word, but when people would be like, kind of like talk me down or like, say something like, oh, it's not abusive.

Like, oh, you're taking this too far. Oh, you're just hypersensitive. Or, um, or even like, Even with his family when they were like, when I was like, these behaviors are abusive, this is a problem. It's because I didn't want to shy away from the word abuse. We have to start calling abusers abusive. We call them narcissists.

I think it's an out, you know, abusers do fit requirements of narcissism, but they're also abusers. So let's focus on the fact that they're abusive and that the behaviors abusive and that we need to change our thinking around. And this is happening. Like emotional abuse is abuse, right? So we need to bring this back to the fact that if this is what you're experiencing, and if this is your reality, the behavior is still not.

Okay. So hope this was helpful. If you do have questions, please reach out. Confined me at desk at coaching. You could also find some resources on emotional abuse, emotional abuse. My website is Jessica net coaching.com. And you can email me@jessicajessicanetcoaching.com. And I will talk to you soon.