The ONE Word That Reveals a Narcissist Instantly

Sometimes the damage is hardest to understand when it arrived wearing charm, certainty, and a perfectly rehearsed story. You stop trusting what you saw, what you felt, and eventually what you know.

One of the clearest ways to cut through that fog is to look at entitlement. Real entitlement is staggering when you slow it down and actually inspect it. What kind of person feels justified lying, using, isolating, humiliating, and then asking for more? That question clears a lot up, rather brutally. It breaks the spell.

Compassion matters. Empathy matters. But without boundaries, they can become an open door for people who feel licensed to take. Healthy compassion has backbone. It says yes when yes is real, and it says no when no protects something sacred.

That shift can be uncomfortable, maybe even a bit annoying at first. Good. Honest realizations often are. Seeing entitlement clearly helps you separate their worldview from your own, and once that happens, your judgment starts coming back online.

Transcript

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I know that people like me to try and find uh the humorous side of these subjects, sometimes it's a little bit difficult. We'll try and see where the funny side of this is, because it's not funny to begin with. I want to say something. My suspicion based on conversations, uh, you know, feedback I've had in the community and and people I talk to who are the victims of narcissistic, is that there is a kind of predator blindness that happens. And whether it exists prior to the narcissistic, the abusive relationship or it's induced in the person is becoming a little bit of a controversial issue. It's like a bone of contention. So if I say, Oh, you were prone to being open to narcissistic abuse, some people will say, Oh, that's victim blaming, or you're making the person who received the narcissistic abuse feel guilty. And actually, what my intention is, is to make them feel more empowered, more hopeful that they can do something about it. Because if we can identify, oh, there's a problem there, you can fix it. But if we go, oh, there's no problem there, people who have narcissistic personality disorder are just powerful vampires that fly down from the belfry and just attack people, and there's nothing you can do about it except hope you don't meet one or hope you can recognize them in time. That seems to be a weaker position to leave people in. So I want people to be stronger and I want people to be tough as well. So answer this in the comments. If I just said to you, as a philosophical shift for a period of time, as an experiment, let's say, I just want you to be tougher. I want you to be wise, I want you to be more cynical, I want you to be more resilient. Does that help you? Or does that make you feel like, oh, it sounds like effort, I can't do it, I don't want to do it. Or are you waiting for permission to somebody to say to you, no, be tougher. Go for what you want, be resilient, be single-minded. You know, if you see wrongdoing, either stop it or shun it and avoid it. You know, let me know in the comments because I'm interested. But in this video, I really wanted to dial in on something that I think I've been blind to in my life, and I think uh a lot of people who are the victims of narcissistic abuse don't see. And I'm not saying this to make you feel bad, I'm saying this to help you so that you can go, oh, I need to learn how to see this. And part of it, as I say, is a kind of a predator blindness. It's um not seeing when a person who is of malicious intent is indeed of malicious intent. And then when you do see it, getting stuck in the weeds of, well, maybe it's not their fault, and maybe there's a reason why they're like this, and maybe I should be more compassionate. And I've heard people get stuck on the compassion and empathy question. So uh at the uh BAFTA screening last night for the narcissist playbook, I got a question. It was a good, I liked it because it's kind of a philosophical question that goes beyond psychology, which is okay, we say the person with narcissistic disorder has no empathy, but then we also say there's really nothing that can be done for them therapeutically, because it's a therapeutically resistant personality disorder. Doesn't that mean we're lacking in empathy? Doesn't that mean we're lacking in the compassion that we say they're lacking in? And I like this question, and I think it's valid, and I think it's something that needs to be sorted through. For me personally, um, the way I've organized it in my head is I do have compassion for people for people who've caused me years of harm and cost. I still, to this day, to this moment, am carrying the burden um of other people's wrongdoing. Well, then surely you have the right to be spiteful and resentful and all the rest of it. And I just think that doesn't work for me philosophically, because I don't think it's gonna help me if I'm carrying spite or resentment or vengefulness. But as to the issue of compassion, I do have compassion for them. I have compassion for them as children. I think like if it was before the age of eight, if they were in a different environment with um, you know, uh different uh parenting and different authority styles and different leadership styles, and they were encouraged to develop their interiority, they were encouraged at least intellectually to develop um empathy, you would still have the genetic drivers of the uh personality disorder, but a lot of the behavior could have been massively ameliorated, especially if they were shown different strategies that allowed them to get what they want without causing pain and destruction in the world to other people and to themselves. So I have compassion there. Second place I have compassion is I have a sort of a spiritual compassion, you know, a spiritual level. There is a soul, there is a human being, they're born into this material reality, which is a giant mystery for everybody, and they've gone down a path that causes pain, that causes destruction. Am I compassionate to that? Yes. Are they suffering? For sure. All living beings suffer. So they are suffering, and I have a compassion for that. But the question is if you take the compassion for them as a child and the compassion for them as a soul, as a spiritual being, what do you do with that? So if I say, oh, well, I have compassion for my ex-girlfriend who's cheated on me and cocked me and stolen money from me, therefore, I think what I should do to help stabilize her emotions and uh help her to grow as a human being is to marry her and have children with her. I will give her children, I will give her a home, I will give her a family. And uh over time and therapy and effort, she will ameliorate. Which, yeah, probably she would, because ameliorate clinically just means you got better. It doesn't say how much you got better, because it's very, very hard to define that. But the person would have gotten better. But that's not what I mean by compassion. I remember when I was a kid, the main interest in my teens was Buddhism and particularly Zen Buddhism. We would I went to a good Zen meditation school, a really, really good Zen meditation school under um Ezra Sensei at the Komiokan Dojo in Harobi Road, Birkenhead. And the study and the conversation there would be around compassion. But what does compassion mean? So we have ours in the West, in the Anglosphere, roughly speaking, we have like a warm, fuzzy compassion, which is the doors always open, it always ends in a cuddle, it always ends in acceptance. But in the Japanese Zen tradition, compassion could be very severe boundaries. Because the best thing for the person who needs that compassion might not be an endless, boundaryless yes, but a definitive and even traumatic, and even physically traumatic. You you can read the Zen stories. The stories of people, the Zen master throws his uh uh student out of a, you know, a window and he has a two-story drop, or uh, there's the famous story of somebody who imitates his master by place by doing this, the master develops this as a way of inducing enlightenment in people, and the student starts copying him, so he chops his finger off. That's a little much for me, but I take the point, I take the myth, I take the archetype for what it is, and I go, okay, so compassion could also be something severe, it could be the cutting of something, it could be the removal of something, and there is a deity, I can't remember his name, but he carries a double-edged sword. I think it's only in Japanese Buddhism, I think. Um, but the double-edged sword represents that compassion flows both ways. So compassion for others, we can call this what codependency, fawn responding, simping, um just being a doormat, being a walkover. So if it only cuts one way, then compassion only for others is codependency. If it only cuts this way, compassion only for me, and nothing for anybody else, I'm only able to feel pity. I'm only able to feel compassion for myself, but not for anybody else. We have a word for that. It brought you to this channel. It might be the word narcissism, I'm not sure if it is or not. So it must cut both ways. Compassion for you means compassion for me, means compassion for all living beings. I can't just do what you want, what you, there's an imaginary narcissist, just here. It's not good for your mother, it's not good for your father, it's not good for everybody in life that you come into contact with, it's not good for your children if you have children. That compassion that I show you, if it's only uh atomized or encapsulated to one person, that's not real compassion. Do you see where I'm going with this? The compassion is also a no, the empathy is also a absolutely not. Absolutely not. Well, you said I need therapy. Maybe you could find me a therapist. No. Well, I have no money. Maybe you could pay for my therapy. Um believe me, I've lived this and I've done this. It doesn't work. If you need help, you as a sovereign adult must go and get that help. You, as a sovereign adult, I would say to the narcissist person, must do this for yourself. Nobody can do it for you. To to ask for people to do it for you is um is a corruption. Let's be spiritually extreme. It's a blasphemy. You're messing with other people's karma, you're messing with other people's dharma. Or if you're in a uh uh Abrahamic tradition, the will of God, the will of Allah is this burden was placed on you. What are you doing trying to cast it off on other people? Oh, you think you know more than God, and then you would have what's that called? Uh uh, yeah, it's called, it's called that's it's blasphemy, it's pride. Um the people who are more versed in the Abrahamic religions will tell me, but there are words for this, it's a known phenomenon. Okay, so where do we draw their lines? And we must. And I don't think it's good enough to just say to people, oh, narcissists are terrible, you're fine, um, so the only thing that needs to be done is purely external work. We should all be involved in just social justice movements, we should be applying pressure to the legal system, we should be trying to educate the police, we should be trying to educate social workers, all of that is fine. But if you only do that and say, I need do nothing, I need do change, I need not change, I need do change. Is English your first language? I need not, I need not change, you're massively missing an opportunity. And you're also engaging in something that's uh on the spectrum for narcissistic defenses and narcissistic behavior, you're saying there's nothing wrong with me, it's all out there, which remember that's the fundamental commandment number one of narcissism. I'm perfect, everybody else has a problem. It couldn't possibly be anything me. When I say this, I'm not saying you attracted or manifested or co-created abuse, but there is a um a way in which we as two people came together and we created a system, uh, like um a dual-star system, a binary system, a folia d'eau, which was dysfunctional and which caused pain and which allowed pain to continue to be caused. I would like you to think about one thing. Think of this as being like a Zen Kwan, where you just go away and you just contemplate and think about one thing. So when you're thinking about your narcissistic abuser, you think just about this and you use this as the filter for everything that happened, and please give me 48 hours. Do this 48 hours, journal it, make notes. This one thing, and the one thing is entitlement. Entitlement. So where I say that we are predator blind, part of that, which a lot of us miss in the predator blindness is we're blind to how entitled one would have to be to do and say the things that they do. So the trick that the devil plays here is to befuddle your capacity to see the difference between them and you. So there's a fusing and merging that goes on, a befuddling of your capacity to see their desires and your desires, their worldview and your worldview. And this is all very deliberate and very intentional. Uh, this is one of the areas where I'm in complete agreement with Dr. Pete Salerno. It's intentional. And I can, if anybody's interested in me, I can make a strong case for not only is it intentional, it's absurd to claim that this is some, you know, like a because it's a mental health issue, I can't control my anxiety. I don't have any intention over my depression. My God, who intends to be depressed? I don't have intentionality over my uh introversion. You know, I'm quite introverted. So last night when I did screening, it's hard for me. And the the next morning I wake up and I'm bombed. I'm like, oof, that was, you know, I feel it. I can really feel it. I can because of the, you know, if you're introverted, intuitive, you're you're picking up things from people, signals from people. There's also like a CPTSD response, which is hyper-vigilance. So you're you're hyper-vigilant to the meta-communication in the room, and so on and so forth. You you know the drill because most of you here will be will be living it. You live that, you know what it's like. I want you to filter everything through entitlement and ask. So think of an incident, think of something that was said to you, think of um a question that you've been ruminating over. Because you're fused and merged with them intentionally by them. This is one thing that will really help to uh undo the fusion and unblend you from the merging that's that's occurred, which is to say, how entitled would I need to feel to do that? How entitled? How entitled and cocksure and overconfident and delusional would I need to be to speak to somebody that way? Let's imagine it's a romantic relationship. I take, I target people who are I target women who I know are vulnerable, who I know are lonely, and I know are in pain. And I I I sneak my way in, and I'm like, hey baby girl, hey baby girl. I slightly want to throw up. Let me do it again. Hey, hey, baby girl. Yeah. I'm gonna fix everything, I'm gonna make everything okay. I'm everything you've been looking for. You don't need to worry, you can relax. A man is here now who's gonna protect you and take care of you and help regulate you and and help you, whatever your objectives are. I'm gonna help you. All of that. And I do that knowing I don't even I'm such a scumbag, coward, degenerate, degenerate. I don't even have the balls and the spine and various other forms of offal, the balls in the spine to choose strong women. Never mind strong women, normal women, women who don't have anything, they're fine, they're good, they have a nice relationship with their family. Both of their parents treated them well. They're, you know, they have a strong circle of friends. Nah, nah, not me. I'm a jackal. I'm an opportunistic predator. I need her weak. And then I fuse with her and I fill her head with nonsense just so that I can then go on to abuse her and have her bound to me. Oh, I'm also going to isolate her from the few friends that she does have, and I'm also gonna deliberately make her as crazy as I possibly can. That's what gaslighting really is. It's not lying, it's the intentional crazy-making behavior. My intention is to make her crazy, and I'm going to do that to gratify my ego because it makes me feel powerful. When I say it like that, you can hear yourself saying, What a scumbag. Or if you're a man and this was a woman that did it to you, imagine me saying all that as a woman. Or if it's a same-sex relationship, just run the drill the same way. What level of entitlement does a person need to feel to do such awful things? Because I think it's easy for us all to sort of clean it up inside of our own heads and say, oh, it's not that bad. And I also uh, you know, I also was a part of this, romantic relationships can go wrong, employer employee relationships can go wrong, friendships can go wrong, but that's because we're not looking at it through the right lens. Look at it through the lens of entitlement and you'll see things much more clearly. Ladies and gents, thank you for your time and for your attention.