How Do People Become Narcissists? (And Abusive)

For people who are selfless and kind, it’s hard to imagine that someone could treat another person without any compassion or kindness – especially someone who that abusive person claims to love. And people often want to know: why are narcissists like that? And can they change?

Abuse is always about power.

People who are emotionally healthy are not interested in having power over others – they understand that the only person they can (and should) control is themselves.

They find satisfaction in their accomplishments
They don’t look for approval from others
They are OK with people disagreeing with them
They take responsibility for what they can control and don’t try to take control where they can’t
They don’t blame others for their problems – they take action to solve them

Emotionally unhealthy people, on the other hand (such as narcissists), don’t try to solve problems – they find people (or circumstances) to blame. Without consciously thinking of it this way, they believe that if they can control other people and get others to do what makes them (the narcissist) happy, then the narcissist doesn’t have to take responsibility for his own happiness . . . or his own failures. They have other-control but no self-control.

Which explains the rage. When someone doesn’t do things his way, he loses control of himself because he’s lost control of the other. This is one of the dynamics that can cause the victim of a narcissist to feel as though they, themselves, are in control of their abuser and responsible for the abuse. The narcissist doesn’t feel in control when things don’t go well, and so he tells his victim that she is in control so that he doesn’t have to take responsibility for the relationship but, rather, can put responsibility on his victim and blame her when it doesn’t go well.

So, why are they like that?

Why can’t narcissists take responsibility for themselves?

Often, someone who is narcissistic and/or abusive as an adult was controlled as a child. They’ve never been responsible for their own happiness or failures because they’ve never had any control over whether someone is happy with them or not – they’ve always displeased those who are supposed to love them (through no fault of their own), and failure just means things got worse. As a result, they were never able to develop their own sense of self-worth or their own sense of control over the world. [Read my article on narcissism]

Imagine this: a young boy is raised by a parent (let’s say the mother, for the sake of the example) who is never pleased with him. She criticizes every little thing he does that she doesn’t like – from the way he makes his bed to the order he eats the food off his plate. He tries hard to please her, being meticulous and obedient, but it doesn’t matter because he isn’t recognized for anything good. Straight A’s are met with the sarcastic and critical comment, “a straight A student should know how to wash the dishes.” First place at the track meet: she didn’t go or ask about it. Keeping his room clean: “you missed a spot.”

And when he displeases her, it’s a tirade of shame and guilt-trips. He sits down to take a moment to himself, and she tells him that he’s lazy and has too many things to do to be sitting down. He folds the towels differently than she would, and she tells him she can’t believe he doesn’t know how to do it right.

When other kids bully him, she asks him what he did to make them do that, and she tells him to turn the other cheek or stop doing things to instigate it. (Or maybe he himself becomes the bully)

So, he grows up learning that he has no control over whether his mom loves him or not. No matter what he does, he can’t make her happy. There is nothing that has led him to believe that good behavior yields good results – everything has yielded bad results. He feels completely out of control of his own life and believes that he doesn’t matter to those who are supposed to love him. How could he possibly develop a sense of self-worth in that environment?

So he lives with the notion that other people determine his worth – and if only he can find someone to make him feel worthy, he would be happy.

In enters a codependent

A codependent is someone who lives to help people, encourage others, let them know what good people they are, and show them their worth by serving them.

When a codependent enters the scene - it’s the perfect storm.

The adult who had no control over the results during his childhood subsequently believes that he can do nothing to affect the outcome of his adult life, either. Therefore, the outcome is someone else’s responsibility. YOUR responsibility. And if you don’t succeed in producing the life he wants . . . rage.

The scenarios of childhood very from one person to another, but the underlying theme is the same:

control

Perhaps, rather than having a parent who controlled the child, the parent was completely dismissive of the child and let him do whatever he wanted. He learned that, in order to survive, he could tell his parent what to do and the parent, not caring (or, alternately, wanting to make the child happy), would do whatever he/she was told by the child to do. This is another scenario that could create a person with a sense of entitlement that others owe it to him to do whatever he says.

Regardless of the circumstances, emotionally unhealthy people stopped developing emotionally at some point, usually in their teens. At a time when they should have been coached on how to become an independent, confident adult, the teen is emotionally abandoned or emotionally controlled by the parent. Problem-solving skills are never learned because there is no one to walk them through the options. They’ve learned by example what works to “solve” problems: anger, disappointment, abandonment. They take what they’ve learned and apply it to their adult relationships, threatening CRAP (Criticism, Rejection, Abandonment, Punishment) if someone they’re with doesn’t please them.

If their childhood is to blame, how can we blame the narcissist?

Well, on one hand, we can’t. Their failure to mature emotionally through no fault of their own has left them incapable of understanding personal power, accountability, and self-control. Therefore, we can have compassion on them because they were never able to develop the healthy emotional traits needed for successful relationships. They literally do not have the capacity to be anything other than abusive.

However, reasons for behavior are not excuses for behavior. So, while they are not to blame for how they turned out, they still need to be held accountable for their behavior whether they understand their responsibility or not. Not only is it good for them to be held accountable (it’s their only hope of being able to grow emotionally), but it’s good for you to protect yourself from the adult rage of their child-like emotional state. [Read my article on how abusers are just adult bullies]

In light of this explanation, it should be clear that people who are narcissists do not have the capacity to change. In order to change and grow, a person needs to be able to recognize their own power to affect their circumstances – and narcissists can’t do that.

How should you think about the narcissist?

1. Accept that the narcissist’s brain is not wired like yours

He doesn’t have the capacity to see things from your perspective, to be able to look inward, or to evaluate his own behavior and the effect it is having. When you can understand and accept that, you can let go of your attempts to get him to understand you. [Read my article on communicating with someone with a character problem]

2. Remember that reasons for behavior are not excuses for behavior

Too often people who have a high capacity for empathy like to excuse someone’s behavior simply because they understand that the person has no control over what happened to them or why they turned out like they did. This thinking keeps people in relationships with others who are harming them simply because you think it’s the right thing to do to love someone in hopes that you can love them into emotional maturity. That won’t happen. No amount of soft love will help someone recognize love and start to mature. People change when the pain of staying the same becomes greater than the pain of changing.

3. Protect yourself from the fallout of their emotional immaturity

Just because someone can’t help it doesn’t mean that you have to subject yourself to it. They are not going to change. But they will change you if you stay with them. And you don’t want that. You will become who they want you to be (an ever-raising bar that will eventually crush you), and you will completely lose who God made you to be. It was for freedom that you have been set free, do not allow yourself to become burdened again by a yoke of slavery (Galatians 5: 1)

4. Understand that no amount of your love or trust can help them change

They must experience the consequences of their actions in a way that is consistent with reality [Click here to read my article about doing the natural and leaving the super up to God]. They grew up with consequences that did NOT match reality, so if they have any hope of growing, it would be for their experiences to start to match reality: bad behavior leads to painful consequences, good behavior results in pleasant consequences.

And maybe (but don’t hold your breath or you’re likely to suffocate), they’ll come to understand that . . .

hope isn’t found in our situation changing; it is found in our situation . . .