No Empathy, No Remorse, No Accountability

Narcissists are full of all kinds of shit. Their entire world is a lie. They love to tell tales of how their friends, family, and exes treated them unfairly, caused them embarrassment, etc. Someone always did them wrong.

Ironically, narcissists love to embarrass, humiliate, smear, and callously abuse others- friends, family, exes, and people they are currently involved with. There is not a shred of empathy when they are dishing it out. Additionally, there is not one human being in their life that the narc has not f-cked over.

Yet when a narcissist faces perceived embarrassment or accountability, the narcissist goes into an intense form of seething rage like you have never seen, caused by a narcissistic injury to the narc’s delusional psyche. This form of rage is way more personal and intense than a normal/ neurotypical person having an unfavorable moment.

It is, in fact, these psychological defense mechanisms, that are the hallmarks of narcissistic personality disorder. These broken psychological processes began young, and they drive the narcissist to be the soul-sucking person they are.

They can dish it out, intentionally, willfully, regularly, and on grand scales, without a second thought, without apology, without any empathy.

But when it comes to them, they cannot take it.

The embarrassment, real or perceived, is very likely and realistically caused by the narc’s behavior directly, or the repercussions of their behavior. But they cannot/will not address themselves as responsible, because they are narcissists. Narcs are fundamentally damaged human beings.

They cannot internalize and reflect on their behavior, as it would be a threat to their very sense of self. So they project outward. The narc’s psyche is driven by a pathological defense system; i.e. an overinflated, seriously diluted ego that asserts the “I”, capital “I”, is the star of all existence.

Realistically, the narcissist’s sense of self is actually dependent upon manipulating the outside world to join their delusion. The narc possesses a no-holds-bar mentality to uphold their delusion. There are casualties. However, the narc could care less about anyone that they hurt. They hardly recognize that others even exist.

The narc must preserve the idealized false self and hide the monster that they are.

This becomes difficult for the narc’s psyche to manage when the narc’s house of cards falls and evidence of the monster is presented. Anything that challenges the narcissist’s fake idealized version of themself is perceived as a major threat.

To give you a glimpse into the narcissist’s demented world I will share an example with you. A story from my direct personal experience of being in a relationship with a malignant narcissist.

My ex was supposedly a recovering addict when I met him. His friends would hint that he was still using. My ex would say his friends were just jealous of him, wanted to embarrass him, and put him down. He promised me the drugs were in the past and he proclaimed proudly, if not arrogantly, he would take a drug test any time.

On Fridays, he used to meet me at my work before I got off, and we would leave together and go out to dinner or for drinks. One particular Friday, he didn’t show up. I called his phone, no answer. I went to his house, he wasn’t home. Hours went by. I didn’t hear from him. I had a sick sinking feeling in my stomach. I wondered if the rumors about the drugs were true.

I thought to myself, he is always saying he will take a drug test any day, any time. Maybe I ought to stop wondering and put the topic to rest. So, I bought a home drug test.

Later that evening, he called and said he had fallen asleep. I immediately got a bad feeling that he was lying, as I had already been to his house earlier and he had not been at home. So, where else would he be asleep?! I put the drug test in my purse and went over to his house.

All the lights were off. He was acting rather strangely. I expressed my concerns to him, gently, asking him if he was using. He, of course, denied it.

I pulled out the drug test and asked him to take it, to ease my mind and put the subject to rest, like we had talked about. He looked stunned. He took it into the bathroom. And he did not come out for several minutes.

When he did, he told me he could not pee. I sort of squinted at him and persisted that maybe he could drink some water. He tried to brush it off and kiss me. But I had a bad feeling.

He was the one constantly offering to take a drug test to prove his innocence once and for all. But now that there was one in front of him, he was desperately searching for a distraction to not take it.

The more I persisted, the more agitated he became. He ended up taking the drug test box and throwing it in a rage. Then he came after me.

I was stunned, hurt, confused, sad. He began screaming at me saying that I believed everyone else over him, as he hit me and went completely ballistic.

I tried to leave, but he kept hitting me, to the point where I was afraid I’d have serious damage. I could feel my face swelling up. I begged him to stop. He kept hitting, kicking, and throwing me around. He dragged me by my hair, leaving me with bald spots after. It was brutal.

He would not let me leave, because he didn’t want anyone to see what he had done to me. He was screaming that I was going to embarrass him, that I always embarrass him.

That’s the point where I paused and absorbed the cold realization he was legitimately psychopathic.

I was a broken, bloody, bruised, bald, swollen, unrecognizable mess. And he was concerned my hideously beaten face was going to embarrass him. That he would look bad for being who he is and doing what he did. He didn’t give a shit about me.

I couldn’t even process how someone could be so cruel, selfish, and utterly deranged.

I ended up escaping and running to a neighbor’s house, who drove me across town to my aunt’s house. I collapsed in her arms. She called an ambulance and the police.

When the police questioned him, he accused me of beating myself. In true psychopathic fashion, he calmly claimed I had run my head into the wall, multiple times, and would not stop. However, my injuries, from head to toe, were so severe, no one believed him for a second. While I lay in the hospital, he was arrested.

He then changed his story to self-defense, claiming I was the aggressor.

Because he had beaten me in his home, he asserted that I had trespassed, entered the house, and started hitting him while he was asleep. When he awoke to this, he said, I began throwing myself into the walls. He lied. He unapologetically lied and took no accountability. And when it was all said and done, he hated me for having him arrested.

Take a good look at this story. This is what narcissists do.

There is no remorse.

They flip scripts over and over again to preserve their false self and hide their horrific reality. Maybe they are lying, drug-using, woman-beating psychopaths. Even though it is the truth, they don’t want to be seen as such.

Narcs want to be seen as the flawless, blameless, eternally innocent, ever superior presentation of themself, which is false.

Narcs are embarrassed of their truly terrible real selves, but because they are so pathologically broken, they deflect all accountability for their bad behaviors rather than work on them.

Listen to me- if any of this sounds even remotely familiar, please know, you are never responsible for someone else’s behavior. Pay attention to the signs. Listen when your intuition is nagging at you that something isn’t right. Don’t second guess yourself. Your higher self is trying to save you.

In my case, I really wanted my intuition to be wrong. I wanted him to be the person he said he was, more than anything. But it turned out, he was worse than I ever imagined.

My ex put me in the hospital for calling him out. He could have killed me. And he wouldn’t have shed a tear. He would’ve immediately begun deflecting all responsibility; only thinking of himself and how he would look to his imaginary fan club.

No empathy; no remorse; no accountability. That’s how seriously deranged this type of personality is. Don’t underestimate it. Narcissists are evil.