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A Peek Inside the Narcissist’s Head: Yes Their Pain Is Real — No, It Doesn’t Justify Their Behavior
About a week after ending my relationship with my narcissistic ex, I happened to be hanging out with my sister and her kids.
At one point during our afternoon, my sister’s five-year-old son was playing with the family bunny and accidentally hurt its ear. This wasn’t a big deal — the bunny hopped away, its ear a little bruised.
My sister, observing this, calmly called out to her son: “Hey, you hurt him. Go apologize and try offering him a treat — ”
Her son, however, did not even hear her second sentence, because he had already collapsed in tears of rage and dismay, literally throwing himself onto the hardwood floor and crying out: “Nooooooo!”
As I watched, something deep inside me clicked: I had seen this emotional response before. I had seen it in my 38-year-old narcissistic ex.
In this moment, my nephew wasn’t rage-crying because the bunny was in pain, he was rage-crying because he was in pain: the social-emotional pain of seeing himself — and being seen — as the “bad guy.” (Research bears out that indeed, this is what happens in the narcissist’s brain too. More on this below.)
